Special Notes for SABs Amid Decreased Local Search Visibility

Posted by MiriamEllis

One of the most common complaints I hear from service area business owners, like plumbers, locksmiths, and housekeepers, is that Google has always treated them as an afterthought. If you’re in charge of the digital marketing for these business models, it’s vital to understand just how accurate this complaint is so that you can both empathize with SAB brand owners and create a strategy that honors limitations while also identifying opportunities.

In marketing SABs, you’ve got to learn to make the best of a special situation. In this post, I want to address two of the realities these companies are facing right now that call for careful planning: the unique big picture of SAB local listing management, and the rise of Google’s Home Service Ads.

Let’s talk listings, Moz Local, and SABs

I was fascinated by my appliance repairman — an older German ex-pat with a serious demeanor — the first time he looked at my wall heater and pronounced,

“This puppy is no good.”

Our family went on to form a lasting relationship with this expert who has warned me about everything from lint fires in dryers to mis-branded appliances slapped together in dubious factories. I’m an admiring fan of genuinely knowledgeable service people who come to my doorstep, crawl under my house where possums dwell, ascend to my eerie attic despite spiders, and are professionally dedicated to keeping my old house livable. I work on a computer, surrounded by comforts; these folks know what real elbow grease is all about:

It’s because of my regard for these incredibly hard-working SAB owners and staffers that I’ve always taken issue with the fact that the local Internet tends to treat them in an offhand manner. They do some of the toughest jobs, and I’d like their marketing opportunities to be boundless. But the reality is, the road has been rocky and the limits are real.

Google goofed first

When Google invested heavily in developing their mapped version of the local commercial scene, there was reportedly internal disagreement as to whether a service area business is actually a “place” and deserved of inclusion in Google’s local index. You couldn’t add service area businesses to the now-defunct MapMaker but you could create local listings for them (clear as mud, right?). At a 2008 SMX event, faced with the question as to how SABs could be accurately represented in the local results, a Google rep really goofed in first suggesting that they all get PO boxes, only to have this specific practice subsequently outlawed by Google’s guidelines.

Confusion and spam flowed in

For the record,

• Both SABs and brick-and-mortar businesses are currently eligible for Google My Business listings if they serve customers face-to-face.
• SABs must have some form of legitimate street address, even if it’s a home address, to be included
• Only brick-and-mortar businesses are supposed to have visible addresses on their listings, but Google’s shifting messaging and inconsistent guideline enforcement have created confusion.

Google has shown little zeal for suspending listings that violate the hide-address guidelines, with one notable exception recently mentioned to me by Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky: SABs who click the Google My Business dashboard box stating that they serve clients at the business’ location in order to get themselves out of no man’s land at the bottom of the Google Home Service ad unit are being completely removed from the map by Google if caught.

Meanwhile, concern has been engendered by past debate over whether hiding the address of a business lowered its local pack rankings. The 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors survey is still finding this to be the #18 negative local pack ranking factor, which might be worthy of further discussion.

All of these factors have created an environment in which legitimate SABs have accidentally incorrectly listed themselves on Google and in which spammers have thrived, intentionally creating multiple listings at non-physical addresses and frequently getting away with it to the detriment of search results uniformity and quality. In this unsatisfactory environment, the advent of Google’s Home Service Ads program may have been inevitable, and we’ll take a look at that in a minute.

Limits made clear in listing options for SABs

Whether the risk of suspension or impact on rankings is great or small, hiding your address on SAB Google My Business listings is the only Google-approved practice. If you want to play it totally safe, you’ll play by the rules, but this doesn’t automatically overcome every challenge.

Google is one of the few high-level local business index requiring hidden SAB addresses. And it’s in this stance that SABs encounter some problems taking advantage of the efficiencies provided by automated location data management tools like Moz Local. There are three main things that have confused our own customers:

1. Because our SAB customers are required by Google to hide their address, Moz Local can’t then verify the address because… well, it’s hidden. This means that customers need to have a Facebook listing with a visible address on it to get started using Moz Local. Facebook doesn’t require SAB addresses to be hidden.
2. Once the customer gets started, their ultimate consistency score will generally be lower than what a brick-and-mortar business achieves, again because their hidden GMB listing address can’t be matched to all of the other complete listings Moz Local builds for them. It reads like an inconsistency, and while this in no way impacts their real-world performance, it’s a little sad not to be able to aim for a nifty 100% dashboard metric within Moz Local. Important to mention here that a 100% score isn’t achievable for multi-location business models, either, given that Facebook’s guidelines require adding a modifier to the business name of each branch, rendering it inconsistent. This is in contrast to Google’s policy, which defines the needless addition of keywords or geo-modifiers to the business name as spam! When Google and Facebook fundamentally disagree on a guideline, a small measure of inconsistency is part and parcel of the scenario, and not something worth worrying about.
3. Finally, for SABs who don’t want their address published anywhere on the Internet, automated citation management simply may not be a good match. Some partners in our network won’t accept address-less distribution from us, viewing it as incomplete data. If an SAB isn’t looking for complete NAP distribution because they want their address to be kept private, automation just isn’t ideal.

So how can SABs use something like Moz Local?

The Moz Local team sides with SABs — we’re not totally satisfied with the above state of affairs and are actively exploring better support options for the future. Given our admiration for these especially hard-working businesses, we feel SABs really deserve to have needless burdens lifted from their shoulders, which is exactly what Moz Local is designed to do. The task of manual local business listing publication and ongoing monitoring is a hefty one — too hefty in so many cases. Automation does the heavy lifting for you. We’re examining better solutions, but right now, what options for automation are open to the SAB?

Option #1: If your business is okay with your address being visible in multiple places, then simply be sure your Facebook listing shows your address and you can sign up for Moz Local today, no problem! We’ll push your complete NAP to the major aggregators and other partners, but know that your Moz Local dashboard consistency score won’t be 100%. This is because we won’t be able to “see” your Google My Business listing with its hidden address, and because choosing service-related categories will also hide your address on Citysearch, Localeze, and sometimes, Bing. Also note that one of our partners, Factual, doesn’t support locksmiths, bail bondsmen or towing companies. So, in using an automated solution like Moz Local, be prepared for a lower score in the dashboard, because it’s “baked into” the scenario in which some platforms show your full street address while others hide it. And, of course, be aware that many of your direct local competitors are in the same boat, facing the same limitations, thus leveling the playing field.

Option #2: If your business can budget for it, consider transitioning from an SAB to a brick-and-mortar business model, and get a real-world office that’s staffed during stated business hours. As Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling discuss is in this excellent video chat, smaller SABs need to be sure they can still make a profit after renting an office space, and that may largely be based on rental costs in their part of the country. Very successful virtual brands are exploring traditional retail options and traditional brick-and-mortar business models are setting up virtual showrooms; change is afoot. Having some customers come to the physical location of a typical SAB may require some re-thinking of service. A locksmith could grind keys on-site, a landscaper could virtually showcase projects in the comfort of their office, but what could a plumber do? Any ideas? If you can come up with a viable answer, and can still see profits factoring in the cost of office space, transitioning to brick-and-mortar effectively removes any barriers to how you represent yourself on Google and how fully you can use software like Moz Local.

If neither option works for you, and you need to remain an SAB with a hidden address, you’ll either need to a) build citations manually on sites that support your requirements, like these ones listed out by Phil Rozek, while having a plan for regularly monitoring your listings for emerging inconsistencies, duplicates and incoming reviews or b) hire a company to do the manual development and monitoring for you on the platforms that support hiding your address.

I wish the digital marketing sky could be the limit for SABs, but we’ve got to do the most we can working within parameters defined by Google and other location data platforms.

Now comes HSA: Google’s next SAB move

As service area business owner or marketer, you can’t be faulted for feeling that Google hasn’t handled your commercial scenario terribly well over the years. As we’ve discussed, Google has wobbled on policy and enforcement. Not yet mentioned is that they’ve never offered an adequate solution to the reality that a plumber located in City A equally services Cities B, C, and D, but is almost never allowed to rank in the local packs for these service cities. Google’s historic bias toward physical location doesn’t meet the reality of business models that go to clients to serve. And it’s this apparent lack of interest in SAB needs that may be adding a bit of sting to Google’s latest move: the Home Service Ads (HSA) program.

You’re not alone if you don’t feel totally comfortable with Google becoming a lead gen agent between customers and, to date:

• Plumbers
• House cleaners
• Locksmiths
• Handymen
• Contractors
• Electricians
• Painters
• Garage door services
• HVAC companies
• Roadside assistance services
• Auto glass services

...in a rapidly increasing number of cities.

Suddenly, SABs have moved to the core of Google’s consciousness, and an unprecedented challenge for these business models is that, while you can choose whether or not to opt into the program, there’s no way to opt out of the impacts it is having on all affected local results.

An upheaval in SAB visibility

If HSA has come to your geo-industry, and you don’t buy into the program, you will find yourself relegated to the bottom of the new HSA ad unit which appears above the traditional 3-pack in the SERPs:

Additionally, even if you were #1 in the 3-pack prior to HSA coming to town, if you lack a visible address, your claimed listing appears to have vanished from the pack and finder views.

*I must tip my hat again to Joy Hawkins for helping me understand why that last example hasn’t vanished from the packs — it’s unclaimed. Honestly, this blip tempts me to unclaim an SAB listing and “manage” it via community edits instead of the GMB dashboard to see if I could maintain its local finder visibility… but this might be an overreaction!

If you’re marketing an SAB, have been relegated to the bottom of the HSA ad unit, and have vanished from the local pack/finder view, please share with our community how this has impacted your traffic and conversions. My guess would be that things are not so good.

So, what can SABs do in this new landscape?

I don’t have all of the answers to this question, but I do have these suggestions:

1. Obviously, if you can budget for it, opt into HSA.
2. But, bizarrely, understand that in some ways, Google has just made your GMB listing less important. If you have to hide your address and won’t be shown in HSA-impacted local packs and finder views because of this guideline compliance, your GMB listing is likely to become a less important source of visibility for your business.
3. Be sure, then, that all of your other local business listings are in apple-pie order. If you’re okay with your address being published, you can automate this necessary work with software like Moz Local. If you need to keep your address private, put in the time to manually get listed everywhere you can. A converted lead from CitySearch or Foursquare may even feel like more of a victory than one from Google.
4. Because diversification has just become a great deal more important, alternatives like those offered by visibility on Facebook are now more appealing than ever. And ramp up your word-of-mouth marketing and review management strategies like never before. If I were marketing an SAB, I’d be taking a serious new look at companies like ZipSprout, which helps establish real-world local relationships via sponsorships, and GetFiveStars, which helps with multiple aspects of managing reviews.
5. Know that organic visibility is now more of a prize than previously. If you’re not in the packs, you’ve got to show up below them. This means clearly defining local SEO and traditional SEO as inextricably linked, and doing the customary work of keyword research, content development, and link management that have fueled organic SEO from the beginning. I’m personally committing to becoming more intimately familiar with Moz Pro so that I can better integrate into my skill set what software like this can do for local businesses, especially SABs.
6. Expect change. HSA is still a test, and Google continues to experiment with how it’s displaying its paying customers in relationship to the traditional free packs and organic results. Who knows what’s next? If you’re marketing SABs, an empathetic and realistic approach to both historic and emerging limitations will help you create a strategy designed to ensure brand survival, independent of Google’s developments.

Why is Google doing this?

I need to get some window blinds replaced in my home this fall. When I turned to Google’s (non-HSA) results and began calling local window treatment shops, imagine my annoyance in discovering that fully ½ of the listings in the local finder were for companies not located anywhere near my town. These brands had set up spam listings for a ton of different cities to which they apparently can send a representative, but where they definitely don’t have physical locations. I wasted a great deal of time calling each of them, and only felt better after reporting the listings to Google and seeing them subsequently removed.

I’m sharing this daily-life anecdote because it encapsulates the very best reason for Google rolling out Home Service Ads. Google’s program is meant to ensure that when I use their platform to access service companies, I’m finding vetted, legitimate enterprises with accurate location data and money-back satisfaction guarantees, instead of finding the mess of spam listings Google’s shifting policies and inadequate moderation have created. The HSA ad units can improve results quality while also protecting consumers from spurious providers.

The other evident purpose of HSA is the less civic-minded but no less brilliant one: there’s money to be made and Google’s profit motives are no different than those of any other enterprise. For the same reason that Amazon has gotten into the SAB lead gen business, Google wants a piece of this action. So, okay, no surprise there, and if the Google leads wind up growing the revenue of my wonderful German handyman, more power to them both.

But I hope my plumber, and yours, and your clients in the service markets, will take a step back from the Monopoly board and see this as a moment to reevaluate a game in which Google and Amazon are setting up big red hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I do advocate getting qualified for HSA, but I don’t advise a stance of unquestioning loyalty to or dependence on Google, particularly if you haven’t felt especially well-served by their SAB policies over the years. If Google can drive lucrative leads your way, take them, but remember you have one advantage Google, Amazon and other lead generation agencies lack: you are still the one who meets the customer face-to-face.

Opportunity is knocking in having a giant of visibility like Google selling you customers, because those customers, if amazed by your service, have grandmothers, and brothers and co-workers who can be directly referred to your company, completely outside the lead-gen loop. In fact, you might even come up with an incentivization program of your own to be sure that every customer you shake hands with is convinced of your appreciation for every referral they may send your way.

Don’t leave it all up to Google to make your local SAB brand a household word. Strategize for maximum independence via the real-world relationships you build, in the home of every neighbor where the door of welcome is opened in anticipation of the very best service you know how to give.

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What Is The Best Way To Silo-Structure A Multi-Location Client’s Site?

In episode 150 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked how best to silo structure the site for a client with offices in 4 different cities.

The exact question was:

Just landed a multi location attorney. Offices in 4 different cities, separated geographically by 1500 miles or so. Would it be better to structure their “”NEW”” site using subdomains for each city or would it be better to have a domain.com/city_name type of structure? What have you found to work better in the past? As always, any input is greatly appreciated!

What Is The Best Way To Silo-Structure A Multi-Location Client’s Site? posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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In episode 150 of the weekly Hump Day Hangouts by Semantic Mastery, one viewer asked about T1 and T2 networks and why/when to use them to help rank money sites higher in the SERP.

The exact question was:

Can you explain what T1 and T2 networks really means and when/why to use them to help rank money sites higher in the SERP? And which course or videos that helps with this explanation? I have only went through RYSR so far.

What Are T1 And T2 Networks And Why/When Should They Be Used To Rank Money Sites? posted first on your-t1-blog-url

The SEO Competitive Analysis Checklist

Posted by zeehj

The SEO case for competitive analyses

“We need more links!” “I read that user experience (UX) matters more than everything else in SEO, so we should focus solely on UX split tests.” “We just need more keywords on these pages.”

If you dropped a quarter on the sidewalk, but had no light to look for it, would you walk to the next block with a street light to retrieve it? The obvious answer is no, yet many marketers get tunnel vision when it comes to where their efforts should be focused.

1942 June 3, Florence Morning News, Mutt and Jeff Comic Strip, Page 7, Florence, South Carolina. (NewspaperArchive)

Which is why I’m sharing a checklist with you today that will allow you to compare your website to your search competitors, and identify your site’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential opportunities based on ranking factors we know are important.

If you’re unconvinced that good SEO is really just digital marketing, I’ll let AJ Kohn persuade you otherwise. As any good SEO (or even keyword research newbie) knows, it’s crucial to understand the effort involved in ranking for a specific term before you begin optimizing for it.

It’s easy to get frustrated when stakeholders ask how to rank for a specific term, and solely focus on content to create, or on-page optimizations they can make. Why? Because we’ve known for a while that there are myriad factors that play into search engine rank. Depending on the competitive search landscape, there may not be any amount of “optimizing” that you can do in order to rank for a specific term.

The story that I’ve been able to tell my clients is one of hidden opportunity, but the only way to expose these undiscovered gems is to broaden your SEO perspective beyond search engine results page (SERP) position and best practices. And the place to begin is with a competitive analysis.

Competitive analyses help you evaluate your competition’s strategies to determine their strengths and weakness relative to your brand. When it comes to digital marketing and SEO, however, there are so many ranking factors and best practices to consider that can be hard to know where to begin. Which is why my colleague, Ben Estes, created a competitive analysis checklist (not dissimilar to his wildly popular technical audit checklist) that I’ve souped up for the Moz community.

This checklist is broken out into sections that reflect key elements from our Balanced Digital Scorecard. As previously mentioned, this checklist is to help you identify opportunities (and possibly areas not worth your time and budget). But this competitive analysis is not prescriptive in and of itself. It should be used as its name suggests: to analyze what your competition’s “edge” is.

Methodology

Choosing competitors

Before you begin, you’ll need to identify six brands to compare your website against. These should be your search competitors (who else is ranking for terms that you’re ranking for, or would like to rank for?) in addition to a business competitor (or two). Don’t know who your search competition is? You can use SEMRush and Searchmetrics to identify them, and if you want to be extra thorough you can use this Moz post as a guide.

Sample sets of pages

For each site, you’ll need to select five URLs to serve as your sample set. These are the pages you will review and evaluate against the competitive analysis items. When selecting a sample set, I always include:

• The brand’s homepage,
• Two “product” pages (or an equivalent),
• One to two “browse” pages, and
• A page that serves as a hub for news/informative content.

Make sure each site has equivalent pages to each other, for a fair comparison.

Scoring

The scoring options for each checklist item range from zero to four, and are determined relative to each competitor’s performance. This means that a score of two serves as the average performance in that category.

For example, if each sample set has one unique H1 tag per page, then each competitor would get a score of two for H1s appear technically optimized. However if a site breaks one (or more) of the below requirements, then it should receive a score of zero or one:

1. One or more pages within sample set contains more than one H1 tag on it, and/or
2. H1 tags are duplicated across a brand’s sample set of pages.

Checklist

Platform (technical optimization)

Title tags appear technically optimized. This measurement should be as quantitative as possible, and refer only to technical SEO rather than its written quality. Evaluate the sampled pages based on:

• Only one title tag per page,
• The title tag being correctly placed within the head tags of the page, and
• Few to no extraneous tags within the title (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

H1s appear technically optimized. Like with the title tags, this is another quantitative measure: make sure the H1 tags on your sample pages are sound by technical SEO standards (and not based on writing quality). You should look for:

• Only one H1 tag per page, and
• Few to no extraneous tags within the tag (e.g. ideally no inline CSS, and few to no span tags).

Internal linking allows indexation of content. Observe the internal outlinks on your sample pages, apart from the sites’ navigation and footer links. This line item serves to check that the domains are consolidating their crawl budgets by linking to discoverable, indexable content on their websites. Here is an easy-to-use Chrome plugin from fellow Distiller Dom Woodman to see whether the pages are indexable.

To get a score of “2” or more, your sample pages should link to pages that:

• Produce 200 status codes (for all, or nearly all), and
• Have no more than ~300 outlinks per page (including the navigation and footer links).

Schema markup present. This is an easy check. Using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, look to see whether these pages have any schema markup implemented, and if so, whether it is correct. In order to receive a score of “2” here, your sampled pages need:

• To have schema markup present, and
• Be error-free.

Quality of schema is definitely important, and can make the difference of a brand receiving a score of “3” or “4.” Elements to keep in mind are: Organization or Website markup on every sample page, customized markup like BlogPosting or Article on editorial content, and Product markup on product pages.

There is a “home” for newly published content. A hub for new content can be the site’s blog, or a news section. For instance, Distilled’s “home for newly published content” is the Resources section. While this line item may seem like a binary (score of “0” if you don’t have a dedicated section for new content, or score of “2” if you do), there are nuances that can bring each brand’s score up or down. For example:

• Is the home for new content unclear, or difficult to find? Approach this exercise as though you are a new visitor to the site.
• Does there appear to be more than one “home” of new content?
• If there is a content hub, is it apparent that this is for newly published pieces?

We’re not obviously messing up technical SEO. This is partly comprised of each brand’s performance leading up to this line item (mainly Title tags appear technically optimized through Schema markup present).

It would be unreasonable to run a full technical audit of each competitor, but take into account your own site’s technical SEO performance if you know there are outstanding technical issues to be addressed. In addition to the previous checklist items, I also like to use these Chrome extensions from Ayima: Page Insights and Redirect Path. These can provide quick checks for common technical SEO errors.

Content

Title tags appear optimized (editorially). Here is where we can add more context to the overall quality of the sample pages’ titles. Even if they are technically optimized, the titles may not be optimized for distinctiveness or written quality. Note that we are not evaluating keyword targeting, but rather a holistic (and broad) evaluation of how each competitor’s site approaches SEO factors. You should evaluate each page’s titles based on the following:

• The site’s (sampled) titles are not duplicative of one another,
• Their titles are shorter than 80 characters,
• They appear to accurately reflect the content presented on their pages, and
• The page titles include the domain name in a consistent fashion.

H1s appear optimized (editorially). The same rules that apply to titles for editorial quality also apply to H1 tags. Review each sampled page’s H1 for:

• A unique H1 tag per page (language in H1 tags does not repeat),
• H1 tags that are discrete from their page’s title, and
• H1s represent the content on the page.

Internal linking supports organic content. Here you must look for internal outlinks outside of each site’s header and footer links. This evaluation is not based on the number of unique internal links on each sampled page, but rather on the quality of the pages to which our brands are linking.

While “organic content” is a broad term (and invariably differs by business vertical), here are some guidelines:

• Look for links to informative pages like tutorials, guides, research, or even think pieces.
  • The blog posts on Moz (including this very one) are good examples of organic content.
• Internal links should naturally continue the user’s journey, so look for topical progression in each site’s internal links.
• Links to service pages, products, RSVP, or email subscription forms are not examples of organic content.
• Make sure the internal links vary. If sampled pages are repeatedly linking to the same resources, this will only benefit those few pages.
  • This doesn’t mean that you should penalize a brand for linking to the same resource two, three, or even four times over. Use your best judgment when observing the sampled pages’ linking strategies.

Appropriate informational content. You can use the found “organic content” from your sample sets (and the samples themselves) to review whether the site is producing appropriate informational content.

What does that mean, exactly?

• The content produced obviously fits within the site’s business vertical, area of expertise, or cause.
  • Example: Moz’s SEO and Inbound Marketing Blog is an appropriate fit for an SEO company.
• The content on the site isn’t overly self-promotional, resulting in an average user not trusting this domain to produce unbiased information.
  • Example: If Distilled produced a list of “Best Digital Marketing Agencies,” it’s highly unlikely that users would find it trustworthy given our inherent bias!

Quality of content. Highly subjective, yes, but remember: you’re comparing brands against each other. Here’s what you need to evaluate here:

• Are “informative” pages discussing complex topics under 400 words?
  • Note: thin content isn’t always a bad thing. Keep page intent in mind as you evaluate.
• Do you want to read the content?
• Largely, do the pages seem well-written and full of valuable information?
  • Conversely, are the sites littered with “listicles,” or full of generic info you can find in millions of other places online?

Quality of images/video. Also highly subjective (but again, compare your site to your competitors, and be brutally honest). Judge each site’s media items based on:

• Resolution (do the images or videos appear to be high quality? Grainy?),
• Whether they are unique (do the images or videos appear to be from stock resources?),
• Whether the photos or videos are repeated on multiple sample pages.

Audience (engagement and sharing of content)

Number of linking root domains. This factor is exclusively based on the total number of dofollow linking root domains (LRDs) to each domain (not total backlinks).

You can pull this number from Moz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE) or from Ahrefs. Since this measurement is only for the total number of LRDs to competitor, you don’t need to graph them. However, you will have an opportunity to display the sheer quantity of links by their domain authority in the next checklist item.

Quality of linking root domains. Here is where we get to the quality of each site’s LRDs. Using the same LRD data you exported from either Moz’s OSE or Ahrefs, you can bucket each brand’s LRDs by domain authority and count the total LRDs by DA. Log these into this third sheet, and you’ll have a graph that illustrates their overall LRD quality (and will help you grade each domain).

Other people talk about our content. I like to use BuzzSumo for this checklist item. BuzzSumo allows you to see what sites have written about a particular topic or company. You can even refine your search to include or exclude certain terms as necessary.

You’ll need to set a timeframe to collect this information. Set this to the past year to account for seasonality.

Actively promoting content. Using BuzzSumo again, you can alter your search to find how many of each domain’s URLs have been shared on social networks. While this isn’t an explicit ranking factor, strong social media marketing is correlated with good SEO. Keep the timeframe to one year, same as above.

Creating content explicitly for organic acquisition. This line item may seem similar to Appropriate informational content, but its purpose is to examine whether the competitors create pages to target keywords users are searching for.

Plug your the same URLs from your found “organic content” into SEMRush, and note whether they are ranking for non-branded keywords. You can grade the competitors on whether (and how many of) the sampled pages are ranking for any non-branded terms, and weight them based on their relative rank positions.

Conversion

You should treat this section as a UX exercise. Visit each competitor's sampled URLs as though they are your landing page from search. Is it clear what the calls to action are? What is the next logical step in your user journey? Does it feel like you’re getting the right information, in the right order as you click through?

Clear CTAs on site. Of your sample pages, examine what the calls to action (CTAs) are. This is largely UX-based, so use your best judgment when evaluating whether they seem easy to understand. For inspiration, take a look at these examples of CTAs.

Conversions appropriate to several funnel steps. This checklist item asks you to determine whether the funnel steps towards conversion feel like the correct “next step” from the user’s standpoint.

Even if you are not a UX specialist, you can assess each site as though you are a first time user. Document areas on the pages where you feel frustrated, confused, or not. User behavior is a ranking signal, so while this is a qualitative measurement, it can help you understand the UX for each site.

CTAs match user intent inferred from content. Here is where you’ll evaluate whether the CTAs match the user intent from the content as well as the CTA language. For instance, if a CTA prompts a user to click “for more information,” and takes them to a subscription page, the visitor will most likely be confused or irritated (and, in reality, will probably leave the site).

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This analysis should help you holistically identify areas of opportunity available in your search landscape, without having to guess which “best practice” you should test next. Once you’ve started this competitive analysis, trends among the competition will emerge, and expose niches where your site can improve and potentially outpace your competition.

Kick off your own SEO competitive analysis and comment below on how it goes! If this process is your jam, or you’d like to argue with it, come see me speak about these competitive analyses and the campaigns they’ve inspired at SearchLove London. Bonus? If you use that link, you’ll get £50 off your tickets.

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 151

Click on the video above to watch Episode 151 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.  

 

Announcement

Bradley: Be like, cheers.

Adam: We are now live. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, this is episode 151, the one where Adam talks loudly because he doesn’t know how loud it’s actually coming through. So, if this is weird, just type in there and be like, “Adam, take it down a notch.” Also, cheers, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Live, so cheers.

Hernan: Yay.

Bradley: Cheers.

Adam: Ah, good beer. Alright. So, we’re at a McMenamins, if you’re from the northwest, you know what it is. If you’re not from the northwest, it means nothing, so we’ll just keep going with that. How’s the weather is what I usually ask people, so, how’s the weather?

Hernan: It’s really nice here, actually, in Portland. It’s pretty cool. We had a nice walk here, so, yeah, it’s been behaving, misting.

Adam: Yeah, so I’ll have to flip over here and see if Marco’s going to join us.

Bradley: No, I don’t think.

Adam: No, still having dinner. He might be on later, but we’ll ask him how the weather is in there. But anyways, we’ve got a few people joining us [inaudible 00:01:00], got Sam, we got [inaudible 00:01:03] and other than that I think we’re just going to jump into it, right?

Bradley: I think so. Actually, I’m going to be trying to navigate from afar, so, bear with me guys. I’ll grab the screen. Let’s see.

Adam: Oh, we don’t [inaudible 00:01:16] on the Facebooks too, so.

Hernan: Facebooks, we’re live if you want to say hi.

Bradley: We’re live on the Facebooks.

Hernan: The Facebooks.

Bradley: Alright.

Adam: Hey, Facebooks.

That’s fine.

Bradley: I think we’re good to go, guys.

Hernan: Let’s get it started.

Bradley: Make sure everybody is good. Hey, guys, if we’re not coming through loud enough or whatever, just let us know on the event page, please, and we’ll try to fix it somehow.

Hernan: You’re watching comments there?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Okay.

Adam: Okay, so, Kevin says, thanks for last week, me answering his question about answering lead gen issues. That was a question about branding being different on the lead gen site when a contractor comes out. You’re welcome, Kevin.

 

Do You Always Create A Syndication Network For SEO Clients Even If It’s Not Content Marketing?

So, next question is from Mohammad, he says, “Hey guys, do you always create a syndication network for SEO clients, even when they won’t be content marketing? I have this guy who’s ranking pretty highly for auto-detailing and he wants me to help solidify that. I’m planning to make a Drive Stack, but I remember BB saying he always starts with a network.” That is correct, Mohammad, because it helps to validate the entity, [inaudible 00:02:19] you syndicate content or not, it’s still valuable to have. Because once again, it validates the entity, it helps to claim that brand [inaudible 00:02:28] trying to do with the syndication network.

So, again, it’s really important. If you can … If you’re going to be content marketing, it’s great to have it because then it’s obviously going to help with SEO as well [silence 00:02:39 – 00:02:51]. Than just creating a syndication. And remember, that’s something that you should … You can charge for as part of a branding package for the client as well> And so, you should, you should tell them that they should want to also their [inaudible 00:03:06]. So, there’s a lot of different reasons why you should encourage that.

How Do You Guys Know When You’re Dealing With A Bad Potential Client?

So, number two is, “How do you guys know when you’re dealing with a bad potential client?” Number one is trust your gut. [silence 00:03:24 – 00:03:36]

Hernan: You know, like …

Bradley: So, he’s asking about, how do you know when a client’s going to be a shitty client? One, I mean, that’s really … Because if you are having trouble … If you’re catching resistance, or you’ve got a bad feeling about a client that you’re pitching when you’re giving them a proposal, like, kind of a stage where you’re courting them, right? You’re giving them a proposal or analyzing their web properties, their current marketing campaigns, that kind of stuff, and you’re just [inaudible 00:04:13]. You feel like they’re … Then I would run.

I mean, and honestly, there’s been many times in my [inaudible 00:04:22] because I knew that their money, if I could get that [inaudible 00:04:25] across the finish line, so to speak, that I would [inaudible 00:04:30]. I had a bad feeling about a [inaudible 00:04:32] … Every single, I’ve ever done that anyways and chased the money instead of just trusting my gut and walking away [inaudible 00:04:40] costing more time and effort than [inaudible 00:04:45]. To be honest.

[silence 00:04:48 – 00:06:17]

Hernan: Yeah, and then, the client, you can actually go up to the client and see and measure it and see where the conversations. Because it’s just, I don’t take any clients that [inaudible 00:06:26].

Bradley: Well, it’s just rude for us to [inaudible 00:06:38].

Asking too many questions about too much information about how you’re doing your SEO and that kind of stuff. Do you go [inaudible 00:06:54] to explain how they fix a roof? You know what I mean? Because it’s like, you hired me to be the professional to do this and as long as I can produce results, that’s all that matters. So, my point is, when it comes to a client, if you think that there’s any sort of bad feeling, I would trust your gut and walk away even if you need the money, because a lot of the time the money’s not worth the additional headache, so.

Adam: One last thing I’d say on this, too, is we see this question and so I think we can probably put together something, I think, moving forward that would be like, “Hey, here’s some cues or here’s somethings.” But part of it’s getting out there and getting clients. Like, you’re not going to know who you’re nightmare client is until you deal with them. And hopefully you can see it coming. And if not, then, you know, it’s [inaudible 00:07:34]. Find it coming, but that bad experience is going to be very informative for you, so.

Hernan: And also, most of the guys, you’re all doing client SEO? Not yet? Oh, okay. So, this actually is valuable, probably. So you know which clients to run away from. Okay, cool.

How Do You Rank A Google Site?

Bradley: Okay, so, the next one’s from Brian. He says, “I have implemented the G sites builder from Peter Drew [inaudible 00:07:58] is anyone else having similar issues?” Brian, maybe so, but [inaudible 00:08:02] use just the G sites builder in the way [inaudible 00:08:07] it primarily is as a link builder, so that we can [inaudible 00:08:12] and stick. If they do, that’s great. But that’s not the intended … That’s not the original link, right?

[inaudible 00:08:20] because they’re Google properties as link building tools. So, in other words, we build [inaudible 00:08:27] keyword registered on Google domains and we use those to actually link to the properties that we’re looking to rank. So, it could be to a money site, to YouTube videos, you could use, obviously, RYS tactics and Drive, Google Drive and Drive files. So, there’s a lot of things that you can end up doing with those Google sites to help you to push the rankings of other properties and that’s typically how we use them.

And here’s the reason why, because, obviously with the Google sites builder, it’s an automated way to build a bunch of different Google properties that you can target different keywords to help push relevancy into whatever property you want. So, for example, your own money site. Second of all, because it is on Google domains, you can use those as buffer sites so that you can basically spam the ever-living hell out of those Google sites and it takes it because it’s a Google domain.

So, it basically will clean the juice so that you can do some pretty nasty stuff with Google sites. Again, sometimes the Google sites themselves will rank, but that’s never what I … I never intend on setting up to rank the Google sites. If it happens, that’s great, that’s icing on the cake. But I use those as actual link building tools and then boost the hell out of those Google sites with additional link building, like from GSA and RankerX and link building packages from server space, in other words.

So, that’s what you should be doing with it, as well. If you’re trying to rank the Google sites, you’re going to have a difficulty. With the Google sites, it’s odd how they react. Like, for example, with the Virginia SEO site that I have ranked, that wasn’t something that I intentionally set out to rank, it kind of just happened. But at the same time, it took a couple of months before it really ranked and it’s been there ever since. Since, what, May of 2015, I guess it was. But it wasn’t something that I had originally set out to do. So, like I said, if it happens, then it’s great.

You’re using it intentionally for another purpose and it services that purpose, then it’s been a successful campaign regardless of whether the actual site ranks or not. Makes sense?

How Do You Know If The RSS (Formerly Yahoo Pipes) Is Working?

Okay. “Also, how can you tell if RSS, formerly AudioPipes is working.” It’s not. They shut it down, Brian.

Hernan: Oh, yeah [inaudible 00:10:38].

Adam: Brian, if you mean something else, because I’m not sure if you meant [inaudible 00:10:44]-

Bradley: They shut that down like, two years ago.

Adam: VRSS, I mean, if there’s something else we’re missing here … If you’re talking about Yahoo RSS, it’s done. On the blog, you can just search the Man of Mastery, Yahoo Pipes and you’ll see it with some alternatives.

Bradley: Yeah, the best thing right now for pipes alternative would be Rank Feeder. Lisa Allen’s Rank Feeder.

Adam: Yeah, let me find, there’s ….

Hernan: That sucks, though. I used to use a lot of stuff on [inaudible 00:11:09].

Bradley: Lisa Allen’s Rank Feeders are great SEO tool for RSS [inaudible 00:11:15]. Splice feeds, you can create sticky items within the feed. So, there’s a bunch of really cool stuff that you can do with Rank Feeder that is … She did a really good job and she built that specifically to replace Yahoo Pipes.

How Do You Get More Traffic To A Video Targetted To A Local Service Business?

Okay, Avi’s up. He says, “Hello, I’ve been able to rank a few videos on the first page of Google, however, it has not been beneficial as I am not getting any traffic to my videos, in the local niche with the service business. Is there a good tool you can recommend for better keywords? The keywords are what, I’m using local cities with population of around 95,000 to 120,000.”

Well, if you want to figure out, Avi, I think the best way, in my opinion, to determine which keywords are going to produce actual traffic or leads, which is really what you’re looking for, is to set up an AdWords campaign. Even if you’ve only got … Use two or three hundred dollars as a budget and use that as what I call a keyword discovery budget. And if you go and you set up an AdWords campaign for the keywords that you think that customers are using …

In fact, if you use what’s called the Alpha Beta campaign structure, and you can do a search in Google for that. Look up The Alpha Beta AdWords Campaign Structure and you’ll find by, I think it’s called Q3 digital. It’s a PDF that describes what the Alpha Beta campaign structure in AdWords is, but I would recommend using that, because then you would us a very broad keyword [inaudible 00:12:38] Keywords, right? So, keywords that are very, very narrow … Service you’re in. You’re not specifying that in your comment, so I can’t tell you which one it is, but bullseye keyword’s going to be very, very specific narrow type of key word with buyer intent, with commercial intent.

And typically, a modified broad match is how you’re going to set up a beta campaign and that campaign is going to be used specifically to identify what are the actual search queries that people are using for that particular industry. And it’s very simple to do, I mean, it’s real easy. AdWords doesn’t have to be complicated and the Alpha Beta campaign structure, especially a beta campaign structure is going to identify to you which actual search queries are typing. And the ones that are generating the click through from your ads.

And even if you don’t ever intend on running that AdWords campaign long term, if SEO is your thing, that’s great, but you can use AdWords to determine … Again, I don’t know your industry, but in any industry that I go in to that’s new, for local stuff, I’ll set up an AdWords campaign and run a couple hundred dollars worth of clicks through that campaign and then from that, I take that data and I build my SEO campaign around the keywords that have been proven to me by actual search behavior. Not using the Google AdWords keyword planner, not using any of these other eight million different kinds of keyword tools out there that are going to give you search metrics and all this other bullshit, I’m going to use actual user data which is generated from AdWords itself. Okay? And that’s why I do that, because it gives me the exact keywords that I should be optimizing for or putting my effort into, as far as an SEO campaign.

Because as you’re saying, Avi, you put in all this work in ranking these videos for keywords that aren’t generating any clicks or leads whatsoever. So, to me, that was wasted time and effort, whereas … And you didn’t know what you didn’t know, you know what I mean? But now that you know, you could be putting a little bit of time and effort and a little bit of money, it’s going to cost you a little bit of money, into an AdWords campaign to identify the keywords that will produce results when you rank them via SEO methods, right?

Hernan: Yeah, if I can add real quick to that and Bradley, I think that Bradley makes a great point because we … I used to make this mistake, too, to spending several weeks or even months trying to work on a project, on trying to rank a website, whether it’s an affiliate website, a lead gen website, whatever that is. And the reality is that you can get rankings, that’s the first step, then you need the visits. Convert those visits into actual clients, and the reality is that some keywords, they have a huge volume but they don’t have any buyer intention, right?

Bradley: They don’t convert into leads or sales, right.

Hernan: Exactly. They don’t convert. So, I had this client once, that he used to sell these cameras and whatnot and he was getting a lot of traffic from Google, but he was getting a lot of traffic from one specific keyword, which was hidden cameras. You know what I’m saying? And it has nothing to do … Like, it had a lot of hits from Google, but all of the wrong traffic, because people will not end up buying his stuff. So, the point here is that Bradley, it’s really [inaudible 00:15:48] with what he’s saying, because you’re buying data.

Bradley: Sure.

Hernan: Just can see that those 200, 300 bucks that you’re spending as buying data. You’re buying data [inaudible 00:15:58] you need that data to tell you which keywords are going to work the best, so that you’re well on your way to actually ranking those keywords and getting better results faster, so.

Bradley: You don’t even need to set up a typical landing page for an AdWords … Like, for just a … It’s a click-through test is what you’re doing, a CTR test with AdWords, is you can set up a Google doc. So, you can like, literally, turn the Google Doc to public and create a landing page out of a Google doc and use that just to test to get some keyword click through, some search query data, to figure out what people are actually searching for.

And if you want to go through the trouble of setting up an actual landing page to convert leads and stuff, by all means, do that, you may already have that somewhat with a website or if you’ve got lead gen stuff set up. But I’m just saying, if you don’t want to go through the trouble of having to set up an AdWords-complaint landing page, you can do it with just a Google doc.

Hernan: Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Is There Another Plugin Or Software Like Google Site Builder That We Can Use To Generate Multiple Pages Or Websites Without Risk?

Bradley: Okay, so Avi’s up, I guess … The next question, he says, is “After posting my question to you, I saw Brian has posted a question about the Google site builder. I, too, tried using that software and did not see results after using it for about six weeks. The sites would show up and then not return. Is there another plugin or software that we can use to generate multiple pages or websites without risk?”

I mean, again, it’s not about the sites themselves ranking, Avi. It’s about using that tool to build sites as a link-building tool, right? And-

Speaker 4:We just use it to funnel the juice …

Bradley: Yeah, and as-

Speaker 4:Funnel the juice to your site.

Bradley: Yeah, basically. And then as far as generating multiple pages or websites without risk, that’s a good way to do it, because it’s a Google site. I mean, there’s other, some mass page builder sites and things like that, but there’s nothing that you’re going to do … Any sort of mass page builder or site builder is risky, is inherently risky, because you’re scamming Google and that’s against Google’s terms of service.

Even with Google site builder, if you’re spamming Google, it’s against their terms of service. So, when you say without risk, there’s not really any way to do it. If you’re building a bunch of pages, mass generating multiple pages or websites … Google. So, that’s not … Yeah, that’s not really kosher. We do it anyways, but …

Do I Need To Create A GMB Listing When Promoting Affiliate Offers With No Physical Address?

Okay, Brandon’s up. He says, “If I’m promoting affiliate offers and I have no physical address for my online business, do I still need to create a Google My Business listing?” Well, no, but … You can, but you don’t have to, Brandon. It’s up to you. If you want to validate the entity, there’s certainly benefit for that. If you have an online … Like, if you’ve got your own [inaudible 00:18:37] affiliate business, you should still have a company, right?

You should still have a legal entity because it gives you all kinds of tax benefits and it protects you from liability and all different kinds of … There’s a number of different reasons you should have an LLC or an S corporation or something like that, Brandon. So, what I would recommend is if you have that anyways, then you should set up an actual business address, which you can do using just a PO box at your local post office and use the street address option. Because then you can still validate your LLC or your S corporation or whatever the entity structure is that you’ve set up for your business. You can still validate that as an actual bona fide business for Google, and so you can get a Google My Business listing.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t do that. It’s going to add authority and credibility to your business. Does that make sense?

Hernan: Yep, that makes sense.

Bradley: Good. “And so, what should I use for my address? Do I use the address of the company I’m promoting?” No, you would use your own address, Brandon. As an affiliate marketer, you wouldn’t use the address of the products you’re promoting because you’re not associated with that … All you’re doing is driving traffic and sales to that company. So, you would use your own business brand name as well as your own address, which, again, I would recommend that you just get a PO box from your post office and use the street address option and then you can register a Google My Business listing under that.

Hernan: I’m sorry, Bradley, what do you usually …

Speaker 4:[inaudible 00:20:04].

Hernan: Lines up.

Bradley: Alright. [inaudible 00:20:11].

Adam: How to set up the PO box-

Bradley: Just do a Google search [inaudible 00:20:18] form that you fill out. When you go [inaudible 00:20:20] PO box, it’s the same for any post office in America, right? You go set up a PO box, you’re going to have to give them your ID, rent it for three months, six months or a year. An extra form that you fill out, it doesn’t cost you anything else, it’s just an extra form that you fill out that allows you to use the street address option. And you can actually Google that and download that ahead of time and print it out.

Hernan: Why were you asking, [inaudible 00:20:43], for that?

Adam: No, but we have the link and we’ve shared it several times.

Bradley: I don’t have my Chromebook, but I’d rather just share it now, but [inaudible 00:20:51] …

Adam: But there could be a tutorial.

Hernan: Okay.

Speaker 4:Well, that means international clients, they might be able to use the USPS PO box, or some other ways …

Adam: Well, you said USPS and you’re international, how do you do it?

Speaker 4:Well, because I’m in the US and we’ve got it.

[inaudible 00:21:10]

Bradley: James is up.

Speaker 4:You can just register online, and they’ll handle the whole thing for you.

How Do You Use Broad Match Modifier For City Specific Keyword In Google Adwords?

Bradley: James says, “When setting up local PC AdWords campaigns using broad match modifier for the city of Los Angeles, which is correct? Los Angeles or plus Los plus Angeles?” The second version, James. For every [inaudible 00:21:29] in a search phrase, you’re going to want to have the plus sign preceding the actual word. That’s what makes it actual broad match modifier. If you have, like you have it written out the first way, plus Los and then Angeles without the plus sign, then Angeles would be broad matched. Now, in that particular situation, I think Google’s smart enough to not really swap out various keywords for Angeles, but just to be safe, it’s supposed to be … The plus sign should precede every keyword within the query.

Hernan: And sorry, Bradley, but we have a bunch of people on Facebook, on the Facebooks.

Bradley: On the Facebooks.

Hernan: If you guys are watching live on the Facebooks, you might want to go to http://ift.tt/2yDHcME and drop your questions there so we can answer them.

Bradley: Yeah, if you’re live on the Facebooks.

Hernan: On the Facebooks.

Speaker 4:Get a couple of them [inaudible 00:22:18].

Adam: Take the series of tubes to Google that’s …

Bradley: We’ve got one of those, today. Alright, we’ll do that one in a minute. A good four part question, or three part question. Take ten minutes to read.

Should You Be Worried If A Maps Listing Dropped Entirely When Changed From Zip Codes To Radius Targetting Even If It Still Ranks For A Brand Name Search?

Jay says, “Hey, met a client’s request to pare down a location’s coverage area from a radius to 10 or so ZIP codes. The map listing appears to have dropped almost entirely except for a brand name search for the biz from the maps listing. Makes sense for me that the big G is re-assessing the maps listing relevance, it’s a maps listing that has consistently been in the top three for main keywords for many years now. I’m not worried but should I be? LOL, thank you so much for your input every week guys. Hump Day Hangouts is a must.”

Interesting. I’m not sure why you would pare it down from a radius to just specific ZIP codes unless there … I mean, I’m sure there was a reason for it, Jay, but I wouldn’t sweat it yet. But if you wait a couple of weeks and it doesn’t look like it’s coming back, then I might be a little bit worried and switch it back. Because if that’s all that was changed was actually the service area from a radius to just specific ZIP codes, I can’t imagine why it would be dropping as drastically.

I mean, anytime you make a change it can dance, but I can’t … I mean, to me that doesn’t seem like something that could cause a whole lot of negative movement.

Hernan: Yeah, I don’t know.

Bradley: So, I would give it a few more days and then see … Because I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve done that, Jay, but I would give it a little bit of time to try to settle in. Usually you’ve got to wait about three weeks when you do something like that. But if it’s not coming back, then you’re right, I would worry and maybe switch it back to a radius, unless there was a specific reason why you switched it to just the ZIP codes.

Hernan: You know, I don’t know if this specifically hit the maps but I think it was this … No, last weekend there was a big shift in the algorithm. Like, it was a big … Like, if you go to AlgoGuru or Google Grunt Meter, there was a big dance. So, I don’t know when this happened specifically, Jay, and I don’t know if that’s related for the maps, but I know that some people that were doing local felt it. You know what I’m saying? So, maybe that’s it. So, I would definitely do what Bradley’s saying, which is give it a few days.

Bradley: Yeah. And then also, Jay, I don’t know how much … If you’re part of Syndication Academy, we covered the press release strategy for local last week, during the update webinar #15 for Syndication Academy. We covered that quite a bit. So, go back and watch that if you have access to that. If you don’t, though, you probably should join because what I would suggest doing is probably publishing a press release or two for the company specifically. You’ve got to find some reason … You can make up news about the company, as far as something that’s news worthy or announcement worthy, in which case you could publish a press release and then link both to the money site itself as well as to the Google Plus listing … I say Google Plus, but I meant Google Maps listing, because that … We’ve been seeing some incredible results with local stuff, with just using press releases.

And so, if you do something with a listing that was ranked in maps and it starts to dance, hit it with a press release is what I’m saying, because a lot the times, that will force it back in to the three pack.

Hernan: You obviously still write the press releases, don’t use any [crosstalk 00:25:48].

Bradley: Well, yeah, you don’t want to … It’s got to be done right.

Adam: Yeah, of course.

Hernan: Please don’t do that.

Bradley: I just assume that you understand that, so.

Hernan: Yeah, please don’t do that. Let me switch this a little … You can keep going.

Should I Find A Fake Address And Phone Number To Use When Creating The Google Properties In Drive Stack?

Bradley: Okay, Andy T’s up with the big multi-part question, so we’ll try to break this down one at a time. “Hi team, good day all, just wanted to add on to the Brandon Carter question. I’m also promoting affiliate offers through my blog. I, too, do not have a physical address or phone number, also I’m implementing IFTTT strategy and it works great, double thumbs up Semantic Mastery team.” Okay I’ll plus one that, thanks Andy.

So, here’s the question, “When the Drive Stack, should I find a fake address and phone number to use when creating the Google properties?” I don’t like to ever do that, Andy, personally.

Hernan: [inaudible 00:26:37]

Bradley: Yeah, I don’t see why you would do that. “Or can I just point everything to the money site URL, since I do not have a real physical address and phone number to use?” No, that’s fine. You don’t have to have an NAP for a Drive Stack. If you’re doing stuff where you have an NAP, like if it’s for a local business, for local SEO type stuff, you want to list that in the Drive Stack. But not having one doesn’t mean that you should create one or fabricate one. Does that make sense, Andy? So, no. Don’t do that. If you’re trying to promote just a website or an affiliate offer and you don’t need a physical address, then don’t do it. For Drives, don’t create a fake one, is what I’m saying.

If you have one … Like what I was saying to the other question was, build an affiliate business. You should be doing it under an actual business entity anyways, in which case you should register your own business entity and get an actual address, I mean, that’s just validation. But what I’m saying is, if you’re just using a Drive Stack to promote a specific affiliate offer and affiliate website … An affiliate page or website that you’ve created to promote an affiliate offer, you don’t need to fake an NAP. There’s no reason for it. You just want to push juice to the actual website itself, you don’t need to mention any sort of name, address or phone number. It’s not important. Okay?

How Does The Google Drive Stack Help The Syndication Network In Improving The Rankings Of A Website?

Okay, so that answered number one. Number two, “As I mentioned, IFTTT is working great for me. Many of my pages have been ranking well. Can you tell me how the Drive Stacks can further help me, since I am not running a local service? It sounds like RYS Reloaded is more suitable for business and not for affiliate websites.”

No, that’s not true. I mean, I typically, because I do pretty much 90% of everything I do is local based, that’s the only reason why I talk about it applying to locals so much, but we’ve got members in Semantic Mastery or Mastermind, for example, Jason Quinlan, he does a ton of affiliate stuff and he uses RYS as his primary method for ranking for affiliate offers. So, it just depends on what your overall business strategy is, Andy. If you’re doing local, use it for local. If you’re doing affiliate, you can use it for affiliate, okay? It’s really beneficial in either case.

Should You Build Drive Stacks For Each Of The Pages Or Just 1 Drive Stack And Point To All The Pages?

Number three, “One of my sites has about 100 pages of content, should I build Drive Stacks for each of the pages?” Wow.

Speaker 4:Shit. [crosstalk 00:28:52]

Adam: Well, yes, but only if you find that there’s a [inaudible 00:28:56].

Bradley: Yeah, right. Or just one Drive Stack and point it to all the pages. You can do either. I don’t recommend building 100 different Drive Stacks, one for each page. I mean, you certainly could, but that would take you a long time or a very big budget. So, no, what I would suggest doing is just building a Drive Stack for the overall theme. Like, if you’ve got 100 pages of content and you’ve got a website that’s got categories in it, so, silo structure to it, then what I would suggest is building a Drive Stack for each silo or at least one Stack for the entire site, but then you can have folders that are modeled after the categories on the site, right? So that you can add more and more Drive file content within folders that match, if that makes sense.

So, in other words, if you have a website that has a silo structure to it, so, it’s got categories, it may have top level … And so, parent and child categories and things like that, you can create a Drive Stack with folders that … The structure of the Stack itself can model the architecture of the site, to where you would have folder that are basically the silos or the categories. Then, you have, all the files inside are optimized for that particular silo or that category, if that makes sense. But you really only need one Stack for that, you don’t need multiple stacks. Does that make sense?

Hernan: Yeah, I would say that you might need to test, Andy. I don’t know how big the project is and if you have a hundred pages of content, I don’t know how big the competition is, but you can test … You can start with one Drive Stack, I think that that would be the best thing.

Bradley: Yeah, always start with the least amount of work.

Hernan: Yeah, one and probably that will take you up to the top pool, maybe not and you need to do one per category, for example. You’ve got like, five categories and within those pages you have got like, 20 pages of content each category, you just go ahead with one Drive Stack per category. But that’s up to you, and then you need to test, so.

Bradley: Yep. Okay, well, that was [inaudible 00:30:58] four.

Hernan: Yeah, that wasn’t too bad.

Speaker 4:[inaudible 00:31:00] Andy.

Bradley: Scott, since he’s sitting behind us …

Scott:Now I have to remember the question.

Did You Use The New Google Sites Embed Url Feature To Embed Web Pages?

Bradley: He says, Scott says, is anyone using the new Google Sites embed URL feature to embed webpages. It’s now live and I’ve tried it today. The feature’s not available in Google Sites classic version. So, what Scott was telling us earlier was that in the new Google Sites you can actually embed a very simple function inside the [inaudible 00:31:26], correct?

Scott:Absolutely.

Hernan: That’s pretty cool, that’s pretty neat.

Adam: Hey Rob, if you’re watching this.

Bradley: So, you could embed your own money site into a new site page.

Scott:Yes, that’s exactly right.

Bradley: And then hammer the hell out of it with links.

Hernan: That would be pretty cool. We were talking about funds, [inaudible 00:31:44].

Bradley: Cool. Alright.

Hernan: I shouldn’t say that? Sorry, sorry.

Crowd Searching Recommendations

Bradley: Nick says, “Who do you guys use for crowd searching? I saw [inaudible 00:31:54] has this new feature. Any thoughts?” We’re building our own right now, SJ. It’ll be in server space, so, right now we’re not using anybody else’s. We used CrowdSearch.me forever and ever until it started going in the shitter as far as the quality of the … It just stopped working and it’s just been … I think the IPs have been burned out, too. Like, traffic bots are using the same type of pool of IPs and so, a lot of those … That click through spam traffic, as we call it, is becoming less and less effective. It’s being filtered out or just ignored altogether and I think it’s because there’s like, limited about of IP ranges that are being used for that kind of stuff.

So, we’re developing our own that actually won’t fall victim to the same sort of circumstances as the other ones. But it’s still in development, we’re probably not going to be ready to launch that until the first part of next year.

Adam: Yeah, early in 2018.

Bradley: In the mean time, SJ, I’ve actually set up … We a CT spam tool showdown, is what I called it, test where we tested several different type of click through spam tools and services and applications and none of them are really producing that good of results right now. The best thing you can do, as far as like … If you want to set up your own micro task worker gigs, for that kind of stuff, it’s a little bit more manual but it works really, really well and that still works like crazy. Something else you can do is use AdWords to send traffic places. That’s kind of a backwards way to do it, but you can do that as well. That can be quite a bit expensive, though, unless … If you’re using YouTube traffic, it’s not as bad, but if you’re trying to use Google Search traffic, it’s pretty much …

But if you set up tasks where you hire micro task workers, MicroTaskWorkers.com is one of the places you can do it. Mechanical Turk is another place you can do it. That’s where you can actually go post a gig and say, “Okay, I’ll pay 10 or 12 cents for somebody to go Google for this particular keyword then find this particular link in the listings, wherever it shows up in the search results pages, click on it and then dwell on the page for 30 seconds or whatever.” And each micro task site will have different ways that you can describe how you want the gig performed, but there’s … And there’s ways that they prove it, like they can copy text from part of the site and paste it into a text box so that you know that they actually visited the page and then you pay them.

And again, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to set those up but that still works like crazy because those are actual, real people searching from real IPs, just like bought traffic, which are, again, it’s just like you bought traffic. And that stuff’s just not working like it used to. It used to work really well, but I think Google has gotten wise to that and so it’s not working nearly as well as it used to. Okay?

Adam: Cool.

Bradley: Okay, cool.

Are we out of questions? Because if so, we’ll wrap it up early, I’m not worried about it.

Adam: Yeah, I was going to say, if anybody’s got any questions or we got some things we want to cut … Well, it looked like there was one more, or did just answer [crosstalk 00:35:03].

Bradley: Yeah, no no, I saw one come up, but …

Adam: What’s this other one?

Hernan: And there’s this …

Bradley: Who’s this Jenny girl?

Hernan: Yeah, she’s spamming the …

Adam: She’s just posting URLs, what’s going on?

Hernan: Do you want to ban her?

Adam: Jenny’s having a hard time internetting, so. It’s all good.

Hernan: [inaudible 00:35:22].

Adam: Well, let’s do this other, [Vasrick 00:35:24]? Or did you do that …

Interlinking PBNS And Rankings

Bradley: No, not yet, not yet. He says, “What’s up guys, had a question, about a month ago I started interlinking. Well, at the same time I posted a PBN to my money site. For one month I had non-stop dancing, went from number 18 to number 70. Well, I couldn’t tell which one it was so I undone both, what do you think caused it? Also, if it was caused by the PBN, do you think my rankings will return and if so, how long? Thanks guys.”

Hernan: A month ago …

Bradley: A month ago I started interlinking …

Adam: And then at the exact same time, posted …

Bradley: Yeah, I mean, I can tell you … I’m not sure what you started interlinking, other than your own syndication network, that’s the only thing I can think of.

Hernan: Yeah, I think he started interlinking his own website. At the same time, he posted a PBN to his money site. So, at the same time he was working on this interlinking and getting [inaudible 00:36:19] from PBNs, that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: That’s the way I see it.

Bradley: Well, if that’s the case, if it’s just that you were doing interlinking on page, any time you start doing massive on-page changes, you’re going to see dancing. And if you start to do on page changes as well as off page at the same time, you could actually sandbox your site. Because Google’s looking for that kind of stuff. That’s why a lot of times, we’ll do small changes or changes in batches, but then leave it alone for three weeks at a time before making other changes, so that it will kind of settle in.

Hernan: Yeah and then he’s saying, “I couldn’t tell which one it was, so I undone both.”

Bradley: Undone both, and that’s a bad sign. That … Because what happens-

Speaker 4:You made it much worse.

Bradley: When you make changes [inaudible 00:37:02] start to go through that dance, then you go back and undo the changes that did, Google has cached and cached your site, right? And so, when you go in and start making changes and Google comes and crawls your pages, that’s when it starts to do the dancing because it says, “Okay, it used to be this and now it’s this. It’s going to bounce around in the index until we determine where it really belongs.” And so, if you go back in during that time where it’s doing the Google dance and you freak out and you start undoing the changes that you made and swapping it back, then the bot comes back and crawls it again and says, “Oh, shit. Now it’s back to the way it was. The guy must be trying to manipulate.” Does that make sense?

So, it’s like you threw a red flag up and that can really cause some problems because, essentially, when you start a change like that, you’re on a probationary period. And that’s why we always talk about making a small set of changes or a batch of changes that are all similar around the same type of thing and then leaving it alone for, up to three weeks, really, because then you get past that probationary or sandbox period, and then once you settle in you can go in and make some additional changes.

So, unfortunately I don’t really know what to tell you as far as how to recover that.

Adam: I mean, just in terms of testing, I mean, anything this could apply to engineering problems, anything. I would wait, now that you’ve undone it and give it-

Bradley: I would, yeah, I would at least wait three weeks>

Adam: Three to four weeks, see what happens and then either come back or see what you want to do. Do one thing at a time after that.

Bradley: Yeah, so as far as like … I would give it a little bit of time and then I would start with your internal linking stuff and make changes there and then let it sit and settle back in before we start doing off-page stuff. Because you should always start with your on page changes first and allow your site to settle in before making off-page changes. Because if you get your on-page right, then your off-page work will be so much more effective. Like, your site will respond quicker or better to any off-page work if the on-page is done correctly. Does that make sense?

Hernan: Yeah, 100%. 100%.

Bradley: Good.

Hernan: In fact, it’s like the 80 20 rule that we keep talking about, right? Usually, 20% of the stuff that you’re doing will bring you 80% of rankings. Meaning, if you work on the on-site, if you work on the on-site SEO, your off-site SEO will be much easier and you will need less links to rank, right? So, there’s actually a pattern that we went through with Marco, I think it was through one of the kind of hangouts or RYS Academy webinars, I don’t remember. Maybe it was one of those webinars that we did with Marco, when he actually deconstructed … Said it’s exactly that.

You make a change, Google start dancing, and then if you freak out and go undo that change, you will get a hit. So, it’s like Google [inaudible 00:39:58] banding their caravan, saying, “Hey, you know, you’re actually getting the exact opposite results that you were supposed to be getting with a new PBN, for example.” Right?

Bradley: Yeah.

Hernan: Leave it alone, don’t touch it. SEO’s more a patience game and a strategy game more than anything else, so you need to have that in mind. I wouldn’t touch it at all anymore for the next two, three weeks and see where it goes, because, again, that has to do with making several changes all at once and don’t know when you can [inaudible 00:40:29]. Does that make sense?

What Services Do You Recommend To Further Improve Ranking When Combined With Drive Stacks?

Bradley: Alright, Robert’s up. He says, “Was just looking at your Drive Stacks, just like to know how much your service will help when trying to improve ranking. What other services of yours would you recommend with the Drive Stacks, as I’m an agency trying to rank my personal site. Thanks.”

Okay, Robert, well, that’s … It’s a very difficult question for us to say, “Oh, it’s going to improve your rankings three spots.” We can’t do that, there’s really no way for us to tell you that. I can tell you that Drive Stacks are incredibly powerful but sometimes they work faster than others. There’s so many different variables that have to be taken into consideration.

For example, if somebody happens to build a Drive Stack for a property and less than three weeks later, they say that they haven’t seen any results, it must not work, I want a refund, that kind of stuff, then there’s … It could be that they didn’t wait long enough, there’s also a million other variables that have to be taken into consideration. It can’t just be the Drive Stack alone. I mean, like, what is your website? Is it optimized properly, does it have the proper categories? Is the on-page done correctly? There’s so many different variables that have to be taken into consideration.

All we can say is that if your on-page is done correctly and the Drive Stack … Your keyword selection is correct, your Drive Stack’s built correct, then you should see some result from it, but I can’t tell you how much because the level of competition is going to make … Is going to determine that as well. But also, we have seen … Sometimes Drive Stacks alone will be enough to make significant jumps with your target properties. Other times, you need to do additional things like, not only once the Drive Stack’s been built but you can build links to the Drive Stack, you can send traffic through the Stack properties themselves. There’s a lot of other things that you can do to improve the effectiveness of a Stack.

But we always recommend starting with the Stack alone and then waiting a good three, four weeks before worrying and seeing what kind of a result it has. Because, again, if you build a Stack for something and within two weeks you don’t see results, that’s too early to tell. For example, with the Virginia SEO, the stuff that I use as an example all the time, I built that Google site and that Drive Stack, and I let it sit for probably two months before … And it didn’t really respond at anything. It would fall in and out of the index, sometimes it was in the index, sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it would be on page three, sometimes you wouldn’t find it in the top ten pages. And then all of a sudden, two months later, it went straight to number one and it’s been number one ever since. And we’re talking, what, almost two and a half years now?

So, my point is is you never really know. And I never did anything to that Drive Stack or that G site other than one PBN link blast, which was like, 13 PBN links from a really shitty PBN and that was it. And so, my point is, you never really know with a Drive Stack except build it, give it two or three weeks or a month. I’d say a good 30 days and see what kind of results happen after about 30 days. And if you haven’t seen any results at that point, then you can start link boating to the Drive Stack, send traffic into it, there’s a whole bunch of other things that you can do. But again, like we just mentioned with the previous question, it’s about being patient and allowing some time for it to settle in and actually take effect.

Because, again, if you build a Drive Stack and in three weeks you don’t see results and you say, “Oh, well, this shit must not work, I want a refund, you guys suck,” then it’s probably just that you were a little bit too impatient.

Adam: Alright, so, I’m not going to lie, I was chatting with [Rob Beale 00:44:04], who’s one of the guys, the guys. One of the geniuses behind RYS Reloaded. So, I didn’t see if, maybe … Did we touch on the other stuff here, what other services of yours would you recommend with the Drive Stacks? Because that’s the other part of his question.

Bradley: Link building.

Adam: If you guys already did, I had my face in … I was text messaging Rob.

Hernan: No, I would suggest that, Robert, if you haven’t, get the Battle Plan. Get the Semantic Mastery Battle Plan, that is super cheap. I think we have a coupon code somewhere that we can give you super cheap and it will tell you exactly what to do for local websites, for aged websites, for new websites, and it’s a step by step process, right?

So, sometimes it’s even like, you have to do stuff before having a Drive Stack, you know? You have to have your on-page right, you have to have your internal linking right, before … And sometimes, you don’t even need a Drive Stack. Actually, we used the Drive Stack, sometimes immediately, sometimes down the road, depending. It depends, right? So if you want to get the Battle Plan, that would be like … I think it’s 20 bucks or something. And you can get it and you can apply what’s in there.

Bradley: Okay, next one. You’re welcome Vasrick. I hope I’m saying that right, but you’re welcome, man. He said that helped.

Alright, Jason. What’s up, Jason? He says, “PRs for new local directory sites. How often would you do it? Ongoing, regularly, or a few times to get started?” Jason, right now, I’m … Every freaking excuse I can find to publish a press release, I’m using it. So, as many as you have a budget for, is what I’m saying.

Speaker 4:First customer.

Bradley: I’m not kidding. It just … It crushes it, man. Like, to me there’s no reason why you just shouldn’t be pumping out PR after PR after PR, as long as you have the budget for it. If it’s making you money, why not?

Hernan: And Dan is asking if … He wants to come, going to be here for a little bit, right?

Bradley: Yeah, Dan. Come on down, where are we? We’re at the …

Adam: I don’t, yeah, is somebody going to come by and like …

Bradley: Fucking eh, yeah, come on Dan.

Adam: Bradley wants to drink beer with you, so, yeah, I’ll post the location on the event page here in a second.

Bradley: You’ve got to buy me a beer, Dan. No, I’m kidding.

Adam: Bring five bucks and then we’re going to give you like, $25 worth of [inaudible 00:46:20].

Hernan: That’s nice, that’s nice, that’s nice. Yeah, how we do it.

Bradley: So, alright, well, listen, since we’ve got a little bit of extra time, how about our guest … Thank you, I was hoping somebody would handle it.

Hernan: Let me see how fast …

Bradley: You guys have any questions or anything you want to chat about, since we’re here? Don, I don’t want to put you on the spot, either.

Speaker 6:I have a question. Google, like, a Google Site that you make through the RYS Stack, if you want to … So, I made one and I think I want to change some of the content, the call to action and everything, I assume that’s something you’d wait until you see it ranking where you’re hoping it …

Bradley: No, I-

Speaker 6:You’d change it any time?

Bradley: I would change it … With a Google site … I wouldn’t be changing my money site content a lot. I might add additional pages and stuff. It depends on how new the site is. Let me explain. For a Google site, what you’re talking about is part of the Stack. I would just go in and change it. If you’ve got to make edits to it or whatever or add pages to it to target the different keywords, that kind of stuff, I would do that. But like, for a money [inaudible 00:47:22], personally, if I get a site built and then I want … I’m always worried about that sandbox period that we’re talking about, the probationary period, with my own site. But a Google site, because it’s a Google domain, it’s different. You see what I’m saying?

Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah.

Bradley: So you can go ahead and make changes to that and not have to worry about it being penalized because it’s a Google site. Does that make sense?

Speaker 6:Yeah, that makes sense.

Bradley: Anybody else?

Hernan: No, we’re probably done early, that’s pretty cool.

Bradley: Yeah, I just got a new beer for it, too.

Adam: No, we’re good, I want to say something, too. Part of what we’ve been doing here, we’re obviously, we’re together, this is rare for us. It’s been once a year, so it’s been ten months since we were last together and so we’ve been obviously going over the stuff that we want to plan out, things we want to do, things we want to implement, and I’m really happy that we have people come down and join us. It’s good to meet, we talk about Masterminds, we talk about networking. It is really important, it’s something that I personally avoided in my life for a long time because I was like, I don’t want to talk to people.

Speaker 4:[inaudible 00:48:22]

Adam: Yeah, and so, I mean, our Mastermind, I’m part of our Mastermind, but it’s not the only one I’m a part of. I know Hernan’s part of a couple others, you guys are, too. So, I just want to stress that importance. And then also, of course, I’m going to talk about ours and we do have a lot of really good stuff coming up.

Bradley: Yeah.

Adam: Part of what we did was planning it out. We’ve talked to Mastermind members. I don’t know if any of you are watching and you want to help corroborate my story, like, post, let them know that you’ve heard from me, because I’ve talked to probably 20 or 30 of our Mastermind members on Skype or [inaudible 00:48:55] asking for information and just getting feedback. “Hey, what can we do to make this …” How can we make it more either interactive or how can we provide better information? And that’s really the path we’re going with it, is to make it better and more complete for people, so.

Hernan: Yeah, yeah. That’s actually a pretty good point. And another thing that I figure, because you brought me the Mastery journal and … One of the greatest things that you could do and this is more talking about entrepreneurship and Mindset, which is one of the things that we’re starting doing, Bradley’s started doing the Mindset series every Monday for a while and then we’re going with that most likely into the Mastermind is that, we are here learning from each other.

[inaudible 00:49:43] something that you want to do, you want to keep doing. You want to keep sharpening the ax, you want to keep getting better than what you are, you want to keep staying on top of things. SEO and marketing in general is a really plastic and dynamic industry and you want to stay on top of your craft, so, that’s why we do this. That’s why the Hump Day Hangouts and we are always out there in the trenches. That’s something that I invite you guys to do too, so.

Bradley: And as far as the Mastermind, something that we’re really focusing our efforts going forward on just improving that and creating a curriculum for a 12 month plan to take people through various levels of building an actual business and I think that’s something that we’re going to be rolling that out over the next couple of months while we start putting this content together and restructuring everything.

So, we certainly are going to be encouraging people to come join the Mastermind because it will help to fast-track your success with any type of online business that you want, whether it’s local, affiliate, anything, really. Lead gen, that kind of stuff. So, more about it. This is all stuff that we’ve just planned out over the last couple days while we’re together and it’s going to take time for us to put all this stuff together but you’ll be finding out more about it going forward and obviously, we’re going to be here every week, doing Hump Day Hangouts.

Adam: Yeah, I was going to say, in the meantime, if it’s not for you, that’s great. Not everybody’s a perfect fit, it’s not a Mastermind for every single person in the world. If it’s not for you, either whether it’s you don’t have the money, you don’t have the business yet, that’s fine. Keep coming to the Hump Day Hangouts. We love it, I mean, we’re happy to have people here and online. So, like Bradley said, just keep coming.

Bradley: Yep. So.

Speaker 4:Alright, that was pretty cool.

Bradley: Let’s see if we have any more questions. If not, we’ll wrap it up.

Speaker 7:Cheers, everyone.

Speaker 6:When’s the next hangout going to be?

Adam: Yeah, the live one? That’s a good question. We were talking about that.

Speaker 6:Two years?

Adam: It’s going to be like, a year.

Speaker 6:I’ll be here.

Adam: Okay.

Bradley: So, Greg’s got a question. Greg, where the hell are you, man? I thought you were coming tonight, man.

Adam: Yeah, he said he couldn’t on the Facebook page, I was like awww.

Bradley: Aww, damn it.

Adam: Free beer!

SEO Value Benefits & Strategies For Multi-Language Pages On The Website

Bradley: Damn it, Greg. He says, “Can you share any experiences in SEO value benefits and strategy adding multi-language pages to your websites? Thanks guys.” You know, I’ve done that with just a couple of my tree service sites, I’ve added, there’s a plugin … Shit, I can’t remember the name of it, I’d have to look it up. But there’s a plugin that will actually create and translate pages from English to whatever other languages you want.

Hernan: Is that the WPML? Is that the one?

Bradley: I don’t remember.

Speaker 4:[inaudible 00:52:17]

Bradley: I don’t remember which one it is, but anyways, there’s a plugin that will do that and so it’ll create, like, at the end of the URL, slash ES for Spanish, you know, for example. And I’ve used that on a couple of my tree service sites and I haven’t noticed any difference, but I can’t imagine it hurting. I don’t know, I don’t have any exact hard data on that, Greg.

Speaker 4:Right, so, I’ve used it quite a lot, so it’s pretty much the same thing if you were ranking a dedicated site for a specific keyword in another language and plugins pretty much just help you to make it a more user-friendly version of the whole site, so it can actually browse the whole site in one language. For who, it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re targeting the keyword and Google actually sees it’s that site.

[crosstalk 00:53:01]

Speaker 6:There’s a Google Translate button that you can actually put on the website.

Speaker 4:Yeah, you can do that, but it’s pretty shit quality.

Speaker 6:Yeah. You can’t expect a lot out of Google. [inaudible 00:53:15]

Bradley: Jason says, “LOL, PR buys incoming, man.” No problem, Jason. And by the way, Jason, just so you know, we use … I use multiple press release distribution services guys. I try to be transparent about that, because people just think that I’m always going to suggest that you just buy them from your server space. No, that’s, I highly recommend that you use that as well because we do have a good distribution service, but I also use several other versions.

In fact, we’ve got a new one that we’re going to be doing some promotions for and Jason, I’m sure you’re already aware of that one, I talked about in the Mastermind, but Peter is a really good dude. So, we’ll talk more about that maybe next week. Okay?

Hernan: Next week.

Bradley: Let’s see. And we got a couple comments from Rob and Jason about the Mastermind, so, thanks guys.

Hernan: Thank you, guys.

Bradley: We owe you a beer next time we see you, apparently. So.

Adam: Alright.

Bradley: Alright, guys, we’re going to wrap it up and drink with our friends now, so., great. Alright, we’ll see you all, thanks for being here.

Adam: Cheers.

Bradley: Bye.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 151 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

How Do You Handle Client Calls Sold To A Local Business From A Branded Lead Gen Site?

In episode 150 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked how one should handle client calls sold to a local business from a branded lead gen site.

The exact question was:

Hey guys, hope everyone is doin good.

I have a lawn/landscape lead gen site that is branded and is getting calls that I would like to sell to a local business. The problem is how does the company answer the phone when the customer is expecting my branded business to be answering the call? Also what happens when a different companies truck shows up at the customers house or when the customer gets the bill and it’s from a different company.

I have local kingpin but havent gone through it fully yet so not sure if it has specific examples and specific strategies to handle this situation.

Thanks so much!!

Kevin

How Do You Handle Client Calls Sold To A Local Business From A Branded Lead Gen Site? posted first on your-t1-blog-url

Can Google Sites Be Duplicated And Uploaded In Bulk?

In episode 150 of Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked whether Google sites rank well and whether they can be duplicated and uploaded in bulk.

The exact question was:

I am in the process of building websites through google sites. Would like to know if they rank well, can be duplicated, and uploaded in bulk.

I tried a software GSG but have had problems in getting it to operate properly. Have viewed the tutorial for GSG and still no success with it. I would like a mass page builder that will work. Do you have any suggestions?

Also want to thank you guys for your commitment to the community. It is appreciated.

Can Google Sites Be Duplicated And Uploaded In Bulk? posted first on your-t1-blog-url