In episode 166 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked whether Google will penalize a review/product type rich snippet that is placed on the homepage of a website.
The exact question was:
I remember I read somewhere that putting a review/product type rich-snippet data on your homepage (instead of an organization/webpage/article type) is not good, cause google will penalize you somehow? I mean a review/product type schema which shows those review stars below your listing on the SERPs (for better CTR). Is this true or just a gossip?
Adam: Hey everybody. We are here and live for Hump Day Hangouts. This is Episode 168. It’s the 24th of January 2018. I’m still working on getting the year correct. I find myself typing 2017 a lot. Anyways, moving right along, we’re going to say hello to everybody and then get into things. Left to right, from me, Marco, how’s it going, man?
Marco: What’s up, dude? You got me first. Latinos are first today. All right. I’m good, man. Nice and sunny, warm. Warm.
Adam: Outstanding. Yeah. Obviously, it’s not warm here. Let’s see, we got Rob with us today. Rob, I’m guessing it’s not too warm where you’re at either, is it?
Rob: Oh, no. It’s icy and snowy. Kids were out, two-hour delay today, so it’s definitely not warm.
Adam: Gotcha. Wow. All right. Bradley, how about you?
Bradley: I’m happy. I’m here. I’m ready to answer some questions. The weather did get cold again. I was just talking to Stan and Rob, it’s nuts because it was like 5 degrees for like a week here and then it went to 70 degrees like almost overnight. It was 70 degrees for like three days and now it’s back to 30 again. It sucks right now, this time of year.
Adam: Well, speaking of questions, I got one for you, Bradley. Earlier this week, obviously, everyone here doing the Hump Day Hangout knows that we launched the Video Lead-Gen System training, but I know a lot of people, we had questions, they weren’t sure exactly what it was about it. Of course, we came out with the weave … Stuff we’ve been using for a long time and kind of developing and Bradley’s built onto a lot of that.
As far as a question, do you mind taking just a couple minutes and kind of explain to people, because I think this will answer a lot of questions like, who is it for, kind of what was your approach to it, and what might be the benefits to somebody?
Bradley: Sure. All right. The Video Lead-Gen System is, basically, it’s an expansion to the Video Email Prospecting training stuff that I put together many years ago that I’ve shared with the Hump Day Hangouts group, as well as many other groups for free. It’s just like expanded training on that where I go into a lot more in depth because the training, the idea, the concept is to use video emails or videos within emails to prospect for landing clients or, if you’re doing lead gen, for landing service providers.
It’s a very unique way of just doing outreach and making yourself stand above the crowd, above the noise. Right? Business owners, as many of you guys probably already know, because you are business owners, online business owners, you probably, if you’ve registered your business ever like with Google My Business listing, you have a Maps page or whatever, and you’re basically a local business, you might be an internet-based business, but you’re still registered as a local business, well then, you probably already know that you get hammered with solicitations all the time via email, cold emails, spam all day long.
How do you separate yourself? How do you stand above that noise? How do you stand out above all these other like spammers out there? I mean, so the way that I found it that worked really well for me when I started building my agency was video-based email. I still use a variation of that now, even though I don’t do like targeted prospecting like that so much anymore, because I do more of a rifle … excuse me … a shotgun approach, which is like a mass prospecting. That’s what I’m doing with my new agencies more of the mass approach-
Adam: But that’s still using video. Right?
Bradley: That’s still video-based, but it’s a lot longer of a kind of a … from the time that they interact with me to the time where they … excuse me … the time that they interact with some digital property. Right? They interact somewhere online with one of my web assets, whether it’s an ad, an email or whatever, there’s a long process between the shotgun approach to when they actually have a conversation with me, if we even ever get to that point.
With video email, it’s a lot more direct. In other words, it’s reaching out very, very precisely to very specific prospects that you’ve hand-selected or you’ve had a virtual assistant do it, which is what I recommend, and then drafting, creating some video-based emails where you’re basically giving them an audit or an analysis of their digital presence.
It doesn’t matter what kind of service you provide. Right? It could be SEO, social media, PPC, lead gen, anything, content marketing services, anything at all, Google Map services. Whatever it is that you do, you can, if you’re looking for clients or you’re looking for lead gen service providers, you can approach prospects this way and kind of explain to them what it is that you’ve got, what you’re seeing, how they can make their presence better online, again, with whatever service that you provide.
Just explain how, conceptually, and ask for a phone conversation. Right? Just ask to begin a dialogue with them. It works really, really well. My numbers were consistently between 30 to 40%. So, an average of 35% is what I would get a response rate. For every 10 emails, I would send I would get three to four replies back and that was like clockwork.
Like I said, even though I’m not doing specifically prospecting that way now, still to this day, when I get a referral, which I get referrals quite often, when I get a referral, I start a conversation or a dialogue with the potential prospect that was referred to me and I do the same thing. I use the exact same process. It’s not a cold contact for me at that point because they were referred, but I still use the exact same video audit process that I share in the Video Lead-Gen System for basically pitching them, showing them, what I see and then giving them a proposal at the same time.
It works really, really well. I close probably eight out of 10 proposals that I submit now using the video email system. It’s the same system.
Adam: Nice. As part of this, too, I wanted to say it’s a win-win, in my mind, value proposition because even if you’re already doing something then this is just going to take your percentages up.
Actually, you were going to do a bonus for people, weren’t you, Bradley?
Bradley: Yeah. I don’t know if we really highlighted that on the sales page or whatever. Guys, we didn’t do like some crazy launch on this and all that. But, yeah, I’m doing a bonus webinar. Did we already schedule that? I think we did, didn’t we?
Adam: Yes. I believe it is February 15th.
Bradley: Okay. February 15th, we’re going to do a bonus webinar, guys, where I’m going to walk through a process of how … Well, first of all, you can ask questions during that, for implementation, Q&A, that kind of stuff. At the same time, I’m going to be revealing a process for how to find hot prospects from YouTube that you can search by industry, you can search by location. Find people that are spending money, that aren’t getting the results that they should be for the money that they’re spending, that you can then prospect them in a very simple and very direct way, which can help you to land those clients. It’s like a freaking gold mine. It really is.
I’m going to be talking about that, specifically outlying how to do that, and showing you guys live on the webinar. Number two, also, I’m going to be going much more in-depth on the outsourcing process for how to outsource this entire process, both the video email prospecting or lead-gen system, the preparation of creating, having somebody outsourcing the vast majority of that work. There’s a portion of it that you’re likely going to have to do regardless, but the majority of it can be outsourced. Also, outsourcing the YouTube prospecting, where to find leads on YouTube and how to find them. That can be outsourced as well. We’re going to be covering all of that.
Adam: Outstanding. Cool. All right. Now if anyone has any questions, please feel free, this is a great time today to ask. Or you can contact us, hop in the Facebook group, if you’re a member there; if not, join it. Or you can shoot an email to support@semanticmastery.com. Real quick before we hop into questions, I know we’re starting, I think, to wind down the time on this, but, Marco, the charity drive is still going on, right?
Marco: It’s still going on. It will go on until Friday. We have to close it Friday because the school year starts February 5th. It starts that week. We have to get everything together and get the money where it’s supposed to go, and get the supplies back, and get it all to the kids so that they’re all ready to go by the time they have to go to school. So, we’re winding down school year 2018, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t go forward with this because I’m thinking that, I mean, we can make this a year-long thing for school year 2019.
I mean, the cause is fabulous. I know we had an offer from someone, a very kind offer to mentor some of the kids in coding. If they’re interested in coding, this person is willing to give up his time and mentor some of these children, which is fabulous, because I spoke before, a tutor two hours a week, it has been shown is all a kid needs to get on the right track and really succeed in school.
On top of that, you get a mentor and play someone who has been there and done it and can show you the way, which is kind of what we do, right? Consultants are like mentors to their clients. So the same effect happens where you mentor the person, you show them, well, these are the things that you can run into, these are the problems that you can run into, encoding in this case. I think that’s fabulous. We might even be able to set up like a mentoring type of website for anyone willing to donate their skills for these kids, as they go along in their education they’re going to need it.
I mean, this is growing. I’m so happy, man. I can’t begin to say how happy and how appreciative I am of the people who have already donated. So, thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I know that kids will be the ones that benefit and will be the most thankful.
Adam: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you everybody who donated. We really do appreciate it. Without further ado, I guess, Bradley, let’s get into it.
Bradley: Let’s rock and roll. All right. Grab the screen. I tried to do the picture-in-picture thing today, but Google wasn’t recognizing minicam for some reason, so sorry.
What Are The Reasons Why Some Queries Do Not Appear On The Country-Specific Google Search Site?
Okay. That’s a really good question. I’m going to probably defer that one to Marco. He’s probably got the best answer for that because I’m not sure, because everything I’ve ever done has always been on Google.com, so I can’t really explain what’s going on there. Do you have any insight, Marco?
Marco: No, I don’t. Because anything that we’ve ever done to target like Spanish, the .es or in the case of Costa Rica, the co.cr is done through .com. Maybe some of the link building that you need to do. I know that there has to be a WordPress.com in Italian and so maybe you need to do that. I know that there’s a Google.it, so maybe everything has to be set up through Google.it rather than Google.com. I don’t know if it was set up that way.
I ran into this problem in Canada. I could get it to rank for Google.com but not Google.ca as well. I mean, I don’t know if he has a full … Does he say he has a full IFTTT?
Bradley: I don’t think he’s mentioned that at all. He says he created a Google site in WordPress.com. That’s all he’s talking about.
Marco: Yeah. To me, there’s not enough for Google to associate, even if it’s in Italian, the WordPress … Let me see, they both rank in Google.com. The G site, you may have to build it in Google.it. I don’t know if that’s possible. It should be and everything that you relate to it should be Google.it. I mean, the link building, if you do a drive stack, which we won’t do in Italian, but it should be done in Google.it if possible, so that Google picks up that relevant, the Google shortened links. I don’t know if the Google shortener, it’s Google.gl but you can shorten any local, anything local that you can add to it would also help.
Other than that, I really don’t know because I’ve never needed to, like, for ranking in Spanish, it’s always done through .com and it works to Spanish for whatever reason.
Bradley: Yeah. I wonder if you could insert like iframe in some like local event feeds or something like that into the site, and that would help to get the bots come crawl a bit more and hopefully get it indexed. Well, I mean, I know you’re saying it’s indexed, but for some reason it’s being filtered out. It’s not showing in the universal search results for Google.it.
Again, these are all just assumptions or speculations on my part, because I don’t know, I’ve never done anything outside of Google.com. But I mean there’s various things I would test to try to get it into the .it to where it’s showing up. You know what I mean? So that might be something you could do, is try to inject like some local event feeds or something like that. Or even topically relevant event feeds or something like that that you can iframe in.
I don’t know if you’re in Syndication Academy, but I showed on the last update webinar how to … You can even take RSS feeds from sites, local sites or in any site within an Italian, period, and take the RSS feed and iframe that into a page on your WordPress.com site, for example. Right? Then, you could use that to kind of just help to force relevancy and for the bots to make the association.
I mean, that’s something that you could try. I don’t know that that’s going to work for you, but that’s something that you could try.
Marco: He could also try the YouTube.it extension for iframing videos.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: He’ll have to play with the code a little bit, but I know that YouTube has the .it extension. He can try that. Anything local, yeah. If you’re going for local, you have to have local relevance.
Bradley: Yeah. Adding language-specific relevance could help. I mean, at least my assumption is it would, but with limited experience outside of Google.com, these are all just wild ass guesses, really.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, we’re just guessing.
Can You Repurpose Existing IFTTT Sites And Point Them To Another Site?
Bradley: Keith Goodwin. What’s up, buddy? I’ve had four people reach out to me in the last couple weeks, Keith, asking me for the super spun article that service provider that I mentioned and I keep referring them to you. Hopefully, you’re getting some orders coming through, man. Quick question … By the way, anybody that needs ever a super spun article, Keith Goodwin is the man to do it. He’s got a great service. It’s really, really good. I’ve been using it for years. I haven’t used it quite sometime because I don’t do all that spam stuff anymore, but when I did I used the hell out of it.
“Is this more successful than starting fresh again?” Yes, it is, because they’re aged accounts. If you do 100% retheme, what I mean by that is, if you change the main topic, the primary topic of whatever that network was for, then I don’t know, I don’t have any hard data to prove this, but I’ve got literally hundreds of IFTTT networks, guys, and many of them were built … I mean, remember I started doing this method back in 2012, so I’ve still got networks that are still alive and kicking today, syndicating today that were built in 2012. Some of those networks have been rethemed, completely rethemed three and four or five times, no kidding, over the years because whatever project they were being used on ended up, you know, we terminated the project or whatever the case may be.
A lot of them were PBN networks. In other words, they were syndication networks around PBN sites that then later became video broadcasting sites, and then later that, you know, all these different things. A lot of times those networks get repurposed. I still think that they’re better than a brand new one because there’s age there, the accounts have been aged or seasoned, so to speak. That’s why … and I know, like I said, I just had, in fact, when we started building a few months ago when I started working on our new contractor marketing agency, I went through my old list of PBN stuff because I let so many of them go. I let a lot of them just expire because I don’t really do that, use PBNs anymore. I ended up with 95 syndication networks that were abandoned, that were just sitting there dormant, but they were all still alive. Some of them had properties that were terminated and stuff like that.
I ended up having one of my VAs go through and she went in and started reconnecting everything, updating everything, turning on applets. It took her three weeks. She got, I think, 50 or 55 of the networks connected to our YouTube channel for that project. We still got about another 40 or 45 in queue that are just on hold, that are just sitting there waiting for me to bring her back over to do that.
My point in telling you all this is that, yes, they can be repurposed. Absolutely, they can be. If you keep them with the same theme, then they’re going to be more powerful than if you retheme them. But again, my experience with an aged network is regardless of whether it’s rethemed or not it’s still more powerful than a brand new one.
Yeah, guys, I bet a lot of you, any of you that have been using the syndication networks for any period of time, you probably have syndication networks out there that aren’t being utilized to their full potential, like on projects maybe that you’ve abandoned or whatever, so go repurpose them, put them to stuff, put them towards projects that you are still working on or current projects, because really there’s no reason.
I mean, again, I let so many of them just go and then once I started going through my drive files and taking inventory of stuff that was available, I mean, could you imagine buying 95 syndication networks, how much that would cost or how long it would take you to build them? I had all these just sitting around. So, definitely, definitely repurpose them if you’re not using them. Okay.
Yeah, if it’s anything for clients, guys, well, first of all, if the client bought the network, I do not repurpose it. If I built supplemental networks to help rank their properties but they wasn’t stuff that they purchased, then yes, I’ll repurpose those. But if they purchased a network from me and I built it for them or I had it built for them and it was branded for them, then I don’t repurpose, I don’t reclaim that network. It’s theirs. They paid for it, it’s their asset.
Just to be clear on that, guys. I’m not saying if a client decides they don’t need me anymore that I go take their network back and then repurpose it, because that’s not what I do. It’s theirs. It’s done. They keep it. Okay? It’s only networks that I’ve used or built to help rank stuff that they haven’t owned, so to speak, that I’ll repurpose.
All right. That’s a great question, Keith.
How Long Should You Wait Before Calling Back People Who Watched The Video From Your Video Emails?
Yeah, it could be. But who cares? It’s up to you, Mohammed. I’ve been real transparent about the fact that I can’t stand cold calling. It is still a cold call but it’s warmer when you just saw engagement on your email that you sent them because you know damn well that you’re top of mind to them. Right? That’s why … I mean, I did it when I was hungry enough guys, when I needed the money bad enough, I would cold call. Right now I just don’t want to do it.
Here’s my process, just to be real clear. If I really needed it, then what I would do is set up notifications. Again, guys, this is covered in the Video Lead-Gen Systems training, but whatever email tracking software or application I’m using you can usually set up notifications to where when somebody opens an email or performs an action within an email or whatever you can set up notifications however you want, but you get notified. You get notified via email, via SMS, text. There’s a number of ways you can get notified.
If you’re hungry enough, you really need clients like yesterday. Right? Then when somebody opens an email, like, I would set up notification on link click, is what I would do. I would have link click, which the link click would be tied to the video that’s embedded in the email. Right? It’s either a still image or it’s a gif image, either way it’s linked to the actual video, the YouTube URL or to the landing page URL if you’re sending them to a landing page. Either way when somebody clicks that video image or gif in the middle of the email, that triggers a notification.
So now you know that they’re getting your message. If you’ve got an eight- or a 10-minute audit video and somebody clicks, then I would wait about 10 or 15 minutes and call and say, “Hey, Mr. Mohamed. I was just calling because I sent a video, an email to,” and you mention the owner’s name.
You should have that anyways. You should get all of that stuff on the front-end when you’re developing your contact list, which I go through that how important that is, especially with this particular process. You got to really know who it is you’re emailing to and try to get the decision-makers email if possible. Then, you call the number.
If it’s a gatekeeper you just say, “Hey, I just sent a video via email to and I’m following up to find out if they had a chance to watch it.” A lot of times you’ll get the person on the phone that just clicked it because they’re the ones sitting at the desk. But if not, you get a gatekeeper, again, if they put you through or if not, they might put you on hold and say, “Hey, we got some guy calling saying that he just sent you a video.” It’s a bit odd, you’re right, for the prospect. Right? Because they’re like, “Holy shit, I just clicked the email open and he’s calling already?”
By the way, this is one of the ways I could tell if it was a prospect that I wanted to work with or kind of like you could test whether the prospect was honest or not, was if you were to call, like I said I used to do it when I was hungry enough, but if I would see the notification on the link click, which means I know they’re watching the video, then I would call and they would answer the phone. I would say, “Hey, this is Bradley Benner. I just sent you an email a few minutes ago,” or earlier today, is what I would say. “I sent you an email earlier today that contained a video and I was just following up to find out if you had a chance to watch it.”
If they say no, then I already know that they’re lying and they’re probably somebody … They don’t have any integrity, right? A lot of times that’s just a defense mechanism. It’s just like, no, I don’t want to be sold to, so I’m going to say no. But you know that they just watched it because you could see it, right? You could see it in the email tracking software.
If they say, “Oh, wow.” I’ve had people say, “Wow. That’s really funny. I literally just watched the video like 10 minutes ago.” I’d be like, “Huh, that’s a coincidence. Well, now that I’ve got you on the phone, do you have a couple minutes?” Anyways, it’s just a great way to break the ice.
Now the other side of this, which I just was getting at was the fact that I don’t like to cold call anymore. Now what I’ll do, and I mentioned to this to you, Mohammed, in the thread in the mastermind, is if I see a bunch of activity through the email tracking, whether a bunch of opens, long duration. In other words, that they dwelled on the email for quite some time. It was open for a while, link clicks or forwards. Right? If I see a lot of engagement or activity around that particular email, I’ll send a follow-up email, a very specific message with the follow-up email. “Hey, I’m just checking in to see if you had a chance to watch the video.”
You know they have. You can already see the activity. Right? But you’d just say “I was just checking in to follow up. I’d really like to schedule a brief call with you, if at all possible, if you have any questions,” blah blah blah. That’s a little bit more non-confrontational, but as I mentioned to you, Mohammed, in the mastermind, there are a lot of people that are genuinely interested in what you have to offer but they still won’t make the first step, they won’t take the initiative.
Those are the types of people that a couple follow-up emails maybe what it takes to push them over the edge to call you or it might take you being the one to take the initiative and make the call. It depends on how hungry you are.
Marco: If I can just-
Bradley: Go ahead, yeah.
Marco: If I can just interject. Another way that he could be less pushy and it’s something that I’ve used in the past is instead of saying, “Have you had a chance to watch the video,” he can always say, “I think there was a glitch in my email,” or whatever in the software, frame it any kind of way, “Did you get the video?” It puts them more at ease because you’re not saying, “Have you had a chance to watch the video?” Damn, I just got the video. It’s like, “Did you get the video?” and it’s the same way. If they say no, you know they’re lying. No integrity. If they say yes, then you can go through the process, “Oh, great,” and then you can go into, now you have them on the phone and now you can start that what we talked about again in the mastermind.
Mohammed, congratulations. You’re active. You’re making full use of the money that you’re investing on your business. But then you can go into that conversational, getting all that information that you need from this client so that you can lead them down the path to closing.
Bradley: Yep. I mean, that’s a great question, Mohammed, because really the timing is everything. Like Marco said, you don’t have to phrase it the way that I did. That’s just the way I did it commonly. But, yeah. I mean, you could even say like, “Hey, I’m just following up because I was concerned that there was a … maybe potentially the email I sent earlier didn’t get delivered.” The point is you know at that moment that whether they’ve watched or not; and if they have, then you’re top of mind already.
That’s what I love about the video emails, especially if you do what I mentioned about doing like a picture-in-picture, so that your face is shown throughout the entire audit. Or if nothing else, at least in the beginning doing a brief introduction where they get to see your face so that they know who you are. It’s almost like they’ve had a chance to meet you. So the call is a much warmer call than just a straight-out cold call and so they’re a lot more receptive. Okay.
Is It Better To Funnel Users To The Contact Page, Or Have CTAs/Contact Forms On Multiple Pages To Improve Conversion In A Local Business Website?
The second part of this is, “In terms of conversion optimization for a local business, is it better to funnel users to the contact page, or have CTAs/contact forms on multiple pages?” Well, for most local business sites, I try to have a contact form and a big call to action, like a phone number on all pages, like usually contact forms in both the sidebar and/or the footer, as well as the contact button, which is typically a tap to call button on mobile and just a big phone number on desktop view of the website. That should be present on all sites, preferably at the top so that on mobile it’s one of the first things that pops up when the site loads. That’s typically what I do, is have those.
Now, as far as contact page, I don’t usually push anybody to a contact page. If I’m driving traffic to a local business site, depending on how I’m driving traffic, I’m usually going to have just a landing page set up. If I’m driving traffic to my WordPress site, which has been SEOed and stuff like that, then I still try to set up the pages in a landing page format. In other words, I like to use those types of local business themes and things like that to have the lead gen form and everything prominent at all times. Okay.
If I’m doing PPC stuff, it’s going to be a very specific landing page. If it’s SEO, it could be direct to just a page, but again generally, I’m going to be using some sort of theme or contact forms or something to where it’s always present. I don’t want to make it difficult for anybody to contact me, or my client, if that makes sense. Right? You want to make it blaringly easy for them to be able to do anything. You’d like to submit their information or call from any point on the website.
Where Can I Find A Course That Teaches A Press Release Method Using Customer Reviews?
Well, no. Actually, I pretty much just developed that on my own. By the way, nobody has this training. I used a combination of things to create the process that we’re using is our front-end service for our new marketing agency right now, which is a combination of reputation videos or their David Sprague’s rep videos. We don’t have an affiliate link for it.
However, I do have the link to where you can join it because I’ve actually reached out the support on several occasions because of people PMing me asking me for it. I think it’s repvideos.com/new. I think that’s it. That’ll take you over to where you can order it. It’s only like 100 bucks a month, guys, and you get like 25 videos per month that you can create, which is insane because super easy to create these videos. They look good. To us, they’re a dime a dozen. Right, guys? To us in the internet marketing space, we see this kind of stuff all the time, so it’s not impressive.
But to local businesses, it can be impressive, these videos. It’s just a good foot in the door strategy anyways. So, what I do is a combination of the review videos, which is basically highlighting a review from Yelp, Google, Facebook, or any number of other business directories. It highlights a review. Then from there, I just submit or publish a press release announcing the receipt of the review commercial or review testimonial video from a happy customer. Right?
I can’t go into it much further than that, Robyn, because the PR course, the press release training course is where this method is detailed and much greater… It’s explained in much greater detail, excuse me. We’re going to be launching that at the end of February. Okay? At first, we’re going to be doing that over a couple of webinars. The first webinar for that is going to be on March 1st. Sometime in the middle of February, guys, we’re going to actually be talking more a lot about the press release stuff and the strategy that I’m using for that, which the review commercial stuff or using reviews is really just … It’s really just an excuse.
In my opinion, it’s just an excuse to publish another press release. Every time a client gets a new testimonial or new review submitted on any one of the review sites that we have notifications set up for, it’s just another excuse for us to be able to publish a press release. We just use the videos as kind of a way to … It’s just kind of like a one-two punch thing. All right. Good question.
Now, Robyn, again, coming out in next month, we’re going to be doing the press release for, PRs for local maps ranking. All right. I’m going to be going in great detail how to use this review method, as well as something really ninja that I’ve kind of played with as I’ve developed this press release method out that just is absolutely crushing it right now. It’s crazy. We can get into the maps pack as well as two or three organic listings within about 72 hours using a very specific method that I’m going to be teaching.
Which is Better In Terms Of For Lead Generation: Peter Drew’s Google Site Generator Or Mass Page Generator?
Okay. Randy says, “If you had to choose between Peter Drew’s Google site generator and a mass page generator for lead generation, which would you choose?” That’s a good question, Randy. It really depends, because, see, I used Peter … For lead generation, probably a mass page generator. The only reason I say that is because, as I’ve mentioned many, many, many times on Hump Day Hangouts, I use Peter Drew’s Google site generator as a link building, like a link network building tool. In other words, I use the Google sites to build links to other Google sites, really.
Usually, we get a drive stack built with a G site, with a Google site, for whatever project and then use the Google site generator to build Google sites that create a link network that links to the primary Google site within the drive stack. It’s just a way to basically use Google properties to backlink Google properties. I’m not actually using the Google site generator sites for lead gen or to rank. Sometimes they do rank, but I don’t ever plan on it. That’s just icing, that’s just gravy at that point.
We’ve had so many people come on Hump Day Hangouts over the last few months saying, “I use Google site generator and none of the sites rank,” “This is crap. It doesn’t work,” blah, blah, blah. That’s why I keep saying, “Guys, that’s not how I’ve been using. I use it as a link building tool.” If you’re going to be trying to do like lead generation with these sites, then a mass page generator would be, if you’re asking me, if I had to choose, I would choose a mass page generator for lead gen and Peter Drew’s Google’s site generator for boosting existing assets. That make sense.
Marco: If I may, and of course I’m biased, why would you go with any of those for lead generation when you can get into RYS Academy Reloaded. Get what we’re using for lead generation. Rob is here with us and he’s having some awesome success generating leads just by using G sites and not necessarily Peter Drew’s methods or mass page generator methods, but RYS Reloaded methods. Again, I’m biased. It’s my course. Rob helped me. He’s the co-creator of the course. But I would put that up against anybody’s whatever as far as generating power, as far as generating ranking, wherever you want it to go and then see what’s what. I mean, that’s just my recommendation. Go get into RYS Reloaded Academy, Rank Your Shit Reloaded Academy.
Bradley: The man has spoken. Rob, are you still on? Do you want to chat about that at all?
Rob: Yeah. I agree with Marco completely. I’ve never seen anything that can, as far as lead gen goes and being able to get power and get them quickly and then just to throw a little teaser out there as well. We’ve got some of the automation to build mass pages within Google as well inside RYS Reloaded. With the little extra webinars we’ve shared in the Facebook group we can actually start mass building them ourselves and silo them out with some automation. We’re already working on that site actually using Google properties in Google sites to set up a mass page builder out there.
Is There Any Value To Purchasing Aged Ready-Made Flippa Websites With Some Higher DA/PA Content Versus Building A Brand New Site On A New Domain?
It’s funny you mentioned that, Nigel, because, I don’t remember who I was talking to. Damn. I was talking to somebody within just the last few weeks that that’s what they’re doing. They don’t build PBNs anymore. They buy sites with traffic from Flippa or any one of the number of marketplaces, even eBay. They’re buying sites from eBay that have traffic, that they’re basically generating revenue with these sites right out of the gate, and they’re using those as PBNs.
They’re buying genuine sites with real traffic that are producing real revenue, whether it’s Adsense clicks or affiliate stuff or e-com or whatever. They’re buying these sites. They say, “Yeah. It’s an investment, but they’re automatically, already generating revenue when they buy them.” And any links that they used are like as PBNs. If they’re build links from those sites, those links are so much more powerful because the sites are valid, genuine sites that receive genuine traffic. I mean, yeah, there’s absolutely some validity to that method, if you want to do it. It’s not something I’ve done, but I thought it was a brilliant idea when he was telling me about it. If you have some funds for that kind of stuff, dude, I would absolutely try it.
Do you guys have any comment on that?
Marco: The problem with that is getting into a bidding war, right?
Bradley: That’s true.
Marco: Where it’s just not going to be cost-effective. You’re better off going and building your own and then starting from scratch. But if you could get it at the right price, yeah, you’re ahead of the game.
Rob: Yeah, definitely. I would say do your due diligence. There’s some really good stuff out there. I’ll try to find the link. I mean, it’s kind of insider from the people who run this. I think it was from the Empire Flippers, but they had a really good article couple years back on how to do due diligence on buying sites like this. If that’s the way you want to go, I mean, it makes sense that actually just kind of set off a couple ideas in my head. I think it’s an interesting idea and it makes sense, too.
Of course, probably I would move in this direction. What do you guys think about that? If I was going to go out now and do something and I needed something now as opposed to building the site up over time, that’s definitely a direction I would look at.
Can You Use Multiple RYS Stacks On Different Pages Of A Domain?
Marco: Yeah. That’s a great question, because we talked about it yesterday when we dueled with Jeffrey Smith in the war room. We did a webinar for his guys. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do this. The way I would do it is I would keep the RYS stack, the additional one part of the main stack, build a page on the G site that targets the page that you want to push up for that keyword. You should do it at either the top level, you can do a top level category or you could push a post where it’s going to go from the bottom up or you’re going to feed the top down. Whichever way you want to do it, if you’re just going to add iframes, so that you can carry all that relevance. There’s a million different ways that this can be done. But the main thing about this is that you want to power up your main stack with additional folders.
How much is too much? We have yet to see anything inside drive being too much. As long as you’re carrying relevance over to your Google My Business listing over to your money site to that page, or from the stack adding the links to that page that … Say, it’s stuck on page two and it just won’t budge, hitting it with a drive stack, whether you hit supporting post, whether you hit the top of the silo, I mean, we call it the spiderweb silo for a reason, right? You could do basically anything you want with it and the relevance will carry over. So, totally, I don’t see any risk in that.
Bradley: Agreed. The reason I’m over in pocket for a second, guys, is I’m looking for … Where the hell is the search function? There it is. I’m looking for something. Give me one moment to answer the next question.
Marco: Yeah. I think Rob has a comment on this.
Bradley: Please, Rob.
Rob: I could jump in while you’re searching there. As far as can you use multiple RYS stacks and if too much, it’s kind of asking how long is a piece of string. Right? I mean, I think the question becomes how little can you do to get your results? I wouldn’t suggest go out there and build 40 stacks for every single page on your site because it’s just overkill. But we’ve tested and, like Marco was saying, you can build up your main stack by putting in different folders and then build stacks to individual pages and silo pages on your site till you get to the point where it’s almost mirroring your site.
Bradley: Yeah. We call that theme-mirroring.
Rob: Yeah. You can just do the same thing just inside Google. I mean, the same type of ideas that apply outside can also apply inside the Google properties as well. In theme mirror, you can silo, you can interlink. You can do the same things. I think just because sometimes we think we’re inside the belly of the beast that it’s a little different. The part that’s different is you can get away with more with the part that’s different.
Is It Important To Assign A Unique Description When Creating The JASON-LD Schema For Each Page Of A Website?
Bradley: Yeah. Agreed. All right, next question. M.J. says “When creating the JSON-LD schema for each page of a website, the “Description” should be unique for that page?” Well, I would say, yeah. I mean, here’s the thing, M.J., I don’t do specific JSON-LD for each page of a website. There are certain pages that I will markup, but I don’t do a separate one for each page. I don’t know why you would do that, maybe e-commerce or something, I don’t know. I’m going to get some opinions here in just a moment.
What I mean by I might have different JSON-LD markup for different pages is if, for example, I have a multi-location site and so each location page will have its own local business markup, and then maybe there’s an organization markup on, not an individual location page, but locations, plural, page where it shows all locations. In fact, I just went on the mastermind, the February newsletter is specifically about a method that I’ve been using for all my multi-location sites that works really, really well. Once again, it uses a Google site. It’s just a great way to boost stuff.
That said, as far as … If you have the description of a website, for example, for, again I’m going to use a local business markup, and it’s the and you have that JSON-LD inserted into the head, the head section, the HTML header of the site and its site-wide, then that description is going to be the same across every page, unless you specifically have a page on your site that you …
Here’s an example, guys. There’s a header and footer plug-in called SOGO Add Scripts or something like that, header and footer or whatever. It’s a plugin that I typically use for this kind of stuff, unless I’m using tag manager. But if I’m just doing it via WordPress, then I’ll do the header footer plug-in. I’ll put the JSON-LD markup in the global header settings, but then on each individual page or post, because of that plug-in, there’s a box that you can check to disable global script, header script. Then, you can inject a specific page script or post script for that matter into that page.
That’s typically what I’ll do for local businesses or business sites that have multiple locations. So that I’ll have a global JSON-LD header, which will be their organization markup, which will be site wide. If the global … excuse me, the organization headquarters is also a local business, then it will have a combination of the organization plus the local business markup in the header site-wide, but then the individual location pages will have their own specific schema. Right? You have to remove the global header script before you can inject the other one. Or else you have double and it kind of ambiguates the data.
Again, I would think description would be either site-wide or if you’re going to be doing on page by page basis, I would, I would make the description more specific to what that page is about. I mean, that’s the whole reason we mark stuff up with structured data, guys, is to explain to machine learning exactly what the page is about. So adding a unique description would be beneficial.
What do you guys think?
Marco: Rob’s the schema guy so I’ll defer to him.
Rob: Yeah. I mean, when you’re putting a schema on there the whole point of the description is to tell exactly what that page is about. Google sees each page as different. I know it’s all builds up to the main site. Currently, we’re kind of sloppy with schema across the web, if you look at sites. They kind of just mark absolutely everything up with the exact same schema, which that’d be like trying to put the exact same H1 tag on every single page on your site. If you think about it in that manner because we understand that a little bit better.
You can tell Google exactly what the page is about. You can tell it what it relates to. You can tell it whether it’s local business organization, whether it’s services, I mean, so you can get really deep. I would say you definitely want to try to be unique for the pages because then you’re feeding that uniqueness, you’re feeding the bot in schema, as well as what’s on your page.
Bradley: Yeah. Just the other side of this, M.J., I was doing some research the other day for it because the organization markup, when you have multiple locations, there is no consensus, unanimous consensus, out there as to how organization markup with multiple locations. I know that’s not what you’re asking about specifically, but there’s no set way or rule of thumb that anybody can point me to on how you should mark that shit up and look the correct way.
I was doing some research again the other day because it changes. Right? The best practice advice changes on that. I ran across this article by SEMrush. This is schema markup for company and corporations. The reason why I pulled this up is specifically because this was the best description I had read thus far about what the @type is in the structured data.
The @type is something that’s relatively newer. Ryan Rodman was the one who pointed that out to us. I wasn’t even aware of it. But this explains what the @type is used for and how to optimize that the best. I found this to be incredibly logical. Again, I don’t know that this is law, that this is the be-all end-all of what the best practices, but I really thought that was the best description of what the @type was that I had read so far in the last few years.
I’m actually using this. I’m setting up basically a sub-domain page. Just an HTML page on a sub-domain for my sites and I’m using that sub-domain as the @type designation. Like the URL, the link that you put as the @type. All that is an HTML page with basically name, address, phone number, an embedded map, It’s basically, it’s just a static page that lists all the company information. It’s like a resource page. That’s what I was looking for, the resource page.
On a corporate domain or local business domain, I just add a sub-domain and then upload an HTML file, which is just a very simple HTML file that lists all the company information, links like … You can mark that up with JSON-LD, guys, at least your same as links and all that kind of stuff and upload just an HTML file to your server on a sub-domain and use that as your @type URL. Basically, it’s just like a resource is telling, “Hey, go reference all the data over here and it will validate the data on the website,” if that makes sense.
I’m going to drop this link on the page for you to bookmark it. I think it’s a great article. We’re almost out of time guys, unfortunately. Holy shit. Was that Wayne? Yeah, of course, it is. Awesome. Good question, M.J.
“Should the main URL be such as company.com or should it be for that specific page.” With the website URL, if you’re marking up each individual page, that’s a good question, I wouldn’t know, I’m not 100% sure on the answer on that either. The @type, I just mentioned, as far as the website URL, if it’s individual page markup, what do you think, Rob? Should it be the individual page so it’s referencing itself or should it be referencing the home, the root domain?
Rob: Could you repeat that again? I was looking at your link and I didn’t hear the whole question.
Bradley: He says, “Also, the website URL, should that be the main URL, such as company.com or should it be for that specific page, company.com/unique page? So, if you have page specific markup, should the website designation within the mark-up be the page itself? Should it point to it, reference itself or should it reference the root domain?
Rob: Well, I mean, I’d have to look to dig and see, I mean, page specific markup-
Bradley: What the use case is?
Rob: Yeah, what you’re trying to call out. If the page is about a service, then you would say that the website for that service on that page you point to the service website. If you’re talking about a service and then you’re saying that’s being provided by X business, then the website of that business would be the business of the main website. It’s all kind of how you write it up. I hate to give … I mean, it’s a vague answer, but kind of how you said as well, there’s no clear-cut way on how to do a lot of this. I’m going to drop a link on here. Actually, it’s the Developer’s Guide actually on Google that tells you how to do schema.
Bradley: Yeah.
Rob: There’s a lot of activity on here and they keep adding more and more. I’ll drop a link to this , the kind of introduction to it. Then over on the left side, you can start to see there’s a piece called Feature Guides, which are the ones that they keep adding to. There was only a few of there to begin with and now it keeps getting bigger and bigger where it’s Google giving you exactly how to markup for different things that they’re seeing.
Bradley: Yeah, that’s the Google developers for a schema markup?
Rob: Yeah.
Bradley: Okay. You’re going to drop it on the page, right?
Rob: Yeah. I’m going to try to you, yeah, once I find it. I’ve got a copy now, I just got to find which tab has the page open. But, yeah, I’ll drop it in there.
Bradley: This is it, right? “Introduction to Schema Markup?”
Rob: Yeah. I just dropped them on the page.
Bradley: Yeah.
Rob: If you look on the left there.
Bradley: Yeah.
Rob: You’ll see where it says …
Bradley: Feature guides, right here.
Rob: Yeah. The feature guides. There’s all the different corporate contacts, logo, socials, articles. Whether a page, are you talking about an article, are you talking about a book on a page, are you talking about an event, are you talking about a job posting, a local business? I mean, it kind of depends on what your main theme of that page is as to how you mark up the rest of the page.
Bradley: Yeah.
Rob: Every single page isn’t about the main company, it’s about the service that that page describes.
What Are Some Best Practices In Using IFTTT For A Multilingual Site?
I would do two branded, one in one language and one on the other. The only thing is if you’re ordering from us, you can only order the one in English because we don’t do them in any other way. You’d have to build the other one yourself or order it and then once you got it back you’d have to go in and update it with content in your specific language.
That’s something else you could do to save at least the time of having you do all the setup. You get all the logins and everything. I would recommend you still do that. You could go in and have … In fact, when you place the order you could state “I’m going to make this particular network a foreign language network.” So if you guys can just build it and either provide them with the seed content that they’ll post when they build it or ask that they don’t post seed content and get and do it yourself. The only problem with that is if you don’t post seed content, a lot of the times when you do go to post, it can lock certain web to accounts.
That’s part of the reason why we try to post seed content when we build them. But that might be something that you could reach out to support at SERP space and basically mention it to them and say, “Look, I would like to build a foreign language syndication network. I know we don’t do that specifically, but if I provided you with one foreign language article from WordPress, one from Blogger, and one from Tumblr to be added as seed content, would you do it?” I’m pretty sure we’d be able to accommodate that. Okay. Yeah. You could have both branded. Right? They could both be branded, just one in English and one in the other language, French or whatever.
Will An Aged Domain With Good Domain Authority And Trust Flow Rank Better If You Link It To A Google Asset Than Linking It To A Self-Hosted Site?
That’s a beautiful thing, guys, in case you didn’t just catch what I said. You can map your own custom domain to a Google site to where your domain resolves to the Google site. It’s like a mass redirect. In other words, your domain shows in the address bar even though it’s displaying the Google site. Yet the Google site will also show if you visit the Google site URL. But if you check the source code, it’s canonicalized to your domain, which means you can spam the shit out of the Google site and it theoretically will boost your domain metrics, but people won’t be able to see it if they’re searching your backlink profile on your domain, if that makes sense.
Although I noticed recently that Majestic is showing canonicals now as backlinks. Have you guys seen that? I don’t know if you all knew that, but Majestic is showing canonicals now in the backlink analysis.
Marco: No, I had not seen that.
Bradley: Yeah. When I saw that I was like, shit, because I literally just within the last week or so I was doing some research on a property and it was one of my own and I saw the canonicals that I had set up in the backlink analysis of Majestic. I was like, “Oh man, there goes my masking.”
I don’t know. Marco or Rob, have either of you tested that? Would it be better to use a domain with authority that’s mapped or just regular old domain?
Marco: I haven’t tested it. I mean, I stopped buying domains with metrics. I don’t bother with it because we do everything from driving G sites. That’s our playground.
Is It Normal For A Lead Gen Blog Syndicated To An IFTTT Network To Have Erratic Rankings?
Yes, Ralph. That is actually absolutely normal because, first of all, it’s a new site so your site’s kind of in probationary period. Typically, with new sites new content will rank very quickly, will rank fairly well, very quickly but then it kind of gets like demoted. It’s just the natural Google dance, especially while you’re on probation with your site being as young as it is. As it begins to mature and you begin to establish a topical relevancy, a topical theme and you’re consistent, those initial positionings when you publish will become more consistent and, again, with time and persistence, you should see a nice consistent increase in your rank positioning over time. Okay. But, yes, originally when you first set up something like that it is very volatile. It will do a lot of dancing, a lot of wild swings both positive and negative.
All right. I’m going to answer the last one from Donald before we wrap it up, guys. By the way, Don, how are you doing, buddy? I have not been doing as many emails as I would like to on the mindset series. I apologize. I’m still trying to get settled in my new routine with the coaching CrossFit every day. Just bear with me. I will get back and do more of a regular routine. It’s just I’m trying to work into it.
Has Anyone Tried Using The IFTTT System On An Ebay Store?
“Has anyone tried using the IFTTT system on an eBay store? Would it be about the same as doing it with an eCommerce store?” I imagine so. As I mentioned before, I don’t do any e-commerce stuff or eBay stuff, which is funny there’s some douchebag in YouTube left a comment the other day and say, “You do a SEO and don’t do e-com? Ha ha ha.” I don’t know what that was supposed to mean. I just thought it was funny. No, I don’t do any e-com. I can’t imagine it being any different though. If you have eBay as a feed, I don’t see why it couldn’t be used. Even if it doesn’t, you could probably do it manually somehow.
I know none of us really do e-com stuff. Does anybody have experience with doing eBay stores?
Rob: No, I don’t at all. But if it’s the same as anywhere else, like if you can set up maybe, I don’t know, if you get an RSS feed or if you can set up on a sub-domain, that just probably what you want to do, unless there’s something powerful about eBay itself, which I highly doubt. I mean, besides that.
Bradley: The domain itself? Yeah. Don, I can’t help you more than that. It’s just e-commerce is not my thing. I just never had any desire to do it either.
All right, guys. Well, thanks for everybody being here. Sorry we didn’t get to all the questions. We got the most of them though. Pretty good.
We do have mastermind tomorrow and I’ve got some pretty cool updates for the first local project for the CrossFit gym. We’re going to be going over that tomorrow guys. Be there or be square. If you haven’t joined the mastermind yet, do it.
Thanks, Marco, thanks, Adam, thanks, Rob, for being here.
Ever since Google rolled out Questions and Answers in mid-2017, I’ve been trying to get a sense of its reception by consumers and brands. Initially restricted to Android Google Maps, this fascinating feature which enables local business owners and the public to answer consumer questions made it to desktop displays this past December, adding yet another data layer to knowledge panels and local finders.
As someone who has worked in Q&A forums for the majority of my digital marketing life, I took an immediate shine to the idea of Google Questions and Answers. Here’s a chance, I thought, for consumers and brands to take meaningful communication to a whole new level, exchanging requests, advice, and help so effortlessly. Here’s an opportunity for businesses to place answers to FAQs right upfront in the SERPs, while also capturing new data about consumer needs and desires. So cool!
But, so far, we seem to be getting off to a slow start. According to a recent, wide-scale GetFiveStars study, 25% of businesses now have questions waiting for them. I decided to hone in on San Francisco and look at 20 busy industries in that city to find out not just how many questions were being asked, but also how many answers were being given, and who was doing the answering. I broke down responders into three groups: Local Guides (LGs), random users (RUs), and owners (Os). I looked at the top 10 businesses ranking in the local finder for each industry:
Industry
Number of Questions
Number of Answers
LGs
RUs
Os
Dentists
1
0
0
0
0
Plumbers
2
0
-
-
-
Chiropractors
0
-
-
-
-
Mexican Restaurants
10
23
22
1
-
Italian Restaurants
15
20
19
1
-
Chinese Restaurants
16
53
49
4
-
Car Dealers
4
5
3
2
-
Supermarkets
7
27
24
3
-
Clothing Stores
4
1
1
-
-
Florists
1
0
-
-
-
Hotels
44
142
114
28
-
Real Estate Agencies
0
-
-
-
-
General Contractors
1
0
-
-
-
Cell Phone Stores
14
3
3
-
-
Yoga Studios
1
0
-
-
-
Banks
1
0
-
-
-
Carpet Cleaning
0
-
-
-
-
Hair Salons
1
0
-
-
-
Locksmiths
1
0
-
-
-
Jewelry Stores
0
-
-
-
-
Takeaways from the case study
Here are some patterns and oddities I noticed from looking at 123 questions and 274 answers:
There are more than twice as many answers as questions. While many questions received no answers, others received five, ten, or more.
The Owners column is completely blank. The local businesses I looked at in San Francisco are investing zero effort in answering Google Questions and Answers.
Unfortunately, what I’m seeing in Google Questions and Answers is that incentivizing replies is leading to a knowledge base of questionable quality. How helpful is it when a consumer asks a hotel if they have in-room hair dryers and 10 local guides jump on the bandwagon with “yep”? Worse yet, I saw quite a few local guides replying “I don’t know,” “maybe,” and even “you should call the business and ask.” Here and there, I saw genuinely helpful answers from the Local Guides, but my overall impression didn’t leave me feeling like I’d stumbled upon a new Google resource of matchless expertise.
Some members of the public seem to be confused about the use of this feature. I noticed people using the answer portion to thank people who replied to their query, rather than simply using the thumbs up widget.
Additionally, I saw people leaving reviews/statements, instead of questions: And with a touch of exasperated irony: And to rant:
Some industries are clearly generating far more questions than others. Given how people love to talk about hotels and restaurants, I wasn’t surprised to see them topping the charts in sheer volume of questions and answers. What did surprise me was not seeing more questions being asked of businesses like yoga studios, florists, and hair salons; before I actually did the searches, I might have guessed that pleasant, “chatty” places like these would be receiving lots of queries.
Big brands everywhere are leaving Google Questions and Answers unanswered
I chose San Francisco for my case study because of its general reputation for being hip to new tech, but just in case my limited focus was presenting a false picture of how local businesses are managing this feature, I did some random searches for big brands around the state and around the country.
But the hands-down winner for a single location lacking official answers is Google in Mountain View. 103 questions as of my lookup and nary an owner answer in sight. Alphabet might want to consider setting a more inspiring example with their own product… unless I’m misunderstanding their vision of how Google Questions and Answers is destined to be used.
Just what is the vision for Google Questions and Answers, I wonder?
As I said at the beginning of this post, it’s early days yet to predict ultimate outcomes. Yet, the current lay of the land for this feature has left me with more questions than answers:
Does Google actually intend questions to be answered by brands, or by the public? From what I’ve seen, owners are largely unaware of or choosing to ignore this feature many months post-launch. As of writing this, businesses are only alerted about incoming questions if they open the Google Maps app on an Android phone or tablet. There is no desktop GMB dashboard section for the feature. It’s not a recipe for wide adoption. Google has always been a fan of a crowdsourcing approach to their data, so they may not be concerned, but that doesn’t mean your business shouldn’t be.
What are the real-time expectations for this feature? I see many users asking questions that needed fast answers, like “are you open now?” while others might support lengthier response times, as in, “I’m planning a trip and want to know what I can walk to from your hotel.” For time-sensitive queries, how does Questions and Answers fit in with Google’s actual chat feature, Google Messaging, also rolled out last summer? Does Google envision different use cases for both features? I wonder if one of the two products will win out over time, while the other gets sunsetted.
What are the real, current risks to brands of non-management? I applauded Mike Blumenthal’s smart suggestion of companies proactively populating the feature with known FAQs and providing expert answers, and I can also see the obvious potential for reputation damage if rants or spam are ignored. That being said, my limited exploration of San Francisco has left me wondering just how many people (companies or consumers) are actually paying attention in most industries. Google Knowledge Panels and the Local Finder pop-ups are nearing an information bloat point. Do you want to book something, look at reviews, live chat, see menus, find deals, get driving directions, make a call? Websites are built with multiple pages to cover all of these possible actions. Sticking them all in a 1” box may not equal the best UX I’ve ever seen, if discovery of features is our goal.
What is the motivation for consumers to use the product? Personally, I’d be more inclined to just pick up the phone to ask any question to which I need a fast answer. I don’t have the confidence that if I queried Whole Foods in the AM as to whether they’ve gotten in organic avocados from California, there’d be a knowledge panel answer in time for my lunch. Further, some of the questions I’ve asked have received useless answers from the public, which seems like a waste of time for all parties. Maybe if the feature picks up momentum, this will change.
Will increasing rates of questions = increasing rates of business responses? According to the GetFiveStars study linked to above, total numbers of questions for the 1700 locations they investigated nearly doubled between November–December of 2017. From my microscopic view of San Francisco, it doesn’t appear to me that the doubling effect also happened for owner answers. Time will tell, but for now, what I’m looking for is question volume reaching such a boiling point that owners feel obligated to jump into management, as they have with reviews. We’re not there yet, but if this feature is a Google keeper, we could get there.
So what should you be doing about Google Questions and Answers?
I’m a fan of early adoption where it makes sense. Speculatively, having an active Questions and Answers presence could end up as a ranking signal. We’ve already seen it theorized that use of another Google asset, Google Posts, may impact local pack rankings. Unquestionably, leaving it up to the public to answer questions about your business with varying degrees of accuracy carries the risk of losing leads and muddying your online presence to the detriment of reputation. If a customer asks if your location has wheelchair access and an unmotivated third party says “I don’t know,” when, in fact, your business is fully ADA-compliant, your lack of an answer becomes negative customer service. Because of this, ignoring the feature isn’t really an option. And, while I wouldn’t prioritize management of Questions and Answers over traditional Google-based reviews at this point, I would suggest:
Do a branded search today and look at your knowledge panel to see if you’ve received any questions. If so, answer them in your best style, as helpfully as possible
Spend half an hour this week translating your company’s 5 most common FAQs into Google Questions and Answers queries and then answering them. Be sure you’re logged into your company’s Google account when you reply, so that your message will be officially stamped with the word “owner.” Whether you proactively post your FAQs while logged into your business’ account is up to you. I think it’s more transparent to do so.
If you’re finding this part of your Knowledge Panel isn’t getting any questions, checking it once a week is likely going to be enough for the present.
If you happen to be marketing a business that is seeing some good Questions and Answers activity, and you have the bandwidth, I’d add checking this to the daily social media rounds you make for the purpose of reputation management. I would predict that if Google determines this feature is a keeper, they’ll eventually start sending email alerts when new queries come in, as they’re now doing with reviews, which should make things easier and minimize the risk of losing a customer with an immediate need. Need to go pro on management right now due to question volume? GetFiveStars just launched an incredibly useful Google Q&A monitoring feature, included in some of their ORM software packages. Looks like a winner!
Do be on the lookout for spam inquiries and responses, and report them if they arise.
If you’re totally new to Google Questions and Answers, this simple infographic will get you going in a flash:
For further tips on using Google Questions and Answers like a pro, I recommend following GetFiveStars’ 3-part series on this topic.
My questions, your answers
My case study is small. Can you help expand our industry’s knowledge base by answering a few questions in the comments to add to the picture of the current rate of adoption/usefulness of Google’s Questions and Answers? Please, let me know:
Have you asked a question using this feature?
Did you receive an answer and was it helpful?
Who answered? The business, a random user, a Local Guide?
Have you come across any examples of business owners doing a good job answering questions?
What are your thoughts on Google Questions and Answers? Is it a winner? Worth your time? Any tips?
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In the 166th episode of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked about the best way to index one million pages per day.
The exact question was:
I want to index about 1.000.000 Pages a day. (T1, 2, 3)
So I need a very scalable solution… how would you do this?
Using IFTTT + Twitter… if yes, how often can I post a tweet so that my account won’t be shut down.. should I create several accounts and spread my posts on them?
Contrary to popular belief, the top ranking pages aren't always the best targets for your link building efforts. There are good reasons to chase those links, sure, but there are also drawbacks — as well as some hidden alternatives you may not have considered trying. This Whiteboard Friday delves into the pros and cons of targeting high-ranking sites for links and why you should consider a link intersect strategy, targeting sites that rank for broader topics, and earning links from publications ranking beyond page one of the SERPs.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about why it may not actually pay to get links expressly or exclusively from the websites and pages that are ranking highly for your keywords. There's a bunch of reasons why behind this. There's a corollary to it, which is high-ranking websites may not always be the best link targets.
Are these the *best* links you can get to rank for "target keyword(s)"?
So okay, let's start with this question of when you're trying to rank for a target keyword, let's say you're trying to rank for "stylish sofas." You've decided you want to replace your couch, and you want something stylish. So you search for "stylish sofas." The results that come up, we're not talking about the paid results. That would be a mistake to try and get links from those. They're pretty commercially focused. They probably don't want to link to you, and I'm not sure it's all that valuable, necessarily, at least from an SEO perspective. But are these links, the ones that rank in the organic results top five, are they necessarily the best links you could possibly get? There are some reasons for and some reasons against.
In favor:
Let's talk about in favor of why these are good link targets. The first one is pretty simple and pretty obvious.
A. These pages get lots of real visitors interested in this topic who may click on/visit your site (if it's linked-to here)
These pages get a lot of search volume, get a lot of search visits from this query. If you're somewhere in this page, if my website is linked to here, that's actually a really nice thing. Maybe someone will click on the top result and then they'll find me and they'll click on it and they'll go to my page instead. That would be great. So if it's linked to there, you could get direct traffic from those pages, so nice link to have.
B. Google has put some trust/indication of authority in these pages and sites
Google has put some sort of trust and a signal of authority for this keyword by ranking it here. It's saying, "Hey, you know what? This top result and these top results are all highly relevant and authoritative for this particular query."
So those are absolutely true things, but I think they bias SEOs and link builders to think in terms of, oh, if I want to rank well for this, these are the only things I should be looking at or the first things I should be looking at or the best places to get links from.
Against:
Here's why that's not necessarily the case, so some points against.
A. Ranking is not actually an explicit signal from Google that these are the best quality links
By putting a page here, in the top of the results, Google is saying, "We, Google, believe that this page will do a great job of solving the searcher's query," not, "We, Google, know that if you get a link from here, you have a very good chance to rank for this keyword." That's not explicitly or implicitly said. It's not an implication. Google has never stated that publicly. I don't think it's necessarily the smartest thing to do in their ranking algorithm to have this recursive system that looks at who that already ranks is linking to someone else and replace them. That would be poor for Google's own user experience for a bunch of reasons.
B. Google and searchers expect that these pages that rank here are going to solve the searcher's query themselves (not force another click)
Not they're going to link to something that's going to solve the searcher's query, at least certainly not necessarily, and definitely that they're not going to force you to make another click. Google wants to rank pages here that solve the searcher's problem directly. So saying, "Oh, well, I don't think they do that and maybe they should link to me to solve this aspect of the problem," this is a spurious connection.
C. Of course, earning links from these pages, incredibly difficult
These people, especially if they're ranking for a commercial, non-branded query, like "stylish sofas," they really, really don't want to link to one of their competitors, to someone who's trying to actively outrank them. That would be pretty challenging.
I recognize that many times when link builders go about this, they look at, okay, this page is ranking. Let me see if I can find another page from this domain from which I can get a link. That's not terrible logic. That's a totally reasonable way to go about link building. But whether it's the best or the only one is what I'm going to challenge here. I don't think it is necessarily the best or only way that you should go about doing your link building for all these reasons we've just talked about.
Alternatively, links like these may be more achievable and provide more ranking value:
Now, what are the alternatives? You might be asking yourself, "Well, Rand, show me where should I be doing this if not from here?" I'm going to present a few alternatives. There's obviously an infinite number of link building tactics you could pursue, but I think some of the smarter ones would be to think about some alternatives like...
1. Sites and pages that link to multiple high-ranking targets
For example, if one and three and four are all linked to by SiteA.com, SiteA.com seems to carry, not necessarily for sure, it could be correlation and not causation, but it's certainly worth looking at as to whether Site A is relevant and provides high-quality links and could conceptually link to you and whether that's a good resource. I think that link intersect concept is a really good one to start with. In fact, I think, from a logic perspective, it makes more sense that sites and pages that tend to link to these top results probably provide more potential power to your ranking authority than just the pages that are already ranking.
2. Sites and pages that rank well for what I'd call broader keywords/broader topics related to the space you're in
So if it's "stylish sofas," you might look at keywords like, well, who's ranking for "interior design" or "interior design magazines" or "interior design events" or perhaps it's "decoration ideas." If I can find the people who are ranking for those sorts of things, that probably is going to say those are the types of places that will link out to other resources that have more specific targeting, like targeting "stylish sofas," and probably provide a lot of value there.
3. Influential publications and resources in the topic space that may not be doing good keyword targeting or SEO
I like going and trying to find influential publications and resources, that are in the topic space, that might not actually be doing good keyword targeting or good SEO, which means it's hard to use Google to find them. You may find them ranking on page two, page three, or page four. You may need to do some other types of research, like look on Instagram and see what companies or what publications are using these hashtags and have lots of followers in this interior design or decoration or furniture space.
From there, that will lead you to influential publications in the space that maybe have lots of readership, lots of engagement on social channels or on their website, but haven't done a particularly great job in Google. Those influential publications, I think Google is doing a very good job of identifying, "Hey, wait a minute. Here's a bunch of publications that are in important in space X and they are all linking to this website, which is doing a good job of targeting these keywords. So, therefore, that's who we should potentially rank."
So hopefully, this Whiteboard Friday will help you to expand your link building opportunities and also to recognize why the top ranking pages might not always be and certainly aren't necessarily the best link targets.
Thanks everyone. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
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And with a touch of exasperated irony: 
And to rant: 
