I may have my first SEO client, I’ve put a proposal together for SEO with content marketing. he has a website on WordPress. I purchased Content Kingpin, I am thinking Build an IFTTT ring for the website, use content kingpin to curate 2 posts a week, (client to provide one additional original post a week).
Confused with Serp Space and ordering the most powerful network set up for a website, should I just order 1 IFTTT network and power with backlink packages to first tier or multiple tiered networks ? I think I remember you saying for website only one ring & YouTube – multiple ? from serp space can you advice on the strongest set up for a website thanks.
Also what other monthly link building methods can you advice I do. (medium competition keywords non local).
Do your link building results look something like this?
Start doing outreach
Get links
Stop doing outreach
No more links
Everyone talks about the long-term benefits of using content marketing as part of a link building strategy. But without the right type of content, your experience may be that you stop earning links as soon as you stop doing outreach.
In this sense, you have to keep putting gas in the car for it to keep running (marketing “gas” = time, effort, and resources). But what if there was a way to fill up the car once, and that would give it enough momentum to run for months or even years?
An example of this is a salary negotiations survey we published last year on Harvard Business Review. The study was picked up by TechCrunch months after we had finished actively promoting it. We didn’t reach out to TechCrunch. Rather, this writer presumably stumbled upon our content while doing research for his article.
So what’s the key to long-term links? Content that acts as a source.
The goal is to create something that people will find and link to when they’re in need of sources to cite in content they are creating. Writers constantly seek out sources that will back up their claims, strengthen an argument, or provide further context for readers. If your content can serve as a citation, you can be in a good position to earn a lot of passive links.
Read on for information about which content types are most likely to satisfy people in need of sources and tips on how to execute these content types yourself.
Original research and new data
Content featuring new research can be extremely powerful for building authoritative links via a PR outreach strategy.
A lot of the content we create for our clients falls under this category, but not every single link that our client campaigns earn are directly a result of us doing outreach.
In many cases, a large number of links to our client research campaigns earn come from what we call syndication. This is what typically plays out when we get a client’s campaign featured on a popular, authoritative site (which is Site A in the following scenario):
Send content pitch to Site A.
Site A publishes article linking to content.
Site B sees content featured on Site A. Site B publishes article linking to content.
Site C sees content featured on Site A. Site C publishes article linking to content.
And so on…
So, what does this have to do with long-term link earning? Once the content is strategically seeded on relevant sites using outreach and syndication, it is well-positioned to be found by other publishers.
Site A’s content functions as the perfect citation for these additional publishers because it’s the original source of the newsworthy information, establishing it as the authority and thus making it more likely to be linked to. (This is what happened in the TechCrunch example I shared above.)
Examples
In a recent Experts on the Wire podcast, guest Andy Crestodina talked about the “missing stat.” According to Andy, most industries have “commonly asserted, but rarely supported” statements. These “stats” are begging for someone to conduct research that will confirm or debunk them. (Side note: this particular podcast episode inspired this post – definitely worth a listen!)
To find examples of content that uncovers a missing stat in the wild, we can look right here on the Moz blog…
Confirming industry assumptions
When we did our native advertising versus content marketing study, we went into it with a hypothesis that many fellow marketers would agree with: Content marketing campaigns perform better than native advertising campaigns.
This was a missing stat; there hadn’t been any studies done proving or debunking this assumption. Furthermore, there wasn’t any publicly available data about the average number of links acquired for content marketing campaigns. This was a concrete data point a lot of marketers (including us!) wanted to know since it would serve as a performance benchmark.
As part of the study, we surveyed 30 content marketing agencies about how many links the average content marketing campaign earned, in addition to other questions related to pricing, client KPIs, and more.
After the research was published here on Moz, we did some promotion to get our data featured on Harvard Business Review, Inc, and Marketing Land. This data is still being linked to and shared today without us actively promoting it, such as this mention on SEMRush’s blog and this mention on the Scoop It blog (pictured below).
To date, it’s been featured on more than 80 root domains and earned dozens of co-citations. It’s worth noting that this has been about far more than acquiring high-quality links; this research has been extremely effective for driving new business to our agency, which it continues to do to this day.
Debunking industry assumptions
But research doesn’t always confirm presumptions. For example, Buzzsumo and Moz’s research collaboration examined a million online articles. A key finding of their research: There was no overall correlation between sharing and linking. This debunked a commonly held assumption among marketers that content that gets a lot of shares will earn a lot of links, and vice versa. To date, this post has received an impressive 403 links from 190 root domains (RDs) according to Open Site Explorer.
How to use this strategy
To find original research ideas, look at how many backlinks the top results have gotten for terms like:
[Industry topic] report
[Industry topic] study
[Industry topic] research
Then, using the MozBar, evaluate what you see in the top SERPs:
Have the top results gotten a sizable number of backlinks? (This tells you if this type of research has potential to attract links.)
Is the top-ranking content outdated? Can you provide new information? (Try Rand’s tips on leveraging keywords + year.)
Is there a subtopic you could explore?
Additionally, seeing what has already succeeded will allow you to determine two very important things: what can be updated and what can be improved upon. This is a great place to launch a brainstorm session for new data acquisition ideas.
Industry trend and benchmark reports
Sure, this content type overlaps with “New Research and Studies,” but it merits its own section because of its specificity and high potential.
If your vertical experiences significant change from one year, quarter, or month to the next, there may be an opportunity to create recurring reports that analyze the state of your industry. This is a great opportunity to engage all different kinds of brands within your industry while also showcasing your authority in the subject.
How?
People often like to take trends and add their own commentary as to why trends are occurring or how to make the most of a new, popular strategy. That means they’ll often link to your report to provide the context.
And there’s an added promotional benefit: Once you begin regularly publishing and promoting this type of content, your industry will anticipate future releases.
Examples
HubSpot’s State of Inbound report, which features survey data from thousands of HubSpot customers, has been published annually for the last eight years. To date, the URL that hosts the report has links from 495 RDs.
Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs have teamed up for the last seven years to release two annual content marketing benchmark reports. The most recent report on B2B content marketing has earned links from 130 RDs. To gather the data, CMI and MarketingProfs emailed a survey to a sample of marketers from their own email marketing lists as well as a few lists from partner companies.
In addition to static reports, you can take this a step further and create something dynamic that is continually updated, like Indeed’s Job Trends Search (171 RDs) which pulls from their internal job listing data.
How to use this strategy
Where can you find fresh industry data? Here are a few suggestions:
Survey your customers/clients
You have a whole pool of people who have been involved in your industry, so why not ask them some questions to learn more about their thoughts, needs, fears, and experiences?
Talking directly to customers and clients is a great way to cut through speculation and discover exactly what problems they’re facing and the solutions they’re seeking.
Survey your industry
There are most likely companies in your industry that aren’t direct competitors but have a wealth of insight to provide to the overall niche.
For example, we at Fractl surveyed 1,300 publishers because we wanted to learn more about what they were looking for in content pitches. This knowledge is valuable to any content marketers involved in content promotions (including ourselves!).
Ask yourself: What aspect of your industry might need some more clarification, and who can you reach out to for more information?
Use your internal company data
This is often the easiest and most effective option. You probably have a ton of interesting data based on your interactions with customers and clients that would benefit fellow professionals in your industry.
Think about these internal data sets you have and consider how you can break it down to reveal trends in your niche while also providing actionable insights to readers.
Curated resources
Research can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of creating content. If someone has pulled together a substantial amount of information on the topic in one place, it can save anyone else writing about it a lot of time.
If you’re willing to put in the work of digging up data and examples, curated resource content may be your key to evergreen link building. Let’s look at a few common applications of this style of content.
Examples
Collections of statistics and facts
Don’t have the means to conduct your own research? Combining insightful data points from credible sources into one massive resource is also effective for long-term link attraction, especially if you keep updating your list with fresh data.
HubSpot’s marketing statistics list has attracted links from 963 root domains. For someone looking for data points to cite, a list like this can be a gold mine. This comprehensive data collection features their original data plus data from external sources. It’s regularly updated with new data, and there’s even a call-to-action at the end of the list to submit new stats.
Your list doesn’t need to be as broad as the HubSpot example, which covers a wide range of marketing topics. A curated list around a more granular topic can work, too, such as this page filled with mobile email statistics (550 RDs).
Concrete examples
Good writers help readers visualize what they’re writing about. To do this, you need to show concrete evidence of abstract ideas. As my 7th grade English teacher used to tell us: show, don’t tell.
By grouping a bunch of relevant examples in a single resource, you can save someone a lot of time when they’re in need of examples to illustrate the points they make in their writing. I can write thousands of words about the idea of 10x content, but without showing examples of what it looks like in action, you’re probably going to have a hard time understanding it. Similarly, the bulk of time it took me to create this post was spent finding concrete examples of the types of content I refer to.
The resource below showcases 50 examples of responsive design. Simple in its execution, the content features screenshots of each responsive website and a descriptive paragraph or two. It’s earned links from 184 RDs.
Authority Nutrition’s list of 20 high-protein foods has links from 53 RDs. If I’m writing a nutrition article where I mention high-protein foods, linking to this page will save me from researching and listing out a handful of protein-rich foods.
How to use this strategy
The first step is to determine what kind of information would be valuable to have all in one place for other professionals in your industry to access.
Often times, it’s the same information that would be valuable for you.
Here are some ways to brainstorm:
Explore your recent blog posts or other on-site content. What needed a lot of explaining? What topics did you wish you had more examples to link to? Take careful note of your own content needs while tackling your own work.
Examine comments on other industry articles and resources. What are people asking for? This is a gold mine for the needs of potential customers. You can take a similar approach on Reddit and Quora.
What works for other industries that you can apply to your own? Search for terms like the following to see what has been successful for other niches that you can apply to yours:
[Industry topic] examples
types of [industry topic]
list of [Industry topic]
[Industry topic] statistics OR stats
[Industry topic] facts
No matter which way you choose to proceed, the time investment can help you garner many links down the line.
Beginner content
Every niche has a learning curve, with various words, concepts, and ideas being foreign to a beginner.
Content that teaches noobs the ins and outs of your vertical has long-term linking potential. This type of content is popular for citations because it saves the writer from explaining things in their own words. Instead, they can link to the expert’s explanation.
And the best part is you can tap your internal experts to provide great insights that can serve as the foundation for this type of content.
Examples
101 Content
Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO is a master class in how comprehensive beginner-level content becomes a link magnet. Not only does the guide have backlinks from more than 1,700 RDs, it also edges out the home page as the most-trafficked page on the site, according to SEMrush.
“What is...?”
Beginner content need not be as massive and thorough as the Moz guide to be linkable. It can be as simple as defining an industry term or concept.
Moz’s meta description page, which has backlinks from 244 RDs, is a solid example of an authoritative yet simple answer to a “what is?” query.
Another example is the first result in Google for the query “what is the Paleo diet,” which has 731 links from 228 RDs. It’s not a 10,000-word academic paper about the paleo diet. Rather, it’s a concise answer to the question. This page has served as an excellent source for anyone writing about the Paleo diet within the last several years.
If a lot of adequate top-level, definition-style content already exists about topics related to your vertical, consider creating content around emerging terms and concepts that aren’t yet widely understood, but may soon be more mainstream.
The perfect example of this? Creating a definitive explanation about content marketing before the entire world knew what content marketing meant. Case in point: Content Marketing Institute’s “What is Content Marketing?” page has amassed an impressive from 12,462 links from 1,100 root domains.
How to use this strategy
Buzzsumo recently released a new tool called Bloomberry which scours forums including Reddit and Quora for questions being asked about a keyword. You can search by time period (ex. questions asked within the last 6 months, all-time results, etc.) and filter by source (ex. only see questions asked in Reddit).
Use Bloomberry to see what beginner questions are being asked about your keyword/topic. Keyword ideas include:
[Industry topic] definition
How does [industry topic] work
[Industry topic] guide
What is [industry topic]
After doing the search, ask yourself:
What questions keep coming up?
How are these common questions being answered?
Bloomberry is also useful for spotting research opportunities. Within the first few results for “SaaS” I found three potential research ideas.
Pro tip: Return to these threads and provide an answer plus link to your content once it’s published.
Yes, you still need to promote your content
Don’t mistake this post as a call to stop actively doing outreach and promotion to earn links. Content promotion should serve as the push that gives your content the momentum to continue earning links. After you put in the hard work of getting your content featured on reputable sites with sizable audiences, you have strong potential to organically attract more links. And the more links your content has, the easier it will be for writers and publishers in need of sources to find it.
What types of content do you think are best for earning citation links? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you – please share your experiences in the comments below.
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The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.
Announcement
Hernan: Alright, we are live. Hey everybody, this is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. I’m just kidding. This is Hernan Vasques, how are you guys doing? We’re taking over the weekly SEO Q&A called Hump Day Hangouts for the 22nd of February today because our beloved Bradley, and the good old Adam, they are out there in Dallas right now for the Funnel Hiking Live. So I’m pretty sure that if they could, they would join. They will probably join later on if they’re not too in depth in a conference or whatever to say some comments, but in the mean time we’re taking over. So we have a bunch of announcements. We have a bunch of questions today, but before going in, I want to say hello to my two partners, two friends here. Hey Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: Hey man, what’s up? If I can just change what you said a little bit. We’re not taking over HDHO. We’re actually taking over the world.
Hernan: Right. There you have it. More to come, more to come, because we’re going to talk a little bit about that in a second. And there’s also Chris, how are you doing Chris?
Chris: Doing good here.
Hernan: Alright. Okay guys, so we have a bunch of questions, but before I just wanted to make a couple of quick announcements. If you haven’t done yet, and you haven’t signed up for the Vita PowerHouse Video Series that we have put together, that I have recorded and we put together with Adam. It’s super super interesting. We shared a lot of interesting information over there, so if you haven’t done yet go ahead and do so. I’m going to share the link on the events page so that you guys can join and start checking out that series. That video series that I recorded with the help of Adam and it’s basically, it’s a lot of good information. Some of it, you guys are already familiar with. Some of it maybe you’re not, because we go in depth about the importance and the opportunity that we have as marketers using video marketing, which is huge. Semantic Mastery is built on the basis of video marketing pretty much.
Then it go about different businesses that are also using and leveraging that power. And the funny thing about it is that I read something crazy like 20 percent or something, not even that, like 12 percent of small businesses across the USA are using video marketing to promote their services and products. And they’re not using YouTube, they’re not using Google, so basically that’s one of the reasons why we created Video Powerhouse. Which again, we are re-launching really really soon.
It’s going to be a super limited launch. Okay, guys, so it’s going to be a super limited launch. We are only going to take so much people in and then we’re going to close the gates because we don’t want to stress or over stress the networks and we have been working hard for the pass 12 to 18 months, I would say, with the guys at SERP Space, so it’s going to be killer. Again, there’s a huge opportunity for each of us to tap into the market, so I would suggest you go ahead, sign up for that video series, and also pay good attention to your email for the next couple of days. I would say for next week in particular because we’re relaunching Video Powerhouse, it’s going to be good. We have a lot of websites and it’s super super super powerful. So, that’s one thing.
The other thing is that if you guys do not know already, ECVSL 3.0 is launching shortly and you know, I’ve been using ECVSL I would say for the past year or so, and it’s super super interesting for the guys out there that need to realize a solution when it comes to creating video sales letter. If you guys been following us around you know that we have been using video sales letters for pretty much all of our products and you don’t have to be this interesting. You do not have to be, like, a digital marketer or you do not have to be in a digital space to use a video sales letter. Again, if you combine the power of YouTube and video marketing with a really good video sales letter that you can rank on Google and YouTube, you can have a killer combo. So video sales letters you can use them for sales of local services, digital, physical products, whatever you want to do.
The reality is that there’s kind of, I feel that sometimes there’s kind of these technological … I would say that you need to use a lot of tools to get a really good video sales letter. Well, actually, ECVSL solves that, and that’s exactly what I’ve been using it for over the past couple of months if you would, pretty much all of last year, because it makes creating video sales letter a really good process and easy to use et cetera, et cetera, for the guys that are not technical out there and you don’t want to be using, I don’t know, Adobe Premiere or whatever you’re using for video editing or you do not want to hire a video guy.
This is a good thing, and there’s a bunch of advancements when it comes to the 3.0 version, like, for example, right now you have speech to text video creation, you have an embedded … it’s interesting, you have an embedded audio recorder within that software, so you do not need to go out or bring your audio from another software. You can do it within video sales letter and there’s a bunch of other things.
Another good thing is that you can do this new kind … They call it kinetic style videos, which are moving fonts, if you would, within the video which are really cool for engagement and they grab a lot of attention. And I’ve been seeing more and more products and services being represented and being … and using this kind of video. So, there’s a bunch of advancements and it’s pretty inexpensive for what it does, so I’m going to also put the link here so that you can join. It’s http://ift.tt/2lYwcGR, http://ift.tt/2lYwcGR and it’s there on the events page as well.
So, that’s that. Then another thing, another announcement that we had is that we’re moving forward with the traffic agency. We mentioned it briefly last week. The idea of a traffic agency that could … Because we have a lot of people actually wanting to implement PPC, mostly Facebook campaigns, Facebook PPC and YouTube ads initially and then Ad Words PPC as well. We will be moving forward.
If any of you guys are needing to get those needs covered, the paid advertising or the traffic cover, just ping us. You can join as a beta testers, if you would. As Adam put it last week, it’s not like … we’re going to be taking it over from a professional stand point but we need to build the entire structure. That’s why we’re taking in at-cost, beta testers for the services. Just ping us at support@semanticmastery.com. That’s going to be good.
Initially we’re going to be starting with, I think, Facebook advertising and YouTube ads. Then we’re going to move into PPC in general, retargeting, maybe email marketing. We have our resident email marketing expert, Chris, over here so that’s something that we’re planning to do as well.
Marco, I know that you have been deep in the lab, man, over the past several weeks. Do you want to tell us a little bit what’s that all about? I know that you’re happy; I can feel it in your voice.
Marco: Yeah, I mean, it’s incredible. We discovered that GSA still works. We made actual garbage spam links work. Not saying how, that’s coming. I have to keep something under my hat. I can’t reveal how, but it still works and it still works really well because we hit, just today, number one in a major metropolitan area for a hyper competitive keyword. I mean, we’re not going after these long tail keywords that hardly anyone wants where there’s hardly any money and say, “Hey, look, we can rank for this.” How ‘bout we show you how to outrank Angie’s List, Yelp, how about that? When was the last time someone was able to say, “Yeah, we were able to take them down”? You don’t hear that very often. We’ve be able to do it. We’re just looking at the test. As you know, we’re continuously testing, we’re constantly in the lab and we’re just searching different paths and ideas, and the only way you can go from theory to practice is through testing, right?
‘Cause I see all of these people posting all of this garbage that people believe in all of these different groups. These masterminds, these gurus, and now we have these child prodigies, these young guns that are supposed to be coming up and they’re supposed to be the shit and can rank anything, and they’re feeding people garbage. It just amazes me that people fall for it. What we give you, we test it and we test it on our own stuff. So that’s what you get at the end. You don’t get something that we have no clue whether it works. We’re actually checking everyday. Every single day, we’re in there and looking and seeing how to improve it, and how to rank even better, and how to eliminate the competition. That’s what we’re after. Domination, total market domination.
Hernan: Alright, very good. Very good. We’re eager to see what you guys can come up with, so that’s going to be a lot of fun. Alright, so if that’s it with announcements, we have a solid 50 minutes of questions that we can go through, so I’m going to share my screen real quick. I’m going to lose you guys for a minute when I do, but bear with me for a second, so alright, there we go.
Just let me know when you can see my screen.
Marco: Yeah, we’re seeing your screen now.
Hernan: Okay, very good. So, let’s jump right into questions.
Well, Ben, yeah, from a theoretical standpoint, that is correct. The reality is that the link profile from a deleted domain does matter when you’re doing a 301 redirect. THat’s why we suggest that when you’re doing a Switchbox and Switchbox SEO domain, like purchasing a domain strictly for doing a 301, I would go with a blank slate domain. A virgin domain that hasn’t been touched before. We’re saying that because the only reason that you’re actually buying that domain is because you want to have detachable [inaudible 00:11:58], meaning that you want to point to target A today, but tomorrow you want to point it to somewhere else. Or you want to kill it.
However, the history of that domain and if it has actual back links, it will skew your results. It will impact your results. Okay? That’s why we are saying that if you’re trying to do this strictly from a Switchbox SEO … from a Switchbox SEO perspective, that is doing this from a 301 perspective only, I would go with a completely pristine, new domain that you’re positive hasn’t been used before.
You can go for a … you can use a main queuer, but that’s not relevant actually. What’s relevant is that it’s a 301, that it’s a pure 301, not a 302 or whatever other thing you’re trying to do. It’s a pure 301, number one. And number two, all of the history of that domain needs to be blank. Even better if it has absolutely no history, you know. Because again, the links and the history of that domain will impact in the 301 that you’re doing. You know, in the target. You do not want that. You want it to be kind of a mirror, if you would. You know? Or a Switchbox, a real Switchbox.
After pointing safelinks with high [inaudible 00:13:25], that will transfer through, is that correct?
Well, a portion of it will transfer. Not 100% of it will transfer because there’s some links you lost on the 301. That’s my experience, anyways. But after doing that, most of it will transfer, but only if the main, again, is a blank slate. It has to be a brand new domain. Because again, the link profile will matter if you’re doing the 301. Do you have any comments on this, Marco? Like, on the 301 side of things?
Marco: Yeah, I’m a little confused by the question. If it’s simply to mirror the [inaudible 00:14:01] where it’s a straight Switchbox, then yeah, you’re better off just buying a domain and making it brand new and mirroring whatever website it is that you’re redirecting the juice at because the purpose of this is to be able to shut it off at will. Or to point it at another website, a PBN or whatever. THat’s the purpose of a Switchbox. If that’s what he’s talking about. And if not, then of course the link profile is going to matter. It’s going to matter a lot. Because if you have garbage links, that’s what you’re passing through.
And so, yeah, that’s going to make a big difference. It doesn’t have to have the main keyword because it’s a 301. I mean, you’re going to take everything that … on the website that you’re pointing at and you’re going to build it on the website that’s going to be the 301, and then you’re going through the 301 page by page. And then you’re going to do all of your SEO through that 301 for protection. That’s how I’m reading this. That link profile, that’s what throws me off. Yes, that’s going to matter, but it depends on what it is that you’re doing.
Hernan: Right, yeah. I guess it depends, Ben. If you’re purchasing a 301 because you know, we have been using Bluetooth batteries to purchase these domains that have great backlinks, but we are searching for that link profile. Even if it is one backlink from CNN, for example, or Wikipedia, you know? So, yeah, it does matter.
Registration Level Redirect Vs Hosting Level Redirect
Well, good question. In my experience, the .htaccess redirect is faster to pass link [inaudible 00:15:58]. I don’t know why, but I’ve seen results faster, and I’ve seen a couple of people actually reporting back the exact same thing. You need to be careful with the registration level redirect because sometimes, as I mentioned before, it’s not a pure 301. For example, in GoDaddy. You know, GoDaddy, if you redirect, they will not give you advanced redirect options, like [inaudible 00:16:20] for example. So GoDaddy will give you a 301 sometimes, and a 302 sometimes, you know what I mean. So if you want to be 100% positive that you have a 301 redirection in place, you would be better of using .htaccess or hosting level redirect, you know.
I’m not sure what you’re asking here. If you’re ranking a video and you want to do like a direct save to it, I would still purchase there cheap domains, like .xyz or .link domains. And you have a bunch of new domains with new extensions that you can use. So, I mean, you can just spend like one buck per year per domain and have a complete Switchbox set, if you would.
Do you have to bother with a 301 redirect? You can point save direct to a video, but as we always say, if you deem your video worthy, or your channel, and you are doubtful about point and save directly to video, I would do a 301. You know, just put a 301 between, and that’s pretty much it. Then you can detach if anything goes wrong. So, we hadn’t had any issues with save directly to videos, but again, so far. We don’t know what’s going to happen six months or even three months down the road, so in any case, you should just use a 301 redirect.
Marco: Yeah, if I’m doing YouTube, I usually make YouTube 301.
Hernan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Marco: I make YouTube. So I’ll do the http to hctp, right? Cause it redirects to https. I just make sure that it’s a 301 and not a 302. And then spam it that way.
Hernan: Right, right. Also, “Marco, great Facebook post. Great article. I think I’m starting to get my head around SEO. Working on becoming a Mastermind member soon.”
Thanks Ben. We’ll be eager to have you on the Mastermind. What post is he referring to, Marco? Did you make a post recently?
Marco: Yeah, I posted [crosstalk 00:18:34]. Yeah I posted in our Facebook groups about the relationship between IFTTT SEO and RYS Academy drive stacks.
Hernan: Right.
Marco: How they’re not mutually exclusive. How they react differently but they can be used for the same purpose. So, I did a post about that because there was some questions about whether to even do RYS, if I remember correctly. So I went in and I posted. It turned out into a really long comment. And so I thought it was good enough to post in all of our groups. So, sometimes I do that. I’ll start flowing and writing and explaining why, and then I’ll just go and share so that anyone can benefit.
Hernan: Nice.
Marco: So that’s one of the benefits of getting into either IFTTT SEO MasterClass, MasterMind, RYS Academy. You get the benefit that we often go in there and post for the benefit of the groups.
Putting Drive Sites or G Sites As Website For Google My Business
Marco: We do that all the time. Not drive sites, of course, because that would deprecate it. There … you can no longer host sites in drive. But you can do G-sites, and we definitely, all of the time, use them as Google My Business. I mean, you’re stacking Google properties. Why would … the question would be, why wouldn’t you put-
Hernan: Right.
Marco: a G-site, where you built it the way that we do, right. To make it look good, and we put the CTAs in place, phone number. Everything’s in place for conversion purposes. And so, yeah, it’s an excellent companion to your Google My Business.
Marco: So like … [crosstalk 00:20:47] Let me just go [crosstalk 00:20:49]. What happens is, if you order building from us, when you order the drive stack, the VA will go in and set up the drive stack. Once that’s done, it gets turned over to the link builder, and he knows exactly what to do. You have to remember, we’ve been doing this for over a year now. The [inaudible 00:21:10] fee services. So the process is pretty much like auto. One VA does his thing, gets turned over to the link builder. The link builder knows exactly what to do and to which properties, and which amounts. And the trip rate. And so that’s how it’s done, and then once it’s all done, I think that a partial report is done on the link building that was done. So you get all that.
Hernan: Right. Yep, that’s basically it. There you have it. So we build links to pretty much everything. That’s the main idea, no? That’s the main idea.
Well, good question, Earl. I’ll give my input and maybe Marco can chime in on this too, but the way sub domain works, is that they are kind of different entities, you know. They are taken as different entities and it would all depend on how your website is set up. So, for example, on some websites, like some templates or some website builders, for example, they will have the mobile version set up automatically. So if the browser detects, or the website detects, that you’re visiting from a sub domain … from a mobile phone, sorry, you’ll get automatically redirected to the m dot version. So that’s kind of how it’s working.
Now, what you can have is a completely html, or whatever it is, like strictly mobile version, like mobile template, of the website on the m dot version. That is, that would be a completely separate [inaudible 00:23:13] dot com website, with a mobile theme. That’s being kind of deprecated, as far as I know, because right now with responsive themes and responsive landing page builders, like ClickFunnels, LEAP pages, whatever you’re doing, they’re all responsive. So you do not need to have an m dot sub domain anymore for people to get redirected. That used to happen when we didn’t have responsive themes. Usually the websites used to look like really really bad on mobile. But that’s not the case anymore, because again, you can visit the same webpage from mobile and desktop and tablet PCs, and the theme will be optimized for the width of the screen.
Now, with that being said, what you can do is to actually build links to the m dot version, you know? You can … If it’s a completely separate entity, meaning if you have the ability of going add schema, maybe add the amp plug-in that we have developed with Semantic Mastery, or have access already to a mobile page on that sub domain, I would strongly suggest that you do so.
Because again, if you want to do Maps placement and visibility on mobile, you need to understand now, Earl, that I would say, 60% of the traffic that goes through Google or Facebook is mobile. So if it’s treated differently than the main domain, meaning that you have the ability to actually go in and tweak the code from that sub domain, you can build links. You can treat it as an additional property. As we would … As I would, for example, if I set up different money sites on sub domains, I would treat them completely differently. Of course, if you focus on getting the url site to run, that will benefit the sub domain and vice versa. That’s why sub domains are really really powerful. So I would focus on building links and local directories that can point back to the m dot version of the website, but that would be sort of a short term approach.
A long term approach, I would definitely start educating your local clients to get a responsive domain and a responsive theme, sorry, on the same domain so that everything falls under the same domain and you do not need to do sort of two SEO campaigns, one for mobile, one for desktop. Does that make sense? Do you want to add anything to that, Marco?
Marco: Yeah, if by Maps placement, he means ranking in the [inaudible 00:25:57], that has absolutely nothing to do with whether the website is mobile friendly because all G-sites, which we’re totally ranking, are not mobile friendly. If you haven’t noticed. And we constantly rank in the three pack. We’re ranking the Map. And we’re ranking the verified Google My Business Map. And we’re sending them to a specific … back to the G-site actually. Or it could be to whatever landing page you want it to be. So, from what I read, there’s different things going on here. If you’re trying to rank in Maps, you’re trying to rank the Map, not the website.
But what you could do is send them, as you mention, to an m dot website, dot url, dot com. And have that m be an html … really light, super fast, loads … eye blink. And, what you would have on there is a click to call button or whatever. But you could have that same thing on your G-site or whatever. Or actually, I think you sometimes get that on the Map. So there’s different things.
As you said, if your website is responsive, then it obviates the need for the m version because Google’s going to see it as mobile friendly. You can do the test. You go right to Google and test whether it’s mobile friendly now. So I don’t see any reason for an m version unless you want to send people to a specific, really fast, html landing page where they can just go in and take the action that you need them to take. That would be my take on this.
Hernan: Right. Yeah, I agree. [crosstalk 00:27:49] Mentioning the mobile friendly test. It’s been around for a while, so I’ll put it here on this page so that you guys can check it out, and you can input your url test here and it will tell you if it’s mobile friendly or not. If your website is not mobile friendly, you will also get a … I think you will also get a note on Webmaster Tools, “You need to improve that mobile friendliness”, if you would. Because again, the results on the mobile side of things, and the desktop side of things, you know, they have been different and different. Even more different as we go by.[crosstalk 00:28:23]
Marco: Just one last thing I want to say. If it’s mobile friendly, and it’s still slow, then you can run into problems. Which is why you might want to have an html landing page. Just something just super fast, and that’ll take care of some of the speed problems that you’re running into. I would also recommend, if there’s speed problems, talking to Clinton Butler, 'cause he’s a master at website speed. So those are the things that I would recommend regarding. It depends on what he’s doing and why.
Well, yeah. We have been mentioning that, briefly, we still recommend building sites out of sub domains. The blog dot site dot com strategy works really well. However, and as we keep saying, we keep repeating, anything worth your while should be protected. So if you have a client website, for example, or you have a really good money site, or you have a really dear project. Or even if you’re doing a blog for your wife or your girlfriend, believe me, I’ve been there. If you try to spam a sub domain in those cases, it might work right now, but it won’t work, maybe won’t work, six months down the road and your website will get penalized. You know? So that’s why we’re saying, “Treat it with with care. Be mindful of the longtime approach.”
The blog dot site dot com strategy works really well when your main website is not a warper site. When you have a client, for example, as Earl had, a client that comes with another technology, or a custom PHP website, or an html website, and they want you to go ahead and optimize that, and to be honest, I don’t have the time to learn a completely new technology. I’m really good with WordPress, and I’m fine, I’m comfortable with WordPress, so what I would do is to just tell them, “Yeah, you need to install a sub domain, a blog on a sub domain”. I have a client right now that we’re starting to work together. I’m helping them optimize and develop their website and their website is completely customized, and they’re trying to get me to go into their CMS and see how we can start building a blog, and say, “No, no way. You need to install WordPress on a sub domain, and we’ll go from there.”
So the changes to this strategy, you know, there’s not many changes, but be mindful that any spam could come back and bite you in the future. So again, you can use 301’s. You can use tier link building for that IFTTT with sub domain. You can syndicate [inaudible 00:31:32] IFTTT network. There’s a bunch of things that you can do to protect that sub domain. If you have a trash domain that you want to test, go ahead. But nothing worthy.
Marco: First of all, he’s absolutely wrong. Google is not killing off My Maps. As a matter of fact, it was just redone last year. What was incorporated was the MapMaker app. So I think he got the two confused. My Maps is what’s being used right now. It’s going to continue to be used. We’re going to continue our RYS stacks with My Maps and doing all of the awesome things that we do through the My Maps. So John … And if you are in RYS Academy, this should have been posted in RYS Academy. By the way, because now people are going to think that RYS stacks are going to stop working because Google is killing of My Maps, which again, is not true.
Okay, Bryan, great question. And it’s funny, because, you know, we have been talking about the opportunities you have using video marketing for your business earlier on, and I strongly suggest that you go ahead and submit and sign up, rather, for that video series because over there we chat to that particular topic. You know? Video marketing.
Now, there’s a bunch of benefits using video-based blog over typed content. Number one: videos, they’re far more engaging, as you’re currently stating. When you see videos, when doing videos, when producing videos, you can reuse the content over and over again. We are a testimonial of that. We are the example of that because as much as we would like to post more often on Semantic Mastery’s blog, all of us are quite busy right now. So what we’re doing is to transcribe, you know, Hump Day Hangouts, and we have that posted beneath the video on the website. And that’s pretty much, yeah, what we’re doing when it comes to video to [inaudible 00:34:16] for the blog, rather. You know?
So, what you need to understand is that video marketing and video production has a lot of benefits. One of them, again, being the possibility of reusing the content. Like transcribing the content, you will have your content needs covered for the blog. You can rip the audio and upload them to SoundCloud, for example, and create a podcast. You can take still shots of the video and if you’re good with Photoshop, you can upload those to Facebook, Instagram, I don’t know. Whatever you want to do, you know? So that’s number one.
Number two is that I read, doing this research for the Video Powerhouse series, that 62% of the queries have videos on page one. Sixty two percent of the queries, the search queries on Google, have a video in it, you know, on page one. And you will have an increase of 32% on the click through rate if you start using videos, and if you get a video ranked on page number one of Google. Not only that, but Google is the number one search engine in the world, and YouTube is the number two search engine in the world, so if you have a video ranked on YouTube and you have a video ranked on Google, just imagine the possibilities and the amount of leads that you can get.
So it’s not only about posting those videos to your website, but it’s about the additional traffic that you can get from the video if you are uploading them to YouTube, for example. Because, again, you can rank on YouTube. I have a couple of videos ranked on YouTube on my own channels. Semantic Mastery has a bunch of videos on page one of YouTube. And those videos can bring a ton of traffic, you know, to Semantic Mastery blog, to [inaudible 00:36:06], et cetera, et cetera. So that’s another of the benefits.
The third benefit is we have yet … I have yet … I haven’t seen any kind of video, like other video blogs [inaudible 00:36:24] whatsoever. Yet. You know? I haven’t seen any video blogs [inaudible 00:36:30] whatsoever. Yet. Again, yet, because we don’t know what’s going to happen six months down the road. The reality is that Google loves Google. We’re using RYS Academy, which are all pretty much Google properties. Going nuts with that. And YouTube, it’s another property that we are optimizing, that we are using to get traffic. But also, Google loves YouTube, so I haven’t seen a video blog like a blog or a website that’s completely about videos. Okay, it hasn’t got anything else. Like no text, nothing else whatsoever. But videos, [inaudible 00:37:10], getting the index.
So if you have the opportunity, Bryan, to make a blog based on videos, I would strongly suggest that you do so. I would also strongly suggest that that you go through the video series that we recorded because, again, there’s a huge opportunity and a lot of small businesses missing out. And again, you do not need to go through the whole process of creating a professional video. If you have a smart phone, if you have an iPhone, if you have a Google Nexus or you have like a new Google Pixel or whatever. If you have an Android phone or an iPhone, you have a small recording studio in your pocket. So you do not need to go in debt to hire a video guy or video crew, et cetera, et cetera.
Also, if you’re camera-shy, which could happen, and you’re not tapping into that because you’re camera-shy, you could just record the screen, with Camtasia, ScreenFlow. Or you could even hire an actor on Fiver to go through that. So, you know, if any of you guys listening to this now is not going through the “trouble” of producing videos for your business and using videos to leverage your business and the traffic, you’re really missing out. And there’s a window of opportunity right now. That’s exactly why we created Video Powerhouse in the first place because we see the opportunity. Again, one of the foundations of Semantic Mastery’s success are Hump Day Hangouts. And guess what? We’re using YouTube live, like YouTube and YouTube Live, at the same time, on Google Plus. So that’s one of the foundations of Semantic Mastery and I think video has a lot of potential.
And if you have the opportunity to go ahead and make videos for your company, Bryan, you need to squeeze every last drop of traffic out of them. Again, you can reuse that content over and over again. And from one hour of our time every week, we are having a ton of results. Again guys, sign up for Video Powerhouse, for that series. Go ahead and pay close attention for the launch because it’s going to be a killing. It’s going to be a killer. How many, how many … Well, I don’t know if we can actually disclose this, Marco, but about the amount of websites that we have right now on Video Powerhouse. I don’t know if we can disclose that.
Marco: Sure, we can. Sure, we can.
Hernan: Okay.
Marco: We have around 3000 primary domains, spread throughout categories, right. They’re all categorized. So you’ll be able to go in there if you’re in business, if you’re in whatever. There’s some things that we won’t take. Porn and that type of crap, we won’t accept it. There’s a human that will actually go through your video and make sure that it doesn’t contain anything that we’re not permitting in the network, number one, and that it’s English, number two. Right now we’re only taking English. In the future, we might do something with other foreign languages. As of now, 3000, all in categories.
To add to that, we’re at around … I think we just broke 600,000 in the secondary embed network, and again, all categorized. And we have sub-categories. So, more than likely, you’re going to hit your niche. If we don’t, then we still have a General category, where we have, I think it’s around 800 domains, 800 primaries. Of course, in the primary embed network, we are building. The build team is busy throwing IFTTT networks around it so that one will actually turn into around 20 embeds, correct? Because it goes into the main domain, then the IFTTT network will take care of spreading the love around into the IFTTT network. So think of all of the damage that you’re going to be able to do using that. You do that, then you go into the secondary embed network then add additional … Ah shit, I’m sorry, I just blanked out. Relevant … sorry, additional relevancy, right?
Hernan: Right.
Marco: With the additional embed network. I blanked out for a second, sorry. But yeah, I mean, it’s something that we’ve worked at really, really hard. It’s not just a re-launch. It’s something that’s totally new and unique and totally different from what it was. What I would say to him, also, is if 62% of results show a video, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t show a website. Right? Or some other type. So there’s actually a double opportunity. There’s opportunity to rank a video, and to rank your content. We use, sometimes, right, we take up four places in the top ten with different methods, and different properties that we use.
So 62% show video, 38% won’t show a video, so you’re still going to need content, regardless. I say, to just hammer this home, do the video, and then just get it transcribed and you have the content. Very simple.
Hernan: There you have it. There you have it, Bryan.
So before I let Marco, I wanted to give my two cents here. Topical trust flow is still a measure that we pay attention to. Not … We haven’t been married with any metrics at all. We have been saying that trust flow and topical trust flow they have been showing better results for us, but that doesn’t mean, Chad, that you should be paying attention only to that in order to show if an entity has authority or not. So for example, what’s the history of that entity? What’s the ranking of that entity? How many pages are indexed on Google? How much traffic that entity has?
A great … For example, when I’m looking for web 2.0 networks … when we are looking for web 2.0 networks for example, for IFTTT Academy 2.0 update webinars, we go through SEMrush and we input those networks. And we can see on SEMrush, we can see the ranking history, if you would. So for example, Pinterest is killing it and you can see, if you go to SEMrush.com, you can see you can input Pinterest.com and you can see there’s a bunch of page rankings from that domain. So that’s telling you that it’s “easier” to rank, thanks to that. So there’s a bunch of things that you can check, Chad, and that’s where the whole [inaudible 00:44:28] comes to play, and I’m gonna leave Marco to talk a little bit about this too. So, what you think, Marco?
Marco: Yeah, you know, from what we’ve been doing, we build our own [inaudible 00:44:42], so to speak, with IFTTT or with syndication. That’s what we’re doing. Because we go into websites and web 2.0’s that we know are trusted and authoritative, without regards to the topic. Because, Facebook, there is no topic in Facebook, it’s multi. Correct? But there’s also other things. This is where …
When I take on … I don’t know how much of this I should be talking about. But when I take on a coaching student, I charge a lot of money, right? But the one thing that I try to teach them is to think outside the box. You can’t get … you can’t pigeonhole yourself into relying on Majestic. What if they’re absolutely wrong with their algorithm? What if … They’re all guessing at Google’s algorithm, and nobody knows Google’s algorithm except the people who work on it, man.
And so, what I say is, say you’re in the home construction industry, or any type of home service, correct? And you want to quote authority, for example. So we don’t recommend doing wiki because that’s what everybody does. So I try to go really broad, right? I try to go … Okay, architecture. Architecture is totally relevant. So I’ll do a quick search on architecture and I’ll come up with MIT, with the architecture school. With the School of Architecture. And there’s a website called, “architecturaldigest.com”, which is considerably authoritative. And I’ll look at their … If I can get … I’ll quote … excuse me. I’ll link to MIT. I know I probably can’t get a link out of MIT, but I’ll try to see who is linking into MIT and see maybe I can get a link off of them. See which of those is relevant to whatever it is that I’m doing.
Now, coming down a little bit further, and I always say this, go to This Old House. Go to Bob Villa. Go to Home Depot. Go to anywhere where you can maybe drop a comment, a good comment, a quality comment. Something that adds value to the conversation that’s going to stick. That the MOD won’t get rid of. Just wherever you can, something that’s relevant, so that here is where you should be. And what you take from this is that it’s relevancy that we’re after, not so much metrics, because we know, because we’ve done it, that you can inflate metrics to whatever you want just with pure spam. But the relevancy, that’s hard to fake, because you know that these websites, these are trusted and authoritative in the niche. That’s what we’re after.
Hernan: Right, right. Okay, so let’s see. Jordan is asking, “Who can eat the most brisket tacos?”.
[inaudible 00:48:04] going to run to market, have an experiment on this. Go ahead, Jordan. Let us know of your results. That would be fun to see.
Ken says, “When embedding a map on a web 2.0 post, is it best to just embed the map by itself like what we do with videos, or is it best to have content too?”.
What do you think, Marco? What does your experiment says about this? Do you have any piece of content?
Marco: No.
Hernan: Or just the map?
Marco: We do special stuff to the iframe.
Hernan: Right. Right. I would suggest that you vary it a little bit, Ken. I would say that, when you do for example, like a video, on Video Powerhouse for example, we would add a link back to the video and a link back to the playlist or the channel, whatever you decide. But we have no text whatsoever, because again, we are aiming to protect the networks, and also to protect the videos. So that’s why we don’t have any text and it backlinks to [inaudible 00:49:07] whatsoever at all. But you can vary it a little bit and let us know. Marco has his secret sauce to get that going.
Marco: By the way, we keep mentioning Video Powerhouse and we don’t mention Maps Powerhouse.
Hernan: Right.
Marco: Which is totally available right now inside of serpspace.com.
Hernan: Yeah, yeah, good point Marco. Good point. Yeah, Video Powerhouse again, and we had … it’s sister would be Map Powerhouse, which that could be a big launch on its own soon. Okay, so realize it’s available right now, it’s available right now, but we don’t know how much more before we actually go in there and revamp it.
Alright, so I think we’re really good with questions. Wow, that was a good one. A bunch of people say Video Powerhouse link is not working. Earl, Valerie, please check again, because I don’t know, maybe serp space is acting up a bit strange, because sometimes it will open, sometimes it won’t. So go ahead. If it isn’t working, just drop us a link, drop us a ticket to Support at Semantic Mastery. We’ll hook you up with the link.
Bryan says, “Congrats at beating Big G and Yelp.”
Cool.
“Links to your video to learn?”
Please see, yeah, Bryan, it’s over here.
“Yes, I can, but my idea is to have better serp stuff”.
I’m guessing that means to the video topic that we touch base on, and yeah, definitely, definitely. If you can get a video rank on page number one, you can actually get additional properties, you know? As Marco was mentioning. And that’s exactly what we’re doing when we’re doing RYS Academy, when we’re doing IFTTT Academy. Like, we’re having a lot of page one rankings thanks to that, and your video will be no exception.
Marco: Yeah, I mean, we can talk about stacking iframes because when you do video embeds, all you’re doing is you’re iframing the video into whatever property you’re doing, which we’ve proven, we’ve shown, that the juice flows through the iframe back to the origin or the destination. So with the destination being YouTube, the signals that Google is getting is that someone is publishing the video. And so Google loves that because Google loves itself. Right?
Hernan: Right?
Marco: Same thing with the map iframe. The map iframe on your property or any other property goes back to wherever it is in drive, wherever it is in the GMB list, whatever page it is, everything will flow there. And this is the beauty, this is the beauty of RYS Academy, guys. We are inside the belly of the beast. We’re in there, and good luck getting us out. ‘Cause we’re in there. We’re tickling stuff, man.
Hernan: Yeah, that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Good times, good times.
Marco: Carson just asked a question.
Hernan: Yeah, Carson, Carson asks, “What would you suggest for getting more local clients?”
Well, Carson, it’s kind of a broad question. It’s kind of a broad question, but Bradley actually, he had the video mail, the vmail prospect team course revamped, but it’s gonna be strictly for Video Powerhouse users. So if you get into Video Powerhouse, you can get that course. But I don’t think it’s going to be available for the public unless we convince Bradley and Adam otherwise. But initially, that’s a really good starting point. That’s a really good starting point because again, that will show you step-by-step how to process those local clients, how to reach out to them, and it’s a really cool strategy. But again, Carson, you need to be part of Video Powerhouse. So I would suggest that you wait until the launch of Video Powerhouse so that you can get that and then you can rank those videos that you’re doing for local clients using Video Powerhouse as well.
Marco: I would add that we’re on episode 120 of Hump Day Hangouts. That means 120 hours of information. Imagine that. 120 hours of answering questions is available in our YouTube channel. It’s http://youtube.com/semanticmastery. Go there, go to the channel search, and just drop your question. Or do the search, “how to get more local clients”. Or just do “local clients”, and you’ll see how much information comes up just from that. While you’re waiting for Video Powerhouse to open, and you should be one of the first in the door maybe because it’s just totally going to kill.
Hernan: Yes, definitely.
Marco: We keep getting into it, but we just put on so much work, so many hours, so much time, so much money that … How long have we been talking about it, since we started?
Hernan: Yeah.
Marco: We’ve been at this for months and months, just redoing. I think it was April of last year.
Hernan: Yeah.
Marco: April or May when I took over, and we decided that we needed to redo it. So think about how much time, effort, how much work, how much money’s been invested, into the back ends so that this works for you guys who are doing video. Not only doing video, because this can complement, of course, your website because iframe on the website or YouTube … People watching the YouTube video if you’ve done your cards correctly, if you’ve done everything, will click over to the website. So it works, just everywhere, to bring traffic back to your website. Or whatever property it is that you have. Wherever you want to take action, you can lead them.
Hernan: Alright. Okay. So I think that’s it. Thank you, guys. It’s been a pleasure, it’s been amazing. So thank you, guys, once again. We’re gonna end pretty much near so let me turn off the screen, turn off …
Marco: [inaudible 00:55:39] music for Hernan.
Hernan: There you have it. Okay.
Marco: Hernan looks like Bradley.
Hernan: Yeah, for some reason, yeah. If I turn off this, I look like Bradley. If I don’t, there you go. All right, guys, thanks a lot for being here tonight, for being here today. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks Marco, thanks Chris. And you know, peel your eyes, peel your ears 'cause Video Powerhouse is coming and it’s gonna swallow the market on its entirely. So thanks you guys. We’ll see you tomorrow.
For those of you who are on the Mastermind, you will also have Marco, Chris, and I present over there. And the rest of you, we’ll see you next week.
Marco: Yeah, I’ve got some good stuff for the Mastermind, guys, tomorrow, so …
In episode 119 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked which among the Semantic Mastery done-for-you services are the most appropriate for content syndication, lead generation and link building.
The exact question was:
I signed up for IFTTT so I can understand the process and workings but then I get lost in the labyrinth of different programs and services within the Semantic Mastery arsenal.
I have no desire to perform any of the fulfilment i.e. building my own networks, and I am very keen on using the Done-For-You-Services you offer.
I want to start by having my own lead generation sites for my chosen niches.
Which of the Done-For-You-Services are most appropriate for link building, content syndication and lead generation?
Actually I think I may have found it. Is this it?
“”Want us to build your networks for you? http://ift.tt/2jaDFSt“”
In the 119th episode of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked about using Sape links to rank YouTube videos.
The exact question was:
I have been wondering about Sape links ever since I watched the linkbuilding video in the IFTTTseo training. A few questions:
1) Are they still viable links to use?
2) Where is the best place to get them?
3) I assume the best use for them would be as a very last resort, after the videos and channel have been optimized every which way, you would finally point a Sape link at a video for just raw ranking power. Is that the case?
4) Would you point a Sape link at an individual video itself, or at one of the tiered properties linking to the video, or something else? What is the best way to use them?
Trying to target a small, specific region with your keywords can prove frustrating. While reaching a high-intent local audience is incredibly valuable, without volume data to inform your keyword research, you'll find yourself hitting a wall. In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares how to uncover powerful, laser-focused keywords that will reach exactly the right people.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about hyperlocal keyword research. Now, this is a big challenge, not only for hyperlocal-focused businesses, but also for all kinds of websites that are trying to target very small regions, and many of them, with their keyword research and keyword targeting, on-page optimization.
The problem:
So the problem tends to be that most keyword research tools, and this includes things like the Google AdWords Tool, it includes Moz's Keyword Explorer, or KeywordTool.io, or Übersuggest, or anybody you want to use, most of them are relying on volume data.
So what happens is when you see a bunch of keyword suggestions, you type in "Sequim," for example, Sequim is a tiny town on Washington's peninsula, so across the Puget Sound from where we are here in Seattle. Sequim has a population of like 6,500 people or something like that, so very tiny. So most searches related to Sequim have no volume data in any of these tools. As a result, you don't see a lot of information about: How can I target these keywords? What are the right ones to go after? You don't know whether a keyword has zero searches a month, or whether it has four searches a month, and those four searchers are exactly who you want to get in front of, and this is really problematic.
There are three solutions that we've seen professional SEOs use and that some of us here at Moz use and the Moz Local team uses, and these can be real handy for you.
Solution 1: Use keyword data for larger, similar regions
So the first one is to basically replicate the data by using keyword information that comes from similar regions nearby. So let's say, okay, here we are in Sequim, Washington, population 6,669. But Port Angeles is only a few miles away. I think maybe a couple dozen miles away. But its population is more like 20,000. So we've got four or five times the keyword volume for most searches probably. This is going to include some outlying areas. So now we can start to get data. Not everything is going to be zero searches per month, and we can probably backtrack that to figure out what Sequim's data is going to be like.
The same thing goes for Ruidoso versus Santa Fe. Ruidoso, almost 8,000. But Santa Fe's population is almost 10 times larger at 70,000. Or Stowe, Vermont, 4,300, tiny, little town. Burlington is nearby, 10 times bigger at 42,000. Great. So now I can take these numbers and I can intuit what the relative volumes are, because the people of Burlington are probably similar in their search patterns to the people of Stowe. There are going to be a few differences, but for most types of local searches this will work.
Solution 2: Let Google autosuggest help
The second one, Google autosuggest can be really helpful here. So Google Suggest does not care if there's one search a month or one search in the last year, versus zero searched in the last year. They'll still show you something. Well, zero searched in the last year, they won't show you anything.
But for example, when I search for "Sequim day," I can intuit here, because of the ordering that Google Suggest shows me, that "Sequim day spa" is more popular than "day care." Sequim, by the way, sounds like a lovely place to live if you are someone who enjoys few children and lots of spa time, apparently. Then, "day hikes."
So this technique doesn't just work with Google itself. It'll also work with Bing, with Google Maps, and with YouTube. Another suggestion on this one, you will see different results if you use a mobile device versus a desktop device. So you might want to change it up and try your mobile device. That can give you some different results.
Solution 3: Use lexical or related SERP suggestions
All right. Third tactic here, last one, you can use sort of two styles of keyword research. One is called lexical, which is basically the semantic relationships between words and phrases. The other one is related SERP suggestions, which is where a keyword research tool — Moz Keyword Explorer does this, SEMrush is very popular for this, and there are a few others — and they will basically show you search terms the links that came up, the search results that came up for "Sequim day care" also came up in searches for these terms and phrases. So these are like SERPs for which your SERP also ranked.
You can see, when I searched for "Sequim day care," I did this in Keyword Explorer, because I happen to have a Moz Keyword Explorer subscription. It's very nice of Moz to give me that. You can see that I used two kinds of suggestions. One are related to keywords with similar results, so that's the related SERPs. The other one was based on closely related topics, like the semantic, lexical thing. "Sequim day care" has given me great stuff like "Banbury School Nursery," a nearby town, "secondary schools in Banbury," "Horton Day Nursery," which is a nursery that's actually near there, "Port Angeles childcare," "children's nursery."
So now I'm getting a bunch of keyword suggestions that can potentially be relevant and lead me down a path. When I look at closely related topics, I can see things like closely related topics. By the way, what I did is I actually removed the term "Sequim," because that was showing me a lot of things that are particular to that region. But if I search for "day care," I can see lots of closely related topics, like day care center, childcare, school care, special needs children, preschool programs, and afterschool programs. So now I can take all of these and apply the name of the town and get these hyperlocal results.
This is frustrating still. You don't have nearly the data that you have for much more popular search terms. But this is a good way to start building that keyword list, targeting, experimenting, and testing out the on-page work that you're going to need to do to rank for these terms. Then, you'll start to see your traffic grow from these.
Hyperlocal may be small, but it can be powerful, it can be very targeted, and it can bring you exactly the customers you're looking for.
So good luck with your targeting out there, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
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In episode 119 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked how to find web properties that support syndication of posts or photos via RSS feed.
The exact question was:
Can you point me to the place that shows all the networks that i could syndicate posts or pictures through RSS to them.
like blogger, tumbler, 500px.
and i have the training of the academy and there are no new networks to post my RSS post or pictures to them for a while.
i can point you to 5 that i have a wordpress plugin that posts in to them.
In 2016, I predicted that ranking in the 3-pack was hard and it would continually get more competitive. I maintain that prediction for 2017, but I want to make one thing clear. If you haven't done so, I believe local businesses should start tolook outside of a local-SEO-3-Pack-ONLY focused strategy.
While local SEO still presents a tremendous opportunity to grow your business, I'm going to look at some supplementary organic strategies you can take into your local marketing campaign, as well.
In this post I'm going to address:
How local search has changed since last year
Why & how your overall focus may need to change in 2017
Actionable advice on how to rank better to get more local traffic & more business
In local search success, one thing is clear
The days of getting in the 3-pack and having a one-trick pony strategy are over. Every businesswants to get the free traffic from Google’s local results, but the chances are getting harder everyday. Not only are you fighting against all of your competitors trying to get the same rankings, but now you’re also fighting against even more ads.
If you thought it was hard to get top placement today in the local pack, just consider that you're also fighting against 4+ ads before customers even have the possibility of seeing your business.
Today's SERPs are ad-rich with 4 paid ads at the top, and now it's not uncommon to find paid listings prioritized in local results. Just take a look at this example that Gyi Tsakalakis shared with me, showing one ad in the local pack on mobile ranking above the 3-pack results. Keep in mind, there are four other ads above this.
If you were on desktop and you clicked on one of the 3-pack results, you're taken to the local finder. In the desktop search example below, once you make it to the local finder you'll see two paid local results above the other businesses.
Notice how only the companies participating in paid ads have stars. Do you think that gives them an advantage? I do.
Don't worry though, I'm not jaded by ads
After all of that gloomy ad SERP talk, you're probably getting a little depressed. Don't. With every change there comes new opportunity, and we've seen many of our clients excel in search by focusing on multiple strategies that work for their business.
Focusing on the local pack should still be a strong priority for you, even if you don't have a pay-to-play budget for ads. Getting listed in the local finder can still result in easy wins — especially if you have the most reviews, as Google has very handy sorting options.
If you have the highest rating score, you can easily get clicks when users decide to sort the results they see by the business rating. Below is an example of how users can easily sort by ratings.
But what else can you do to compete effectively in your local market?
Consider altering your local strategy
Most businesses I speak with seem to have tunnel vision. They think it's more important to rank in the local pack and, in some cases, even prioritize this over the real goal: more customers.
Every day, I talk to new businesses and marketers that seem to have a single area of focus. While it's not necessarily a bad thing to do one thing really well, the ones that are most successful are managing a variety of campaigns tied to their business goals.
Instead of taking a single approach of focusing on just free local clicks, expand your horizon a bit and ask yourself this question: Where are my customers looking and how can I get in front of them?
Sometimes taking a step back and looking at things from the 30,000-ft view is beneficial.
You can start by asking yourself these questions by examining the SERPs:
1. What websites, OTHER THAN MY OWN, have the most visibility for the topics and keywords I'm interested in?
You can bet people are clicking on results other than your own website underneath the local results. Are they websites you can show up on? How do you increase that visibility?
I think STAT has a great tracking tool for this. You simply set up the keywords you want to track and their Share of Voice feature shows who's ranking where and what percentage of visibility they have in your specific market.
In the example below, you can see the current leaders in a space I'm tracking. Notice how Findlaw & Yelp show up there. With a little further research I can find out if they have number 1–2 rankings (which they do) and determine whether I should put in place a strategy to rank there. This is called barnacle SEO.
2. Are my customers using voice search?
Maybe it's just me, but I find it strange to talk to my computer. That being said, I have no reservations about talking to my phone — even when I'm in places I shouldn't. Stone Temple recently published a great study on voice command search, which you can check out here.
Some of the cool takeaways from that study were where people search from. It seems people are more likely to search from the privacy of their own home, but most mobile devices out there today have voice search integrated. I wonder how many people are doing this from their cars? This goes to show that local queries are not just about the 3-pack. While many people may ask their device "What's the nearest pizza place," other's may ask a variety of questions like:
Where is the highest-rated pizza place nearby?
Who makes the best pizza in Denver?
What's the closest pizza place near me?
Don't ignore voice search when thinking about your localized organic strategy. Voice is mobile and voice can sure be local. What localized searches would someone be interested in when looking for my business? What questions might they be asking that would drive them to my local business?
3. Is my website optimized for "near me" searches?
"Near me" searches have been on the rise over the past five years and I don't expect that to stop. Sometimes customers are just looking for something close by. Google Trends data shows how this has changed in the past five years: Are you optimizing for a "near me" strategy for your business? Recently the guys over at Local SEO Guide did a study of "near me" local SEO ranking factors. Optimizing for "near me" searches is important and it falls right in line with some of the tactical advice we have for increasing your Google My Business rankings as well. More on that later.
4. Should my business stay away from ads?
Let's start by looking at a some facts. Google makes money off of their paid ads. According to an article from Adweek, "During the second quarter of 2016, Alphabet's revenue hit $21.5 billion, a 21% year-over-year increase. Of that revenue, $19.1 billion came from Google's advertising business, up from $16 billion a year ago."
This roughly translates to: "Ads aren't going anywhere and Google is going to do whatever they can to put them in your face." If you didn't see the Home Service ad test with all ads that Mike Blumenthal pointed out, you can check it out below. Google is trying to find more creative ways to monetize local search. Incase you haven't heard it before, having both organic and paid listings ranking highly increases your overall click-through rate.
Although the last study I found was from Google in 2012, we've found that our clients have the most success when they rank strong organically, locally, and have paid placements. All of these things tie together. If potential customers are already searching for your business, you'll see great results by being involved in all of these areas.
While I'm not a fan of only taking a pay-to-play approach, you need to at least start considering it and testing it for your niche to see if it works for you. Combine it with your overall local and organic strategy.
5. Are we ignoring the featured snippets?
Searches with local intent can still trigger featured snippets. One example that I saw recently and really liked was the snowboard size chart example, which you can see below. In this example, someone who is interested in snowboards gets an answer box that showcases a company. If someone is doing this type of research, there's a likelihood that they may wish to purchase a snowboard soon. Depending on your niche, there are plenty of opportunities to increase your local visibility by not ignoring featured snippets and creating content to rank there. Check out this Whiteboard Friday to learn more about how you can get featured snippets.
Now that we've looked at some ways you can expand your strategies, let's look at some tactical steps you can take to move the needle.
Here's how you can gain more visibility
Now that you have an open mind, let's take a look at the actionable things you can do to improve your overall visibility and rankings in locally centric campaigns. As much as I like to think local SEO is rocket science, it really isn't. You really need to focus your attention on the things that are going to move the needle.
I'm also going to assume you've already done the basics, like optimize your listing by filling out the profile 100%.
Later last year, Local SEO Guide and Placescout did a great study that looked at 100+ variables from 30,000 businesses to determine what factors might have the most overall impact in local 3-pack rankings. If you have some spare time I recommend checking it out. It verified that the signals we put the most effort into seem to have the greatest overall effect.
I'm only going to dive into a few of those factors, but here are the things I would do to focus on a results-first strategy:
Start with a solid website/foundation
What good are rankings without conversions? The answer is they aren't any good. If you're always keeping your business goals in mind, start with the basics. If your website isn't loading fast, you're losing conversions and you may experience a reduced crawl budget.
My #1 recommendation that affects all aspects of SEO and conversions is to start with a solid website. Ignoring this usually creates bigger problems later down the road and can negatively impact your overall rankings.
Your website should be SEO-friendly and load in the 90th percentile on Google's Page Speed Insights. You can also see how fast your website loads for users using tools like GTMetrix. Google seems to reduce the visibility of slower websites, so if you're ignoring the foundation you're going to have issues. Here are 6 tips you can use for a faster Wordpress website.
Crawl errors for bots can also wreak havoc on your website. You should always strive to maintain a healthy site. Check up on your website using Google's Search Console and use Moz Pro to monitor your clients' campaigns by actively tracking the sites' health, crawl issues, and domain health over time. Having higher scores and less errors should be your focus.
Continue with a strong review generation strategy
I'm sure many of you took a deep breath when earlier this month Google changed the review threshold to only 1 review. That's right. In case you didn't hear, Google is now giving all businesses a review score based on any number of reviews you have, as you can see in the example below: I know a lot of my colleagues were a big fan of this, but I have mixed feelings since Google isn't taking any serious measures to reduce review spam or penalize manipulative businesses at this point.
Don't ignore the other benefits of reviews, as well. Earlier I mentioned that users can sort by review stars; having more reviews will increase your overall CTR. Plus, after talking to many local businesses, we've gotten a lot of feedback that consumers are actively using these scores more than ever.
Start by soliciting past customers on your list
If you're not already collecting customer information on your website or in-store, you're behind the times and you need to start doing so immediately.
I work mainly with attorneys. Working in that space, there are regulations we have to follow, and typically the number of clients is substantially less than a pizza joint. In pickles like this, where the volume is low, we can take a manual approach where we identify the happiest clients and reach out to them using this process. This particular process also creates happy employees. :)
List creation: We start by screening the happiest clients. We then sort these by who has a Gmail account for priority's sake.
Outreach by phone: I don't know why digital marketers are afraid of the phone, but we've had a lot of success calling our prior clients. We have the main point-of-contact from the business who's worked with them before call and ask how the service they received was. The caller informs them that they have a favor to ask and that their overall job performance is partially based off of client feedback. They indicate they're going to send a follow-up email if it's OK with the customer.
Send a follow-up email: We then use a Google review link generator, which creates an exact URL that opens the review box for the person if they're logged into their Gmail account.
Follow-up email: Sometimes emails get lost. We follow up a few times to make sure the client leaves the review...
You have a new review!
The method above works great for low-volume businesses. If you're a higher-volume business or have a lot of contacts, I recommend using a more automated service to prepare for future and ongoing reviews, as it'll make the process a heck of a lot easier. Typically we use Get Five Stars or Infusionsoft integrations to complete this for our clients.
If you run a good business that people like, you can see results like this. This is a local business which had 7 reviews in 2015. Look where they are now with a little automation asking happy customers to leave a review:
Don't ignore & don't be afraid of links
One thing Google succeeded at is scaring away people from getting manipulative links. In many areas, that went too far and resulted in people not going after links at all, diminishing their value as a ranking factor, and telling the world that links are dead.
Well, I'm here to tell you that you need good links to your website. If you want to rank in competitive niches or in certain geographic areas, the anchor text can make a big difference. Multiple studies have shown the effectiveness of links to this very day, and their importance cannot be overlooked.
This table outlines which link tactics work best for each strategy:
Strategy Type
Link Tactic
Local SEO (3-Pack)
Links to local GMB-connected landing page will help 3-pack rankings. City, state, and keyword-included anchor text is beneficial
Featured Snippets
Links to pages where you want to get a featured snippet will help boost the authority of that page.
Paid Ads
Links will not help your paid ads.
"Near Me" Searches
Links with city, state, or area anchor text will help you in near me searches.
Voice Search
Links to pages that are FAQ or consist of long-tail keyword content will help them rank better organically.
Barnacle SEO
Links to websites you don't own can help them rank better. Focus on high-authority profiles or business listings.
There are hundreds of ways to build links for your firm. You need to avoid paying for links and spammy tactics because they're just going to hurt you. Focus on strong and sustainable strategies — if you want to do it right, there aren't any shortcuts.
Since there are so many great link building resources out there, I've linked to a few of my favorite where you can get tactical advice and start building links below.
For specific tactical link building strategies, check out these resources:
While the importance of citations has taken a dive in recent years as a major ranking factor, they still carry quite a bit of importance.
Do you remember the example from earlier in this post, where we saw Findlaw and Yelp having strong visibility in the market? These websites get traffic, and if a potential customer is looking for you somewhere where you're not, that's one touchpoint lost. You'll still need to address quality over quantity. The days of looking for 1,000 citations are over and have been for many years. If you have 1,000 citations, you probably have a lot of spam links to your website. We don't need those. But what we do need is highly relevant directories to either our city or niche.
This post I wrote over 4 years ago is still pretty relevant on how you can find these citations and build them with consistency. Remember that high-authority citations can also be unstructured (not a typical business directory). They can also be very high-quality links if the site is authoritative and has fewer business listings. There are millions of listings on Yelp, but maybe less than one hundred on some other powerful, very niche-specific websites.
Citation and link idea: What awards was your business eligible or nominated for?
One way to get these is to consider awards where you can get an authoritative citation and link to your website. Take a look at the example below of a legal website. This site is a peanut compared to a directory like Yelp. Sure, it doesn't carry near as much authority, but the link equity is more evenly distributed.
Lastly, stay on point
2017 is sure to be a volatile year for local search, but it's important to stay on point. Spread your wings, open your mind, and diversify with strategies that are going to get your business more customers.
Now it's time to tell me what you think! Is something I didn't mention working better for you? Where are you focusing your efforts in local search?
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