In episode 158 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked if there are any issues with not doing anything on a newly built syndication network for a few weeks?
The exact question was:
Bradley, you say to season syndication networks with content as soon as they are finished being built. Are there any issues with getting the network built and not doing anything with them for a few weeks?
For example, what if we get everything setup and ready and for industry licensing reasons the client has to put all marketing on pause for a couple months?
This week we’re talking about how to utilize Facebook, and other platforms, to harness the power of groups and online communities. There are some amazing opportunities to provide real value while finding out more about your market and customers – are you taking full advantage?
When it comes to direct traffic in Analytics, there are two deeply entrenched misconceptions.
The first is that it’s caused almost exclusively by users typing an address into their browser (or clicking on a bookmark). The second is that it’s a Bad Thing, not because it has any overt negative impact on your site’s performance, but rather because it’s somehow immune to further analysis. The prevailing attitude amongst digital marketers is that direct traffic is an unavoidable inconvenience; as a result, discussion of direct is typically limited to ways of attributing it to other channels, or side-stepping the issues associated with it.
In this article, we’ll be taking a fresh look at direct traffic in modern Google Analytics. As well as exploring the myriad ways in which referrer data can be lost, we’ll look at some tools and tactics you can start using immediately to reduce levels of direct traffic in your reports. Finally, we’ll discover how advanced analysis and segmentation can unlock the mysteries of direct traffic and shed light on what might actually be your most valuable users.
What is direct traffic?
In short, Google Analytics will report a traffic source of "direct" when it has no data on how the session arrived at your website, or when the referring source has been configured to be ignored. You can think of direct as GA’s fall-back option for when its processing logic has failed to attribute a session to a particular source.
To properly understand the causes and fixes for direct traffic, it’s important to understand exactly how GA processes traffic sources. The following flow-chart illustrates how sessions are bucketed — note that direct sits right at the end as a final "catch-all" group.
Broadly speaking, and disregarding user-configured overrides, GA’s processing follows this sequence of checks:
AdWords parameters > Campaign overrides > UTM campaign parameters > Referred by a search engine > Referred by another website > Previous campaign within timeout period > Direct
Note the penultimate processing step (previous campaign within timeout), which has a significant impact on the direct channel. Consider a user who discovers your site via organic search, then returns via direct a week later. Both sessions would be attributed to organic search. In fact, campaign data persists for up to six months by default. The key point here is that Google Analytics is already trying to minimize the impact of direct traffic for you.
What causes direct traffic?
Contrary to popular belief, there are actually many reasons why a session might be missing campaign and traffic source data. Here we will run through some of the most common.
1. Manual address entry and bookmarks
The classic direct-traffic scenario, this one is largely unavoidable. If a user types a URL into their browser’s address bar or clicks on a browser bookmark, that session will appear as direct traffic.
Simple as that.
2. HTTPS > HTTP
When a user follows a link on a secure (HTTPS) page to a non-secure (HTTP) page, no referrer data is passed, meaning the session appears as direct traffic instead of as a referral. Note that this is intended behavior. It’s part of how the secure protocol was designed, and it does not affect other scenarios: HTTP to HTTP, HTTPS to HTTPS, and even HTTP to HTTPS all pass referrer data.
So, if your referral traffic has tanked but direct has spiked, it could be that one of your major referrers has migrated to HTTPS. The inverse is also true: If you’ve migrated to HTTPS and are linking to HTTP websites, the traffic you’re driving to them will appear in their Analytics as direct.
If your referrers have moved to HTTPS and you’re stuck on HTTP, you really ought to consider migrating to HTTPS. Doing so (and updating your backlinks to point to HTTPS URLs) will bring back any referrer data which is being stripped from cross-protocol traffic. SSL certificates can now be obtained for free thanks to automated authorities like LetsEncrypt, but that’s not to say you should neglect to explore the potentially-significant SEO implications of site migrations. Remember, HTTPS and HTTP/2 are the future of the web.
If, on the other hand, you’ve already migrated to HTTPS and are concerned about your users appearing to partner websites as direct traffic, you can implement the meta referrer tag. Cyrus Shepard has written about this on Moz before, so I won’t delve into it now. Suffice to say, it’s a way of telling browsers to pass some referrer data to non-secure sites, and can be implemented as a <meta> element or HTTP header.
3. Missing or broken tracking code
Let’s say you’ve launched a new landing page template and forgotten to include the GA tracking code. Or, to use a scenario I’m encountering more and more frequently, imagine your GTM container is a horrible mess of poorly configured triggers, and your tracking code is simply failing to fire.
Users land on this page without tracking code. They click on a link to a deeper page which does have tracking code. From GA’s perspective, the first hit of the session is the second page visited, meaning that the referrer appears as your own website (i.e. a self-referral). If your domain is on the referral exclusion list (as per default configuration), the session is bucketed as direct. This will happen even if the first URL is tagged with UTM campaign parameters.
As a short-term fix, you can try to repair the damage by simply adding the missing tracking code. To prevent it happening again, carry out a thorough Analytics audit, move to a GTM-based tracking implementation, and promote a culture of data-driven marketing.
4. Improper redirection
This is an easy one. Don’t use meta refreshes or JavaScript-based redirects — these can wipe or replace referrer data, leading to direct traffic in Analytics. You should also be meticulous with your server-side redirects, and — as is often recommended by SEOs — audit your redirect file frequently. Complex chains are more likely to result in a loss of referrer data, and you run the risk of UTM parameters getting stripped out.
Once again, control what you can: use carefully mapped (i.e. non-chained) code 301 server-side redirects to preserve referrer data wherever possible.
5. Non-web documents
Links in Microsoft Word documents, slide decks, or PDFs do not pass referrer information. By default, users who click these links will appear in your reports as direct traffic. Clicks from native mobile apps (particularly those with embedded "in-app" browsers) are similarly prone to stripping out referrer data.
To a degree, this is unavoidable. Much like so-called “dark social” visits (discussed in detail below), non-web links will inevitably result in some quantity of direct traffic. However, you also have an opportunity here to control the controllables.
If you publish whitepapers or offer downloadable PDF guides, for example, you should be tagging the embedded hyperlinks with UTM campaign parameters. You’d never even contemplate launching an email marketing campaign without campaign tracking (I hope), so why would you distribute any other kind of freebie without similarly tracking its success? In some ways this is even more important, since these kinds of downloadables often have a longevity not seen in a single email campaign. Here’s an example of a properly tagged URL which we would embed as a link:
The same goes for URLs in your offline marketing materials. For major campaigns it’s common practice to select a short, memorable URL (e.g. moz.com/tv/) and design an entirely new landing page. It’s possible to bypass page creation altogether: simply redirect the vanity URL to an existing page URL which is properly tagged with UTM parameters.
So, whether you tag your URLs directly, use redirected vanity URLs, or — if you think UTM parameters are ugly — opt for some crazy-ass hash-fragment solution with GTM (read more here), the takeaway is the same: use campaign parameters wherever it’s appropriate to do so.
6. “Dark social”
This is a big one, and probably the least well understood by marketers.
The term “dark social” was first coined back in 2012 by Alexis Madrigal in an article for The Atlantic. Essentially it refers to methods of social sharing which cannot easily be attributed to a particular source, like email, instant messaging, Skype, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.
Recent studies have found that upwards of 80% of consumers’ outbound sharing from publishers’ and marketers’ websites now occurs via these private channels. In terms of numbers of active users, messaging apps are outpacing social networking apps. All the activity driven by these thriving platforms is typically bucketed as direct traffic by web analytics software.
People who use the ambiguous phrase “social media marketing” are typically referring to advertising: you broadcast your message and hope people will listen. Even if you overcome consumer indifference with a well-targeted campaign, any subsequent interactions are affected by their very public nature. The privacy of dark social, by contrast, represents a potential goldmine of intimate, targeted, and relevant interactions with high conversion potential. Nebulous and difficult-to-track though it may be, dark social has the potential to let marketers tap into elusive power of word of mouth.
So, how can we minimize the amount of dark social traffic which is bucketed under direct? The unfortunate truth is that there is no magic bullet: proper attribution of dark social requires rigorous campaign tracking. The optimal approach will vary greatly based on your industry, audience, proposition, and so on. For many websites, however, a good first step is to provide convenient and properly configured sharing buttons for private platforms like email, WhatsApp, and Slack, thereby ensuring that users share URLs appended with UTM parameters (or vanity/shortened URLs which redirect to the same). This will go some way towards shining a light on part of your dark social traffic.
Checklist: Minimizing direct traffic
To summarize what we’ve already discussed, here are the steps you can take to minimize the level of unnecessary direct traffic in your reports:
Migrate to HTTPS: Not only is the secure protocol your gateway to HTTP/2 and the future of the web, it will also have an enormously positive effect on your ability to track referral traffic.
Manage your use of redirects: Avoid chains and eliminate client-side redirection in favour of carefully-mapped, single-hop, server-side 301s. If you use vanity URLs to redirect to pages with UTM parameters, be meticulous.
Get really good at campaign tagging: Even amongst data-driven marketers I encounter the belief that UTM begins and ends with switching on automatic tagging in your email marketing software. Others go to the other extreme, doing silly things like tagging internal links. Control what you can, and your ability to carry out meaningful attribution will markedly improve.
Conduct an Analytics audit: Data integrity is vital, so consider this essential when assessing the success of your marketing. It’s not simply a case of checking for missing track code: good audits involve a review of your measurement plan and rigorous testing at page and property-level.
Adhere to these principles, and it’s often possible to achieve a dramatic reduction in the level of direct traffic reported in Analytics. The following example involved an HTTPS migration, GTM migration (as part of an Analytics review), and an overhaul of internal campaign tracking processes over the course of about 6 months:
But the saga of direct traffic doesn’t end there! Once this channel is “clean” — that is, once you’ve minimized the number of avoidable pollutants — what remains might actually be one of your most valuable traffic segments.
Analyze! Or: why direct traffic can actually be pretty cool
For reasons we’ve already discussed, traffic from bookmarks and dark social is an enormously valuable segment to analyze. These are likely to be some of your most loyal and engaged users, and it’s not uncommon to see a notably higher conversion rate for a clean direct channel compared to the site average. You should make the effort to get to know them.
The number of potential avenues to explore is infinite, but here are some good starting points:
Build meaningful custom segments, defining a subset of your direct traffic based on their landing page, location, device, repeat visit or purchase behavior, or even enhanced e-commerce interactions.
Track meaningful engagement metrics using modern GTM triggers such as element visibility and native scroll tracking. Measure how your direct users are using and viewing your content.
Watch for correlations with your other marketing activities, and use it as an opportunity to refine your tagging practices and segment definitions. Create a custom alert which watches for spikes in direct traffic.
Familiarize yourself with flow reports to get an understanding of how your direct traffic is converting. By using Goal Flow and Behavior Flow reports with segmentation, it’s often possible to glean actionable insights which can be applied to the site as a whole.
Ask your users for help! If you’ve isolated a valuable segment of traffic which eludes deeper analysis, add a button to the page offering visitors a free downloadable ebook if they tell you how they discovered your page.
Start thinking about lifetime value, if you haven’t already — overhauling your attribution model or implementing User ID are good steps towards overcoming the indifference or frustration felt by marketers towards direct traffic.
I hope this guide has been useful. With any luck, you arrived looking for ways to reduce the level of direct traffic in your reports, and left with some new ideas for how to better analyze this valuable segment of users.
Thanks for reading!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
In episode 157 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked whether one should add more RYS stacks or MyMaps to rank a verified Google My Business page to other cities.
The exact question was:
Last week you didn’t get to my comment or question answered so I thought I would repost it again and say a little bit more.
I have been with you guys since episode 25. I want to thank all of you at Semantic Mastery for your work, perseverance, and most of all the shit you guys teach that WORKS. No other group that I am aware of has as much success as you guys.
I want to thank Marco for not giving into temptation when you were offered a large sum of money to Not go public with RYS.
Although I have to admit, I’m glad people think its to much work and don’t want to take the time to learn it. Less idiots out there screwing it up for those that need the service. (like me)
I have bought a lot of RYS stacks, and I see the same questions come about that I had the first time I bought the service. The main question I see the most is “”How long does it take””. Bradley and Marco’s answer is always the same, “”It depends on the Niech””.
But trust me everyone, RYS works and it takes as long as it takes. Sometimes 24 hrs, sometimes 3 weeks but it always works.
My question is;
If I have a business I ranked in the map pack for the city it is verified in (GBM), to rank in the other cities, do I have to do more RYS stacks for each city? Or can I just add more My Maps for the other cities inside the same stack?
Keep up the good work, and next year do a 2 hr HO.
In my last post, I discussed why your top funnel content shouldn’t be all about your brand. Today I’m making a 180-degree turn and covering the value of content at the opposite end of the spectrum: content that’s directly about your business and offers proof of your effectiveness.
Specifically, I’m talking about case studies.
I’m a big believer in investing in case studies because I’ve seen firsthand what happened once we started doing so at Fractl. Case studies were a huge game changer for our B2B marketing efforts. For one, our case studies portfolio page brings in a lot of traffic – it’s the second most-visited page on our site, aside from our home page. It also brings in a significant volume of organic traffic, being our fourth most-visited page from organic searches. Most importantly, our case studies are highly effective at converting visitors to leads – about half of our leads view at least one of our case studies before contacting us.
Assuming anyone who reads the Moz Blog is performing some type of marketing function, I’m zeroing in on how to write a compelling marketing case study that differentiates your service offering and pulls prospects down the sales funnel. However, what I’m sharing can be used as a framework for creating case studies in any industry.
Get your client on board with a case study
Marketers shy away from creating case studies for a few reasons:
They’re too busy “in the weeds” with deliverables.
They don’t think their results are impressive enough.
They don’t have clients’ permission to create case studies.
While I can’t help you with #1 and #2 (it’s up to you to make the time and to get the results deserving of a case study!), I do have some advice on #3.
In a perfect world, clients would encourage you to share every little detail of your time working together. In reality, most clients expect you to remain tight-lipped about the work you’ve done for them.
Understandably, this might discourage you from creating any case studies. But it shouldn’t.
With some compromising, chances are your client will be game for a case study. We’ve noticed the following two objections are common regarding case studies.
Client objection 1: “We don’t want to share specific numbers.”
At first it you may think, “Why bother?” if a client tells you this, but don’t let it hold you back. (Truth is, the majority of your clients will probably feel this way).
In this instance, you’ll want your case study to focus on highlighting the strategy and describing projects, while steering away from showing specific numbers regarding short and long-term results. Believe it or not, the solution part of the case study can be just as, or more, compelling than the results. (I’ll get to that shortly.)
And don’t worry, you don’t have to completely leave out the results. One way to get around not sharing actual numbers but still showing results is to use growth percentages.
Specific numbers: “Grew organic traffic from 5,000 to 7,500 visitors per month”
Growth percentage: “Increased organic traffic by 150%”
We do this for most of our case studies at Fractl, and our clients are totally fine with it.
Client objection 2: “We don’t want to reveal our marketing strategy to competitors.”
A fear of giving away too much intel to competitors is especially common in highly competitive niches.
So how do you get around this?
Keep it anonymous. Don’t reveal who the client is and keep it vague about what niche they’re in. This can be as ambiguous as referring to the client as “Client A” or slightly more specific (“our client in the auto industry”). Instead, the case study will focus on the process and results – this is what your prospects care about, anyway.
Gather different perspectives
Unless you were directly working with the client who you are writing the case study about, you will need to conduct a few interviews to get a full picture of the who, what, how, and why of the engagement. At Fractl, our marketing team puts together case studies based on interviews with clients and the internal team who worked on the client’s account.
The client
Arrange an interview with the client, either on a call or via email. If you have multiple contacts within the client’s team, interview the main point of contact who has been the most involved in the engagement.
What to ask:
What challenge were you facing that you hired us to help with?
Had you previously tried to solve this challenge (working with another vendor, using internal resources, etc.)?
What were your goals for the engagement?
How did you benefit from the engagement (short-term and long-term results, unexpected wins, etc.)?
You’ll also want to run the case study draft by the client before publishing it, which offers another chance for their feedback.
The project team
Who was responsible for this client’s account? Speak with the team behind the strategy and execution.
What to ask:
How was the strategy formed? Were strategic decisions made based on your experience and expertise, competitive research, etc.?
What project(s) were launched as part of the strategy? What was the most successful project?
Were there any unexpected issues that you overcame?
Did you refine the strategy to improve results?
How did you and the client work together? Was there a lot of collaboration or was the client more hands-off? (Many prospective clients are curious about what their level of involvement in your process would look like.)
What did you learn during the engagement? Any takeaways?
Include the three crucial elements of a case study
There’s more than one way to package case studies, but the most convincing ones all have something in common: great storytelling. To ensure you’re telling a proper narrative, your case study should include the conflict, the resolution, and the happy ending (but not necessarily in this order).
We find a case study is most compelling when you get straight to the point, rather than making someone read the entire case study before seeing the results. To grab readers’ attention, we begin with a quick overview of conflict-resolution-happy ending right in the introduction.
For example, in our Fanatics case study, we summarized the most pertinent details in the first three paragraphs. The rest of the case study focused on the resolution and examples of specific projects.
Let’s take a look at what the conflict, resolution, and happy ending of your case study should include.
The Conflict: What goal did the client want to accomplish?
Typically serving as the introduction of the case study, “the conflict” should briefly describe the client’s business, the problem they hired you to work on, and what was keeping them from fixing this problem (ex. lack of internal resources or internal expertise). This helps readers identify with the problem the client faced and empathize with them – which can help them envision coming to you for help with this problem, too.
Here are a few examples of “conflicts” from our case studies:
“Movoto engaged Fractl to showcase its authority on local markets by increasing brand recognition, driving traffic to its website, and earning links back to on-site content.”
“Alexa came to us looking to increase awareness – not just around the Alexa name but also its resources. Many people had known Alexa as the site-ranking destination; however, Alexa also provides SEO tools that are invaluable to marketers.”
“While they already had strong brand recognition within the link building and SEO communities, Buzzstream came to Fractl for help with launching large-scale campaigns that would position them as thought leaders and provide long-term value for their brand.”
The Resolution: How did you solve the conflict?
Case studies are obviously great for showing proof of results you’ve achieved for clients. But perhaps more importantly, case studies give prospective clients a glimpse into your processes and how you approach problems. A great case study paints a picture of what it’s like to work with you.
For this reason, the bulk of your case study should detail the resolution, sharing as much specific information as you and your client are comfortable with; the more you’re able to share, the more you can highlight your strategic thinking and problem solving abilities.
The following snippets from our case studies are examples of details you may want to include as part of your solution section:
What our strategy encompassed:
“Mixing evergreen content and timely content helped usher new and existing audience members to the We Are Fanatics blog in record numbers. We focused on presenting interesting data through evergreen content that appealed to a variety of sports fans as well as content that capitalized on current interest around major sporting events.” - from Fanatics case study
How strategy was decided:
“We began by forming our ideation process around Movoto’s key real estate themes. Buying, selling, or renting a home is an inherently emotional experience, so we turned to our research on viral emotions to figure out how to identify with and engage the audience and Movoto’s prospective clients. Based on this, we decided to build on the high-arousal feelings of curiosity, interest, and trust that would be part of the experience of moving.
We tapped into familiar cultural references and topics that would pique interest in the regions consumers were considering. Comic book characters served us well in this regard, as did combining publicly available data (such as high school graduation rates or IQ averages) with our own original research.” - from Movoto case study
Why strategy was changed based on initial results:
“After analyzing the initial campaigns, we determined the most effective strategy included a combination of the following content types designed to achieve different goals [case study then lists the three types of content and goals]...
This strategy yielded even better results, with some campaigns achieving up to 4 times the amount of featured stories and social engagement that we achieved in earlier campaigns.” - from BuzzStream case study
How our approach was tailored to the client’s niche:
“In general, when our promotions team starts its outreach, they’ll email writers and editors who they think would be a good fit for the content. If the writer or editor responds, they often ask for more information or say they’re going to do a write-up that incorporates our project. From there, the story is up to publishers – they pick and choose which visual assets they want to incorporate in their post, and they shape the narrative.
What we discovered was that, in the marketing niche, publishers preferred to feature other experts’ opinions in the form of guest posts rather than using our assets in a piece they were already working on. We had suspected this (as our Fractl marketing team often contributes guest columns to marketing publications), but we confirmed that guest posts were going to make up the majority of our outreach efforts after performing outreach for Alexa’s campaigns.” - from Alexa case study
Who worked on the project:
Since the interviews you conduct with your internal team will inform the solution section of the case study, you may want to give individuals credit via quotes or anecdotes as a means to humanize the people behind the work. In the example below, one of our case studies featured a Q&A section with one of the project leads.
The Happy Ending: What did your resolution achieve?
Obviously, this is the part where you share your results. As I mentioned previously, we like to feature the results at the beginning of the case study, rather than buried at the end.
A lot of case studies fail to answer an important question: What impact did the results have on the client’s business? Be sure to tie in how the results you achieved had a bottom-line impact.
In the case of Superdrug Online Doctor, the results from our campaigns lead to a 238% increase in organic traffic. This type of outcome has tangible value for the client.
You can also share secondary benefits in addition to the primary goals the client hired you for.
Busbud saw positive impacts beyond SEO, though, including the following:
Increased blog traffic
New partnerships as a result of more brands reaching out to work with the site
Brand recognition at large industry events
An uptick in hiring
Featured as a “best practice” case study at an SEO conference
Similarly, in our Fractl brand marketing case study, which focused on lead generation, we listed all of the additional benefits resulting from our strategy.
How to get the most out of your case studies
You’ve published your case study, now what should you do with it?
Build a case study page on your site
Once you've created several case studies, I recommend housing them all on the same page. This makes it easy to show off your results in a single snapshot and saves visitors from searching through your blog or clicking on a category tag to find all of your case studies in one place. Make this page easy to find through your site navigation and internal links.
While it probably goes without saying, make sure to optimize this page for search. When we initially created our case study portfolio page, we underestimated its potential to bring in search traffic and assumed it would mostly be accessed from our site navigation. Because of this, we were previously using a generic URL to house our case study portfolio. Since updating the URL from “frac.tl/our-work” to “http://ift.tt/2AgWZDi,” we’ve jumped from page 2 to the top #1–3 positions for a specific phrase we wanted to rank for (“content marketing case studies”), which attracts highly relevant search traffic.
Use case studies as concrete proof in blog posts and off-site content
Case studies can serve as tangible examples that back up your claims. Did you state that creating original content for six months can double your organic traffic? On its own, this assertion may not be believable to some, but a case study showing these results will make your claim credible.
In a post on the Curata blog, my colleague Andrea Lehr used our BuzzStream case study to back up her assertion that in order to attract links, social shares, and traffic, your off-site content should appeal to an audience beyond your target customer. Showing the results this strategy earned for a client gives a lot more weight to her advice.
On the same note, case studies have high linking potential. Not only do they make a credible citation for your own off-site content, they can also be cited by others writing about your service/product vertical. Making industry publishers aware that you publish case studies by reaching out when you’ve released a new case study can lead to links down the road.
Repurpose your case studies into multiple content formats
Creating a case study takes a lot of time, but fortunately it can be reused again and again in various applications.
Long-form case studies
While a case study featured on your site may only be a few hundred words, creating a more in-depth version is a chance to reveal more details. If you want to get your case study featured on other sites, consider writing a long-form version as a guest post.
Most of the case studies you’ll find on the Moz Blog are extremely detailed:
HubSpot has hundreds of case studieson its site, dozens of which also feature supplemental video case studies, such as the one below for Eyeota.
Don’t feel like you have to create flashy videos with impressive production value, even no-frills videos can work. Within its short case study summaries, PR That Converts embeds videos of clients talking about its service. These videos are simple and short, featuring the client speaking to their webcam for a few minutes.
Speaking engagements
Marketing conferences love case studies. Look on any conference agenda, and you’re sure to notice at least a handful of speaker presentations focused on case studies. If you’re looking to secure more speaking gigs, including case studies in your speaking pitch can give you a leg up over other submissions – after all, your case studies are original data no one else can offer.
My colleague Kelsey Libert centered her MozCon presentation a few years ago around some of our viral campaign case studies.
Sales collateral
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, many of our leads view the case studies on our site right before contacting us about working together. Once that initial contact is made, we don’t stop showing off our case studies.
We keep a running “best of” list of stats from our case studies, which allows us to quickly pull compelling stats to share in written and verbal conversations. Our pitch and proposal decks feature bite-sized versions of our case studies.
Consider how you can incorporate case studies into various touch points throughout your sales process and make sure the case studies you share align with the industry and goals of whoever you're speaking with.
I’ve shared a few of my favorite ways to repurpose case studies here but there are at least a dozen other applications, from email marketing to webinars to gated content to printed marketing materials. I even link to our case studies page in my email signature.
My last bit of advice: Don’t expect immediate results. Case studies typically pay off over time. The good news is it’s worth the wait, because case studies retain their value – we’re still seeing leads come in and getting links to case studies we created three or more years ago. By extending their lifespan through repurposing, the case studies you create today can remain an essential part of your marketing strategy for years to come.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
In episode 157 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked how one could apply Semantic Mastery courses and strategies to an Amazon niche website.
The exact question was:
I have an Amazon niche website and here is the current website status:
1) With the current money site status, is this money site considered SEO optimised and ready to start building more links to it?
2) Referring to the BattlePlan, there is build link plan for “”New Site’ and ‘Aged Site’. For my case, which one should I be following?
3) What else can I do to drive more organic traffic to the money site beside engaging link services from SM?
Hope I have given enough information for you to evaluate my situation. Your insight and opinion are highly appreciated. Sorry for the long post, though.
Over the past two years, we've seen a steady and substantial increase in Featured Snippets on Google SERPs. In our 10,000-keyword daily tracking set, Featured Snippets have gone from about 5.5% of queries in November 2015 to a recent high of just over 16% (roughly tripling). Other data sets, with longer tail searches, have shown even higher prevalence.
Near the end of October (far-right of the graph), we saw our first significant dip (spotted by Brian Patterson on SEL). This dip occurred over about a 4-day period, and represents roughly a 10% drop in searches with Featured Snippets. Here's an enhanced, 2-week view (note: Y-axis is expanded to show the day-over-day changes more clearly):
Given the up-and-to-the-right history of Featured Snippets and the investments people have been making optimizing for these results, a 10% drop is worthy of our attention.
What happened, exactly?
To be honest, when we investigate changes like this, the best we can usually do is produce a list of keywords that lost Featured Snippets. Usually, we focus on high-volume keywords, which tend to be more interesting. Here's a list of keywords that lost Featured Snippets during that time period:
CRM
ERP
MBA
buddhism
web design
anger management
hosting
DSL
ActiveX
ovulation
From an explanatory standpoint, this list isn't usually very helpful – what exactly do "web design", "buddhism", and "ovulation" have in common (please, don't answer that)? In this case, though, there was a clear and interesting pattern. Almost all of the queries that lost Featured Snippets gained Knowledge Panels that look something like this one:
These new panels account for the vast majority of the lost Featured Snippets I've spot-checked, and all of them are general Knowledge Panels coming directly from Wikipedia. In some cases, Google is using a more generic Knowledge Graph entry. For example, "HDMI cables", which used to show a Featured Snippet (dominated by Amazon, last I checked), now shows no snippet and a generic panel for "HDMI":
In very rare cases, a SERP added the new Knowledge Panel but retained the Featured Snippet, such as the top of this search for "credit score":
These situations seemed to be the exceptions to the rule.
What about other SERPs?
The SERPs that lost Featured Snippets were only one part of this story. Over the same time period, we saw an explosion (about +30%) in Knowledge Panels:
This Y-axis has not been magnified – the jump in Knowledge Panels is clearly visible even at normal scale. Other tracking sites saw similar, dramatic increases, including this data from RankRanger. This jump appears to be a similar type of descriptive panel, ranging from commercial keywords, like "wedding dresses" and "Halloween costumes"...
...to brand keywords, like "Ray-Ban"...
Unlike definition boxes, many of these new panels appear on words and phrases that appear to be common knowledge and add little value. Here's a panel on "job search"...
I suspect that most people searching for "job search" or "job hunting" don't need it defined. Likewise, people searching for "travel" probably weren't confused about what travel actually is...
Thanks for clearing that up, Google. I've decided to spare you all and leave out a screenshot for "toilet" (go ahead and Google it). Almost all of these new panels appear to be driven by Wikipedia (or Wikidata), and most of them are single-paragraph definitions of terms.
Were there other changes?
During the exact same period, we also noticed a drop in SERPs with inline image results. Here's a graph of the same 2-week period reported for the other features:
This drop almost exactly mirrors the increase in Knowledge Panels. In cases where the new panels were added, those panels almost always contain a block of images at the top. This block seems to have replaced inline image results. It's interesting to note that, because image blocks in the left-hand column consume an organic position, this change freed up an organic spot on the first page of results for those terms.
Why did Google do this?
It's likely that Google is trying to standardize answers for common terms, and perhaps they were seeing quality or consistency issues in Featured Snippets. In some cases, like "HDMI cables", Featured Snippets were often coming from top e-commerce sites, which are trying to sell products. These aren't always a good fit for unbiased definitions. Its also likely that Google would like to beef up the Knowledge Graph and rely less, where possible, on outside sites for answers.
Unfortunately, this also means that the answers are coming from a much less diverse pool (and, from what we've seen, almost entirely from Wikipedia), and it reduces the organic opportunity for sites that were previously ranking for or trying to compete for Featured Snippets. In many cases, these new panels also seem to add very little. Someone searching for "ERP" might be helped by a brief definition, but someone searching for "travel" is unlikely looking to have it explained to them.
As always, there's not much we can do but monitor the situation and adapt. Featured Snippets are still at historically high levels and represent a legitimate organic opportunity. There's also win-win, since efforts invested in winning Featured Snippets tend to improve organic ranking and, done right, can produce a better user experience for both search and website visitors.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
In episode 157 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked the team’s opinion on how SEO and UX compare from an SEO standpoint.
The exact question was:
I’m building silo/category pages for a new site – the main content being my latest/sticky posts listings (title+thumbnail+excerpt+masonry layout). I want to add some topically relevant article content (2-3k words+pics/video) to these silo pages, getting the best SEO value from the new content while not pushing my latest/sticky posts way way down the page where readers will miss them. SEO vs UX? So far I am considering the following – how would you compare them from an SEO standpoint?
Put article in an accordion at the top
Put article after latest/sticky posts section – maybe with teaser/jumplink at top
Put article on another page on my site and iframe it into top of silo page (w/ scrollbars)
Put article content in GDoc or GSite and iframe it into top of silo pa
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: All right. We’re live. Hey, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving Hump Day Hangouts. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery wearing my turkey hat for at least temporary for the beginning of this. I thought everybody would get a laugh out of this. It’s November 22nd, 2017. This is Hump Day Hangouts episode 159. Welcome, everybody. We’ve got everybody on with us today except for Adam. I think he’s traveling. I’m going to go right on down the line and introduce everybody as I see them. Chris, how are you?
Chris: Been good. Glad to be here. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Bradley: All right. Hernan, how are you?
Hernan: Hey, guys. Hey, everyone. It’s really good to be here. I see a lot of people chilling already for Thanksgiving. That’s good to see.
Bradley: I’m looking for the Hangout app that, like effects app, so that I could add turkeys to all of your heads as well. I think they did too. I just didn’t see it anyway. Last but not least, Marco, how are you?
Marco: I’m good, man.
Bradley: Good? You want to share with everybody why you’re do good?
Marco: Sure. Here you are. Can you see it?
Bradley: Scotch. Right?
Marco: No, it’s rum.
Bradley: Oh, it’s rum. Okay.
Marco: It’s a 15 year old rum.
Bradley: Right. This is going to be a party.
Marco: Happy Thanksgiving.
Chris: YOLO.
Bradley: All right. Hernan, what kind of announcements do we have?
Hernan: Good question, Bradley. Glad you asked. Well, we have a bunch of stuff going on for Black Friday. We’re not allowed, as per Adam’s instructions, we are not allowed to share the links with you guys just yet. You just need to be aware of that. We’re going to be sending some emails with good stuff tomorrow and Friday. The point here is that you can get a lot of stuff from Semantic Mastery and SerpSpace and Mastery PR for a big discount. What you need to ask yourself is with that money are you going to purchase a new TV or you’re actually going to invest in your business, right? That’s going to put you more money back in your pocket. One thing is going to take money out of your pocket. The other thing is going to put more money in your money.
I would suggest doing the latter, but that’s up to. Stay tuned because it’s going to be really good. We have some really stuff coming for the Semantic Mastermind MPR on SerpSpace.
Bradley: Very cool. Yeah, guys, I would recommend just waiting until Friday or tomorrow and we send out the emails, and you could check it out then. I did want to briefly talk about and then I’ll pull this hat off and we’ll get down to serious business. I did want to talk about briefly the, and I’ll grab the screen in a minute and we’ll talk about the image that I have added there, but I’m having some really amazing success right now with the prospecting funnel that I’ve been working on for a while. I’ve kind of worked on it for the last couple days or several days, excuse me, and really refined it. It’s working like crazy right now. That’s something we’re going to be revealing.
We’ve actually revealed it to the mastermind members already specifically how it’s set up and I’m going to be continuing to share that as I continue developing that out. The prospecting side is working great. Now I’ve got to refine the sales process and the onboarding and the client fulfillment. That’s what I’m working on now. I’m an open book when it comes to this stuff inside the mastermind guys. We’ve already had a lot of people interested in the Facebook post where I posted this image. I mean it really is it’s us bribing you to come join the mastermind. You want to learn how to set up a funnel like this for yourself and automate your prospecting? That’s fine. We’ll teach you, but you got to come to the mastermind to do it.
Just wanted to share that with you guys. I guess we don’t have any other announcements, Hernan. I’m going to go ahead and get right into questions.
Hernan: Yeah, let’s do it.
Marco: No. No. Hang on. I have to make an announcement because Rob has some personal issues that he needs to attend to. We have the holidays and he has some issues. I have my back issues that I have to tend to. There will be no Reloaded webinar this Monday. We’re going to push it to the following Monday or the Monday after that. If we skip, we’ll make it up to everyone. We usually come up with something up really nasty to share, so that they can go abuse the rankings. I just wanted to let everyone know. I’ll be posting in the Facebook group that there will be no webinar on Monday.
Bradley: Okay. Very good. All right. Anything else, guys?
Hernan: We’re good to go.
Marco: No, that’s it.
Bradley: All right. Cool. Yeah. Again guys, this is what I was talking about, this particular image here. This was just taken as a screenshot this morning from Pipedrive. After having this on hold for about four or five weeks, I turned this back on last Tuesday. This was this morning before businesses were opened, essentially before any emails went out today. I’ve been sending out only on weekdays, Monday through Friday, emails. We had Tuesday through Friday last week and in Monday of this week, well, Tuesday as well. A total of five business days. 25 emails per day. Total emails sent 125. We actually had 13 inbound leads, but one of them I deleted out because we actually called the guy and he was a real jerk.
We actually really had 13% or excuse me, 13 out of 125 emails. 13 inbound leads out of it, which is freaking crazy. It’s just working really, really well and that’s what I wanted to point out. It’s really cool setting up a … I’ve been working on it for weeks, but it works very, very well. There was some bugs in it that I covered in the last mastermind webinar last week that I have resolved those issues and it’s just working beautifully now. I’m really excited about it. I’m going to continue sharing that as I further develop the onboarding and fulfillment funnel as well. Andy T’s up first.
Did You Notice Any Issues When Syndicating Posts From Blog To Network Properties From Time To Time?
A lot of the times if it’s a specific web 2.0 that it didn’t post to, then most of the time it’s just you have to reconnect that service or that channel, so that web 2.0 property. You just got to go into IFTTT, go to services, go select that property and then hit reconnect and that’ll fix it. If like for example if you got 10 properties in your network and it syndicates to nine of them and it’s just this one that’s like intermittent or hit or miss, that kind of stuff, just reconnect the channel or the service and that should fix it. If it’s all of them, then it’s likely a trigger issue on the RSS feed side of things, which would lead me to believe sometimes there can be problems with your RSS feed from your WordPress blog.
I’m assuming you’re using WordPress or any sites for that matter that has an RSS feed. Sometimes there’s problems. Specifically with WordPress, you can sometimes have theme or other plugin compatibility issues that will actually affect the RSS feed. That’s a pain in the ass. You’ve got to isolate that through process of elimination or another quick fix, sometimes when there’s … I’ve run into this before where I’ve had issues with RSS feed not being picked up by IFTTT. The only way to fix it, I was never able … In some cases I’ve not been able to isolate the reason why and I’ve had to develop or find a workaround.
The workaround typically is to go burn a FeedBurner feed from the WordPress feed and then use the FeedBurner feed URL as your RSS URL for the trigger of the applets. That oftentimes will fix it. The only problem with that is some of the properties that we syndicate to when using the FeedBurner feed, it doesn’t pull in the correct feed title. There’ll kind of like be like a blank title or a generic title or it will say FeedBurner or something like that, but in my opinion it’s not that big of a deal. I use the FeedBurner trick as kind of like a last resort if I can’t isolate the original problem. You guys have any comments on that?
Chris: Yeah. Use a feed validation service. You for example have like [inaudible 00:08:52] that can post a link and a couple other ones as well, which I highly recommend, and use that as like very first indicator to see if the feed is valid and if there’s any errors on there.
Bradley: Okay. Thank you.
Marco: He also says that everything goes back to normal. To me, that’s not really problem. To me, that would just be focused more on are you getting results. If he checks and after a few weeks everything is normal or everything is the way it should be, what are the results of what he’s doing? Because maybe he’s just focusing on something that’s not really an issue. That would be only advice. What are the results? Are you getting more traffic? Are you getting more leads, sales? Whatever it is that your end result or your goal should be or is, what is it that you’re getting there? Because the only way that this is a problem is if you’re not getting the end result.
That’s when you start working your way back and seeing what it is that you need to fix. Right now I really don’t see that he needs to fix anything.
Bradley: Yeah. Andy, I recommend throughout the training as well and as often as I can really, don’t focus … Kind of what Marco said is focus on the bigger picture stuff. If it’s flat out just not syndicating to any of the properties, then yeah, go troubleshoot, go investigate. If it’s just intermittent, or it’s hit or miss with some of the properties, I recommend just skipping it because focus on bigger stuff instead of sweating the small stuff. I know because when I first started using or actually for quite some time after I started building and using syndication networks, I would spend sometimes hours trying to troubleshoot every single little issue to where I wanted every post to get syndicated to every property in the network 100% of the time.
I would burn up an enormous amount of time going through and troubleshooting stuff that I couldn’t repair anyways. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t anything that I could have done to fix it. It was an issue with one of the web 2.0 platforms or it was an issue with IFTTT or something and you end up spending hours of time working on something you’re not unable to repair anyways and it’s frustrating as hell. It’s just wasted time. It’s trying to be a perfectionist. Andy, I’m not saying you’re doing that. I’m just saying for the benefit for everybody, don’t sweat the small stuff. A lot of the times if you just leave it alone like what you mentioned in your comment and then come back to it, it will have repaired itself.
The couple of tips that I just gave you are some quick fixes that you can go on and test very quickly. Reconnect the channel is always the first thing that I recommend. Then if you’re still continuing to get repeated errors or non syndicated posts from your RSS feed, then go burn a FeedBurner feed and replace the feed URL as the trigger in the applets. That’s your quickest fixes.
How Do You Use Local Events And News To Establish Local Relevancy With Google?
We just turned that in yesterday really. I actually am covering part of that in that mastermind newsletter, but yes, you can embed like local calendar events. You can also use plugins and things like that that you can add feeds to, which are great to go find local blogs or local newspapers. Any kind of local publications that have feeds and import feeds direct so that you can basically post … Even if not post or snippets of posts, you can still get like headlines and embed like a widget onto a page or a post on your site or even multiple pages or posts. It doesn’t matter. The point is is that you can use these plugins and embedded calendar events and news sites and things like that to just inject … You can use Twitter too by the way.
You can use Twitter too to inject local relevancy into pages or posts. It’s not really a backlinking strategy. There are some things that you can do with that. I’ll talk about that in just a moment. It’s really about the on-page. It’s about adding local geographic relevant information to your site. Google starts to associate that, your keywords and your site, your brand with that local event. You got to try to be a little bit targeted with that.
Sometimes if you’re in a big metropolitan area, the events are just flat out overwhelming, so you’ve got to try to put a filter on it, throttle it down a bit, or you can use very specific keywords sometimes or hashtags if you’re using Twitter and things like to kind of narrow it down to where it’s not overwhelming the number of events that get posted. It’s really more about an on-page thing in that respect. However, I have tested and played with this a little bit and I’m doing a little bit of testing with it right now. We’ve got limited time for it, but creating mini sites that are local event type sites, specifically to use as like a PBN, but you don’t have to even create any content.
It’s auto generated content from other local events and news related sites. You’re just using it to basically create a curated site that just repost events and things. It’s just strictly for creating local relevancy and then you can use that to link over to your money pages. As far as like the linking strategy, that’s how I’m doing it. There might be some other ways that some others here can comment on, but that’s … Typically, I just use it for on-page relevancy. However, I have been testing recently with creating some mini sites that are hyper local focused and using that as just curated news and events calendar basically. You can use Facebook by the way, guys, Facebook Events.
You can do searches for Facebook and use those to add content and then actually linking from those like mini sites over to the money site. You guys got comments on that or any other strategies?
Hernan: No. I think you nailed it because I pretty much do the same that you said, Bradley.
How Much Power Would A Network Lose If You Don’t Include A Tumblr Account?
I remember specifically that we used to use the Outlook email a lot for … Like we would set up the Gmail as the main profile, right, but then we would always create a recovery email, which would either be Yahoo or Outlook. We typically would use Outlook or Hotmail or some Microsoft email because it was less of a pain in the ass to create an account than Yahoo. A lot of the times we would end up … The Tumblr account would end up getting suspended immediately. There was a time and it’s not so much anymore, but there was a time where Tumblr used to suspend accounts like at a drop of a hat. They may still do it. I’m not building them all the time anymore, so I don’t know. I know this is in the training.
We would just submit an email to support and say, “Why was my account suspended? There’s not even been any content posted or anything like that.” A lot of times they would reissue or reinstate the site, reactivate the site. If they didn’t, sometimes we’d get denied. We’d end up using just like the Outlook email. Another thing you can do, Sam, is use a webmail account if it’s connected to a brand domain, right? If it’s a branded network, then you can just create a webmail account and use that. Again it’s not the end of the world if you can’t use Tumblr or if you can’t get a Tumblr account set up, but chances are just try another email and you’ll probably get it.
How Many Rings Are Safe To Use In IFTTT Network For Money Site?
Raphael’s up. “Hi. How many rings is it safe to use in an IFTTT network for a money site?” Well, Raphael, it can be safe to use as many networks as you want, as long as you are setting them up the way that we recommend if you’re going to use two tiered or multi-tiered structures for money sites for blog syndication. I don’t recommend it. I recommend that unless you’re only managing like one site and then in that case, you have the bandwidth to be able to manage multiple layers or tiers of networks. It’s really super important that you are injecting additional relevant content into the persona based networks. You only want one branded network per money site. Period. That’s it. Right? That would be a network that is branded and themed for the brand, so it’s going to be consistent all the way across.
You only want one per money site. That’s why I usually recommend to just stick with a branded tier 1 ring for a blog syndication and that’s it. Multiple networks is doable. It can be safe. By the way, you can never eliminate your footprint, but you can minimize it by using the … Who keeps pinging me? Somebody keeps pinging. Anyways, you can minimize it by injecting related content feeds into the additional networks, the supporting networks. We cover all that stuff in the training. Any comments on that guys before I move on?
Hernan: Yeah. I mean we have always said the same, right? If you’re doing huge power sites, you can do multiple rings. For money blogs, usually you don’t need that many. I mean if you’re setting your on site SEO in the way that we explained for example on the Battle Plan, et cetera, et cetera, you don’t need a multiple tier network for a blog.
Bradley: Just so you guys know, with YouTube networks, you can stack as many networks as you want. There’s no footprint issues. As long as you’re using the applets the way that we’ve shared, then there’s no problem with it. At least not yet. There hasn’t been for years. I’ve been using this method since 2012 and I’ve never had any issues with YouTube with as many networks as you want. It’s never been a problem. I have had it caused problems with websites if I haven’t minimized my footprint or covered my tracks properly. That’s what the beautiful thing is about the branded networks, guys. You’re not covering your tracks. You’re literally staking your claim. You’re throwing a flag up in the air and saying, “Hey, this is us. This is my brand. This is us on all these other properties.”
That’s why we interlink them and all that other stuff because we are literally saying, “This is us. Come look at our footprint,” right? That’s what we’re doing. For all the other persona based networks, you don’t want to do that.
Can Review Schema Be Overused?
Muhammad’s up. What’s up, Muhammad? He says, “Hey, guys. Can review Schema be overused?” Yes, Muhammad. You can get a manual penalty in Search Console from Google for Schema spams, structured data spam. You absolutely can. I’ve gotten it, so I know. All right? “I have it on all my posts and the reviews are real, but I read there’s such a thing as Scheme abuse.” Yes, there is. If you have them in all your posts and they’re real … Okay.
The terms of service state that if an individual page, like a service page or a product page, has reviews for that product or service that’s highlighted on that page, then the review Schema should be marked up for those reviews specific to that product. Where it can cause problems is if you have like an aggregate review rating that you basically append or add to every page and/or post on the site to where it’s a site wide aggregate review rating for every page on the site, every page and/or post on the site. That can get you into trouble. That’s against terms of service.
If you have say six reviews for a service page and the reviews are specific about that service, then you can mark that page up for those six reviews and the home page of the website can have an aggregate rating, but it shouldn’t be site wide if that make sense. Any comments on that guys before I move on to the next part of it?
Hernan: Yeah. Just be careful. I mean some people will go ahead and for example do Schema and JSON-LD, and that’s duplicate. That’s actually overusing. Like rich snippets or structured data. You either do one or the other.
How Harmful Are Multiple H1 Tags On A Page?
Bradley: Right. Okay. Number two is how harmful are multiple H1 tags on a page? It depends on the page like a blog index page is going to typically have multiple H1 tags because the title of each post is usually … It’s going to be theme specific, but it’s pretty much industry standard, the index pages, whether they’re category index pages, blog index pages, tag index pages, anyone of those are going to have multiple H1 tags because every single post in that category with the blog page or the tag index or whatever are going to have … Each one of the blog or post titles are actually H1s. You’ll have multiple H1s in that case and that’s normal, right? For typical pages or posts, not index pages, then no, it’s not good.
You should only have one H1 tag. Okay? I would just, Muhammad, confirm if it’s an index page, don’t worry about it. It’s not an issue because that’s normal. If it’s like a standalone page or post, then yes, you only want one H1 tag. If you’ve got a long post, authority content post, 2,000 plus words, that type of stuff and you’ve got like multiple themes or concepts within that one article, then it make sense sometimes to have more than one H2 because maybe the concepts within the article are unique enough or different enough that like having another H2 would make sense as a way to like break it up to break up the concepts or ideas within that same article, but that’s rare that an article is that long that it would have such too broad concepts on it.
I recommend typically only having one H2 unless it falls under that criteria that I just mentioned, but you can have multiple H3s, multiple H4s, that kind of stuff. I would recommend only one H1 and H2. Use it only once on an article if it’s about a single topic, but if it’s about multiple topics like long form authority content, then sometimes it makes sense to have multiple H2s. Any feedback on that guys?
Hernan: Yeah. I’m just saying like that’s why you’re using H1, H2s, H3s. I think that there’s also like best practices. I don’t have enough data to confirm this, but the best practices say that high on the page that needs to be … You need to follow a hierarchy of title types, right? You’ve got an H1, you only have one, but then you have an H2 and then an H3 and then maybe another H2, et cetera, et cetera, right? You need to follow these order, but internally you can have as many as you want.
How Do You Improve The Rank Of Affiliate Blogs That Are Stuck At The Bottom Of Page 1?
Like go to microtaskworkers.com or microworkers.com I think it is or just search micro task workers in Google and go select one of them. Mechanical Turk’s another one, something like that. You can actually hire people to go search in Google and click on your link and that’s a real traffic signal. That absolutely will help. Obviously you could do a drive stack, an RYS drive stack. You could build more links to it. One of the other things, press releases are working really, really well right now. If you could figure out an angle to create a press release about that particular link, that page or post on your site, then that would also work. Something else you can do is add additional on-page content.
In other words, you can update that specific page with more content. Add like an updated paragraph or something else onto the page to just kind of add additional relevancy to the page. Something else that you can do on site, on the website itself is do additional … Like create that as a category. If it’s not already its own category, make that a category so that you can actually put like child posts underneath it as supporting articles, so that you essentially make that one post part of like the top of a silo or at least part of a silo that then you add additional supporting articles to that all interlink up to that one post. Right?
Especially if you’re syndicating with a network, right, a syndication network because each additional post that you publish to your blog that’s going to be interlinked up to that post that you’re trying to push will end up going out across your network. You get a bunch of internal links plus the external links from the branded network that are going to be pushing back to that one post. Those are just a couple big quick fixes. I know you guys have some other suggestions.
Hernan: Yeah. Well, at some point, Muhammad, you do need to wait because here’s the thing, because you do all these little tweaks, right? Sometimes what we do is we do a little tweak and then we have the exact opposite results that we would want, right? It plummets. The position goes down. That’s Google actually dangling the carrots saying, “Hey, are you doing this to manipulate whatever?” We usually rush through turning it back and whatever. I would do everything that Bradley suggested one thing at a time to see what has the most impact on your rankings and then wait for a little bit and then implement the next thing or what not. SEO is a long-term gig. You know what I’m saying?
If you change a million different things and then you go back and change it up, you don’t really know what’s going on. Sorry. You don’t really know what created the good effect so that you can do more of that. You know what I’m saying?
Is It Okay To Create A Local Lead Generation System With A Gsite With Blogger As A Trigger For The Syndication Network?
It’s I guess the random ranking factor of Google, but sometimes WordPress sites will rank for certain keywords way better than blogger sites and sometimes Tumblrs will rank better than the other two. Really sometimes you just have to test. That’s what I love about the syndication networks because if you syndicate a post from your money site to a network that’s going to have blog or Tumblr or WordPress and you go like boost those three posts on the web 2.0s, right, so you can go build links to those posts, one of them you’ll see where they start to rise in the search results and one of them will start to surface or bubble up to the top. Rank higher than the others.
Then that’s the one that you know is the stronger site for that particular search query or keyword theme, which is interesting. Again it varies. I don’t know why that is, but it just is. That’s why I would just say do a little bit of testing to determine what’s the best route or what’s the best property. If you don’t know, then just select one and run with it. If you have the ability to do some testing, test and figure it out. See which ones perform the best and then use that as your trigger if you want, as a web 2.0 trigger instead of a money site trigger. That’s absolutely fine.
Hernan: Yeah. That’s one of the reasons why we do syndication networks in the first place, right, because you don’t know what’s going to rank right off the bat. With that, under the logic you could have like it’s always better to have like, I don’t know, 5, 7 or 10 or 15 properties syndicated under your content. Some of them will not even rank ever. Some of them will actually pop on page one when people are searching for your stuff, right, or your brand or a long tail article that you have written, et cetera, et cetera. What I’m trying to say is that you want to have as many opportunities to rank as possible, right?
That’s why we’re doing syndication networks and that’s why I would say if you have the chance to test with branding properties using some sort of syndication, that will be even better because that will multiply your chances of actually ranking because as Bradley suggests, there’s this random ranking factor that on some cases some websites will do better than others, but you don’t need to choose. That’s the good news.
Should You Use RVR-Pro On The Branded YouTube Channel Or To A Separate Channel?
Bradley: Yeah. The second part of his question was should we use RVR Pro? That’s Rocket Video Ranker, one of Bill Cousins’ products. Should we use RVR Pro on money site YouTube channel or set up a separate YouTube channel? Separate and I’ll tell you why. Guys, it’s a good product. There’s no doubt. I’ve used it quite a bit and it works really, really well. For those of you that aren’t aware of it, I don’t know, Hernan, if you want to try to grab the link. It should be in the spreadsheet, but RVR Pro, I’ve played with it quite a bit and been really successful with lead gen campaigns, as well as wowing potential clients, prospects with it. What I found and I’m not talking bad about the software, I want everybody to understand.
I want to be completely transparent about what I have found with this method. I’ve got several channels out there that have been affected by this, but as long as you understand it, that’s fine. It’s a churn and burn strategy. Period. Just keep that in mind. It’s a churn and burn strategy. Don’t use your money site and I’ll tell you why because I’ve got several channels that I had set up, phone verified channels that I use specifically for RVR Pro. I would go out and create 30 videos at a time and it’s all handled by the software, guys. It makes it super simple to do. It’s a rather quick process, but I would go target and it basically uploads all the videos as private or unlisted. Then once they’re all uploaded, it turns them all to public at the same time.
For some reason or another and I don’t know why and I’ve said this through the webinars that we did with Bill and everything, I don’t know why it works, but it works. As long as it works, I’ll exploit it. I’ll take advantage of it. What I have found is that within a few weeks and sometimes it’s a little bit longer, it’s a couple months, I don’t know when exactly it’s happened, but I’ve had it happen to multiple channels that I’ve used this method. All of a sudden all the videos will basically fall out of the index, basically become the index and the channel’s still there. The channel doesn’t get terminated, but I can’t get any videos from the channel to index.
Whenever YouTube or Google decides that it’s spam and they de-index everything, but they don’t terminate the channel. I’ve got several channels that I actually was using with Live Rank Sniper as part of a poking. For example, I had several RVR Pro channels that I had ran some campaigns with. In fact, some of them were the channels that I used in the case studies when we did the webinar with Bill Cousins. I hadn’t used those channels since we did the case study and they’re all in Browseo. I just opened up those channels and said, “Okay. Here, I’m going to use this for Live Rank Sniper to poke a bunch of keywords, that kind of stuff.” I was doing a whole lot of poking a couple of weeks ago and so I was like literally testing hundreds of keywords.
I needed a bunch of different YouTube channels, so I just grabbed some of those from RVR Pro. What happened was when I would run Live Rank Sniper to go search Google to check the results of the scheduled live events to see if they ranked on page one or page two, that’s how you know which keywords are easy to rank for, I kept getting back blank text files with no ranking videos whatsoever, which is odd. Especially for dozens and dozes of keywords, you should get some results. I kept getting these blank text results back, text files back, which means it didn’t find any results. I went and literally tested manually by uploading a video, copying the URL once it was uploaded, make sure it was public.
I’d go over to Webmaster Tools or Submit URL Tool in Search Console and submit it, which usually will index that link within a matter of seconds if not minutes, right, or minutes if not seconds. It typically indexes very, very quickly. I’ve been unable to get some of those channels to index anything. Keep that in mind just so you know. I consider that a churn and burn strategy. It’s great for wowing people. It’s great for short-term lead gen projects. There might be some channels that have longevity, but there’s some sort of … It’s got to be some sort of percentage of them that end up with the same trouble that I had.
As long as you understand that, that’s fine, but just don’t use it on a money site because if it ends up rendering the channel non-indexable, if that’s a word, then you just lost your money channel if that makes sense. Use another channel. Guys, you don’t need like syndication networks and all that for this. That’s what’s beautiful about it. You can just go buy brand new YouTube accounts, phone verified I recommend, and then just set it up with that and just blast this stuff out there. Because if there’s a chance that you’re going to lose it anyways, what difference does it make? Just go out and use new channels. Don’t spend a lot of time setting up syndication networks for all that stuff. Once you’ve identified keywords that rank well, you can always go back and do it through your money site, your money site channel, through syndication networks which will give you the longevity too.
What Are Your Thoughts On Free Traffic Exchange Sites?
If there’s any way that you can direct the traffic to click a link once they land on the target URL, so like you can give them a second target URL, then you could always have them click through from the tier 1 property to your money site, which is a super good signal for SEO, right? Put analytics on your site and then send referral traffic through your social media properties. A lot of the social media sites actually report to Google anyway, so Google is aware of the traffic. If you have analytics on your site, if you run it through tier 1 properties first, that’s great because it’s referral traffic from social sites or web 2.0 properties. Its great signal, but I would not recommend without testing on some like demo sites or dummy sites.
I would not send that kind of traffic direct to money site. Now again I don’t have any experience with this, guys. I have not tested that, but that’s why I’m not going to recommend to you that you run it to your money site without testing first.
Hernan: Yeah. I agree. You need to think of what kind of traffic is being exchanged on these websites. It’s usually like Popunder or not Popunder, but tool bars kind of traffic and what not. Yeah, I would definitely recommend that. If you filter that through Twitter for example, that helps a lot or through a PBN or through whatever, right? That helps a lot, but directly, it’s kind of hard.
Bradley: You can spam the shit out of a press release too by the way. You can just throw shit traffic at a press release and you can actually get press releases to rank higher and to also stick, to stay in the index for longer, but that way. I’ve tested that quite a bit.
How Do You Increase The Visibility Of An MLM Company Website Online?
I know a lot of these network marketing sites, guys, you need to check because a lot of the times because of the fact that all independent business owners, IBOs or whatever they call them in this specific MLM company, but that’s typically what they’re called, because they all have the same basic sites with the only difference is the URL, a lot of the times those individual sites end up being no indexed as part of the code. It’s in the header or they’re all canonicalized to the root domain, which means Google likely won’t index the page. If it’s got a no index header tag, Google likely won’t index it or robots.txt, either one, right?
If it’s got a canonical tag which points back to the root, which is the main network marketing company domain, then Google likely won’t index it or it’ll be a fleeting index. In other words, it could index, but then fall out because every time Google does recrawls and caches again, sometimes they’ll pick up the canonical tags, sometimes they won’t. You need to check the code, the source code, and take a look at that. Because if that’s your issue, there’s probably nothing you can do about it. Marco, can you comment on that at all?
Marco: I totally, totally agree with you. You got to check the source code and make sure that the individual pages or websites or whatever it is, some domains don’t have the no index tag. If it doesn’t have the no index tag, you’re still going to have a hard time indexing simply because of the market that you’re in, the niche that you’re in. I think Robin is in RYS Reloaded if I’m not mistaken. I’m sorry I haven’t been in there as much as I should have because of my back. After the holidays and the new year, I should be back and fully in there. Just go in there and tag me because you should be able to do it with the way we do it in RYS Reloaded. You should be able to index.
If there were all indexable, then you should be able to do it with the way we index in RYS Reloaded. Catch me in there. Tag me.
Hernan: That makes sense. I think that pretty much everyone that’s working on an MLM … Here’s the thing. They will give you these office or these asset that you can definitely leverage, but what I would recommend is two main things. Number one is that you can branch off to an environment that you can control, right, to a blog that you can control. That you can actually push people into your downline, whatever, or your own office, et cetera, et cetera, but it’s an environment that you can control. It also happens to a lot of the people pinging me when it comes to Facebook Ads for MLMs. If you’re doing any kind of beta testing or SEO, you don’t control the environment. It’s super hard to install a Pixel. There’s no way you can install a Pixel or check conversions.
You’re pretty much throwing money at it blindly, right? I would suggest that you branch off a little bit and this will have another effect, Robin. The fact that you can control environment, so you control leads because the reality is that most people that visit your website and if you’re providing good quality content, they obtain to get more information about that base on this opportunity, maybe I would say 95% of those people will not become part of your team, right? That’s completely normal, but that doesn’t mean that they’re useless. You can use them for something else. For example, Mike Dillard made a lot of money selling services and stuff for MLM people. He was part of an MLM.
He was pushing people on his line of work, but he was also leveraging the opportunity of building an asset with the money that came from the MLM. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be focusing a little bit on your own side of things while pushing people into the MLM or trying to show them the business opportunity or the, sorry, the products, right? You can also do your own thing a little bit and gather leads through some other thing.
Bradley: The other thing is like what Hernan just said, I totally agree is I would recommend that you … You got to be careful and find out what the rules and regulations are, the bylaws or whatever, for the particular network marketing company because sometimes they really frown upon having your own blogs and things like that, which I think is stupid by the way. That’s part of the reason why I’ve never been really happy with any network marketing company. If you have your own assets and your own blog, you can push traffic to that site and you don’t need to worry about Google and indexing that site. It doesn’t matter, right? That’s the thing.
If you control your own assets that you can use to generate traffic, you can push that traffic wherever you want to that actual MLM site if you want to. That’s fine. Also, like what Hernan said is if you capture those leads from the sites that you manage, not the MLM site but from your own assets, then even if they don’t join, which the vast majority of them aren’t going to join, you still have an asset, right? You have an email list now. You know that they’re at least interested in that theme, right, that niche, that industry, that topic, whatever it is, that product, that business, whatever. You know what they’ve raised their hand because they opted in and they’ve actually clicked through and all that stuff over to the site.
They’re at least interested. Maybe they didn’t like that particular offer, but who’s to say they’re not going to respond well to other offers. You could start doing affiliate marketing for other products and services. All that kind of stuff. I always recommend trying to build an asset out of it instead of just running like straight traffic to that one page where most people aren’t going to convert anyways and you end up losing it. You lose all that traffic. All right. I’m sorry. Was somebody else going to comment?
Hernan: No. No. I was just saying that yeah, I agree with you.
How Do You Find Contractors For Your Lead Gen Service?
Bradley: This is Sergei. He asked me in this in a PM in Facebook and I told him to go post it over here because I thought everybody could benefit from this. He said, “I’ve set up a lead gen tree service website as my testing ground for more aggressive SEO. I’m receiving calls already. Semantic Mastery stuff freaking works.” I’m going to plus one that. He says, “How do you find contractors to pass the leads to and what percentage or fee do you charge?” Okay. Sergei, I’ve actually covered this. I don’t know if you’re still in the mastermind. I believe you are. You should have access to all of the master class training, the archives from that. We don’t do the master class anymore, but you should have access to all that.
There’s been like specifically prospecting funnels for service providers for lead gen stuff that I’ve set up. It’s very similar to like what I’m doing for prospecting for agency clients right now, right? Now there’s a couple ways. You can do the shotgun approach, which is in that particular city, you just scrape all the leads, get all the contact leads for all the tree service contractors in that particular city and just do a mass email blast to all of them. Like literally it’s carbon copy, the CC, right, so that they see that you’re emailing everybody and put a basic pitch in the email that sends them over to a landing page where you can have a video explaining and you could show results, you can show that you’re ranking.
You can show screenshots of call records, things like that, so that you can prove that you actually have these leads currently right now and push them over there. Put an application. I like to put a Google form application where I’m not asking them anything sensitive, but I make them jump through a hoop to qualify themselves as a potential service provider that I want to work with. Because I can tell you right now especially in the tree service industry about 85% or 90% of them aren’t even going to fill out the form because they’re not very sophisticated. Some of them are going to fill it out and they’re going to say something rude or crude in it or they’re going to email you back and they’re going to cuss you out and stuff like that.
That’s just the nature of that industry, guys, but there will be probably a few that will raise their hand or that will actually complete the process. Sometimes and this is funny, but a lot of times I’ve set up these funnels for service providers essentially just to prospect service providers for a lead gen asset that’s already producing leads, right? I’ll send people through the process, but instead of them filling out the actual Google form and then me contacting them, they end up looking at the page and then just contacting me back via the email that I sent them and starting a conversation that way or they’ll call sometimes. Those are the ones that you want because those are the people that have like …
Even though they didn’t go through the specific process you set up, they’re anxious. They’re hungry. They want those leads. Then obviously for tree service stuff, guys, I always recommend that you only work with clients or service providers that have insurance. Make sure they’ve got business licenses, stuff like that. Because even though you’re just providing the leads, I don’t want any liability ever coming back to me for that kind of stuff. Just make sure you’ve covered your ass. Obviously don’t sell leads to a tree service contractor that has like one star reviews and shit like that. Don’t do that, right?
It is about the money, but you also got to make sure that the leads that you’re sending to the contractors are going to be serviced properly because it’s your asset that’s going to be damaged if they don’t perform well. All right? As far as that, the other process that you could go through as opposed to the shotgun approach would be the rifle approach. Once again, Sergei, I know you have access to the video email prospecting training. That’s more of a laser approach. It’s a lot more time consuming, but it’s very, very effective. That way you could actually hand-select contractors.
For example, you could go find the tree service contractors, just do a little bit of research and find the ones that have the best reviews and hand-select them and reach out to them with a very targeted specific video email message telling them that you chose them because of how good of a review … They got a really good reputation and you’ve got these leads and you want somebody that has a good reputation. Now you’re massaging their ego. It works really, really well. Okay? Also, don’t forget, even with the laser approach, you don’t want to not let them know that you’re also providing this offer to other contractors. Especially with the laser approach, the rifle approach, you can actually list the other contractors that you’ve hand-selected in the email.
Reply quickly though because I’ve also contacted and then just bullet point it right out, like Joe’s tree service and Bob’s tree service and blah, blah, blah right on down the list because that creates a sense of urgency. I found contractors really respond well to that sense of urgency. Now sometimes they’re just going to flat out cuss you out. Get over it. As far as what percentage or fee you charge, it depends on the relationship. It also depends on how I’m generating the leads. It depends on the area too, right? It depends on the level of competition. It really does depend, Sergei. Typically, if I’m doing AdWords for tree service and tree removal jobs, then like I’ll charge on a flat fee per lead, per qualified lead, which would be …
It ranges between say $50 to $75 per lead. If I’m doing SEO, if my leads are coming in through SEO as opposed to AdWords where I’m not paying per click, then I will have a lower price, a lower cost per lead price. If I’m doing AdWords, I specifically just tell the contractors, “Look, sometimes it cost me $30, $35, $40 to generate this lead. I’ve got to charge you $75 per lead.” Period. I’m just transparent about it with them. I tell them flat out, “If it’s SEO, then sometimes I might charge 40 bucks per lead or 50 bucks per lead.” Then generally what I like to do is especially with tree service … Now this isn’t always possible.
Once you’ve developed a relationship with the service provider and a track record and he’s proven to perform well, to be able to close a lot of jobs, he pays you when he’s supposed to and all that kind of stuff, then you can always negotiate a revenue share and that’s my preferred method especially in a tree service industry because I get 10% of any jobs that close. The contractors love that because they don’t pay for leads that don’t turn into revenue. They only pay for leads that generate revenue, but you have to have a trusting relationship with them. They have to be good closers, right? You get like, especially with tree services, 10% and it’s pretty much all labor. There’s very rarely ever any material cost in the job.
I’m not kidding. The average job for my biggest contractor, my best tree service contractor with the revenue share model, the average job is about 1,800 bucks. I get $180 on average per call. We had a lot clearing job that came through. It was a $47,000 job. I’m not kidding. I got $4,700 for one damn phone call. That was a damn good week. Just so you know, that’s a great model, but you have to have developed a relationship with the contractor first, a trusting relationship. Anybody have any comments on that before I move on?
Hernan: That’s pretty cool. Yeah, no. When you have that relationship, that’s where the actual money is.
Bradley: Yup.
Hernan: Not selling the leads. The actual I’ll pay you when somebody closes. Depending on the niche, right? That’s why it’s usually better to go for high ticket niches, right? It takes time. You can start with the Rank and Rent model, then moving to the lead selling model, and then finally, you want to get to that model when you’re being paid for a new contract.
Bradley: Absolutely. To start with, yeah, the Rank and Rent is absolutely the easiest way, guys. You’re going to leave a lot of money on the table on that way though, but that’s the easiest way and quickest way to get going and to start generating revenues is just Rank and Rent because it’s simple. All you go to do is charge a flat fee. I still got a lot of lead gen sites out there that are on the Rank and Rent method and that’s fine. It’s simple to manage that way. Doing PPL, pay per lead, or revenue share, you have to have a lot more tracking in place, more infrastructure basically, but it’s worth it because you’d make so much more money. All right. Keith’s up from Super Spun Article. Keith, I was promoting your stuff I think it was last week just so you know.
What Do You Mean By Custom Sidebars To Create A Silo’s IFTTT Network?
Like for example with WordPress.com or with Tumblr or blogger, we’ll add in the sidebar all the links to all of the other properties in the network and that’s just to create like a branded silo I guess if that’s what he’s talking about. Again I don’t know because I’m not Bo, so I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. Does anybody else have maybe ideas on that?
Hernan: Let me check. I don’t know, buddy. You’ll need to ask him.
Bradley: Yeah. Just post in the group, Keith, in our Facebook group, the SEO Tutorials Facebook group and tag Bo on it if you have a question specifically. I know he’ll answer it because he also moderates that group for us anyways. Okay?
Is There Any Benefit In Running RSS Masher Feed Through FeedBurner Before Adding To IFTTT Recipes?
I typically don’t do a lot of those like additional little steps that have tiny, tiny fraction of a benefit. If you’ve got the time, sure. Why not? It wouldn’t hurt. You’d have two separate feeds at that point, right? You got your RSS master feed and then you have a FeedBurner feed, so you could actually use it in different locations. You could submit both feeds to different aggregators, RSS directories, and that kind of stuff. I mean it’s not going to hurt is my point. Okay? All right. Cool. We’re almost done.
What Are Your Thoughts On Money Robot And SEO Jet?
Edward, “You guys like Money Robot or do you like SEOJet?” Edward, I don’t run any of the tools. I can’t answer that. You’d have to talk to Dedia, our link building manager. He could answer any question about any spam tool out there right now.
He’s an expert in all of them. He’ll tell you the best ones to use. Anybody got a comment on that before I move on? We’re almost done. Good. We should be able to finish these questions.
Which Part Of The Syndication Network Training That Teaches How To Connect A Web 2.0 To The Client’s Website Through The RSS?
“Where do I go in syndication training to see how to connect a web 2.0 the client’s website through RSS?” Wow, Edward. Come on buddy. I know you, Edward. You are like a sponge, man. You already know this. Unless I’m misunderstanding your question, you just create an applet with an RSS as the trigger. If this RSS, then that select the web 2.0 and that’s it. Then set up the applet. Am I misinterpreting the question, guys?
Hernan: How to connect a web 2.0 to the client’s website through the RSS. Maybe it’s not supported by IFTTT. Is that what you’re saying, Ed?
Bradley: Oh, if it’s the case, then yeah. Maybe that’s it, Ed. Again I’m not picking on you, buddy. You know you’re cool. If it’s a web 2.0 that IFTTT can connect to as a service, then you just use an applet. Very, very simple. All that’s covered, right? If it’s a web 2.0 that does not connect to IFTTT, then you’re going to have to look for another service that would make … There are some plugins out there that will … Like SNAP, Social Network Auto Poster plugin. That may connect to the web 2.0 specifically. DLVR.it is another one. Zapier obviously. You could use that if it connects. You’re going to have to find another way to do it. If it’s not IFTTT specific, find another way to do it. Sometimes you just can’t.
Should You Use A P.O. Box Or Street Address When A Client Wants To Setup Another Location?
Sometimes you can’t automate it. All right. Next question from Ed, “I have several clients that want to set up another location. I can just set up a box at the post office and use street address and not the box.” Yes. You have to fill out an additional form, Ed. Standby one minute. Let me see. Right here. This is it. This PDF form. It’s a form you can get it at the post office or you can download it and then print it out. All you got to do is fill this out. It doesn’t cost anything else guys. It’s just one additional form. You just put the post office street address here. The box number that they assign you when you go pick up your post office box. The city, state, zip. This is exactly how you have to write it.
You use the street name and then you use the number sign. They’re very particular about that by the way. You use the pound sign, the hashtag symbol, and then the number of the box. That’s how you write it out when you fill out this form. That’s all you got to do is sign this form. I’m going to grab this link and drop it on the event page. This is the street address option. I just did, Paul. Last question I believe is from Donald. What’s up, Don? Shit. I forgot to mention that again. I always forget. The Mindset Mastery Series. I just posted another video yesterday for the Mindset Mastery Series after two weeks of not doing videos because of my traveling to Vegas and all that shit.
Also, I’ve been focusing on building my email sequence, my autoresponder sequence, for … If you go to bradleybenner.com guys, you can sign up for my Mindset Mastery Series emails, my email series. What I’m trying to do is build the habit right now. For years, I’ve been meaning to improve my writing skills because writing is such a shitty job. It sucks. It’s not that I’m bad at it, but it takes me forever to do it and it’s very painful. It’s very tedious process. The only way to ever get better at stuff like that is just do more of it guys. It’s just like anything else. It’s the only way to get better at it. For years, I’ve been putting it off.
I’ve created a goal many, many times to get better at writing and I’ve never followed through because I never built a habit out of it. I started about three weeks ago with this Mindset Mastery Series and again you can subscribe to the emails. Go to bradleybenner.com and there’ll be a popup to subscribe. If you don’t like it, just unsubscribe. What I’ve been doing every single day as part of my daily routine now with the meditation and with my daily goal setting and planning, now I’m also writing an email every morning. It’s not every morning, but I try to get Monday through Friday as often as possible. My goal is to write a minimum of 200 words per day. What happens is by the time I get to 200 words, it’s not enough to convey the thought that I’m trying to get across.
My emails are on average about 600 to 800 words. It’s been great because I think I’ve got 12 emails in there over the last three weeks. I’ve only missed a few days and I’m starting to develop the habit, which is going to make it easier for me to write in all areas of my business and my life, right? Again I would recommend you go check that out. I know Don’s been following it, so thanks, Don. Just keep in mind guys, I do use colorful language, some strong language in those emails at times. If you’re easily offended, just don’t subscribe or unsubscribe if it offends you. It’s really about kicking your ass and making you like get off your ass and go do something. Go be productive. Make life happen.
Does Sean Donahoe’s Commission Commando Still Works?
Hernan: Probably yeah. We were using Backlink Commando. It’s not being supported anymore. He also had Commission Commando for some other stuff, but Backlink Commando is not being supported anymore.
Bradley: Yeah. I never use Commission Commando. Backlink Commando was a way to extract the web 2.0 URLs, post URLs for the syndication network and automatically send them to an indexer, which was great, but they stop supporting it about probably a year and a half ago now, maybe two years ago even. We never found another solution that was able to do that. We’ve talked about developing our own, but we’ve never done it and it’s not really a really top priority. It maybe something that SerpSpace … I know that’s on the to do list of SerpSpace because with our network monitoring over there at SerpSpace, it would make it super simple and we have an indexer service and everything already built into SerpSpace.
It’s just a matter of developing it to pull and extra the URLs. It’s something that’s on the to do list. I imagine it will be done within the next few months, but I just can’t give you a date when. All right. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Hernan: No, I mean, yeah. I don’t know how high on the priority list that is.
Bradley: Last thing guys, by the way Don, I did cover an alternative way to do that to extra the web 2.0 post URLs automatically and have them posted to a drive file, a spreadsheet, and then you could actually just like send the spreadsheet. You could build links to the spreadsheet or send it on the indexer or whatever and that will help the web 2.0 post URLs to get indexed. That was all covered in an update webinar in IFTTT or excuse me, Syndication Academy. Just go back and look through the updates or the webinar replays archives and you should be able to see where I mention an indexing method for web 2.0 posts and that will show you how to set that up. “Have I tried RSS Mixer plugin?” No. Not that I’m aware of.
All right, guys. We got to wrap it up. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Thanks for being here and spending your Thanksgiving eve with us.
