On this episode we talk about how to use videos to get more clients and more sales for your local business.
Resources mentioned on the episode:
– Video Powerhouse Training Series: http://ift.tt/2iEnDQ2
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Music: Gramatik – The Anthem
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In episode 111 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked for recommendations on how to get your business listed in Google.
The exact question was:
any ideas on how I can get my google business listed have attempted several times and I am on my last chance to get approved for a local business I work my office out of my home and am listed in all the local site for yahoo,bing and apple but not google any thoughts
Posted by MiriamEllis
When America’s first star TV chef, Julia Child, demonstrated the use of a wire whisk on her 1960’s cooking show, the city of Pittsburgh sold out of them. Pennsylvanians may well have owned a few of these implements prior to the show’s air date, but probably didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about them. After the show, however, wire whisks were on everyone’s mind and they simply had to have one. Call it a retro micro-moment, and imagine consumers jamming the lines of rotary phones or hoofing it around town in quest of this gleaming gadget … then zoom up to the present and see us all on our mobile devices.
I like this anecdote from the pages of culinary history because it encapsulates all four of Google’s stated core micro-moments:
I want to know - Consumers were watching a local broadcast of this show in Pittsburgh because they wanted to know how to make an omelet.
I want to go - Consumers then scoured the city in search of the proper whisk.
I want to buy - Consumers then purchased the implement at a chosen retailer.
I want to do - And finally, consumers either referred to the notes they had taken during the show (no DVRs back then) or might have turned to Julia Child’s cookbook to actually beat up their first-ever omelet.
Not only does the wire whisk story foreshadow the modern micro-moment, it also provides a roadmap for tying each of the 4 stages to local SEO via current technology. I’ve seen other bloggers pointing to the ‘I want to go’ phase as inherently local, but in this post, I want to demonstrate how your local business can decisively claim all four of these micro-moments as your own, and claim the desirable transactions resulting thereby!
Google whisked up some excitement of their own with the publication of Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile. Some of the statistics in the piece are stunning:
Google defines micro-moments as “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends,” and goes on to identify mobile as the great facilitator of all this activity. It’s simple to think of micro-moments as a series of points in time that culminate in a consumer arriving at a transactional decision. For local business owners and their marketers, the goal is to ‘be there’ for the consumer at each of these critical points with the resources you have developed on the web.
Let’s reverse-engineer the famous tale of the wire whisk and put it into a modern technological context, demonstrating how a hypothetical cooking supply store in Pittsburgh, PA could become a major micro-moments winner in 2017.
I want to be sure to preface this with one very important proviso about the order in which micro-moments happen: it varies.
For example, a consumer might decide she wants to patch cracks in her ceiling so she watches a video on YouTube demoing this >>> looks up the name of the putty the YouTube personality was using >>> looks up where to buy that putty locally >>> buys it. Or, the consumer could already be inside a home improvement store, see putty, realize she’d like to patch cracks, then look up reviews of various putty brands, look at a video to see how difficult the task is, and finally, purchase.
There is no set order in which micro-moments occur, and though there may be patterns specific to auto body shops or insurance firms, the idea is to be present at every possible moment in time so that the consumer is assisted, regardless of the order in which they discover and act. What I’m presenting here is just one possible path.
Our consumer is a 30-year-old man named Walter who loves the fluffy omelets served at a fancy bistro in Pittsburgh. One morning while at the restaurant, Walter asks himself,
“I wonder why I can’t make omelets as fluffy as these at home. I’m not a bad cook. There must be some secret to it. Hey — I challenge myself to find out what that secret is!”
While walking back to his car, Walter pulls out his smartphone and begins his micro-moment journey with his I-want-to-know query: how to make a fluffier omelet.
Across town, Patricia, the owner of a franchise location of Soup’s On Cooking Supply has anticipated Walter’s defining moment because she has been studying her website analytics, studying question research tools like Answer The Public, watching Google Trends, and looking at Q&A sites like this one where people are already searching for answers to the secret of fluffy omelets. She also has her staff actively cataloging common in-store questions. The data gathered has convinced her to make these efforts:
Walking down the street, Walter discovers and watches the video on YouTube. He notices the Soup’s On Cooking Supply branding on the video, even though there was no hard-sell in its content — just really good tips for omelet fluffiness.
“Soup’s On near me,” Walter asks his mobile phone, not 100% sure this chain has an outlet in Pittsburgh. He’s having his I-Want-To-Go moment.
Again, Patricia has anticipated this need and prevented customer loss by:
Walter keys the ignition.
Walter arrives safely at the retail location. You’d think he might put his phone away, but being like 87% of millennials, he keeps it at his side day and night and, like 91% of his compadres, he turns it on mid-task. The store clerk has shown him where the wire whisks and pans are stocked, but Walter is not convinced that he can trust what the video claimed about their quality. He’d like to see a comparison.
Fortunately, Patricia is a Moz Whiteboard Friday fan and took Rand’s advice about comprehensive content and 10x content to heart. Her website’s product comparison charts go to great lengths, weighing USA-made kitchen products against German ones, Lodgeware vs. Le Creuset, in terms of price, performance for specific cooking tasks, and quality. They’re ranking very well.
Walter is feeling more informed now, while being kept inside of the company’s own website, but the I-Want-To-Buy micro-moment is cemented when he sees:
The next day, Walter is ready to make his first fluffier omelet. Because he’s already been exposed to Patricia’s article on the Soup’s On Cooking Supply website, he can easily return to it now to re-watch the video and follow the recipe provided. Even in the I-want-to-do phase, Walter is being assisted by the brand, and this multi-part experience he’s now had with the company should go far towards cementing it in his memory as a go-to resource for all of his future culinary needs.
It would be excellent if the website’s page on fluffy omelets also challenged Walter to use his new whisk for creating other dishes — perhaps soufflés (for which he’ll need a ceramic ramekin) or chantilly cream (a nice glass bowl set over ice water helps). Walter may find himself wanting to do all kinds of new things, and he now knows exactly where he can find helpful tutorials and purchase the necessary equipment.
As we’ve seen, it’s completely possible for a local business to own all four of Google’s attested micro-moments. What I can’t cover with a single scenario is all of the variables that might apply to a given geography or industry, but I do want to at least make mention of these three points that should be applicable to most local businesses:
The origins of both I-want-to-do and I-want-to-know moments are incredibly varied. A consumer need can arise from something really practical, as in, it’s winter again and I need to buy snow tires. Or, there can be public/cultural happenings (like Julia Child’s cooking program) to which consumers’ ultimate transactions can be directly traced. To discover the sparks that ignite your specific customers’ micro-moments fires, I recommend delving further into the topic of barnacle local SEO — the process of latching onto existing influences in your community in order to speak to existing wishes and needs.
Google states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately navigate away from any website or app that doesn’t satisfy them. 70% of these cite slow loading and 67% cite too many steps to reach information or purchase as reasons for dissatisfaction. On November 4, 2016, Google announced its major shift toward mobile-first indexing, signaling to all website publishers that Google sees mobile, rather than desktop, as the primary platform now.
Google’s statistics and policies make it irrefutable that every competitive local business which hasn’t yet done so must now devote appropriate funds to creating the best possible mobile user experience. Failure to do so risks reputation, rankings, and revenue.
Though my story of Walter touches briefly on the resources Patricia had built for his in-store experience, I didn’t delve into the skyrocketing technology constantly being pioneered around this micro-moment phase. This would include beacons, though they have so far failed to live up to earlier hype in some ways. It could involve the development of in-store apps. And, at the highest echelons of commerce, it could include kiosks, augmented, and virtual reality.
KFC may strive to master I-want-to-buy moments with chicken-serving robots, Amazon Go may see micro-moments in checkout-free shopping, and Google Home’s giant, listening ear may be turning whole lives into a series of documented micro-moments, but what makes sense for your local business?
The answer to this is going to be dictated by the competitiveness of your industry and the needs of your consumer base. Does a rural, independently owned hardware store really need a 6-foot-high in-store touch screen enabling customers to virtually paint their houses? Probably not, but a well-written comparison of non-toxic paint brands the shop carries and why they’re desirable for health reasons could transform a small town’s decorating habits. Meanwhile, in more competitive markets, each local brand would be wise to invest in new technology only where it really makes proven sense, and not just because it’s the next big thing.
Our industry loves new technology to a degree that can verge on the overwhelming for striving local business owners, and while it can genuinely be a bit daunting to sink your teeth into all of the variables of winning the micro-moment journey, take heart. Julia Child sold Pittsburgh out of wire whisks with a shoestring, black-and-white PBS program on which she frequently dropped implements on the floor and sent egg beaters flying across rooms.
With our modern capabilities of surveying and mining consumers needs and presenting useful solutions via the instant medium of the web, what can’t you do? The steps in the micro-moments funnel are as old as commerce itself. Simply seize the current available technology ... and get cooking!
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Click on the video above to watch Episode 112 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.
Adam: All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode 112 of Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the last Hump Day Hangout for 2016 as we get ready to move into 2017. We got the whole crew here, so we’ll just go down the list here, and at least to the way I see it. Chris, how’s it going?
Chris: Good here in warm, sunny Austria, here.
Adam: Outstanding. Hernan, how’s it going?
Hernan: Hey, guys. What’s up? I’m cooking my ass in Buenos Aires, right now. It’s hot and humid, but it’s good to be here.
Adam: Summer time for you. Yeah. How hot is it down there?
Hernan: Right now, I think it’s 36 celsius, 37 celsius. I don’t know how that adds up to fahrenheit.
Marco: That’s almost a 100, man.
Adam: Yeah.
Hernan: The problem is humidity it’s like 80% or 90% humidity, right now. It’s kind of nasty, but it’s good, because I’m here for the last Hump Day of the year. That makes everything better.
Bradley: Sweet.
Adam: Outstanding. Marco, can you give us an update? What’s going on down there?
Marco: The usual, dude. It’s like, do you know that movie Groundhog Day? Where you-
Adam: Yeah.
Marco: You live the same weather over, and over. I wouldn’t change it for the world, because it’s warm, but it’s not humid.
Marco: It is never cold.
Adam: Nice. Bradley, how’s it going? How’s the east coast treating you?
Bradley: It’s actually a really nice day, today. Really nice. Sunny, shiny, the weather is kind of good. Didn’t feel much like a Christmas, though, I mean, as far as the weather.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: I had a wonderful Christmas. I hope everybody else did. I had my daughter for five days. I rarely get her for that long. It was a really good time. Looking forward to New Years this weekend.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: 2017 is going to be a big year for us, as well. This is the last Hump Day Hangout of 2016. I’m just excited to be here.
Adam: Awesome. Good deal. Yeah. I’m happy. I got sunshine today, I’ve been in the Northwest. I’m actually up by Seattle, and hopefully the screen doesn’t totally wash out, can you guys see that?
Chris: Yeah.
Adam: It’s coming through. Anyways, happy today, this is my last day visiting friends and family, and getting some work done on the side. I know these guys think I’m slacking. I kind of get in and communicate when I can. Let’s see. We got a couple announcements, and then we’ll get moving, here. I want to remind everybody, if you haven’t seen it, I’m going to paste a link in here in a second, but we’ve got our best of 2016, so these are the tools we’ve been using, top of the list, things like click funnels. But, if you want to go through and check those out, it’s like our top ten. Then, also the top webinars. By all means, if you’ve got some time, I know some people are still on vacation, or you got this weekend, take the time, check out the webinars if you haven’t seen these yet. Pretty good stuff.
Also, if you haven’t yet, somehow go over to Serp Space, okay, serpspace.com create your free account, check those out. We’re going to be doing a big public launch with Video Powerhouse. Now is an excellent time to start using Video Powerhouse. That’s all we’re going to say for now, but we’ll have some more information for you guys, too.
Bradley: Cool.
Adam: I think that’s it. Do you guys have anything else we want to add?
Bradley: I do. I just want to mention one thing. I’ve been studying ad words guys, and now I’m in the middle of studying remarketing in the Google Display Network, and also starting to study Google Analytics more, because there’s a lot for building remarketing lists, it’s best to have segments, your remarketing list based upon how people are engaging and interacting with your site. I’m starting to learn analytics, as well. It’s not something that I’ve ever used other than for just basic purposes.
I found this instructor on Udemy, that has got just some fabulous training on ad words, and remarketing, and also on landing page optimization, and design and optimization. It’s absolutely fantastic training guides, it’s a $200.00 course. He’s got three courses out, one for ad words, one for remarketing, and one for landing pages, and each course is about 200 bucks but, right now, until the end of the year, you can get courses on Udemy for 15 bucks, and it’s only until the end of the year, so I’m going to drop the links here guys, for this guys courses, because I know a lot of you, not so much for Hump Day Hangouts, but for the Master class, which by the way, we have a MasterClass immediately following today’s Hump Day Hangouts.
I’ve been teaching a lot of paid traffic stuff, as I’m learning. I found these courses to be incredibly helpful. This guy is really good. For the cost, at only 15 bucks, I highly recommend you guys, if you’re thinking, or considering doing any sort of ad words stuff, or remarketing, or any sort of paid traffic period, that you check out these courses, and get them, because at 15 bucks a piece for $45.00 you get three really thorough, robust courses. Anyways, I’m going to drop these links, guys.
Check them out, if it’s something you’re interested in, get them before the end of the year. There’s also a coupon code, there. I think, that coupon code is the correct one to get everything, each course for 15 bucks, if not, I know that you can sign up with a new account, and they’ll give you your first one for 10 bucks, your first Udemy course for 10 bucks. Then, if you sign up for notifications, like essentially on their notifications and stuff like that, they’ll send you a coupon code that you can use. I have an existing account, so right now the coupon code is already just added to my account for any course that I want to buy.
Marco: Yeah. One last one from me. I just want people to know that we’re building the biggest, baddest video in map embedded network in existence. I don’t give a shit who says what, we are doing it the Semantic Mastery way, you know, we’re doing the IFTTT networks around our root domains. All of them won’t have it, right. We’re doing everything, so that it looks as natural as possible. We’re trying to keep everything looking as good as possible, so that it lasts, so that you guys can get the most benefit, the most bang for your buck, let’s say, but we’ve been working on this for a long time.
When it finally rolls out, guys, people are already using it, having great success, I mean I won’t mention who it is that’s been using our stuff since it rolled out, but people are using it, they’re not giving us enough credit for what it is that we did. We’re coming out in January. Look for it. Get on the mailing list, get in Serp Space, and push your videos guys, because I mean it’s going to kill. It’s going to kill.
Adam: Yeah. Definitely. I think, too, Marco, thank you I’m glad you said something, that reminds me. We will be letting people know, it’s January 25th is the launch, but we’ve got some really cool information that Hernan, and Bradley have put together, it’s actually some awesome training leading up to it. I get something out to everybody, so that you can at least get that information, and decide whether it’s going to be the right product for you, if you are in video marketing, it is the right product, and if you’re thinking about it, then this is either going to show you exactly why you should be getting into it, or how you can.
It’s going to be pretty cool, because it’s not only here go use Video Powerhouse, it’s the stuff like, how can I monetize this, right? Sometimes people have issues with that. There’s going to be a lot of cool stuff coming up, so we’ll fill you all in on that.
Marco: Price will go up.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: All right. Can we get into questions?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Bradley: All right. Rod’s up first. This will be one for Marco. He says, “Hi. I’m trying to find a way to embed an existing site into a Google site with an iframe, so far I’ve had no luck, and I’m discovering that there are security issues that prevent this. Any ideas?”
Marco: Yeah. I cannot do it. I’ve tried every which way there is, old sites, new sites. The problem is there used to be, I forget what they called it, but there used to be a way where you could pull HTML into a G site, but they even took that away, because they figured us spammers would just choke them with their own stuff, so they took that away from us. We’re always looking, if they ever open that up we’ll let you guys know.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. Greg [inaudible 00:08:47] he says, “Hey, Bradley, what are some ways to use RSS Master actual traffic to the feeds and links to get the feeds actually found by people, and viewed? I’ve already done all the advance RSS academy steps from my IFTTT, which are really not from traffic. Thanks.”
Yeah. The advanced RSS Academy stuff wasn’t for traffic it was more for SEO, but RSS Master can actually generate traffic. There’s a couple of ways that you can do that. Number one, you can burn, feed burner feeds from the RSS Master feeds, because a lot of people will subscribe to feed burner feeds, or pull them, essentially scrape them to republish for auto blogs, and stuff. I’ve noticed that a lot. I’ve got some old feed burner accounts that have feeds that I generated five years ago, that have hundreds of subscribers, which is crazy, to me. I know that just burning a feed burner feed alone can actually get you some traffic. If not, actual traffic, it can get you some additional links, because people will use those feeds sometimes just to set up for auto blogs or for filler content, and that kind of stuff. You can get additional links from other peoples websites that way. Okay? That’s number one.
Number two, is if you are building out syndication networks for those RSS Master feeds, tier two networks, and they’re themed well. Right? You have your own IFTTT network around it, then over time they should build up authority in their own right, and start to generate some traffic, because some of the blog posts, the posts on the web twos will get found, just naturally, organically, they’ll get found, and will generate some traffic.
That way over time, it’s not going to happen overnight, but over time you should have a true real following that can generate, that’s interested in that content, that’s going to generate real traffic. That’s where the power of RSS Master comes in, in my opinion. SEO part of it is great, we can accomplish SEO, achieve an SEO benefit from just using RSS feeds, traditional RSS feeds, and we cover how to do that in advanced RSS Academy, and also Lisa Allen’s Rank Feeder. It’s a great tool for adding SEO, or for improving SEO with feeds.
The traffic aspect of it is in my opinion is where RSS Masters shines, and doing what I just mentioned with building out some real profiles for specific networks, and then actually engaging, and building up followers, not just a 100% auto posting all the time. It’s going to take a little bit of work, but once you build up those social profiles now you have a real active audience, and engaging audience that’s going to send real traffic, real social signals, and real engagement to wherever you chose. Hopefully that was helpful. Does anybody want to comment on that?
Hernan: Sorry. I was muted. Yeah. I mean, I second what you were saying. We have had great results with Twitter for example, you know for personas. Using that, using completely 100% auto pilot Twitter accounts, that they will become influencers, and there’s some studies, right now, and some patents, maybe this is a job for Marco, but when you can, when a persona becomes an influencer, every link that he or she posts on their social media will become much more strong. You know what I mean?
For example, many people like doctors, and I don’t know, scientists, and researchers, et cetera, they do not own a website, you know? They don’t. What they do is that they put papers that you can find on Google’s Caller, for example, and you will find those names over and over again, and on the internet of things the semantic web, people are actually things, you know? In terms of how Google process them.
Let’s say Bradley Benner appears over, and over, and over again as being an influencer on the search engine ranking space, or the search engine marketing, or whatever, internal marketing space, digital marketing space, so you will start being quoted on articles, and you will be found on Google’s Caller, and you will be found here, and there, and there, and then you will have a Google Plus profile, et cetera, that link that you put out on your social profiles on Twitter, on Google Plus that you share on YouTube, et cetera, will become much more powerful and relevant than a persona. I get hammered every day with those fake Facebook profiles, you know, that you can totally tell that they’re fake. You know?
That persona, that person becomes an influencer. You can actually emulate this behavior as Bradley was saying with Browseo. One of the best ways of doing it is by sharing authority content, et cetera. RSS Master is a great, I mean we have been doing this with RSS Master right now, but we have been doing this with other free tools like [inaudible 00:14:59], we used to do Yahoo! Pipes, which I love that tool, Yahoo! Pipes, back in the day, but the theory behind it is always the same. You can get a ton of traffic, because of authority robbing, like your website being mentioned over and over again among other authority websites, we already know that, but we have been founding that personas, the more following they get, and the more they get mentioned among other experts, et cetera, the more weight their links get. Doesn’t matter where they get shared. Does that make sense? Am I making any sense? At all?
Bradley: Yeah. Of course. I mean, that’s kind of the whole point, and that’s where Browseo is so strong, because you can actually create digital footprints, which is what you want to do. SEO’s always say, we want to try to minimize, or reduce, or hide our footprint, eliminate a footprint, but with Browseo you do it correctly, you’re actually creating a digital footprint, which is what you want.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: That’s how you can make personas become influencers. Even if their not influencers, if you get enough following and engagement from a persona account, it doesn’t have to necessarily be an influencer for it still to carry weight. You can still generate traffic, and again, like Hernan said, the links from those type of accounts that are weighted more heavily count a lot more. The links are weighted more, as well. It’s not just the traffic, it’s also the SEO benefit.
Yeah. I mean, you could, if you got, if it’s a three year old channel it’s only got three videos and 600 views, doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of traffic, although it could just be the channel because it’s older, it has some inherent authority, in which case all I would do is just link out from each video in that channel to the new channel, or the new videos in the new channel. That’s pretty much all I would do.
You could also add potentially if it’s the same theme, like you said, you could also add those videos into a playlist on the new channel among the videos in your new channel, as well. So, if you’re using YouTube silo method, which you should be, and that’s using playlists to silo your channel, you could include those videos, but guys, by the way you can include other peoples videos in your playlist. That’s how you can actually siphon some traffic from more popular videos. Right?
You can grab other peoples videos and put them into a playlist to help optimize for your term that you’re trying to rank for. Here’s a little trick, too, I talk about this in YouTube Silo Academy, but you can also put a comment in the video section, the comment section of popular videos, and mention your playlist. You don’t put a spammy comment, comment on the video, make it a genuine, valid comment, but then drop, say, “Hey. I’ve compiled other videos around this topic, or this subject, or whatever, go check them out here, and drop a link to your playlist.
Now, sometimes that’ll get moderated out, but sometimes, if you’re adding value in the comments section, there’s a good chance it will stick. That’s how you not only get the video from somebody else’s video in your playlist, which can help siphon authority, but at the same time you can put a, drop a link in that comment section that links to the playlist. A very, very powerful method. That’s something I would do, Chris. I would go ahead and use those videos to add to playlists to your new channel, as well as link from the video description of the old videos to the new videos, once you have them added to the new channel. Okay?
He says, “Also, I just started using Buddy VIP, if Buddy shows 15 closely related phrases that can all rank easily, examples,” and he gives several examples, “Would you create 15 separate videos, or instead create only one or two high quality videos and optimize them for all related phrases?” All right. That’s a tricky one, Chris. It depends on what you’re trying to do. The best answer is, yes, I would only want to create one or two high quality videos, and optimize them, because here’s the thing, guys, spam videos just don’t work like they used to.
You might be able to rank spam videos, but the traffic conversion is really poor on spam videos. Other than just crowding other people out, like taking up more space, in other words. There is really little value in spam videos unless you’re using spam videos as a link building tool to power up other videos, that are higher quality, videos with higher production value. Right? It’s best to optimize one or two high quality videos from a traffic, or from a conversion standpoint, from a user standpoint. Right?
As far as for SEO than you can use all those variations of the keyword as feeder videos, essentially supporting articles. Right? Think about a silo again, and this is what I’m talking about with the YouTube Silo Academy using playlists to create silos. For example, let’s say your top level term is more competitive, and you’ve got 15 variations that will rank somewhat easily, you could basically create a separate video that could be spam videos for each and everyone of those variations of the keywords all linking in the description area linking up to the one video, that’s the high quality video that you want to rank for, for the more competitive turf.
That again, is the YouTube silo method. Right? That works really, really well, that’s something that I’ve been doing for several years, now, is just using a tool like Hangout Millionaire, or Live Rank Sniper’s is another one now that’s out, or Video Marketing Blitz, which is Adam’s product. Anything like that, that you can create a bunch of spam videos very quickly and then use the playlist method to build supporting article links, essentially, they’re supporting videos. Right? Up to the top level term that I’m trying to rank, but again, that’s strictly just an SEO method.
When it comes to traffic like actually converting visitors, and engaging viewers of the video, then you’re going to have a much better success rate using high quality videos. By the way, you can take those one or two high quality videos and change them up slightly, and still use those for each and everyone of the terms. The problem is I don’t like to do that on a money channel. Here’s what I mean by that, on money channels, on channels that I want for long-term, I don’t like to spam those channels at all, period. I don’t like spamming YouTube with money channels. What I will do is create a supporting channel.
I would recommend creating one or two high quality videos, optimizing for the top level, most trafficked terms, put those on your money channel, and then use a secondary channel, either a new one or an older one, preferably an older one, if you have one to do all your spam videos. Where you just take those same one or two videos, that you’ve already created and basically optimize them. There’s video spinners and all that stuff that will change the file type or the file link, and that kind of stuff. Then, you could use those on the supporting channel to blast out for each and every keyword variation, but all linking to, in the video description, to the videos that you want to rank on your money channel. If that makes sense? Okay? Again, it’s all about mitigating risk guys, trying to reduce the possibility, or the impact that it would have if Google or YouTube was to terminate an account. Okay?
All right. Wong says, “Bradley, can I use Serp Space link building service for foreign language sites, like Chinese? I personally will supply the keyword, if I tell them what my niche is about, can your team write articles in niche, and translate to Chinese?” No. We cannot do that Wong. If you have something that you want links built to, we can do that, it’s not going to be, we’re not going to write something, and then have it translated to Chinese, and then post in Chinese, though, I can tell you that’s not something we’re going to do.
Again, if you have something that you want us to build links to, we will do that, but we will be using English based articles and stuff like that. It shouldn’t really matter. I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never done anything in Chinese, as far as tried to optimize any of that, I’m going to actually defer this to Hernan and Marco, because they do a lot of foreign language stuff. What do you guys think?
Hernan: Yeah. I agree with you, it shouldn’t really matter. I’ve run websites with tier one, I’ve ranked Spanish websites with tier one English links, which I wouldn’t recommend. As a test, it’s funny. The reality is that, Wong, first I haven’t heard much about doing SEO in China. I don’t think Google is the bigger search engine over there, unless you’re trying to optimize for people outside main land China. You know what I mean?
With that said, it shouldn’t matter that much, because again, for foreign languages it’s okay if you have a tier one network built in Chinese then you can pump it up with English back links. Have in mind guys that we don’t have the tools, like there are no tools, like literally no tools to have as many variations of content.
For example, in foreign languages in Spanish, Italian, German, you name it, Japanese, we can not pin that, because it will require us to do a heavily manual labor, because the most advanced tools they’re all for the English market, and whatever, you name it like the best painter whatever you’re trying to do. Most of the article services that we are using will only output English content and variations, et cetera that you need for this to work will not be the same, because there are no tools whatsoever to make that happen. I would say that you test it out, because I don’t think you will have any kind of issues, because usually, again, it’s ways here in other languages.
Bradley: Yeah. Remember if tier two links, Wong, isn’t going to matter, like Hernan just said, if you’re syndicating your content to a branded tier one network, anyways in Chinese, that’s fine, because our Serp Space link building service is for tier two and beyond, anyways. Essentially you power up your tier one network, or any tier one links that you want. It could be citations, press releases, whatever you want, but we’re building at tier two and out from there, so we’re not actually building direct to the money site, so that’s like Hernan just said, it shouldn’t really matter. Okay?
Edward’s up, he says, “Bradley I’ve gotten a lot of new clients, because of you, and Brian Willey, I will plus one that. I have a lot of new questions, including how to take care of so many accounts without inconsistencies while crushing my competition. I would like help from you and Hernan to be the best SEO in my area. What is the best way to communicate?”
Number one, Edward, the first thing I would tell you is start outsourcing, hire some virtual assistants that in my opinion there’s no way that you can scale on your own. I don’t know whether you are doing that already Edward, I’m just, for the benefit of everyone I would recommend that you start outsourcing, hiring virtual assistants, create processes, working procedures out of all of the tasks that you perform. We have a training program called Outsource Kingpin that teaches exactly the process that we use to create working procedures or a process-process, so to speak.
Number two, if you want help from me and, or Hernan the best way to communicate is to join our Mastermind, because that way you have access to not only Hernan and me, but also to my other partners as well as all of the other high level SEO’s and marketers in our Mastermind. That only costs 297 a month, plus you get all of the other training that we have, most all of it included, if it’s under 300 bucks it’s included, if it’s over 300 bucks you get 30% discount off anything else that you decide to purchase. If you want one on one consultation, I charge a minimum of $400.00 an hour, I think Hernan charges somewhere around that, maybe even more.
If you want a one on one consultation, honestly, the best thing to do is, it’s more cost effective to join the Mastermind because you can still ask us questions in the actual community as well as we have biweekly webinars where we get real in depth on stuff with our Mastermind members. That’s what I recommend, is you join the Mastermind, that’s going to be the most cost effective for you, plus you’ll get a hell of a lot more out of it than you would just from a one on one consultation for an hour from either one of us.
Hernan: Yeah. I agree. I wanted to say real quick that, in the same line that outsourcing many business owners and agency owners, because that’s great Edward, you’re having growing pains, which are great problems to have. I usually like to say that we as entrepreneurs we do not solve problems, we create new ones. You know?
Bradley: Right.
Hernan: I would rather have the problems that you are having Edward, then the problem of not having enough money at the end of the month, so that’s great congratulations for taking action. With that said, on the Mastermind we touch base, because we have a lot of people that have their own agencies on the Mastermind, and we touch base repeatedly on productivity, outsourcing, et cetera. One of the things that I’m going to drop the last podcast episode, last week’s episode 59, that we made with Adam, we touched briefly on outsource campaign, that I think that, correct me if I’m wrong, Bradley, but if he joined the Mastermind he gets it?
Bradley: That’s correct. Yeah.
Hernan: Okay.
Bradley: Yes. You get Outsource Kingpin as part of the Mastermind. That’s correct.
Hernan: Okay. That’s cool. That’s, that. One of the main pain points that many agency owners, or that they’re growing their agency have is that outsource, hiring outsourcers is hard. It’s hard. If you go out on your own like posting on these outsource, or freelancer, you will get hammered, literally, with propositions, postings, people applying to your job offer, and that can be cumbersome, that can be a nightmare in of itself. Then, you need to train them. Then, you need to make sure that they don’t leave. We have developed a process, Bradley has developed a process, a really, really straightforward, it’s super simple, and it will eliminate 95% of the manual input that you need to put, and you make sure that you get 100% of the time you will get the best VA’s that you can get for that position. You know?
Bradley: That’s right.
Hernan: Because you’re filtering, you’re doing some heavy filtering, so at the end of the day you post the way we tell you to, how to post, then you set up the funnel, and then you end up internally maybe five, or maybe three, or five, or seven, if you’re too picky. You know? For that same position. It’s crazy the quality of people that you end up getting from that funnel its mind blowing. At some point it happened with us with Semantic Mastery, and it happened to me, personally, because we use these funnels over and over again, that we have trouble deciding. You know?
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: Because we’ll have overqualified people and we will say, “Screw it. We’ll hire them both.”
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: They’re such good candidates.
Hernan: Yeah. That’s, that. I’ll put the link over there. I’m looking forward to-
Bradley: By the way-
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: Hernan, if you don’t mind, jump into Click Funnels and grab the webinar registration link for that, the Outsource Kingpin webinar.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: Because, Edward, I recommend that you join the Mastermind for real, but if you want to just go through the Outsource Kingpin webinar that we did where we walk through the process and everything, there’s a webinar, an auto webinar that we have set up for that, and you can always go check that out first before you pull the trigger.
Hernan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bradley: Okay.
Hernan: I’m going to drop them both on the events page.
Bradley: Very good. Thank you. Ethan’s up. He says, “Hey, guys. Hope you’re enjoying the holiday. This question is about local Kingpin video using the creative comments videos for your YouTube channel. I understand that these videos are free to use and modify, but I noticed that some of the CC videos look very professional, had their company logo on the lower corner of the video, I may be wrong, but I remember Bradley saying in one training video is that you can put your logo in front of the old logo from branding purposes, but I just wanted to confirm. Is it okay to place your logo in front of those?”
I don’t know that, Ethan, and I don’t remember ever saying that anywhere, that might have been somebody else that had said that. I typically do not do that, because I’m not sure what the Creative Comments licensing states when it comes to that, so from my assumption without doing any research, I don’t think that would be legal to do. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? You could get somebody that would say take the video down, or they’ll report you to YouTube and you get a strike on your channel.
I’ll just go to Fiver or go to Upwork, and I’ll hire somebody to create videos for me as opposed to actually using Creative Comments videos, if I cannot find one, if you find something that’s decent, that you don’t have to modify, and coverup logos and all that stuff, then use that, but if you have to go through that trouble, again, I don’t know what the legal requirements are for that or the consequences of doing that, so I just won’t even bother is my point. Okay?
I’m just thinking to myself why the original creator would put their logo there in the first place and it seems entirely possible to me that some may do this to discourage anyone else from stealing and rebranding the videos. That some of the CC videos be marked by as CC by accident? Yes, Ethan. That is most likely what has happened, I don’t want to say most likely, but there’s a good chance that some of those videos were uploaded under the Creative Commons attribute without the uploader even noticing it, or recognizing that, being aware of it. Right?
That would be my first guess, but it also could just be that people are looking to get more traction out of their videos, and so they add them as Creative Commons, because they know that more people will look at them and possibly use them for their own marketing efforts without taking the logo off. Right? It could be that, that was done intentionally, I’m not sure what the intent was for this particular video you’re talking about, but again, I typically would not do that.
Hernan: Yeah. I wanted to add real quick, Ethan, there are several levels of Creative Commons, like create a comment you can use for commercial use without citing the source, and there are some Creative Commons that you will be compelled, and you will be, it would be compesatory for you to cite the source. You know? Because there are several levels, and several categories, or licenses free to use for commercial, without citing the source, those kinds of things, but I’m guessing that you’ve come across one of those videos that will need you to cite the source. You know?
Bradley: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Honestly, Fiver videos typically, a good Fiver video now will cost you 30, 35 bucks, whatever, not a big deal.
Hernan: Right.
Bradley: I mean, if it’s something you could do Ethan is take the Creative Comments video and you could find hint, fact you could use Outsource Kingpin to find a video editor that you could hire on an as needed basis, like a virtual assistant. Right? You could hire a video editor that essentially just send the video, the Creative Commons video to the video editor and say, “Look. I want something like this. Can you make it happen?” A lot of the times they can duplicate something similar to that, and it will be unique to you, so it’ll be your own video at that point, you’re free to do what you want with it, without having to worry about any sort of legal action for misusing Creative Comments, if that makes sense. Okay?
Greg’s up, he says, “Any IFTTT training the first section updates includes several update webinars,” yeah, that’s correct, Greg. “Nothing for December,” yeah, we’re not actually going to have one in December, the next update webinar has already been scheduled. That’s for next Wednesday at 5 p.m. okay? That is update webinar number eight. Then, in the last section of the bottom page is called Update Webinars, it just has four webinars. “Is that by design, or by design to have some of the same webinars in both sections?” No, Greg. That last module can just completely be removed from the training area.
I’m not sure why there was another module put down there for update webinars, but I’m just putting all the update, well, the update webinars, in my opinion, should be in the update section, which is module number one, or number two, I cannot remember. That’s where the update webinars should be. That bottom module can be removed. In fact, somebody, you know what? I’ll make a note of that. I’m going to do that right now. Excuse me, guys, I’m taking a note. Remove webinar module. Okay. Yeah.
Update webinar number eight is next Wednesday at 5 p.m. it’s in the IFTTT, SEO Academy Facebook group, click on the events tab, and then you can click on that link, and it will take you over to the actual Google event page, where the webinar will be held. That’s update webinar number eight. Thanks for pointing that out, Greg. I know that module, that bottom module, is there, it just needs to be removed. Okay. All right I made a note of it. It’ll happen in the next couple days.
Curt says, “Great Christmas. Glad you folks had a good one, too.” I did. I had a great one. Thanks, Curt. Let’s see what’s next? Okay. Michael says, “No coupon code needed for the Udemy course, so just go to the site, and all the prices are $15.00 each.” Awesome, Michael. Yeah. I wasn’t sure if new accounts got the same deal, or what, but I know mine has that deal, and I’m telling you man, those three courses I posted, I’m just doing the remarketing one, right now, but I picked up the other two, because the remarketing one is so good.
Okay. “What are the names of the courses?” What do you mean what are the names of the courses? I dropped the links. There on the page, Edward.
Adam: I got them covered.
Bradley: There on the page, Edward. Just go click on the links, it will take you directly to the course. Did you drop the … yes, you did. Never mind. “I need to find an RSS creator to create a feed for any page, all the ones that I used are debunked to which should I buy, RSS Smasher?” Yeah, Edward. It depends. If you’re just doing it strictly to create a feed for any page. I’m not sure what you mean for that. To create a feed from a page? I’m not sure about that, but I can tell you Lisa Allen’s Rank Feeder, you can take a single post, or a single page, or a single YouTube video and stick it into a created feed with other content.
That’s what creates co-citations a very, very powerful method. You can make that post what’s called a sticky post, so it sticks in the feed at all times, which means every time the feed is updated with new content from other publishers, and the bots come crawling that feed, your post, your sticky post, which could be again, a page, a post, a YouTube video, anything, will always be associated with that other content. It’s called co-citation. Very, very powerful method. Rank Feeder is outstanding for using RSS for SEO. RSS Master is in my opinion better for traffic generation. If that makes sense?
Rank Feeder in itself is outstanding for SEO, because of being able to basically take any static item and stick it in a feed, which is dynamically updated every time new content is added. Does that make sense? You don’t even have to be the one adding content, you can benefit off of other peoples activity by creating a feed with your post, your item being made sticky in that feed. If that makes sense?
It’s a toss up, really. It depends on what you’re trying to do, if you’re trying to do strictly SEO, Rank Feeder is the best option, if you’re trying to do more traffic generation, then I would stick, I would go with RSS Master. In fact, we have Mastermind members that are using both, which I completely understand, because one of the questions was, “Can we replace Rank Feeder with RSS Master?” I said, “I wouldn’t do it,” if you’re getting, achieving success with RSS Master, excuse me, with Rank Feeder already, if you are getting good results, I wouldn’t discontinue that. I would continue using that, and that RSS Master as another tool in your toolbox. Okay? Wow, we’re almost done with questions this is going to be good timing.
Michael [inaudible 00:43:07] is up, he says, “My site has 40,000 impressions, and 3500 clicks per month, currently no brand searches. In Crowd Search, how many brand navigation’s would you add per month for this site?” That’s a great question, Michael. I would start slow and build it up. Build the volume, or the velocity of brand searches over time. What I would do is go in and create a brand search, and guys remember navigational searches are, there’s several variations of navigational searches. Right?
You could have the brand name, let’s just use company as the name, so Company then you can have Company phone, Company contact, Company location, Company website, you can use all of those different type, you can add Company plus keyword, right? Company plus services, like different service or products that you sell, so now you can start associating the brand name with those keywords, or those products, or services. There’s a ton of things that you can do with navigational searches.
What I would recommend that you do is set up variations of those navigational searches, and then put them all in Crowd Search, but only turn on two or three at a time with very, very low volume, and then every, maybe set a calendar reminder to once a week, go in and cycle through, in other words, turn off the two or three navigational searches that you had on for the past week, turn those off, and turn on the next three navigational searches with very low volume. Then, do that over the course of a few weeks, and then start to slowly edit the volume numbers. Right? That you are increasing the search volumes. The click throughs.
Start increasing that over time, but I would start real, real low to begin with because if you have no brand searches to begin with, and you can find out whether you’re having any brand searches guys by going into the search console. Right? Take a look at the search query report. Then, you’ll be able to determine if you have any brand searches, and if you don’t that’s a great opportunity for you to use Crowd Search in how I think Crowd Search signs the most, and that’s navigational searches. I think, that’s the most powerful way to use Crowd Search, is navigational searches, and I’ve been saying that since it was released in November of 2014. Okay? To this day, I still think that’s the most powerful way to use it.
All right. Cool. “Thanks, Adam, for the RSS Master link.” All right. Hey, guys, if we don’t have any other questions we can wrap it up just a couple of minutes early for the end of the year. We’ve got Master class that starts in about 15 minutes. I’ll give it another 30 seconds or so, if you have any other questions post them. You guys have anything else you want to add before we wrap it up?
Hernan: I think we’re good. I just wanted to wish everyone that they start, that they end 2016 in a great manner. They start 2017 in an even better manner, and I would suggest that maybe Adam can refer and defer to this, but I would suggest that you don’t make new year resolutions, but you start working, right now, for whatever you want to achieve by the end of 2017.
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: Do not make resolutions, if you wanted to achieve something this year, you should have been working in 2015 to do it, so now is your time to start working for whatever you want to achieve in 2017.
Adam: Yeah. I’ll tell you what, how about this? The first three people, sorry about the feedback, the first three people who give us a serious explanation of what you want to do in the first three months, and you’re going to start working on it, when I get home, if you write it down, I’ll pick the first three on the page, tell us what you’re going to do, at least two sentences, tell us what your plan is, and I’ll send you out the Entrepreneur On Fire book, so you can plan out your 100 days and get it done. We’re serious about it. Get out there, get started. Like Hernan said, don’t make new years resolutions just start doing something.
Bradley: Yeah. Here, I’ll add something, and Michael I’ll answer your question, here, in just a moment, but since we have a few extra minutes to build on with what Hernan just said, guys sit down, draw out a plan, set goals, I know goal setting is so abstract and for the longest time, for so many years in my business I never set out any goals. I never defined my goals, and wrote them down in clear written, to me, there’s something about handwriting stuff, too that makes it seem like I take more action for some reason when I write stuff down by hand versus typing it out.
Take a notebook and sit down, guys, and spend an hour or two, literally thinking about what you want to accomplish in 2017. Think about where you would like to be one year from today. Where you want your business to be? Visualize it. Close your eyes. I don’t care how stupid you feel sitting there doing it, just close your eyes and visualize what that day would look like at the end of the year, next year, if your business is where you want it to be at that point.
From that point you work your way back and break down, okay, what’s it going to take for me to accomplish that? Start breaking it down into manageable chunks. For example, I mentioned this, I think last week, somebody asked and I said the Twelve Week Year is a book I highly recommend for planning, and that’s something that you can literally, you could take your one year vision and break it down into four chunks, four big chunks, which would be each, quarterly chunks, and then all you do is take each quarter and from each quarter chunk give 25%, each one of those, you take it and you break it down into monthly activities. You take your one chunk, your quarter chunk, break that down into monthly goals. Right?
You would have three monthly goals, then you break the monthly goals down into weekly goals. You’d have four weekly goals to equal the month. Then, you break that down into daily goals. You always work your way back from the end goal back to today. That’s how you, in the Twelve Week Year, guys if you haven’t, I say, make 2017 the year that you apply some methodology such as that, because you’ll get so much more done, it will help you to stay focused, and it will help you to avoid distractions, and avoid shiny objects, guys.
I told Michael I would answer this, “I have added five variations of brand navigation’s already in Crowd Search. I set up at two per month for first month. Is that too low?” Yeah. I would think that’s a little bit low, Michael. I mean, again, guys, always air on the side of conservatism, be conservative when it comes to that, instead of aggressive, in my opinion, unless it’s a spam site, a turn and burn type thing, but yeah, start low, but I would say two for the first month is, that’s one brand search every 15 days. I would go a little bit more aggressive than that, maybe 10 for the first month. That would essentially be one brand search for every three days. Right? Roughly.
Then, I would kind of work my way up from there, but again you can always go lower, that’s fine, and build up slower. That’s entirely up to you. It seems from the stats that you were posting earlier 3500 clicks to your site every month, you could go a little bit more aggressive on those numbers, and you’d be fine. If you had a site that only had 50 clicks in a month, then yeah I wouldn’t say do 10 brand searches right off the bat. Two would be a good number for that, but since I think you said you had like 3500 clicks a month, you could go quite a bit more aggressive, even probably 20, 25 brand searches per month for each variation.
Again, I would start ramping that up slowly. Maybe start with 10 per variation, and cycle through them. Only run two or three concurrently at any one time. Then, every couple weeks go in and switch it out. Turn on the other ones that haven’t been running. That kind of stuff. Then, ramp it up from there. Start off with maybe 10 click throughs per month, per variation. Then, ramp it up from there. Okay? Cool. Okay. I think we’re done. Are we done?
Adam: I think so.
Bradley: Okay.
Adam: I think we got what? One more person wants to post just to clarify. I’ll send you the book for free when I get home. Look it up. Hernan, do you remember exactly what the name of the book is? Is it the EOFire, I forget what they call it, now.
Hernan: The Freedom Journal.
Adam: Yeah. The Freedom Journal. Thank you. I used one last year, it was great. I ended up making my own book based on this, and a couple of others I’ve used. If you just want to tell us what you’re going to do, and then this will help you plan it out. This is like a 100 day, broken up into sprints to help you achieve your goals. I think we got one more spot, if somebody wants to answer, and tell us what your plans are, and what you want to do with it, and I’ll go home, I’ll contact you, and I’ll ship it to you for free.
Bradley: Toby, to answer your question. That email that you’re talking about is the email that YouTube sends, because you’re a subscriber to our channel. When you click that link, it takes you to the watch page on YouTube instead of to the event page. However, right in the description is the link to the Hump Day Hangout page. The event page, which is what you’re looking at, here.
Guys, if you ever have trouble finding the event page just go to http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2 one word, and it will take you to this event page, or if you cannot remember http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2, just go to semanticmastery.com and click on the Hump Day button on the site, and it will take you over here. Again, that email that you received is an email from YouTube because you’re a subscriber. When you click on that link, it’s going to take you to the watch page, but in the description of the watch page is the link to the Hump Day Hangouts events page. Okay? All right. Anything else guys? Can we wrap it up?
Hernan: I think we’re good to go.
Bradley: We’re done. Okay. Cool. All right. Again, thanks everybody for being here. Master class starts in five minutes. Thanks for an awesome year for 2016 guys. 2017 will be even better.
Hernan: Yes.
Bradley: We will be reaching our three anniversary as Hump Day Hangouts in October of next year, which will be what? That will be episode 154?
Bradley: Or, 156?
Adam: 156. Yeah.
Bradley: 156.
Adam: That’s awesome. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Everybody, here, and everybody watching. This has been an awesome year, and I’m looking forward to 2017.
Bradley: Yeah.
Hernan: Yes.
Marco: By everyone, happy new year.
Hernan: Bye.
Bradley: Bye, guys.
Marco: Later, dude.
In episode 111 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked for tips on handling time management effectively.
The exact question was:
Can you discuss how you all handle time management effectively? Are there any programs or shortcuts that help you get more accomplished?
Posted by zeehj
Whether you’re the only SEO at your company, work within a larger team, or even manage others, you still have to stay on top of your projects. Project management skills aren’t and shouldn’t be exclusive to someone (or some tool) with the title “project manager.” I believe that having good project manager skills is essential to getting work done at all, let alone delivering high-quality work in a timely and efficient way.
Freakonomics Radio released this podcast episode in October called In Praise of Maintenance. The TL;DR (or TL;DL, rather) is that our society rewards innovators, but rarely (if ever) celebrates the maintainers: the people who get sh*t done, and do it reliably, often without anyone’s noticing. This podcast episode confirmed what I’d been feeling for a long time: We don’t award enough praise to the good project managers out there who keep engagements moving forward. And that’s largely because it’s not a sexy job: it’s not exciting to report to stakeholders that necessary services that have been reliable for so long are, as always, continuing to be reliable.
It’s only when things aren’t running smoothly does it seem project managers get recognition. A lack of a rewards system means that we’re not teaching PMs, Consultants, Account Managers, and more that their excellent organizational skills are their most valuable asset. Instead, the message being communicated is that innovation is the only praise-worthy result, which oftentimes may not be essential to getting your work done. The irony here is that innovation is the by-product of an excellent project management framework. The situational awareness of knowing how to delegate work to your colleagues and a repertoire of effective organizational habits is vital if you ever want to free up your attention to allow for the headspace and concentration ingenuity requires.
Sound familiar? Lately I’ve been focused on the idea of a cluttered headspace, where it feels like everything on your to-do list is floating ephemerally around in your head, and you can’t seem to pin down what needs to be done. Of course, this isn’t specific to just professional life (or consulting work): it can happen with personal tasks, which can present their own set of organizational challenges. Regardless of your professional role, crunch time is exactly when you need to put on your project manager hat and get yourself organized. Read on to find out the tools and tricks I use to stay on top of my work, and how I delegate work when needed without losing a personal touch on projects.
What do you do to make that process easier? One Slack conversation that seems to always come up is which project management tools do we use (and which is best). I take the annoying middle-ground stance of “whatever tool you use is best” and I stand by it (don’t worry, I’ll get to the actual list in a minute): a tool is only useful if it’s actually used.
So how do you get started? It’s always important to have preferred methods for project tracking, note keeping, and reminders. Depending on your role and learning style, you may find that some tools work better than others for you. For instance, while I have a few tools I work with to stay on top of client work, I also have a clear plastic desk cover that I can jot down notes and reminders on. Here’s a breakdown of the tools I use to manage projects, and the needs they meet.
Of course, it’s possible to manage and delegate work without these, but I’m of the mind that pen, paper, and email can only get you so far, especially if you want your delegation process to be somewhat automated (think tagging colleagues in comments within documents, or assigning projects to them within standard project management tools like Asana).
Tools can only get you so far: any good delegation process starts with a conversation (no more than five or 10 minutes) about the work you need and a great brief. The conversation establishes whether your colleague actually has the bandwidth to take your work on, and the brief goes into greater detail of what you actually need done. The brief format I follow works for a large number of different deliverables — I’ve used this same layout to delegate page speed, technical and backlink audits, and content briefs to colleagues. Below are the fields I always include, and the type of information always provided:
Subject: [BRIEF] Work I Need Done
Deadline: The precise date and time you need it, with enough time for you to review the work before delivering it to your stakeholders or your client. If it’s something like a page speed audit, I would allow up to a full week to review it and ensure that it’s in the best format and all the information is correct. Of course, it also depends on how familiar the delegate is with projects like these — if they’ve done a number of audits for you in the past, they may know your style and you may not need as much time to edit their final work.
Output/Deliverable: The format in which you need this work delivered to you. Maybe it’s a Google Doc or an Excel Spreadsheet. This brief format can work for any output you need, including more creative pieces (do you need a video edited to :30 seconds in a .mov format? A photo edited to certain specs and saved as a PNG or IDD?).
Expected hours: This may be the most challenging element of the entire brief. How long do you anticipate this work to take, start to finish? Keep in mind the experience level of the person to whom you’re delegating. Is this their first SEO technical audit, or their 30th? You will almost definitely need to check in with your delegate a few times (more on that later), so how long do you anticipate these meetings to take? Just like the deadline timing estimate, use your best judgment based on work you’ve done with this person in the past, and the type of work you’re assigning.
Relevant materials: This is where you can provide additional articles or tools that should help your colleague do the work you’ve assigned to them. Some good examples are 101 articles (like ones on the Moz blog!), or a tool you know you always use in projects like the one you’re delegating (think SEMRush, new photo editing software, or Google’s Keyword Planner).
Once you’ve delivered your brief, the next step is to make sure you check in with your delegate along the way. Even the most experienced person can benefit from added context, so whether it’s an in-person meeting or a five-minute call, touching base shortly after delivering a brief is necessary to ensure you’re on the same page. Beyond kicking off a project, it’s important to have check-ins along the way to stay on track.
At Distilled, we like to follow a check-in model at the following completion points:
Not only is this good to keep everyone on the right track, it’s even more valuable both to the person delegating and the delegate to know how much work should be completed at which points, and how much detail is required as you give feedback.
In many ways, great project management and delegation skills are really future-proofing skills. They allow you to be on top of your work regardless of what work (or life) throws at you. You can be the best SEO in the world, but if you can’t manage your projects effectively, you’ll either fail or not see the greatest impact you otherwise could achieve. It’s time to ditch praising the model of a lone innovator who somehow “does it all,” and instead truly celebrate the maintainers and managers who ensure things remain operational and steady. Often, our biggest problems aren’t best solved with a complex solution, but rather a clear mind and supportive team.
A large part of turning projects around comes down to improving the project management process, and being organized allows you to juggle multiple clients and acknowledge when you’re at capacity. Without a solid foundation of project management skills, there is no groundwork for successful innovations and client projects. The next time you’re looking to bolster your skill set, do an audit of how you manage your own work, and identify all of the things that prevent you from delivering the best work on time.
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In episode 111 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked if it is okay to take a Tier 1 YouTube channel and put multiple tiers on it when optimizing videos.
The exact question was:
Merry Christmas to all of you IFTTT nerds out there! I have a question that probably has been answered somewhere but I missed it. I have only done branded tier 1 rings around money sites so far and have used the money site tier 1 YouTube Channel as just a placeholder for all the link profiles. Can I take that tier 1 YouTube Channel and put multiple tiers on it or leave it as is and start another related YouTube Channel and add as many tiers as I want to it? If so, does that new Channel link to the money site and is it a Branded Channel that matches the money site? Thanks again. Love you guys and what you do!
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