In episode 150 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked how one should set expectations for clients whose services do not get a lot of call volume.
The exact question was:
You had mentioned that, compared to your tree service niche, Remodeling GMB listings do not get that much call volume. How was your experience different at expectation setting for your client for remodeling compared to tree service?
Stuck in a content marketing rut? Relying on your existing newsletter, social followers, or email outreach won't do your launches justice. Boosting your signal with paid social both introduces your brand to new audiences and improves your launch's traffic and results. In today's Whiteboard Friday, we're welcoming back our good friend Kane Jamison to highlight four straightforward, actionable tactics you can start using ASAP.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans. My name is Kane. I'm the founder of a content marketing agency here in Seattle called Content Harmony, and we do a lot of content marketing projects where we use paid social to launch them and get better traffic and results.
So I spoke about this, this past year at MozCon, and what I want to do today is share some of those tactics with you and help you get started with launching your content with some paid traction and not just relying on your email outreach or maybe your own existing email newsletter and social followers.
Especially for a lot of companies that are just getting started with content marketing, that audience development component is really important. A lot of people just don't have a significant market share of their industry subscribed to their newsletter. So it's great to use paid social in order to reach new people, get them over to your most important content projects, or even just get them over to your week-to-week blog content.
Social teaser content
So the first thing I want to start with is expanding a little bit beyond just your average image ad. A lot of social networks, especially Facebook, are promoting video heavily nowadays. You can use that to get a lot cheaper engagement than you can from a typical image ad. If you've logged in to your Facebook feed lately, you've probably noticed that aside from birth announcements, there's a lot of videos filling up the feed. So as an advertiser, if you want to blend in well with that, using video as a teaser or a sampler for the content that you're producing is a great way to kind of look natural and look like you belong in the user's feed.
So different things you can do include:
Short animated videos explaining what the project is and why you did it.
Maybe doing talking head videos with some of your executives or staff or marketing team, just talking on screen with whatever in the background about the project you created and kind of drumming up interest to actually get people over to the site.
So that can be really great for team recognition if you're trying to build thought leadership in your space. It's a great way to introduce the face of your team members that might be speaking at industry conferences and events. It's a great way to just get people recognizing their name or maybe just help them feel closer to your company because they recognize their voice and face.
So everybody's instant reaction, of course, is, "I don't have the budget for video." That's okay. You don't need to be a videography expert to create decent social ads. There's a lot of great tools out there.
Soapbox by Wistia is a great one, that's been released recently, that allows you to do kind of a webcam combined with your browser type of video. There are also tools like...
Promo, which is a tool by a company called Slidely, I think.
All of those tools are great ways to create short, 20-second, 60-second types of videos. They let you create captions. So if you're scrolling through a social feed and you see an autoplay video, there's a good chance that the audio on that is turned off, so you can create captions to let people know what the video is about if it's not instantly obvious from the video itself. So that's a great way to get cheaper distribution than you might get from your typical image ad, and it's really going to stick out to users because most other companies aren't spending the time to do that.
Lookalike audiences
Another really valuable tactic is to create lookalike audiences from your best customers. Now, you can track your best customers in a couple of ways:
You could have a pixel, a Facebook pixel or another network pixel on your website that just tracks the people that have been to the site a number of times or that have been through the shopping cart at a certain dollar value.
We can take our email list and use the emails of customers that have ordered from us or just the emails of customers that are on our newsletter that seem like they open up every newsletter and they really like our content.
We can upload those into a custom audience in the social network of our choice and then create what's called a lookalike audience. In this case, I'd recommend what's called a "one percent lookalike audience." So if you're targeting people in the US, it means the one percent of people in the US that appear most like your audience. So if your audience is men ages 35 to 45, typically that are interested in a specific topic, the lookalike audience will probably be a lot of other men in a similar age group that like similar topics.
So Facebook is making that choice, which means you may or may not get the perfect audience right from the start. So it's great to test additional filters on top of the default lookalike audience. So, for example, you could target people by household income. You could target people by additional interests that may or may not be obvious from the custom audience, just to make sure you're only reaching the users that are interested in your topic. Whatever it might be, if this is going to end up being three or four million people at one percent of the country, it's probably good to go ahead and filter that down to a smaller audience that's a little bit closer to your exact target that you want to reach. So excellent way to create brand awareness with that target audience.
Influencers
The next thing I'd like you to test is getting your ads and your content in front of influencers in your space. That could mean...
Bloggers
Journalists
Or it could just mean people like page managers in Facebook, people that have access to a Facebook page that can share updates. Those could be social media managers. That could be bloggers. That could even be somebody running the page for the local church or a PTA group. Regardless, those people are probably going to have a lot of contacts, be likely to share things with friends and family or followers on social media.
Higher cost but embedded value
When you start running ads to this type of group, you're going to find that it costs a little bit more per click. If you're used to paying $0.50 to $1.00 per click, you might end up paying $1.00 or $2.00 per click to reach this audience. That's okay. There's a lot more embedded value with this audience than the typical user, because they're likely, on average, to have more reach, more followers, more influence.
Test share-focused CTAs
It's worth testing share focus call to actions. What that means is encouraging people to share this with some people they know that might be interested. Post it to their page even is something worth testing. It may or may not work every time, but certainly valuable to test.
Filters
So the way we recommend reaching most of these users is through something like a job title filter. Somebody says they're a blogger, says they're an editor-in-chief, that's the clearest way to reach them. They may not always have that as their job title, so you could also do employers. That's another good example.
I recommend combining that with broad interests. So if I am targeting journalists because I have a new research piece out, it's great for us to attach interests that are relevant to our space. If we're in health care, we might target people interested in health care and the FDA and other big companies in the space that they'd likely be following for updates. If we're in fashion, we might just be selecting people that are fans of big brands, Nordstrom and others like that. Whatever it is, you can take this audience of a few hundred thousand or whatever it might be down to just a few thousand and really focus on the people that are most likely to be writing about or influential in your space.
Retarget non-subscribers
The fourth thing you can test is retargeting non-subscribers. So a big goal of content marketing is having those pop-ups or call to actions on the site to get people to download a bigger piece of content, download a checklist, whatever it might be so that we can get them on our email newsletter. There's a lot of people that are going to click out of that. 90% to 95% of the people that visit your site or more probably aren't going to take that call to action.
So what we can do is convert this into more of a social ad unit and just show the same messaging to the people that didn't sign up on the site. Maybe they just hate pop-ups by default. They will never sign up for them. That's okay. They might be more receptive to a lead ad in Facebook that says "subscribe" or "download" instead of something that pops up on their screen.
Keep testing new messaging
The other thing we can do is start testing new messages and new content. Maybe this offer wasn't interesting to them because they don't need that guide, but maybe they need your checklist instead, or maybe they'd just like your email drip series that has an educational component to it. So keep testing different types of messaging. Just because this one wasn't valuable doesn't mean your other content isn't interesting to them, and it doesn't mean they're not interested in your email list.
Redo split tests from your site
We can keep testing messaging. So if we are testing messaging on our site, we might take the top two or three and test that messaging on ads. We might find that different messaging works better on social than it does on pop-ups or banners on the site. So it's worth redoing split tests that seemed conclusive on your site because things might be different on the social media network.
So that's it for today. What I'd love for you guys to do is if you have some great examples of targeting that's worked for you, messaging that's worked for you, or just other paid social tactics that have worked really well for your content marketing campaigns, I'd love to hear examples of that in the comments on the post, and we'd be happy to answer questions you guys have on how to actually get some of this stuff done. Whether it's targeting questions, how to set up lookalike audiences, anything like that, we'd be happy to answer questions there as well.
So that's it for me today. Thanks, Moz fans. We'll see you next time.
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In episode 150 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked how to formulate anchor text diversity and ratios for different types of rankings.
The exact question was:
First off, the SEO BattlePlan is great! You guys did an awesome job! There is one part of the Battleplan that I couldn’t find much information on. I couldn’t find much info on anchor text diversity or anchor text ratios for the different types of rankings you cover. I was wondering if you could either PM me with suggested anchor text suggestions or post it here for the different types of rankings. Thanks!
In episode 149 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked for tips for embedding customer reviews from external sources to your website.
The exact question was:
I have a client who has a huge amount of reviews on FB and GMB. They’re mostly 5-star and I’ve realized I need to make use of those. A few weeks ago BB mentioned a review plugin that embedded the reviews on the site. That sounds cool, but how would I use it? Where would I place the reviews on the site? Would I have a dedicated page, or just drop them around? Just wanted to see how you guys leverage reviews.
If you asked me, I’d tell you that proper tracking is the single most important element in your local business digital marketing stack. I’d also tell you that even if you didn’t ask, apparently.
A decent tracking setup allows you to answer the most important questions about your marketing efforts. What’s working and what isn’t?
Many digital marketing strategies today still focus on traffic. Lots of agencies/developers/marketers will slap an Analytics tracking code on your site and call it a day. For most local businesses, though, traffic isn’t all that meaningful of a metric. And in many cases (e.g. Adwords & Facebook), more traffic just means more spending, without any real relationship to results.
What you really need your tracking setup to tell you is how many leads (AKA conversions) you’re getting, and from where. It also needs to do so quickly and easily, without you having to log into multiple accounts to piece everything together.
If you’re spending money or energy on SEO, Adwords, Facebook, or any other kind of digital traffic stream and you’re not measuring how many leads you get from each source, stop what you’re doing right now and make setting up a solid tracking plan your next priority.
This guide is intended to fill you in on all the basic elements you’ll need to assemble a simple, yet flexible and robust tracking setup.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is at the center of virtually every good web tracking setup. There are other supplemental ways to collect web analytics (like Heap, Hotjar, Facebook Pixels, etc), but Google Analytics is the free, powerful, and omnipresent tool that virtually every website should use. It will be the foundation of our approach in this guide.
Analytics setup tips
Analytics is super easy to set up. Create (or sign into) a Google account, add your Account and Property (website), and install the tracking code in your website’s template.
Whatever happens, don’t let your agency or developer set up your Analytics property on their own Account. Agencies and developers: STOP DOING THIS! Create a separate Google/Gmail account and let this be the "owner" of a new Analytics Account, then share permission with the agency/developer’s account, the client’s personal Google account, and so on.
The “All Website Data” view will be created by default for a new property. If you’re going to add filters or make any other advanced changes, be sure to create and use a separate View, keeping the default view clean and pure.
Also be sure to set the appropriate currency and time zone in the “View Settings.” If you ever use Adwords, using the wrong currency setting will result in a major disagreement between Adwords and Analytics.
Goals
Once your basic Analytics setup is in place, you should add some goals. This is where the magic happens. Ideally, every business objective your website can achieve should be represented as a goal conversion. Conversions can come in many forms, but here are some of the most common ones:
Contact form submission
Quote request form submission
Phone call
Text message
Chat
Appointment booking
Newsletter signup
E-commerce purchase
How you slice up your goals will vary with your needs, but I generally try to group similar “types” of conversions into a single goal. If I have several different contact forms on a site (like a quick contact form in the sidebar, and a heftier one on the contact page), I might group those as a single goal. You can always dig deeper to see the specific breakdown, but it’s nice to keep goals as neat and tidy as possible.
To create a goal in Analytics:
Navigate to the Admin screen.
Under the appropriate View, select Goals and then + New Goal.
You can either choose between a goal Template, or Custom. Most goals are easiest to set up choosing Custom.
Give your goal a name (ex. Contact Form Submission) and choose a type. Most goals for local businesses will either be a Destination or an Event.
Pro tip: Analytics allows you to associate a dollar value to your goal conversions. If you can tie your goals to their actual value, it can be a powerful metric to measure performance with. A common way to determine the value of a goal is to take the average value of a sale and multiply it by the average closing rate of Internet leads. For example, if your average sale is worth $1,000, and you typically close 1/10 of leads, your goal value would be $100.
Form tracking
The simplest way to track form fills is to have the form redirect to a "Thank You" page upon submission. This is usually my preferred setup; it’s easy to configure, and I can use the Thank You page to recommend other services, articles, etc. on the site and potentially keep the user around. I also find a dedicated Thank You page to provide the best affirmation that the form submission actually went through.
Different forms can all use the same Thank You page, and pass along variables in the URL to distinguish themselves from each other so you don’t have to create a hundred different Thank You pages to track different forms or goals. Most decent form plugins for Wordpress are capable of this. My favorite is Gravityforms. Contact Form 7 and Ninja Forms are also very popular (and free).
Another option is using event tracking. Event tracking allows you to track the click of a button or link (the submit button, in the case of a web form). This would circumvent the need for a thank you page if you don’t want to (or can’t) send the user elsewhere when they submit a form. It’s also handy for other, more advanced forms of tracking.
Once you’ve got your form redirecting to a Thank You page or generating an event, you just need to create a goal in Analytics with the corresponding value.
You can use Thank You pages or events in a similar manner to track appointment booking, web chats, newsletter signups, etc.
Call tracking
Many businesses and marketers have adopted form tracking, since it’s easy and free. That’s great. But for most businesses, it leaves a huge volume of web conversions untracked.
If you’re spending cash to generate traffic to your site, you could be hemorrhaging budget if you’re not collecting and attributing the phone call conversions from your website.
There are several solutions and approaches to call tracking. I use and recommend CallRail, which also seems to have emerged as the darling of the digital marketing community over the past few years thanks to its ease of use, great support, fair pricing, and focus on integration. Another option (so I don’t come across as completely biased) is CallTrackingMetrics.
You’ll want to make sure your call tracking platform allows for integration with Google Analytics and offers something called "dynamic number insertion."
Dynamic number insertion uses JavaScript to detect your actual local phone number on your website and replace it with a tracking number when a user loads your page.
Dynamic insertion is especially important in the context of local SEO, since it allows you to keep your real, local number on your site, and maintain NAP consistency with the rest of your business’s citations. Assuming it’s implemented properly, Google will still see your real number when it crawls your site, but users will get a tracked number.
Basically, magic.
There are a few ways to implement dynamic number insertion. For most businesses, one of these two approaches should fit the bill.
Number per source
With this approach, you'll create a tracking number for each source you wish to track calls for. These sources might be:
Organic search traffic
Paid search traffic
Facebook referral traffic
Yelp referral traffic
Direct traffic
Vanity URL traffic (for visitors coming from an offline TV or radio ad, for example)
When someone arrives at your website from one of these predefined sources, the corresponding number will show in place of your real number, wherever it’s visible. If someone calls that number, an event will be passed to Analytics along with the source.
This approach isn’t perfect, but it’s a solid solution if your site gets large amounts of traffic (5k+ visits/day) and you want to keep call tracking costs low. It will do a solid job of answering the basic questions of how many calls your site generates and where they came from, but it comes with a few minor caveats:
Calls originating from sources you didn’t predefine will be missed.
Events sent to Analytics will create artificial sessions not tied to actual user sessions.
Call conversions coming from Adwords clicks won’t be attached to campaigns, ad groups, or keywords.
Some of these issues have more advanced workarounds. None of them are deal breakers… but you can avoid them completely with number pools — the awesomest call tracking method.
Number pools
“Keyword Pools,” as CallRail refers to them, are the killer app for call tracking. As long as your traffic doesn’t make this option prohibitively expensive (which won’t be a problem for most local business websites), this is the way to go.
In this approach, you create a pool with several numbers (8+ with CallRail). Each concurrent visitor on your site is assigned a different number, and if they call it, the conversion is attached to their session in Analytics, as well as their click in Adwords (if applicable). No more artificial sessions or disconnected conversions, and as long as you have enough numbers in your pool to cover your site’s traffic, you’ll capture all calls from your site, regardless of source. It’s also much quicker to set up than a number per source, and will even make you more attractive and better at sports!
You generally have to pay your call tracking provider for additional numbers, and you’ll need a number for each concurrent visitor to keep things running smoothly, so this is where massive amounts of traffic can start to get expensive. CallRail recommends you look at your average hourly traffic during peak times and include ¼ the tally as numbers in your pool. So if you have 30 visitors per hour on average, you might want ~8 numbers.
Implementation
Once you’ve got your call tracking platform configured, you’ll need to implement some code on your site to allow the dynamic number insertion to work its magic. Most platforms will provide you with a code snippet and instructions for installation. If you use CallRail and Wordpress, there’s a handy plugin to make things even simpler. Just install, connect, and go.
To get your calls recorded in Analytics, you’ll just need to enable that option from your call tracking service. With CallRail you simply enable the integration, add your domain, and calls will be sent to your Analytics account as Events. Just like with your form submissions, you can add these events as a goal. Usually it makes sense to add a single goal called “Phone Calls” and set your event conditions according to the output from your call tracking service. If you’re using CallRail, it will look like this:
Google Search Console
It’s easy to forget to set up Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools), because most of the time it plays a backseat role in your digital marketing measurement. But miss it, and you’ll forego some fundamental technical SEO basics (country setting, XML sitemaps, robots.txt verification, crawl reports, etc.), and you’ll miss out on some handy keyword click data in the Search Analytics section. Search Console data can also be indispensable for diagnosing penalties and other problems down the road, should they ever pop up.
With all the basics of your tracking setup in place, the next step is to bring your paid advertising data into the mix.
Google Adwords
Adwords is probably the single most convincing reason to get proper tracking in place. Without it, you can spend a lot of money on clicks without really knowing what you get out of it. Conversion data in Adwords is also absolutely critical in making informed optimizations to your campaign settings, ad text, keywords, and so on.
If you’d like some more of my rantings on conversions in Adwords and some other ways to get more out of your campaigns, check out this recent article :)
Getting your data flowing in all the right directions is simple, but often overlooked.
Linking with Analytics
First, make sure your Adwords and Analytics accounts are linked. Always make sure you have auto-tagging enabled on your Adwords account. Now all your Adwords data will show up in the Acquisition > Adwords area of Analytics. This is a good time to double-check that you have the currency correctly set in Analytics (Admin > View Settings); otherwise, your Adwords spend will be converted to the currency set in Analytics and record the wrong dollar values (and you can’t change data that’s already been imported).
Next, you’ll want to get those call and form conversions from Analytics into Adwords.
Importing conversions in Adwords
Some Adwords management companies/consultants might disagree, but I strongly advocate an Analytics-first approach to conversion tracking. You can get call and form conversions pulled directly into Adwords by installing a tracking code on your site. But don’t.
Instead, make sure all your conversions are set up as goals in Analytics, and then import them into Adwords. This allows Analytics to act as your one-stop-shop for reviewing your conversion data, while providing all the same access to that data inside Adwords.
Call extensions & call-only ads
This can throw some folks off. You will want to track call extensions natively within Adwords. These conversions are set up automatically when you create a call extension in Adwords and elect to use a Google call forwarding number with the default settings.
Don’t worry though, you can still get these conversions tracked in Analytics if you want to (I could make an argument either for or against). Simply create a single “offline” tracking number in your call tracking platform, and use that number as the destination for the Google forwarding number.
This also helps counteract one of the oddities of Google’s call forwarding system. Google will actually only start showing the forwarding number on desktop ads after they have received a certain (seemingly arbitrary) minimum number of clicks per week. As a result, some calls are tracked and some aren’t — especially on smaller campaigns. With this little trick, Analytics will show all the calls originating from your ads — not just ones that take place once you’ve paid Google enough each week.
Adwords might give you a hard time for using a number in your call extensions that isn’t on your website. If you encounter issues with getting your number verified for use as a call extension, just make sure you have linked your Search Console to your Adwords account (as indicated above).
Now you’ve got Analytics and Adwords all synced up, and your tracking regimen is looking pretty gnarly! There are a few other cool tools you can use to take full advantage of your sweet setup.
Google Tag Manager
If you’re finding yourself putting a lot of code snippets on your site (web chat, Analytics, call tracking, Adwords, Facebook Pixels, etc), Google Tag Manager is a fantastic tool for managing them all from one spot. You can also do all sorts of advanced slicing and dicing.
GTM is basically a container that you put all your snippets in, and then you put a single GTM snippet on your site. Once installed, you never need to go back to your site’s code to make changes to your snippets. You can manage them all from the GTM interface in a user-friendly, version-controlled environment.
Don’t bother if you just need Analytics on your site (and are using the CallRail plugin). But for more robust needs, it’s well worth considering for its sheer power and simplicity.
Once you’ve got conversion data occupying all your waking thoughts, you might want to take things a step further. Perhaps you want to track traffic and leads that come from an offline advertisement, a business card, an email signature, etc. You can build tracking URLs that include UTM parameters (campaign, source, and medium), so that when visitors come to your site from a certain place, you can tell where that place was!
Once you know how to build these URLs, you don’t really need a tool, but Google’s Campaign URL Builder makes quick enough work of it that it’s bound to earn a spot in your browser’s bookmarks bar.
Pro tip: Use a tracking URL on your Google My Business listing to help distinguish traffic/conversions coming in from your listing vs traffic coming in from the organic search results. I’d recommend using:
Source: google
Medium: organic
Campaign name: gmb-listing (or something)
This way your GMB traffic still shows up in Analytics as normal organic traffic, but you can drill down to the gmb-listing campaign to see its specific performance.
Bonus pro tip: Use a vanity domain or a short URL on print materials or offline ads, and point it to a tracking URL to measure their performance in Analytics.
Rank tracking
Whaaat? Rank tracking is a dirty word to conversion tracking purists, isn’t it?
Nah. It’s true that rank tracking is a poor primary metric for your digital marketing efforts, but it can be very helpful as a supplemental metric and for helping to diagnose changes in traffic, as Darren Shaw explored here.
For local businesses, we think our Local Rank Tracker is a pretty darn good tool for the job.
Google My Business Insights
Your GMB listing is a foundational piece of your local SEO infrastructure, and GMB Insights offer some meaningful data (impressions and clicks for your listing, mostly). It also tries to tell you how many calls your listing generates for you, but it comes up a bit short since it relies on "tel:" links instead of tracking numbers. It will tell you how many people clicked on your phone number, but not how many actually made the call. It also won’t give you any insights into calls coming from desktop users.
There’s a great workaround though! It just might freak you out a bit…
Fire up your call tracking platform once more, create an “offline” number, and use it as your “primary number” on your GMB listing. Don’t panic. You can preserve your NAP consistency by demoting your real local number to an “additional number” slot on your GMB listing.
I don’t consider this a necessary step, because you’re probably not pointing your paid clicks to your GMB listing. However, combined with a tracking URL pointing to your website, you can now fully measure the performance of Google My Business for your business!
Disclaimer: I believe that this method is totally safe, and I’m using it myself in several instances, but I can’t say with absolute certainty that it won’t impact your rankings. Whitespark is currently testing this out on a larger scale, and we’ll share our findings once they’re assembled!
Taking it all in
So now you’ve assembled a lean, mean tracking machine. You’re already feeling 10 years younger, and everyone pays attention when you enter the room. But what can you do with all this power?
Here are a few ways I like to soak up this beautiful data.
Pop into Analytics
Since we’ve centralized all our tracking in Analytics, we can answer pretty much any performance questions we have within a few simple clicks.
How many calls and form fills did we get last month from our organic rankings?
How does that compare to the month before? Last year?
How many paid conversions are we getting? How much are we paying on average for them?
Are we doing anything expensive that isn’t generating many leads?
Does our Facebook page generate any leads on our website?
There are a billion and seven ways to look at your Analytics data, but I do most of my ogling from Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. Here you get a great overview of your traffic and conversions sliced up by channels (Organic Search, Paid Search, Direct, Referral, etc). You can obviously adjust date ranges, compare to past date ranges, and view conversion metrics individually or as a whole. For me, this is Analytics home base.
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium can be equally interesting, especially if you’ve made good use of tracking URLs.
Make some sweet SEO reports
I can populate almost my entire standard SEO client report from the Acquisition section of Analytics. Making conversions the star of the show really helps to keep clients engaged in their monthly reporting.
Google Analytics dashboards
Google’s Dashboards inside Analytics provide a great way to put the most important metrics together on a single screen. They’re easy to use, but I’ve always found them a bit limiting. Fortunately for data junkies, Google has recently released its next generation data visualization product...
Google Data Studio
This is pretty awesome. It’s very flexible, powerful, and user-friendly. I’d recommend skipping the Analytics Dashboards and going straight to Data Studio.
It will allow to you to beautifully dashboard-ify your data from Analytics, Adwords, Youtube, DoubleClick, and even custom databases or spreadsheets. All the data is “live” and dynamic. Users can even change data sources and date ranges on the fly! Bosses love it, clients love it, and marketers love it… provided everything is performing really well ;)
Supermetrics
If you want to get really fancy, and build your own fully custom dashboard, develop some truly bespoke analysis tools, or automate your reporting regimen, check out Supermetrics. It allows you to pull data from just about any source into Google Sheets or Excel. From there, your only limitation is your mastery of spreadsheet-fu and your imagination.
TL;DR
So that’s a lot of stuff. If you’d like to skip the more nuanced explanations, pro tips, and bad jokes, here’s the gist in point form:
Tracking your digital marketing is super important.
Don’t just track traffic. Tracking conversions is critical.
Use Google Analytics. Don’t let your agency use their own account.
Set up goals for every type of lead (forms, calls, chats, bookings, etc).
Track forms with destinations (thank you pages) or events.
Use "number per source" if you have a huge volume of traffic; otherwise, use number pools (AKA keyword pools). Pools are better.
Set up Search Console and link it to your Analytics and Adwords accounts.
Link Adwords with Analytics.
Import Analytics conversions into Adwords instead of using Adwords’ native conversion tracking snippet...
...except for call extensions. Track those within and Adwords AND in Analytics (if you want to) by using an “offline” tracking number as the destination for your Google forwarding numbers.
Use Google Tag Manager if you have more than a couple third-party scripts to run on your site (web chat, Analytics, call tracking, Facebook Pixels etc).
Use Google Campaign URL Builder to create tracked URLs for tracking visitors from various sources like offline advertising, email signatures, etc.
Use a tracked URL on your GMB listing.
Use a tracked number as your “primary” GMB listing number (if you do this, make sure you put your real local number as a “secondary” number). Note:We think this is safe, but we don’t have quite enough data to say so unequivocally. YMMV.
Use vanity domains or short URLs that point to your tracking URLs to put on print materials, TV spots, etc.
Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels is your new Analytics home base.
Consider making some Google Analytics Dashboards… and then don’t, because Google Data Studio is way better. So use that.
Check out Supermetrics if you want to get really hardcore.
Don’t let your dreams be dreams.
If you’re new to tracking your digital marketing, I hope this provides a helpful starting point, and helps cut through some of the confusion and uncertainty about how to best get set up.
If you’re a conversion veteran, I hope there are a few new or alternative ideas here that you can use to improve your setup.
If you’ve got anything to add, correct, or ask, leave a comment!
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In episode 149 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked how the Semantic Mastery team members save images from other sites.
The exact question was:
Hey guys, when saving an image from another site, do you right click and choose “”Save as”” or do you use a snipping tool like Snagit to take it? I know from Maps Kingpin that snipping it means it won’t have any meta data, but is it something I should do even when not optimizing for Maps?
Google still ranks webpages based on the content, code, and links they find with a desktop crawler. They’re working to update this old-school approach in favor of what their mobile crawlers find instead. Although the rollout will probably happen in phases over time, I’m calling the day this change goes live worldwide “D-day” in the post below. Mobilegeddon was already taken.
You don’t want to be in a situation on D-day where your mobile site has broken meta tags, unoptimized titles and headers, missing content, or is serving the wrong HTTP status code. This post will help you prepare so you can sleep well between now then.
What is a mobile parity audit?
When two or more versions of a website are available on the same URL, a "parity audit" will crawl each version, compare the differences, and look for errors.
When do you need one?
You should do a parity audit if content is added, removed, hidden, or changed between devices without sending the user to a new URL.
This type of analysis is also useful for mobile sites on a separate URL, but that's another post.
What will it tell you? How will it help?
Is the mobile version of the website "optimized" and crawlable? Are all of the header response codes and tags set up properly, and in the same way, on both versions? Is important textual content missing from, or hidden, on the mobile version?
Why parity audits could save your butt
The last thing you want to do is scramble to diagnose a major traffic drop on D-day when things go mobile-first. Even if you don’t change anything now, cataloging the differences between site versions will help diagnose issues if/when the time comes.
It may also help you improve rankings right now.
I know an excellent team of SEOs for a major brand who, for severals months, had missed the fact that the entire mobile site (millions of pages) had title tags that all read the same: "BrandName - Mobile Site." They found this error and contacted us to take a more complete look at the differences between the two sites. Here are some other things we found:
One page type on the mobile site had an error at the template level that was causing rel=canonical tags to break, but only on mobile, and in a way that gave Google conflicting instructions, depending on whether they rendered the page as mobile or desktop. The same thing could have happened with any tag on the page, including robots meta directives. It could also happen with HTTP header responses.
The mobile site has fewer than half the amount of navigation links in the footer. How will this affect the flow of PageRank to key pages in a mobile-first world?
The mobile site has far more related products on product detail pages. Again, how will this affect the flow of PageRank, or even crawl depth, when Google goes mobile-first?
Important content was hidden on the mobile version. Google says this is OK as long as the user can drop down or tab over to read the content. But in this case, there was no way to do that. The content was in the code but hidden to mobile viewers, and there was no way of making it visible.
How to get started with a mobile/desktop parity audit
It sounds complicated, but really it boils down to a few simple steps:
Crawl the site as a desktop user.
Crawl the site as a mobile user.
Combine the outputs (e.g. Mobile Title1, Desktop Title1, Mobile Canonical1, Desktop Canonical1)
Look for errors and differences.
Screaming Frog provides the option to crawl the site as the Googlebot Mobile user-agent with a smartphone device. You may or may not need to render JavaScript.
You can run two crawls (mobile and desktop) with DeepCrawl as well. However, reports like "Mobile Word Count Mismatch" do not currently work on dynamic sites, even after two crawls.
The hack to get at the data you want is the same as with Screaming Frog: namely, running two crawls, exporting two reports, and using Vlookups in Excel to compare the columns side-by-side with URL being the unique identifier.
Here's a simplified example using an export from DeepCrawl:
As you can see in the screenshot above, blog category pages, like /category/cro/, are bigly different between devices types, not just in how they appear, but also in what code and content gets delivered and rendered as source code. The bigliest difference is that post teasers disappear on mobile, which accounts for the word count disparity.
Word count is only one data point. You would want to look at many different things, discussed below, when performing a mobile/desktop parity audit.
For now, there does NOT appear to be an SEO tool on the market that crawls a dynamic site as both a desktop and mobile crawler, and then generates helpful reports about the differences between them.
But there's hope!
Our industry toolmakers are hot on the trail, and at this point I'd expect features to release in time for D-day.
Deep Crawl
We are working on Changed Metrics reports, which will automatically show you pages where the titles and descriptions have changed between crawls. This would serve to identify differences on dynamic sites when the user agent is changed. But for now, this can be done manually by downloading and merging the data from the two crawls and calculating the differences.
Moz Pro
Dr. Pete says they've talked about comparing desktop and mobile rankings to look for warning signs so Moz could alert customers of any potential issues. This would be a very helpful feature to augment the other analysis of on-page differences.
Sitebulb
When you select "mobile-friendly," Sitebulb is already crawling the whole site first, then choosing a sample of (up to) 100 pages, and then recrawling these with the JavaScript rendering crawler. This is what produces their "mobile-friendly" report.
They're thinking about doing the same to run these parity audit reports (mobile/desktop difference checker), which would be a big step forward for us SEOs. Because most of these disparity issues happen at the template/page type level, taking URLs from different crawl depths and sections of the site should allow this tool to alert SEOs of potential mismatches between content and page elements on those two versions of the single URL.
Screaming Frog
Aside from the oversensitive hash values, SF has no major advantage over DeepCrawl at the moment. In fact, DeepCrawl has some mobile difference finding features that, if they were to work on dynamic sites, would be leaps and bounds ahead of SF.
That said, the process shared below uses Screaming Frog because it's what I'm most familiar with.
You can make a copy of it here. Follow the instructions in the Readme tab. Note: This is a work in progress and is an experimental tool, so have fun!
On using the hash values to quickly find disparities between crawls
As Lunametrics puts it in their excellent guide to Screaming Frog Tab Definitions, the hash value "is a count of the number of URLs that potentially contain duplicate content. This count filters for all duplicate pages found via the hash value. If two hash values match, the pages are exactly the same in content."
I tried doing this, but found it didn't work very well for my needs for two reasons: because I was unable to adjust the sensitivity, and if even only one minor client-side JavaScript element changed, the page would get a new hash value.
When I asked DeepCrawl about it, I found out why:
The problem with using a hash to flag different content is that a lot of pages would be flagged as different, when they are essentially the same. A hash will be completely different if a single character changes.
Mobile parity audit process using Screaming Frog and Excel
Run two crawls
First, run two separate crawls. Settings for each are below. If you don't see a window or setting option, assume it was set to default.
1. Crawl 1: Desktop settings
Configurations ---> Spider
Your settings may vary (no pun intended), but here I was just looking for very basic things and wanted a fast crawl.
Configurations ---> HTTP Header ---> User-Agent
2. Start the first crawl
3. Save the crawl and run the exports
When finished, save it as desktop-crawl.seospider and run the Export All URLs report (big Export button, top left). Save the export as desktop-internal_all.csv.
4. Update user-agent settings for the second crawl
Hit the "Clear" button in Screaming Frog and change the User-Agent configuration to the following:
5. Start the second crawl
6. Save the crawl and run the exports
When finished, save it as mobile-crawl.seospider and run the Export All URLs report. Save the export as mobile-internal_all.csv.
Combine the exports in Excel
Import each CSV into a separate tab within a new Excel spreadsheet.
Create another tab and bring in the URLs from the Address column of each crawl tab. De-duplicate them.
Use Vlookups or other methods to pull in the respective data from each of the other tabs.
You'll end up with something like this:
A tab with a single row per URL, but with mobile and desktop columns for each datapoint. It helps with analysis if you can conditionally format/highlight instances where the desktop and mobile data does not match.
Errors & differences to look out for
Does the mobile site offer similar navigation options?
Believe it or not, you can usually fit the same amounts of navigation links onto a mobile site without ruining the user experience when done right. Here are a ton of examples of major retail brands approaching it in different ways, from mega navs to sliders and hamburger menus (side note: now I’m craving White Castle).
HTTP Vary User-Agent response headers
This is one of those things that seems like it could produce more caching problems and headaches than solutions, but Google says to use it in cases where the content changes significantly between mobile and desktop versions on the same URL. My advice is to avoid using Vary User-Agent if the variations between versions of the site are minimal (e.g. simplified navigation, optimized images, streamlined layout, a few bells and whistles hidden). Only use it if entire paragraphs of content and other important elements are removed.
Internal linking disparities
If your desktop site has twenty footer links to top-selling products and categories using optimized anchor text, and your mobile site has five links going to pages like “Contact Us” and “About” it would be good to document this so you know what to test should rankings drop after a mobile-first ranking algorithm shift.
Meta tags and directives
Do things like title tags, meta descriptions, robots meta directives, rel=canonical tags, and rel=next/prev tags match on both versions of the URL? Discovering this stuff now could avert disaster down the line.
Content length
There is no magic formula to how much content you should provide to each type of device, just as there is no magic formula for how much content you need to rank highly on Google (because all other things are never equal).
Imagine it's eight months from now and you're trying to diagnose what specific reasons are behind a post-mobile-first algorithm update traffic drop. Do the pages with less content on mobile correlate with lower rankings? Maybe. Maybe not, but I'd want to check on it.
Speed
Chances are, your mobile site will load faster. However, if this is not the case you definitely need to look into the issue. Lots of big client-side JavaScript changes could be the culprit.
Rendering
Sometimes JavaScript and other files necessary for the mobile render may be different from those needed for the desktop render. Thus, it's possible that one set of resources may be blocked in the robots.txt file while another is not. Make sure both versions fully render without any blocked resources.
Here’s what you need to do to be ready for a mobile-first world:
Know IF there are major content, tag, and linking differences between the mobile and desktop versions of the site.
If so, know WHAT those differences are, and spend time thinking about how that might affect rankings if mobile was the only version Google ever looked at.
Fix any differences that need to be fixed immediately, such as broken or missing rel=canonicals, robots meta, or title tags.
Keep everything else in mind for things to test after mobile-first arrives. If rankings drop, at least you’ll be prepared.
And here are some tools & links to help you get there:
I suspect it won't be long before this type of audit is made unnecessary because we'll ONLY be worried about the mobile site. Until then, please comment below to share which differences you found, and how you chose to address them so we can all learn from each other.
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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, marketers who wanted to learn about SEO were forced to mine deep into the caverns of Google search engine result pages to find the answers to even the most simple SEO questions.
Then, out of darkness came a new hope (with a mouthful of a name):
...the Learn SEO and Search Marketing hub!
The SEO and Search Marketing hub housed resources like the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and articles about popular SEO topics like meta descriptions, title tags, and robots.txt. Its purpose was to serve as a one-stop-shop for visitors looking to learn what SEO was all about and how to use it on their own sites.
The Learn SEO and Search marketing hub would go on to serve as a guiding light for searchers and site visitors looking to learn the ropes of SEO for many years to come.
CHAPTER 2: The Learning Hub Strikes Back
Since its inception in 2010, this hub happily served hundreds of thousands of Internet folk looking to learn the ropes of SEO and search marketing. But time took its toll on the hub. As marketing and search engine optimization grew increasingly complex, the Learning Hub lapsed into disrepair. While new content was periodically added, that content was hard to find and often intermingled with older, out-of-date resources. The Learning Hub became less of a hub and more of a list of resources… some of which were also lists of resources.
Offshoots like the Local Learning Center and Content Marketing Learning Center sprung up in an effort to tame the overgrown learning hub, but ‘twas all for naught: By autumn of 2016, Moz’s learning hub sites were a confusing nest of hard-to-navigate articles, guides, and 404s. Some articles were written for SEO experts and explained concepts in extensive, technical detail, while others were written for an audience with less extensive SEO knowledge. It was impossible to know which type of article you found yourself in before you wound up confused or discouraged.
What had once been a useful resource for marketers of all backgrounds was languishing in its age.
CHAPTER 3: The Return of the Learning Center
The vision behind the SEO and Search Marketing Hub had always been to educate SEOs and search marketers on the skills they needed to be successful in their jobs. While the site section continued to serve that purpose, somewhere along the along the way we started getting diminishing returns.
Our mission, then, was clear: Re-invent Moz’s learning resources with a new structure, new website, and new content.
As we set off on this mission, one thing was clear: The new Learning Center should serve as a home base for marketers and SEOs of all skill levels to learn what’s needed to excel in their work: from the fundamentals to expert-level content, from time-tested tenets of SEO success to cutting-edge tactics and tricks. If we weren’t able to accomplish this, our mission would all be for naught.
We also believed that a new Learning Center should make it easy for visitors of all skill levels and learning styles to find value: from those folks who want to read an article then dive into their work; to those who want to browse through libraries of focused SEO videos; to folks who want to learn from the experts in hands-on webinars.
So, that’s exactly what we built.
May we introduce to you the (drumroll, please) brand new, totally rebuilt SEO Learning Center!
Unlike the “list of lists” in the old Learn SEO and Search Marketing hub, the new Learning Center organizes content by topic.
Each topic has its own “topic hub.” There are eleven of these and they cover:
Each of the eleven topic hubs host a slew of hand-picked articles, videos, blog posts, webinars, Q&A posts, templates, and training classes designed to help you dive deeper into your chosen SEO topic.
All eleven of the hubs contain a “fundamentals” menu to help you wrap your brain around a topic, as well as a content feed with hundreds of resources to help you go even further. These feed resources are filterable by topic (for instance, content that’s about both ranking & visibility AND local SEO), SEO skill level (from beginner to advanced), and format.
Use the Learning Center’s filters to zero in on exactly the content you’re looking for.
And, if you’re brand new to a topic or not sure where to start, you can always find a link to the Beginner’s Guide to SEO right at the top of each page.
But we can only explain so much in words — check it out for yourself:
One of the main motivations behind rebuilding the Learning Center website was to make it easier for folks to find and move through a slew of educational content, be that a native Learning Center article, a blog post, a webinar, or otherwise. But it doesn’t do any good to make content easier to find if that content is totally out-of-date and unhelpful.
In addition to our mission to build a new Learning Center, we’ve also been quietly updating our existing articles to include the latest best practices, tactics, strategies, and resources. As part of this rewrite, we’ve also made an effort to keep each article as focused as possible around specifically one topic — a complete explanation of everything someone newer to the world of SEO needs to know about the given topic. What did that process look like in action? Check it out:
As of now we’ve updated 50+ articles, with more on the way!
Going forward, we’ll continue to iterate on the search experience within the new Learning Center. For example, while we always have our site search bar available, a Learning Center-specific search function would make finding articles even easier — and that’s just one of our plans for the future. Bigger projects include a complete update of the Beginner’s Guide to SEO (keep an eye on the blog for more news there, too), as well as our other introductory guides.
Help us, Moz-i Wan Community, you’re our only hope
We’ve already telekinetically moved mountains with this project, but the Learning Center is your resource — we’d love to hear what you’d like to see next, or if there’s anything really important you think we’ve missed. Head over, check it out, and tell us what you think in the comments!
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In episode 149 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked whether a GMB account location that is reported/removed will jeopardize other locations that are managed on the same account.
The exact question was:
One of my clients has 6 locations, one of them in his single GMB account is a PO box. If it is reported/removed from Google Maps, does it jeopardize the other locations in the GMB account? Or does Big G only remove the problem listing? Im hesitant to move the sites to a multi location silo if there’s risk the entire GMB account is at risk for the PO Box location.
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://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.
Announcement
Bradley: Hey everybody, this is Bradley Benner, with Semantic Mastery, and today is Hump Day Hangouts Episode number 150. A nice round number. Can you believe that, man?
Marco: It’s crazy. Six more.
Bradley: Yeah, six more. That’s what I was just about to say. The three year anniversary, the official three year anniversary will be 156. That’s quite a milestone, so very proud of that.
Marco: We always have goodies we give away on our anniversary specials, right? Look forward to that.
Bradley: Yeah. That’s just six short weeks away, so that’ll be coming very soon guys. We don’t have Adam here. He typically drives this train wreck. He usually is the one that has all the notes and announcements and stuff like that. He’s actually traveling, preparing for his wedding, which is this upcoming weekend. We’re all going to be meeting there, except for Marco unfortunately, in Portland. I know we’ve talked about that briefly.
That’s something we can talk about Marco. I don’t have the link for it though, shit. Do we have the link for that?
Marco: No. That’s Adam’s job.
Bradley: Okay.
Marco: That damn Adam.
Bradley: That’s what I said, Adam is the glue that holds us together. When he’s not here, it truly is a train wreck. Anyways, if anybody’s interested in meeting with us in Portland next week for Hump Day Hangouts live, we’re going to be doing it at 6:00 PM Pacific time, which will be 9:00 PM Eastern time. The only reason why we’re doing it late is because, first of all, we’re on Pacific time. Second of all, anybody that does come out to hang out with us at the bar that we’ve rented, we wanted it to be in the evening so that it would be, I guess just better for everybody else. We’re going to be having Hump Day Hangouts live next week at 9:00 PM Eastern. It ought to be fun.
Basically it’ll be drinks with Semantic Mastery. If you guys want to come hang out with us, like we did last year when we were in Panama, and we’re just going to be drinking beer and chatting live, and all that. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so hopefully you guys can attend the Hump Day Hangout webinar if you can’t make it live. If you could make it actual out to Portland, just reach out to us at support@SemanticMastery.com, and we’ll get you the link to sign up for that. I think we charge like $20. Was it $20, or $5?
Marco: I don’t even remember. It was nothing.
Bradley: It was nothing. That was just to make sure that you had a small commitment so that your ass shows up. Besides that, I don’t really have any other announcements, do you Marco?
Marco: Yeah. RYSR is killing it, man. People in RYS Reloaded are, I don’t know, it’s fun. The group is really fun. Got a bunch of go getters. I just got a PM from a guy who had been at number 15 for months, and he said he added a stack, went to number six or number five overnight, literally.
Bradley: That’s insane.
Marco: It’s crazy. Someone else said, again, they were stuck for months and months and months at number ten. One stack, number one. These aren’t, before we go any further, this is not to say that anyone who does this will have the same result. You have to follow the training to the letter. You have to do things exactly how we explain them, because if you miss anything, or if you omit it, you go, “This isn’t important.” You go on to the next part of the training, the training is set up so that you build power on power.
Forget anything and everything that you think you know about SEO. The only thing that we’re interested in is power. We don’t care about follow, or no follow. Only in that we do look for the do follow version of our files. We do look for that, because we want to pass the juice along, of course. You can use Google shortened links to kind of override that, but you still want the juice to flow nicely to whatever destination you’re throwing it to. The only way to do that is through a 301, or just a straight link. Either one works just fine.
People are just getting amazing results. They’re contacting me left and right. We have a breakaway group that I’m calling them the Holiday Jackers. They’re jacking holidays. I’m in there, I’m helping them along, because I love to see that. I love the incentive. I love that they said, “Okay, what can we do together?” If we can do all of this alone, if each one of us can rank alone, what can we do if we pool our resources and actually try to take down, let’s say Christmas, or Christmas specials, Christmas sales, whatever people are looking for at Christmas, let’s say, or Mother’s Day. If you plan now for Mother’s day, you’re just going to crush Mother’s Day. Ten people working together, each pushing stacks, all linking to other stacks. You’re just creating a mad house of power.
That’s what’s going on, and it really gets me excited to see people taking action. You know how I am. If you’re not going to do anything with it, why in the fuck would you spend so much money to just put something up on a shelf to review later, when you could be using it now, like everybody is, to rank. It makes absolutely no sense, but people actually do that.
Bradley: It’s crazy powerful. By the way guys, I do have one announcement I’ll add to your comment, Marco. We’ve got Syndication Academy Update Webinar number 15, I believe it is, immediately following Hump Day Hangouts. By the way, anybody that’s in the Syndication Academy, I really apologize for last month’s webinar not being posted in the members area. I just posted that today. I’m really sorry about that guys. That was my fault entirely, so I apologize.
I did mention it in the Facebook group to one of the people that had commented about it, that you should be able to access the replays from the events tab inside of the Facebook group. Because what happens is, I actually remove the replay from the Google event page when it gets added to the members area. If it’s not in the members area, go back and check the event page, and it should typically still be there. Anyways, I do apologize for that.
We’re going to be talking about, I’m going to be revealing on a conceptual level, I can’t get into the nitty gritty details, but I’m going to be revealing on a conceptual level, so kind of like a high level, of what the PR stack method is that I’ve been using for local ranking. It’s just fricking crushing it man. We’ve got a project, in the mastermind we’ve got what’s called a lead gen accountability group, where it’s about 10 or 12 of us that are in this group that are doing lead gen sites, and we’re using specifically this press release method to rank. We’re testing different configurations, and different number of press releases, and how soon, the volume or the frequency that we’re publishing them. That kind of stuff, and just testing, in various industries too, to see if we can duplicate the results with different types of configurations and that kind of stuff.
One of the projects I’m working on, it’s a JV project with somebody else, we’re doing some lead gen sites in a very specific industry. I’ve only published two press releases and we’re already in the 3-pack for some of the keywords, and right outside the 3-pack for many others. I’m going to be sharing some of those details today.
Building on what Marco was saying with the drive stacks, the stuff that we’re doing with the press releases for local ranking is not even including drive stacks. This is, right now it’s been specifically just testing straight press releases. If we mix in the Syndication Academy networks, so the syndication networks, which help to validate the entity. Create the little network of branded and interlinked sites, and then drive stacks as well, along with the press releases, I mean it’s a three punch combo that is just like nothing I’ve ever seen in SEO. It’s just absolutely incredible, and it builds the brand and the authority so much so that those rankings just stick.
I’m talking about ranking in the maps 3-pack guys, for some seriously competitive terms. Not only that, but without even doing any citations, which is crazy. Because you’d think that for local stuff, the traditional wisdom for years has been that you have to have citations. The press releases are acting as citations, but they’re not the traditional like directory style citations, and it’s working incredibly well. We’re going to be talking about that in the Syndication Academy webinar today a bit.
Just so you know, inside the mastermind we’ve been covering this stuff almost as it occurs. Not only the press release stuff, but also like the prospecting funnel and all the stuff that I’ve been building out for the new agency that we’re building, we at Semantic Mastery, are building a new local marketing agency. I’ve been working on it for about two months. Last mastermind webinar, which was two weeks ago, we broke down the prospecting funnel, which is producing anywhere between 10 to 15 inbound leads for be per day, which is absolutely insane. I’m talking about, I’m doing cold email outreach, but it’s producing inbound leads into our prospecting and sales funnels. In a very kind of tight niche, or industry, and it’s working really, really well. We broke that down two weeks ago.
Basically what I’m getting at is you guys should be in the Syndication Academy. If you’re not, you should join, because you’ll get some of this stuff there, or join the mastermind if you really want to get it in real time, as these products are being developed. Because eventually I’m going to produce a press release course that we’re going to sell under either Semantic Mastery or Mastery PR brand. Then as far as the local agency stuff that we’re developing, that’s not going to be sold until we’re ready to franchise or license it. Inside the mastermind, people are getting an inside look at how it’s being built and developed. That’s something that, again, we would encourage you to come join us so that you can experience all that stuff with us. Anything you want to add to that before we get into questions Marco?
Marco: No. I just think that co-citations are a really good way to push everything up, because you not only create the co-citation, you’re creating co-occurrence. I don’t want to get deep into what co-occurrence is. It’s just where the same word, or set of keywords appear, where they converge on the web. If you do that inside a Google property, the power that you generate literally overrides any other factor in the algorithm. It’s incredible how we not only trigger the algorithm, but you override a lot of the negative factors, or a lot of the stops, within the algorithm. You just push straight through them. One of those ways is like you said, press releases plus the RYS Reloaded, the drive stacks, with co-occurrence and co-citations. It’s just a powerful strategy man.
How Do You Formulate Anchor Text Diversity And Ratios Using SEO BattlePlan?
All right, we’ll I’ll cover it. I’m not going to type it out, but I’ll cover it right now. Sirian, typically what I focus on is naked URLs and brand anchors. Almost 100% now. I do naked URLs a lot, but I do brand terms quite a bit as well. It depends on where the links are coming from. Now, if you’re doing syndication through your blog, then you’re going to be creating contextual links within the blog post, the body of the blog post that you’re going to be syndicating out to your networks. Remember, they start off as internal links, because you’re posting on the blog, but it’s going to get syndicated out.
However, if you’re using a tier one branded network only, as your syndication network, instead of tiered networks and all that, then you can use keywords. Remember, when you do internal linking, a lot of the times you’re going to set keywords as anchor text anyways. That helps, it really does help. One of our partners in SerpSpace, Roman, he’s been crushing it with on page SEO. I mean, the stuff that this guy is doing is just like magic. He’s ranking for some serious crazy terms, like national terms, or even global terms, with just mainly on page stuff. It’s insane what he’s got going on.
What I’m getting at is, there’s a lot that can be done with just on page. If you’re using keywords, that’s fine, especially with just a single tier branded network, which is part of the reason why I always suggest just doing that, because it’s easier. It prevents potential issues with over optimization of your anchor text profile. Because if you think about it, when you syndicate a blog post to a single branded network, you’re really only getting three contextual links syndicated, because the rest are just a link back to the blog post. Does that make sense?
Like the bookmarks and the cloud storage sites, like Google Drive, those kind of things, social signals, the social media posts, all they do is link back to the post URL. There is no republishing of the text of the post itself. It’s just a link back to the post URL, so it doesn’t matter what your anchor text ratio is from, or the anchor text to the links in the body of the post.
For Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress, and if you happen to be using Medium and Weebly and stuff like that, which aren’t auto-posting anyways, but if you happen to be using those, you’ve got to take those into consideration. For a typical standard network, it’s going to be three contextual links that actually get syndicated out. Because of that, you don’t have to worry about over optimizing unless you continually publish blog posts to your blog using the same anchor text over and over again, as part of your internal link up to one of the pages of the site. Just keep that in mind.
If you’re doing external link building, so if you’re building inbound links from third party sites, not through syndication but through like PBNs for example, or through link building packages that you buy from either SerpSpace or from Black Cat forums or whatever else. Other link building services, if you’ve got your own tools, or whatever, then I highly recommend that you stick with naked URLs, very broad keywords instead of exact match, especially if you’re doing local and stuff. Then also generics, and in brand terms. That’s pretty much it.
As far as like the actual ratios, I gave up trying to figure out what the perfect ratio balance is. Because we just realized, probably two or three years ago now, that it’s really naked URLs and brand terms that’s all that’s required. If you’re on page is correct, if you have really good on page optimization done, then you can rank with strictly brand and naked URLs, because the keywords are all taken care throughout your on page.
I know there’s a lot of people out there, again traditional wisdom, conventional wisdom has been that everybody always says that, not everybody, but a lot of SEOs, a lot of conventional wisdom states that there should be 20% brand terms and only 5% exact match, and 10% broad match. Then 30% generics and 40% … All that. Okay. I get an ice cream headache just thinking about all that crap. I just stick with making sure on page is really good, and then I just use naked URLs and brand terms almost 100% of the time. What do you think, Marco?
Marco: Man, I agree totally with your answer. I don’t think I can add anything to it.
Bradley: All right. Perfect. Next is Shilbga. I’m going to screw that up. Sorry buddy.
Marco: He’s one of our Reloaded guys. Hey man.
How Did You Set Expectations To The Call Volume Of Clients For Remodeling Services?
Remember that a home remodeling, like home builders and home remodelers, and general contractors, it’s not a lot of call volume. Like tree services, like plumbing services and HVAC services, and any sort of repair services, is different. Because those a lot of times are smaller jobs, and there’s going to be more call volume. For tree service industry, guys, there’s seasons, certain seasons, especially like spring and summer, they get a ton of calls, but obviously during the winter it’s very, very low call volume. At least where I am, because the winters are pretty harsh and there’s not really a lot of tree activity.
When it comes to remodeling, you’ve got to remember to tell the client, or anybody that has really high ticket items, is that although the leads aren’t going to be coming through like dozens per week, and it depends, there’s certain areas where that could be true. In the areas that I’ve done lead gen, and/or SEO work for remodeling contractors and general contractors, it’s not usually a lot of call volume. For a decent sized city, maybe we’d get anywhere between eight to 15 calls per month, and that’s for a pretty good sized city. For some of the smaller like suburb areas that we target, sometimes we’ll go a month without any calls. Other months we’ll get five or six calls.
The idea here is, one of those leads … Here’s an example that I use for the last contractor that I pitched on a lead gen site for. I told him, I said, “Look, I’m going to charge you $100 per lead that comes in.” If you think about it, the average kitchen job, on the small end, an average kitchen remodel job is $20,000. If it takes us, if you close one out of every three leads that calls you. Remember, obviously it’s in their best interest to get better at closing. If it costs them $300 for three leads, and they close one of them and it’s a $20,000 kitchen job, which is actually the low end of a kitchen remodel average. Then was it worth spending $300 to get that lead? That cost per conversion, or cost per acquisition, CPA, cost per acquisition for that kitchen remodeling job was $300. Was that worth it? You better believe it was worth it, because that’s less than 1%, or is it one? 1% would be what, $200. What is it, like 1.5% of the job price? Like with my tree service clients, at least with my biggest client, I do a 10% of whatever the contract price is, the gross contract. Let’s say they get a $10,000 tree job. That’s not normal. We usually get tree jobs anywhere from $1500 to maybe $3000 is a typical tree removal contract. They pay 10% on that, and that’s on the gross side because there’s not a lot of materials involved, it’s mostly just all labor. I can get 10% for those, and they’ll pay me, for a $1500 tree removal job, I get $150. That’s great. They’re paying 10% for that lead. When you explain it that way to a contractor, like a remodeling contractor and say, “Look, if I’m charging you $100 per lead, and it takes you four leads to close the sale, and you get a $25,000 job out of it, then you’ve only paid $400.” Which is, again that’s like 1.5% or 2% of your contract price.
If you’re going to go with the revenue share model, which is where you get a percentage, which a lot of contractors like that. You have to have a specific, a trusting relationship with the contractor in order for you to even propose that. If you were to do that with remodeling contractors, then typically you’re going to ask for a percentage of the net contract price. Which means the total contract price, minus materials. Sometimes, depending on what you work out with the contractor, it may be minus materials and labor. A lot of the times I always try to strike an agreement where it’s contract price minus materials. Get paid on that. 10% for a remodeling type of lead is often a lot, even on the net side instead of the gross side. 5% is more of a number that is, they will agree to 5% of net proceeds of a lead more than they will on 10%, if that makes sense.
Anyways. Those are just a couple different ways. I don’t know if he … We should have some monetization model training in Syndication Academy, and I know we do in Local Kingpin. You should go through one of those webinars. If you don’t have access to either one of those, reach out to us at support and ask for the monetization models for lead gen webinar. Actually, you know what? I know where it is. It’s in our bonus site. You should have access to our bonus site, since you bought RYS Academy. Go into the Semantic Mastery bonus site and you’ll see that there is a webinar in there where I go very in depth into monetization models for lead gen stuff. If you have any problems accessing that site, just reach out to us, Support@SemanticMastery.com, and we’ll get you sorted out.
Can Google Sites Rank Well And Be Duplicated And Uploaded In Bulk?
Bradley: Yeah, so I don’t know what GSG is. “I tried a software GSG, but had problems in getting it to operate properly. I viewed the tutorial for GSG, and I still had no success with it. I would like a mass page builder that would work. Do you have any suggestions? Also, want to thank you guys for your commitment to the community. Is appreciated.” I’ll plus one that.
I would say Peter Drew’s Google Site Builder is great for building unlimited Google sites, where you would target like one keyword per site. You can go in there and literally put in, I think 100 keywords at a time, or something like that. I may be incorrect on that, but it’s a lot. You can put a lot in there, or you can build a site with up to eight pages per site, if you want like inner pages targeting. You can build almost like a silo structure within a Google Site. That works really well.
I know Marco’s tested it quite a bit. I’ve played with it a little. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with software, but I know I’ve played with it. Anything from Peter Drew is always a good product. In our opinion, he’s one of the good developers. He keeps his software updated regularly. I would suggest that. Marco, do you have any comments on that since you’ve used it more than I have?
Marco: No. It’s good for what it does. It ranks for long tails, but you could do the same thing with just a manual build on a G Site, chasing a long tail. If you want the true power, and excuse me because I’m biased, and I’ll admit, is in RYS Reloaded. Because you can chase as many long tails as you want with what we do, and the way that we do it. I mean, automation is fine, but you can’t refine the process when you’re doing things en masse. It might be great for poking niches. It might be great for other things. When you want ranking that stick, you start with RYS Reloaded, and that G Site, if that’s what you’re trying to rank, is that G Site, or to push power wherever you want to push it.
I could take more. You have to remember that certain niches require more work. It’s not just, okay, I’ll do a half-assed stack like it’s done in other places, and I’m going to rank. Then when it doesn’t you come back and say, “Well this stuff doesn’t work.” Well no, it just wasn’t done right, or it needed more power. How do you add more power? We teach all that inside RYS Reloaded. I’m not going to start teaching it all here. There’s a big difference.
If you want to rank for 100 long tails, then yes, of course, get the Google Site Creator from Peter Drew, and target 100 long tail keywords. You’ll get traffic out of each one of those, but why do that when you could just build one and target just everything under the sun? You’re going to rank, I mean I’ve seen people ranking for hundreds and hundreds of keywords. Not just one, or a hundred, or whatever.
Bradley: Yeah. For what the specific question was about, building mass Google sites, I would suggest that tool. I agree with Marco 100%. As the specific tool for what you’re asking about Taylor, that is a good tool, there’s no doubt. I would give you the link, but typically Adam or Hernan are here dropping the links when I mention something, and I don’t have it. If you want to check that you, and you can’t find it on your own, just reach out to us, Support@SemanticMastery, or post in one of the Facebook groups or something like that, and we’ll find the link for you and get it to you.
How Do You Handle Client Expectations From A Branded Local Lead Gen Site?
Okay, that’s a great question, Kevin. You do have Local Kingpin, that should be covered in there. To be honest, I can’t remember. I’m almost 100% certain I covered that in there, just because that is a common question. That comes up a lot.
The way that I’ve always solved that is, once I have a site ranking, which is always just like a pseudo-brand, and by the way, it’s getting more and more difficult, guys, to do that, just so you know. It’s getting more difficult to create a fake brand. Because Google is putting so much emphasis on branding and entity validation now, it’s getting more difficult to do that. I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to get away with that, but I know that in some cities, or in some industries specifically, they’re actually making you jump through hoops now, to get a Google My Business listing verified.
It’s going to make it more and more difficult for us to set up these lead gen sites, which is part of the reason why I’ve started getting back into doing more client work again, and we started building a local agency. Because it’s getting to the point where it’s going to be too much of a headache to try to create lead gen sites. Now, because of some of the tools and processes that we have in place, like RYS Reloaded, and the press release services, and the syndication networks, and SerpSpace as our order fulfillment center. We have the ability to drive, and you guys do too, you guys have access to all this stuff too.
We have the ability to actually provide results for clients, instead of producing our own assets. Which I’ve recommended that for years, but as it becomes more difficult, you’ve got to evolve with the times. Let me get back to your question, Kevin.
Marco: Before you get there, let me just continue on what you started. They’re getting so anal that I verified, it was either yesterday or the day before, I verified, or helped a doctor verify a business, and they actually made us go on video. They wouldn’t accept the call. They made us go on video, and they made the doctor show his offices, his staff, and the wall with his degrees. It’s gotten to that point. It used to be, okay doctor, you went in, you sent the pin, it was verified. They made us go on video.
Bradley: That’s insane. I’ve heard of the same thing happening in some of the industries, like some various industries. I think locksmithing is one of them. In some cities they’re requiring it for certain industries and things like that. That’s why I’m saying, although I wanted to, for years I’ve been trying to get out of the client business, and just build my own lead gen properties, we’re kind of going back to more client services again, because of this very reason. Plus we’ve got methods, like with SerpSpace, which you guys have access to, so much of the fulfillment can be handled now, right from that dashboard. It’s really silly not to be able to provide services.
Let’s keep rolling. I’m going to get through this question. Kevin, this is something that happens often. what I’ve always done, was once I’ve got the site ranked, and I start generating calls, then I put, like if it’s a WordPress site, I just put a plugin. I use the InkThemes, what’s called the InfoBar plugin, but I’m sure there’s other ones as well. Let me just find it real quick. This is the plugin that I always use. I think that should be it. Yes, this is it. InfoBar plugin. I use this, because it’s really simple. What it does is it puts a nice like red banner type thing at the very top of the site, that has a scrolling text. I always just put whatever the pseudo brand name in, is now partnered with, and then I put the company name that’s actually servicing the leads. That’s all I do.
What I might do, is if I have a logo on the site, I will change the logo image out with the service provider. Whoever’s buying the leads from me, I’ll put their logo on there. I keep control of the domain, and the phone number, the email form, all of that stuff, so I can track everything. I’m not going to rebrand it. Let me rephrase. I’m not going to go update citations in all of that. I’m going to keep my phone number, my URL. I’m going to keep the web forms, at least if it’s a contact form that gets submitted, it gets sent to me as well as to the contractor. Then like I said, if you’re using a logo image, probably are, then I will swap out the logo image with the client’s logo image, or the service provider’s image, and I’ll put the notification bar on there. That’s all I do. That’s it. Period.
Now remember, I don’t have any calls going directly from my lead gen sites to the contractors, none of them do. All of my lead gen sites go through a call center. I use AnswerConnect.com. AnswerConnect has been my call center service since 2011, or actually probably 2012. Five years now I’ve been using AnswerConnect. It’s a great, great service. Whenever I have submitted the script to AnswerConnect, the call screening script that they read, and they ask questions of the caller, which is a great service, by the way guys.
Because as a local business, and any of you guys doing local services you already know this, or if you have your own website ranked for marketing services or whatever, in your local area. You already know you get hammered with spam calls all day long, solicitation calls. It’s typically from marketing agencies, or like Yelp. Yelp is notorious for calling 15 freaking times a week. I can’t stand Yelp because of that. They blow up my call center all the time with calls, because of all the different lead gen sites that we have being funneled into a call center. I literally burn up probably 300 or 400 minutes a month on spam calls, because of that.
What I’m getting at is, by having everything go through a call center, the call centers screen all the leads, so that it’s only true leads that get delivered to the contractor, which is good. Because if you’ve got the calls going directly to the contractor, first of all they’re probably going to get pissed off eventually, that they keep getting spam calls, which is just the nature of the game. Once you get ranked in Google, you start receiving calls, not just from customers, but also from marketing and advertising agencies trying to sell you more stuff.
The contractor will oftentimes get annoyed with how many spam calls they get, so having a call center really cuts down on that, almost 100%. Because now the only leads that get forwarded to the contractor are the ones that have been screened by the call center, and are valid, bonafide leads. The call center will send an email and a text, or however you got notifications set up.
The way that I have it set up is, it sends an email to the contractor plus me, and it sends a text to the contractor, with all the lead data in the text as well. The contractor can see the contact information, their name, phone number, address, the service that they’re interested, brief description of the job. All that kind of stuff, and they can call back.
Typically, what I do in that case is the call center will originally, while I’m getting the site ranked, it will have like, “Hello, Joe’s Plumbing, how may I help you?” Then as soon as I get a new service provider, I will have the script updated to the contractor’s name, or I will just have it go generic and say like, “Plumbing service, how may I help you?” Does that make sense? You take the brand name out of it. That way, if a customer calls, and they get, again you can either have the service provider’s name inserted in the script, or you can just make it very generic, like Plumbing Services, or in your case Landscape Services. Something like that. Landscaping, how may I help you? Something like that.
Then when the service provider shows up at the customer’s house, their branding should have been on the website already. If anybody ever asks questions, I always tell my contractors, don’t lie to the customer. You just tell the customer, “Yes, that’s a marketing website that was set up by a third party. I service all the leads through that website. This is my company.” It’s under their insurance. It’s under their license. All that kind of stuff, if that makes sense. Good question, Kevin.
Scott’s up. He says, “Hey guys, looking forward to the meetup in Portland. Do we have a location?” Yeah Scott, Adam would have it, but he’s not here. Yes, we have a location. If you’ve already signed up, you will definitely get notification. Just be looking out on your email. Adam’s real good about making sure the email goes out several times, so you’ll get notified.
What Are T1 And T2 Networks And When/Why To Use Them To Help Rank Money Sites Higher In The SERP?
George says, “Can you explain what T1 and T2 networks really mean?” Yeah, we actually covered this in depth in the mastermind, didn’t we? I think there was a pretty good thread in there. Rob answered a great answer for that, didn’t he?
Marco: Yeah, he did.
Bradley: Okay. George, I’m only going to skip your question because I know that it was covered extensively in the mastermind earlier today. If you have any additional, if you’d like us to cover this a little bit more in depth, I’m certainly happy to. We have a mastermind webinar tomorrow, so we can cover this more in detail for you. If we get into that right now, it’ll probably take up the rest of the Hump Day Hangout. I’m going to keep moving. Not that your question’s not important, George.
By the way, George is a newer mastermind member, and he’s been just soaking it up. It’s been awesome to see how engaged he is in the community. He’s always asking questions. Really good questions, and it’s been awesome George, to see that. I love it when new members come in and they’re as active as you are. We’re glad to have you.
What Is The Best Way To Silo Structure Attorney Offices From 4 Different Cities?
Jeff, I always, always, always recommend going with subdomains. Just use your root domain. What I’ve been doing recently, personally what I like to do is, on the root domain now … It depends. If I’m going to be doing a syndication network, and I’m going to be trying to syndicate from the root domain for all locations, which is perfectly fine to do, and I recommend doing that because you don’t need four syndication networks. Chances are, you don’t need four syndication networks. You said you’ve got four locations. A lot of people want to, right off the bat, create a separate syndication network for each location. It’s not necessary. A lot of the times it’s unnecessary to do that. You can get away with one branded syndication network that covers all four locations.
You basically do all your blogging from the root domain, in which case you would want WordPress installed, because you’re going to use the blog function for your content distribution engine. That’s how you’re going to be publishing content to your network. In that case, you’d want to put WordPress on that as kind of a, just a brand site. In other words, it’s not going to be location specific. Now of course, you could put a locations page on the site, and then you can link out to each one of the subdomains from that locations page.
Here’s the other thing. You would also create categories for each one of those subdomain locations. Let’s say you’ve got Dallas and Atlanta and Miami, let’s just say those are three. Then you would create a Dallas category. You’d have a Dallas subdomain, and maybe you’d even say Dallastx.whatever your domain is. You could have a Miami one and an Atlanta category. The idea is, every single time you go to publish a post from the root domain to your single tier one ring, branded network, then you would just make sure that the post that you’re using to promote the Dallas site, for example, has an internal link up to the Dallas category page, and also links out to, so the category on the root domain. Also, a contextual link that links out to the subdomain.
That way you can build links to each one of your subdomain sites, through just one blog. What happens is, after you’ve started publishing content consistently, you start boosting the branded network, link building, starting to get some traction. Remember, the more content you publish, the more themed it will become, the higher the authority will build. You’ll start seeing movement from your subdomain sites if you do it this way.
What happens is, after a period of time, and it depends on your frequency of publishing. How often are you publishing? That kind of thing. Once you’ve got some good volume there, you should be able to determine which particular subdomain sites, or locations, may need the extra boost. In which case you could, at that time, create a location specific network, which would be just the brand name plus the location modifier. You can do that, and then you can actually start publishing content from that specific subdomain to that location specific network.
Don’t go through all that trouble until you’ve created one branded syndication network and started pushing your content out to that, because there’s a good chance that you’re going to start gaining a lot of traction with just that alone. There’s no reason to go through all the extra hassle. I absolutely recommend using subdomains, because it reduces exposure or risk. Remember, if your domain gets penalized, and you’ve got all of your location stuff as pages or silos on the site, then you’re going to lose all of those sites. All those locations are going to go down if your domain gets penalized. If you have them on subdomains, and any one of the subdomains gets slapped, then it’s not going to affect the other subdomains. Does that make sense?
That’s part of the reason why, if you’re going to be using subdomains, you don’t want to be doing anything spammy to the root. Syndicating content from the root to your branded network is all you really need to do. Then you can always boost your tier one ring, and you can do like third party inbound linking to your individual subdomains. I wouldn’t do any kind of inbound linking to your root domain, because if you got that slapped, it would affect all your subdomains too. Does that make sense? You just want to be real careful any time you’re doing anything on a root domain, because once the domain gets slapped, then it’s tanked, and everything attached to it is.
Is It Possible To Add A Facebook And Google Tracking Pixel To A GStack?
Marco: I can’t answer that, which means that there’s probably a way.
Bradley: Gabriel, if you’re in the RYS Academy group, then that would be a good place for that to possibly be covered. I know that’s coming up in an upcoming webinar, right?
Marco: Yeah. That’s coming. We’ve got so much stuff coming up. We just did one that was awesome, how to do the Google My Business entity, and how to optimize it. How to make it work in your favor. How to add it so that it’s part of the drive stack, it’s part of the entire entity. Once you’ve got all that going, it’s all about creating power guys. It’s no longer just about links, or just about keywords. We override all that. We override anything and everything in the Google algorithm with just sheer power. What did they say in that Rocky movie? Good old fashioned blunt force trauma. That’s what we’re after.
Bradley: Awesome. Gabriel, ask in that group. I know they’ve got kind of a hack to do some pretty cool stuff. I don’t know, because I haven’t done it myself, but I know that Marco will cover it in there in one of the upcoming webinars.
How Do You Handle Suspended Tier 1 Branded WordPress Site For Local Client?
Jay, it happens from time to time. Now, first of all, it sucks when it happens, there’s no doubt, but it does happen. For example, our Semantic Mastery one got suspended, and I don’t think anybody’s ever rebuilt it. It’s kind of silly, because we don’t do anything spammy at all, other than publish snippets from the Hump Day Hangouts. Ours got suspended. It happens guys. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not 100% all the time. As you know Jay, like you just mentioned, it’s the first time that’s ever happened to you, and I know you’ve been following us and using these methods for quite some time, probably a couple years. The fact that you’ve only had one just now goes to show you how well you’ve been building your networks, which is awesome. It’s going to happen from time to time.
Now, that said, I do know, from hearing some chatter in the group and stuff, that it seems like WordPress is becoming a lot more trigger happy at suspending sites. My suggestion would be that whenever you first create the account, the site, that remember to post seed content. I would suggest doing two or three posts over the course of a couple of weeks, that don’t link out to any external sources. The only thing that you would possibly want to link to is maybe another WordPress.com blog. Another WordPress.com site, not a self-hosted site, but an actual WordPress.com site that would be relevant to the seed content on your site.
The only reason why I say that is because you don’t want any external links because that can trigger, especially with new accounts, it can trigger, it can flag the account as being used for external link building, which is against their … They specifically, and they have for years, said that was against their terms of service. We’ve been getting away with it, but that’s part of the reason why we add seed content. I recommend that if it’s becoming more trigger happy, it’s more sensitive, then wait longer. Season the account longer, which means add more seed content without outbound links.
Remember, when you’re linking to another WordPress.com blog, that’s considered an internal link. If you link to other WordPress.com blogs, and you add some relevant, useful content, not spammy, spun bullshit. If you’ve got to go to a writer, or a content farm even, and buy a couple of articles to have posted, do it. If the WordPress.com site is that important to your network, which it is, in my opinion, then do it. It’s just, as things progress or change or evolve, guys, we have to as well. Does that make sense?
If you’ve got to get a couple of original articles posted on the site first, then do it. Just factor that into your costs for your client, or whatever, so that it’s covered on your end. You just order a couple pieces of content, publish them, and let the site sit for two weeks, three weeks, even 30 days, before you start automating syndication to that site. A little bit of a pain in the ass, but again guys, remember, all these sites and platforms are trying to crack down on spam. Even though syndicating valid content in our eyes isn’t spam, if it’s got external links, like pointing from the WordPress.com site back to the money site for your client, and it’s an automated post, then WordPress may very well consider it spam, even if it’s not really spam. Remember, it’s an automatic and algorithm type thing, that will suspend the account. Go ahead Marco.
Marco: Yeah. I’m shocked anyone would try to spam WordPress. I’m offended. Seriously.
Bradley: Shocked and appalled.
Marco: I’ve put the link for Jay, so that he could file for reinstatement. You could actually do that with free WordPress blogs. I’ve given him the link. You fill out the contact form, and see if you can get around it. Sometimes they just want to see that there’s a real person.
Bradley: I’ve never had that successful though, for me, for WordPress. For Tumblr, yes, but for WordPress.
Marco: I have. I’ve gotten a couple un-suspended that I did a bunch of nasty stuff to. You can. I mean, it’s worth a try.
Has Anyone Tried Submitting A Local Clients’ Coupons With Metadata To Any Coupon Sharing Sites?
Marco: No, because what we’re using, as you know, the Google My business verified listing for coupons and events. It works like crazy. Of course, it’s a Google property, and you’re doing what they want you to do. Rather than go out and share your coupons for services, you can do your own coupon. I’m not going to go through the whole strategy of what you do and how you get Google to crawl ad infinitum. I’m sorry, I keep mentioning it, it’s taught inside RYS Academy. We load it.
Bradley: Yeah, the Google My Business coupons are supposedly working really well. I still haven’t messed with that, because again, I’ve just never done any coupon stuff. I probably should, but I just have had no desire to do it. Check that out Jay, because I know that that is working real.
Does Using Zip Codes Better Than Radius To Avoid Overlapping Issues In Maps?
Mel, what’s up Mel? She says, “For maps our clients locations are overlapping instead of doing radius. If we do select zip codes, will it be better?” Yeah. Mel, I’ve always done zip codes, unless it was a really large service area, in which case it just wouldn’t make sense to input 300 zip codes or whatever. Usually when I’m doing, usually a service area for a company isn’t that large, and so I will actually generate a list of zip codes within the radius of their service area, and then add them individually. Add them to the Google My Business listing individually. I’ve always found that to be more effective.
Now, I haven’t split test that recently. Years ago I did, and it was absolutely more effective several years ago, so I’ve just always continued that, because it worked so much better years ago. I haven’t done any recent testing to determine if that’s still a better option or not, but as you mentioned, since there’s some overlap there, it may be better because you can be more specific in the service area boundaries, by using zip codes as opposed to doing just a blanket radius, if that makes sense.
Is There A Safe Way To Order RYS Stacks For Two Subdomains In A Legal Directory Site?
I’m going to let Marco answer, Doss. I can tell you, I haven’t seen like any velocity issues when it comes to Google properties. What do you say, Marco?
Marco: I’m looking at it. I don’t see why there would be any problem, as long as he’s on subdomains. Because each one is actually a different website, so you throw a stack at each different website, your minions, as you call them, that’s perfect. That’s what it’s all about. You can actually create the different stacks, create a company. You have a company and you have employees, and these employees are in charge of managing each of the different towns in that directory. It’s logical for each one of these employees to do what everyone else in the company does. That’s how you have to think about this.
If you do this, and you push all that power, it’s not only going to feed the root, it’s probably going to shoot back and feed all of the other subdomains, if you have it all tied together correctly. If you separated it, it’s till going to feed back and forth. Although, if you incur a penalty in any one of them, it won’t. That’s the great thing.
Bradley: Yup. That’s exactly why we do that. What I was saying about velocity is, you guys know, when you start link building, if you start building too many inbound links too quickly, you can catch a velocity penalty, which means like too many links being built too quickly. As far as from my experience, Google stacks don’t apply, because again, it’s a Google property. Now, what Marco said is true. I haven’t tested like on a mass level what I think Doss is explaining here, so there may be some velocity issues that can occur. I just haven’t seen it on the level that I’ve done it.
Now again, if you’re going to be pointing different stacks at different subdomains, those are each considered a separate web entity, so to speak. It might be part of an overall brand, but each one of those are separate assets, so to speak. They’re like sub-entities, so to speak. Anyways, my point is, I wouldn’t really worry about it. If you’re going to be building stacks to subdomains, just build away.
Marco: I mean, I saw someone build a stack for each city in a state, and then point each one of those folders to a page for that specific city, in that state. I saw everything ranking either in the map pack, or in the ranking. It just ranked all over the place. Again, power trumps anything and everything that you know about SEO.
Have You Done Any SEO Testing With Javascript Blog Commenting Systems Like FB Comments Or Disqus?
Shane, okay it’s my understanding with Disqus, because I’ve done some of that in the past. Disqus is a powerful property, but if I remember correctly, you have a, in your profile that you set up in Disqus, you can add a link to whatever website, it’s one link, and so typically you’re going to select your money site. Then any comments that you post out on the web through the Disqus app, which a lot of sites use that, it’s going to funnel juice back from that page to your profile in Disqus, which is where your link back to your money site is.
If it’s a relevant comment, like if it’s a comment on relevant content sources, especially with high authority, good metrics, that kind of stuff, then yeah. What it does is it funnels back all those kind of like comments aggregate back to your profile page, where it has a link to your money site. I haven’t done a lot of that recently, but I know it was very effective two or three years ago, because that was something that I had a VA manually doing for me, was going out and scraping blogs that were related, that had the Disqus app, and then they would basically post through the persona profile that was set up for that particular project. It was very helpful.
As far as like Facebook comments and stuff, I don’t know. As far as like posting links in the comment, a lot of times those will get moderated out. That’s why I liked that Disqus method, because you never had to post a link in the actual comment, and you would still benefit from it because it would funnel back to the profile page, which would have a link to your target URL. Does that make sense? Marco, do you have any comment on that?
Marco: Yes. JavaScript links rock. They don’t get counted against your link profile, so if you can get them, if you can do a nice post that’s related to whatever it is that you’re talking about, and it doesn’t get moderated out, that JavaScript link will be treated as a do follow link, but it won’t count against your link profile. That’s perfect.
How Do You Keep Your Affiliate Links From Being Hijacked?
Bradley: Yup. Paul, “How do you keep your affiliate links from being hijacked?” To be honest, I don’t know. Jason Quinlan would be the guy to talk to about that, who’s in all of our groups. Just reach out to him in whatever group you’re in, Paul. I’m sure he’d be happy, because he’s dealt with a lot of that shit. Jason Quinlan would be somebody really good to talk to about that.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any suggestion for you, other than using a bulk phone verified account provider, like Bulk PVA, for example. We’ve got another provider too. There’s two providers now that I’ll recommend. I’ve got another one. I don’t have time to grab the link right now, Jeff, but if you want to tag me in Syndication Academy group on that thread, and remind, I’ll come back and I’ll find the link and I’ll post it in there for you.
Fresh Weekly Content For Local SEO
Anthony says, “Is fresh weekly content the number one ranking factor to you for local SEO? I know some SEO’s believe that it is, but it’s just not true. Anyways, what do you say?” Well no, it’s not the number one ranking factor, but it is a ranking factor. We know that because over the last several years I’ve been able to rank dozens of sites by just using the Syndication Academy strategy. What I’m saying is, like with the testing that I’ve been doing now for what, three or four months now, with lead gen sites that I don’t even have syndication networks attached to most of them. I’ve just been doing press releases, which is not content marketing, not from the brand. It’s external content marketing, it’s inbound content marketing instead of outbound, like we do with syndication networks and stuff.
My point is, content marketing is important. It is freshness of content and frequency of publishing, whether it’s inbound or outbound, either way, is a ranking factor, there’s no doubt. We’ve proven over the years that … Hey look, Bulk PVA just reached out to me on Skype. I wonder, he might be on the webinar, that’s why. That’s awesome. Anyways, it is definitely a ranking factor, but we have proven time and time again that content marketing from the blog out, so outbound content marketing instead of inbound content marketing, works really, really well for ranking. In some cases, for lower competition stuff, that’s all we needed, was a syndication network and a few blog posts to rank. I wouldn’t say it’s the number one ranking factor, but it is definitely a ranking factor.
Marco: I would go as far as to say that it’s entity, and how much validity, trust, authority, and again I keep going back to power, how much power your entity is producing. Your relationships between keywords, between your location as far as your location. All you have to do is be in the state and you can actually rank for anything in that state, we’ve done it. I think that it is, because we blog and we can get things ranked, through time, by triggering that freshness algorithm. Eventually Google takes notice and they start ranking. Beyond that, for local, it’s the entity. It’s being transparent with Google. It’s being on file with them, and it’s being verified and validated, as far as I’m concerned.
Bradley: All right. I’ve got to cut you off dude, we’re already a minute late.
Marco: Yeah. We’re late. Sorry.
Bradley: All right guys. Thanks for being here. Syndication Academy webinar starts in about 30 seconds, we’ll see you over there. If not, by the way, mastermind webinar tomorrow. If we don’t see you guys in either one of those, we’ll see you all next week in Portland, at the Live Hump Day Hangout. It’ll be awesome. Thanks guys.
