Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 118

Click on the video above to watch Episode 118 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://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

 

 

Announcement

Bradley: Didn't say it yet.

Marco: Don't talk about Adam.

Hernan: There we go.

Bradley: Hey, everybody. This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. It is Wednesday, February 8th at 4 p.m. Eastern. This is Hump Day Hangouts episode 118. Wow. We got Hernan on and Marco on with us today. What's up, Hernan?

Hernan: Hey, guys. Hey, everyone. It's really, really good to be here.

Bradley: Marco how are you?

Marco: What's up dude?

Bradley: Adam's not here who typically does announcements, but I know that Hernan and Marco both wanted to tease a couple things or talk about a couple thing so I'll let you jump right into it.

Hernan: Yeah. Well, first off that we're getting close on the VPH, Video Power House launch. There's some really, really powerful stuff going on in there. We will give you guys … Adam didn't allow me to share with you guys the link to actually jump on the list, but I'll try to convince him to actually share the link with you guys next week so that you can jump in. We will have a bunch of stuff going in there. We have training for the guys that are in the list that we are not sharing anywhere else. I think it's going to be pretty cool so that you can jump in the Video Power House. Also one of the things that we discuss on our last meeting in Panama was the possibility of start offering services, in particular traffic services.

Bradley has been diving hard into PPC, in particular AdWords and YouTube. Myself I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook advertising. We decided to go ahead and set up a traffic agency. We are polishing the details and that's going to be available soon. If you guys have projects that need traffic, you can start contacting us and we will give you the details shortly. We're still ironing out the details and that's going to be launching soon as well.

Bradley: We're going to be starting off with Facebook and we'll be adding AdWords, search PPC, as well as YouTube. AdWords for video and Bing search and then probably a few months down the road we'll be in the display network. Well, we'll be using display network for like remarketing, retargeting stuff, but like setting up separate display campaigns will be something that comes down the road. Just to let you guys know.

Hernan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yup.

Bradley: Okay? What else?

Hernan: Marco? You want to say something?

Marco: Yeah. Have I mentioned how easy it is to rank in YouTube ever since they tweaked the algorithm to make it more difficult? Have I mentioned how easy it … Should I even be saying anything?

Bradley: Probably not. Not yet.

Marco: Sorry. Okay. Moving on, we're deep in the lab. You guys know that. We recruited programmer, right, Cesar. Most of you guys know Jesson from our Done For You RYS services. He's in there training. We have two master spammers. I am in awe. You guys know that I teach to a whole other level when I spam, but these guys outdo me and I'm impressed. Sometimes when I look at their spamming, literally I want to cry. I'm so happy. It's just so awesome man. The great thing about it, remember how I always say you have to be a master mimic with Google? If you don't have the trust and authority to rank, you have to look like you do so that you can rank. Well, we've accomplished that. I shouldn't say accomplished. Yeah, I can say it. This is the level that we're going to.

This is what we're going to have available come August. Guys, get ready because it's not just like everyone else does where they just repolish old crap and sell it to you like it's new. You should know better than to expect that from us. It's just something that's so awesome, I can't even say where we are because somebody else will take credit for it once we do it, right? They'll get the training and then they'll put out their own training and say it was theirs. Like they're doing with IFTTT now where supposedly they invented it. I invented Google Drive is what I'm going to come up with, right? I invented Google Drive guys. I'm going to take credit for it. Anyway, enough ranting. Be ready. It's awesome.

We're spamming the crap out of everything and getting just tons of results in some of the most difficult niches that you'd ever imagine. I'm going to leave it at that.

Bradley: I love that you said the spamming is so beautiful that you almost cried. That must be some lovely spam.

Marco: Tears of happiness man.

Bradley: All right. Cool. Well, guys, the only announcement I have is next week, next Wednesday, immediately following Hump Day Hangouts is the IFTTT update webinar. I think it's either number 8 or number 9. Anyways, we got several things to go over next week so just be aware of that. The event has already been posted in the Facebook group. That's where you can find the link that will take you over to the event page for the webinar. Also we have a master class today immediately following Hump Day Hangouts. If you guys don't have anything else, I'm going to go ahead and jump into the questions.

Hernan: We're good.

Bradley: We're good? All right. Let me grab the screen. Is the audio back now guys?

Hernan: Good to go.

Marco: Yeah.

SEO For Beginners

Bradley: Okay. Cool. Thanks. All right. Cool. We're going to start right at the bottom here. It looks like Vanita is up and she says, “Hi, I'm Vanita from the UK. I don't know anything about SEO. I'm a total beginner. I want to rank real estate and mortgage broker websites. Where can I start learning? I watched some of your videos. Nothing makes sense to me. It's all jargon and complicated code words. If you can help, I'll appreciate it and I won't be able to listen live due to the time differences. Thank you.” Well, Vanita, one thing is we've got a ton of content on the YouTube. That's for damn sure. I see that you say you want to learn about SEO. I don't know. I mentioned this. We did a webinar for new subscribers last week and Marco, Hernan and I did actually.

I mentioned this in that. My strategy has completely done 180 degree shift. I would recommend personally anybody that's new, it depends on what kind of resources you have available. Typically people either have more time than money or more money than time. It really depends on where you're at. I suggest starting off with paid traffic initially now. That's my strategy going forward which would be … I start with Google search PPC or pay per clicks since that's all jargon to you. That's AdWords, okay? Google AdWords. That where you pay for your traffic. What I found is especially before starting in an SEO project, I like to use AdWords now to determine … Find out more data about my market. It's more like discovery like anything else.

It's research and discovery, right? It helps me to identify the pain points, the keywords, the actual search queries that people are typing into Google, where the traffic's coming from, what converts. All of that I can fine tune and kind of get set up and gather data and start fine tuning my sales funnels or opt-in funnels or whatever it is that I'm trying to do, whatever my conversion goal is, right? Excuse me. I can start getting that set up, start collecting data and then I'll turn around and build out an SEO campaign once I've identified the successful terms, the successful keywords and the pain points in the market. You can determine all of this rather quickly with AdWords. Cost you a few hundred dollars in traffic if you know what you're doing.

If you don't know what you're doing, you could spend thousands of dollars in traffic. That's personally how … I'm not starting anything with SEO anymore. Not right out of the gate, okay? Because SEO has become so complicated and so complex unless you're Marco and you're the spam king, but seriously, SEO has become so complicated and so complex and it's difficult and it takes time and you have to be patient. My strategy like I said is turn to paid traffic. Then once I've identified the things that are working in that particular industry or for that project, then I will go ahead and start setting up the SEO portion of the campaign.

Because I only want to spend time and energy and money on SEO work for the terms I already know will be successful because I've proven that through paid traffic. Guys, that's not an old concept. It's new to me. I mean it's a new concept. It's an old concept. It's new to me just because I always ignored it. When I heard other people for years say that same thing, I always ignored it because I was adamant about just using SEO. I was successful doing so. Again, I say for new people that are just starting out, now if you don't have any money to invest in paid traffic, then SEO is going to be the way to go because you obviously would have more time than money to be able to invest, right?

If that's the case, then I would recommend starting with probably video SEO which is typically what I tell people I do when they start off if they're going to start off in the SEO route is to go with video SEO because it's usually a lot easier than trying to rank websites and stuff or webpages, but it depends on what kind of webpages you're trying to rank. Because again that's one of the products that we have called RYS Academy uses Google Drive files which are free to not only rank the drive files themselves, but also to help rank whatever properties that we want. That's a more advanced course, but it's very, very, very effective. What I like about it is you don't have to learn …

You can use specifically just Google Drive to be able to rank stuff as well, rank the files themselves, as well rank other properties. You don't need to learn everything else like web design and back link building and all that other kind of stuff you really don't need to learn. Vanita, starting off as a rank beginner which is which you're saying that you are, again I would recommend starting with paid traffic if you have the resources available. If you don't, then I would start with video SEO. That said, I can point you to some courses that we have if you want to learn AdWords. Specifically like you said you want to rank real estate and mortgage broker websites, I think those are great for Local Kingpin.

Local Kingpin is a product that we developed underneath one of our sister companies called Mastery PR. Local Kingpin is specifically for setting up lead gen sites, lead generation sites, or sites for local businesses, brick and mortar local businesses. Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, those would work well. They would fit the Local Kingpin model very, very well. Again if you want to start with SEO instead, then I don't know guys, what would you recommend? IFTTT SEO Academy probably.

Marco: I would stay with IFTTT SEO, but if he … I'm not sure if Vanita's a he or a she, but if you're that new, I would say go learn the jargon. Go learn what it all means. There's places where you can learn the terms so that you're familiar with whatever it is that we're talking about and then move on from there. You can do it both, learn the jargon and implement IFTTT SEO Academy. You can also do that the Local Kingpin. I would say real estate and mortgage broker, high competition and he's going to have to pay a large amount per click unless he really dials it in and goes after something with less competition. You'll have to take a look. You have to know your market. You have to know what it is that you're going after.

You have to know where the money is so that you can concentrate. Because if you only have a hundred bucks a month to spend on AdWords which is okay, you can possibly generate a couple of leads from that, but that's all you can expect is maybe a couple of leads from that hundred bucks that you invest. Learn. Learn all you can. Take in all you can while at the same time taking some type of action. Don't just consume information and do nothing because then … When you're done consuming information, you're right at the place where you started except you know more. You know more, but you still haven't done anything. You haven't made a nickel. At least if you start implementing ideas, you can go through YouTube. We have a YouTube training course.

We have a whole bunch of things that you could take advantage of and try to generate some type of income while you're learning. That would be my advice.

Bradley: One thing I want to add to that because Marco mentioned that real estate keywords and mortgage learn type keywords are typically expensive when you're paying for the traffic. PPC, pay per click, they're typically the competition is high so it's expensive, but so is the competition for SEO in those industries. The competition is high in both of those industries regardless of whether you're doing SEO or paid traffic. It really doesn't matter. Either way the competition's going to be high. In AdWords, all that means is you're going to pay more per click. Your clicks are going to be more expensive.

Obviously your goal is to generate leads and so the leads, the cost per lead or cost per acquisition's going to be higher because it's competitive and there's a lot of other people typically bidding on those keywords. In SEO, again that's very, very … I know because I've worked with several real estate agents in the past and a real estate broker, an actual Re/Max affiliate. I can tell you that the SEO is really difficult for those as well because a lot of the times you're dealing with … For SEO the competition is the big, big website. Re/Max and Long and Foster and what's … Redfin I think is one of them or whatever. There's a whole bunch of, Zillow's another one, whole bunch of real estate websites that generally take up all the space on page one.

It's very, very difficult to rank with SEO in those industries as well. Like Marco said, you definitely want to find out where the money is because regardless of whether you're doing AdWords or SEO, if you don't know where the money is, then you're going to be wasting both time and money on testing and trying to find out. Personally I like the AdWords route better because I can get to the pain points. I can understand the market a lot faster and then once I understand that market, then I'll put the effort into the SEO like I mentioned before.

Because especially in a competitive market that's competitive with SEO guys, if you try to go right out of the bat and just assume that you know where the money is in the market and start working on all this SEO stuff just to find out three months down the road, six months down the road when you finally get something ranked and it starts generating some traffic, but it's not converting and it's generating any revenue, you just lost three to six months worth of work. Right? Three to six months just to find out that you were targeting the wrong damn terms or that you were in a market that there's no money. That's all I'm saying is I think it's better to start off using paid traffic so you can identify where the money is, what is converting and then put the effort into the SEO.

Again that's prohibited to some people and I get that. You just have to really choose your own battles. You have any input on that Hernan?

Hernan: Oops, I was muted. No, I agree with you. I think this is a complex universe. Again IFTTT SEO Academy I think it's the best way to go initially because we treat … Although we treat some complex stuff over there, I think it's the best way to go. This needs to be taken step-by-step. You learn as you go. We are always saying that you need to be testing. That in my opinion is the best way to learn like honestly. You take a concept that you learn here. You ask your question. We tell you our input and then you go and text and then this works, this doesn't work. That's the best way. The hands-on approach is the way to go in my opinion.

Bradley: Total immersion. Okay. Ed is up and I see that he posted a followup up here under a different profile because I was reading these earlier. Ed's basically saying the YouTube like recipes aren't working for him. Ed, I'll have to look into that. We have the IFTTT update webinar next Wednesday. I've added that to the list of things to check into between now and next Wednesday. I will cover that in the update webinar, okay? I haven't heard anybody else say that it's not working yet so it maybe an isolated incident, but I will test it myself and get back to you on that. Well, again I will cover this next Wednesday in the IFTTT update webinar, okay?

Using IFTTT Network To Post Both Videos And Articles

 

Ben's up. Ben says, “Hey, guys. Two questions. Number one is if for one niche I have a site with a branded network around it triggered by RSS and a YouTube channel triggering a tier 2 network, a 2 tier network, then the Google properties in the branded network around the site, Blogger, Google Plus, Google Plus Page, also used in the tier 1 ring triggered by the YouTube channel so that they would be populated with posts and videos. If for one niche I have a site, are the Google properties in the branded network around also used in the tier 1 ring trigger it?” Well, you can Ben. It's up to you. Look, we've covered this a lot of times. I'm going to cover it again, but I do want to point something out guys because I saw this earlier so I pulled this up. We do have a knowledge base, support.semanticmastery.com.

If you go in there and you click on the IFTTT SEO Academy category, there's pages and pages in here of frequently asked questions. This is one that comes up … It's not 100% exact match Ben, but this is very similar to your question. Right here it says, “If I have a YouTube channel and a branded website, can I syndicate both to the same network via IFTTT??” I just want to point this out guys because I know we have some of the same questions come up almost every week or often enough that we put them in the frequently asked questions section. I just want to point this out that this is a resource that you guys have to get your questions answered so you don't have to wait until Wednesday That said, let's cover this briefly. All right. You can.

I've mentioned this many, many times, but if you have a branded tier 1 network and it's being fed or triggered by your money site which is what I recommend if you are using both a YouTube channel syndication network, so YouTube syndication network and a money site blog syndication network. If you're going to use both for the same project, the same brand, then most of the time what I want to do is put the tier 1 branded network attached and triggered by the blog itself. Then the YouTube channel I will put just persona based rings around that. Tier 1 rings or tier 2, whatever you want, as many as you want because it doesn't matter. There's no footprint issues with YouTube still to this day. That could change at any moment. I don't expect it to, but it could at any moment.

To this day there's no footprint issues with syndicating YouTube videos the way that we have the applets or the recipes set up, but there is with your blog, blog syndication networks. There can be footprint issues especially with 2 tier networks with you're using those. I don't recommend using those unless using something like RSS Smasher or if you want to go through the additional trouble of related content feeds, blah blah blah, we've been over that too. Put the tier 1 branded network attached to the blog because you want to benefit your website, your domain, more so than you want to be benefit YouTube because you own that so to speak. You own the website. YouTube's just allowing you to use some space to rent basically a channel on their site.

I always like to push the authority over to the money site if possible. That's why I like to use the branded ring for the money site and then all persona based rings for the YouTube channel. Guys, this is only for if you're going to be using both the YouTube channel and blog syndication for the same brand. You guys get that? Just want to clarify that. However, here's the thing, if you want to have your YouTube channel and your blog trigger the same network, that's perfectly okay to do. It's the same brand, right? It makes sense to do so. What I recommend is a lot of times people will publish videos to the YouTube channel and then they'll take the YouTube video and publish it to their blog and they won't change anything.

They won't add additional text. They won't change the titles. In other words, whatever the title of the video was on the YouTube channel, they go embed it into a post on their blog and then they use the same title from the YouTube video as the blog post title. Then they usually don't add any content below it or if they do, whatever. My point is what happens is if you do that where both the YouTube channel and the blog are triggering and syndicating to the same network, the same branded network or even just a handful of properties within the same network, my point is is that it will end up looking like duplicate posts unless, unless you end up making the blog post unique somehow versus just the YouTube video.

Let's put it this way to try to clarify this or to make this a little bit more clear, if you post a video or you publish a video to your YouTube channel, then you want to publish to your blog, that's perfectly fine as well, but making more blog appropriate style title and add some additional content. One thing that I love to do is to actually take whatever video it is that I'm going to embed into a post on my money site and have it transcribed, right? Have it transcribed. Any news transcription text is blog post text because now and remember again, make the title more like blog appropriate. When you first upload it to your YouTube channel, it's going to syndicate out to that network with the YouTube title and all that.

Then when you publish it to your blog, if you switch it up and make it unique enough even if the same video is present in the post, it doesn't matter because it's a unique post. Does that make sense? It's a different title and you have additional content. It's not just a republishing of the same video. The problem occurs when it … Because it looks spammy guys. If you have in your branded network basically what looks like duplicate posts because one came from YouTube and one came from your money site and there's very little differences between the two, then it's going to look like duplicate posts on your branded properties which can end up getting them terminated for spam. That's my whole point.

If you want to syndicate from both to the same network, I recommend just switching it up enough on the blog when you republish your video to your blog to make it unique, to make it to where it's not duplicate content anymore. It can be the same video, that's fine, but just switch up the title and add some content, some additional text below the video or in the post itself. That's perfectly fine to do just to let you know. Like I said, that's what I recommend doing guys because you don't want to … Unless you're using it for spam purposes, I wouldn't want to be cluttering up my branded properties with duplicate posts. All right. Number two.

Dominate A Local Competitive Market

“If I am in a local market for lead gen and it's competitive, what is the best strategy for being the dominant player in that market 12 to 18 months from now? Is it just to muscle my way to the top for the primary search term? If so, what is the best way to do that? Alternatively, would you cast a wide net targeting relevant, but less competitive keywords, creating and posting one or two curated post per day. One to two videos per day for 12 to 18 months.” Well, if you're in a really competitive industry, then yeah. I mean again my first go-to strategy now is AdWords like right off the bat. I would start working my way in or muscling my way into the top of the AdWords, the ads pack. That's what I would be doing because again if you're … The primary search term.

If you already know this market and you know the primary search term has got money in it and you can determine that which by the way we should mention this for Vanita, one thing you can check to see which keywords are … If you see a lot of people paying for ads, so a lot of advertisers for different types … For keywords that you're looking at, then you know that there's money in that niche if that makes sense or in those keywords, right? For Ben, excuse me, Ben, I would be working on AdWords number one because I think that that's critical for lead gen especially now. I think it's absolutely critical, but then I would be focusing on maps too if possible. Now I don't know your situation. I don't know if you have a physical location in this area.

It's very difficult with just small amount of text here to assume everything that's going on for your project specially, but what I would say is maps for lead gen guys. I've got several dozen lead gen sites and I can tell you that the ones that we're just using organic rankings for generating leads have tanked. Like not the rankings have tanked. My lead volume has tanked because there's just so much competition now between the ads and the maps 3-pack that you often have to go pass seven damn listings to get to the first organic listing.

I've noticed for a lot of local terms now guys, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but for a lot of the industries that I'm in or for the cities that I'm in because I'm pretty much mainly in just a couple industries, I'm seeing a lot more directory sites listed on page one now in the organic section. I'm seeing a lot more of that. They're starting to muscle out the little guys. Because of that, like I said, I would recommend focusing specifically on maps if possible for SEO and I would be focusing on AdWords and maps. Pretty much that's what I would be doing. You guys have any comment on that?

Hernan: Yeah, I think that would be the best way to go. Plus you can have really quick iterations of your website if it's converting. The ability that will give you paid advertising, once you have a proven website, you will be miles ahead of those that are just waiting for them to rank their websites or whatever. Let's say that you need to wait, I don't know, three months for you to rank on the 3-pack or for you to rank on the regular listings, whatever that is, then you have lost three months of potential input on your website. You do not need to wait those three months. If you have traffic coming in and then when SEO kicks in, then you will have version two or version three of your website, et cetera, et cetera. Have that in mind as well.

Bradley: The other part of this that I want to mention is … The second part of this question or the last part of this question when you say, “Would you cast a wide net targeting relevant, but less competitive keywords?” Yes. I would do that anyways. My point is that if you're in a competitive market, it's going to take an SEO strategy, time and patience in order to work your way in or muscle your way in like what you just mentioned. What I'm saying is absolutely always target long tail. Use your blog. That's the whole IFTTT SEO strategy guys is to identify the top level keywords, then find supporting type keywords. The longer tail versions of the keywords, SLI, co-occurring keyword type things, reinforcing supporting keywords that are generally going to be longer tail in nature.

Then start blogging using those keywords. Creating blog posts whether their original or curated content covering those topics using those longer tail keyword phrases as the primary topic of the post. Build silo structure into your site and continuously blog on a consistent and regular basis and you will start to muscle your way into that top level term. You use the blog as your way to build that relevancy and back links starting with just distributing content that's relevant within a proper silo structure. I absolutely recommend that you do that anyways for any SEO strategy you should be doing that.

Why go after the top level that's going to take you months of effort when you can start going after longer tail stuff and get traction a hell of a lot quicker which will also reinforce your efforts to try to rank for the top level term, if that make sense. Guys, I used to go after just the top level terms all the time. Overtime I realized that that was ass backwards strategy. I should be going after the low hanging fruit first to initially get some traction, start getting some leads and thus revenue. Then reinvest and continually work on trying to rank for those top level terms where the real money is. In the meantime, I can start generating revenue especially for lead gen, right? I can start selling those leads whether they came from a long tail search or top level change, it doesn't matter.

A lead is a lead is a lead, right? Again for that just one … I want to point this out one time, but we talk about this tool all the time, Power Suggest Pro has got to be my favorite keyword tool of all time guys for SEO. For AdWords, I just use the Keyword Planner. For SEO, the Power Suggest Pro is probably the greatest keyword research tool of all time in my opinion. It's inexpensive. It's like 57 bucks one time and it's a super simple tool. It doesn't have a learning curve at all. All you do is punch your main keywords in there, select Google if you're going to be targeting Google. You can uncheck YouTube. Then click search and it will start spitting out the suggested autosuggest keywords very, very quickly and you'll get all the long tail ideas that you need for your content marketing right there.

Does that make sense? It will give you a gold that you can use, really long tail stuff a lot of times … Power Suggest will return really long tail terms sometimes that are absolute gold because there's traffic there and you can build relevancy within a silo to help rank your top level term.

Marco: I added the link.

Bradley: Okay. Thanks. This was Ed following up on the IFTTT YouTube like recipes. Again I'll cover that … I'll look into that and get … That will be covered next Wednesday. Edward's up. He's got several questions. Go ahead?

Marco: I would just say with Ben, he's looking to rank …

Bradley: Your audio's coming in and out.

Marco: Can you hear me?

Bradley: I can right now, but you've been breaking up. Try again.

Marco: Let me try it again. RYS Academy if he wants to rank in the mad pack. It's incredible how it influences it. Then we're also working on lessening the competition in organic results. That's something else to look forward to.

Bradley: We're not going to elaborate on that yet, are we?

Marco: Not yet.

Bradley: Okay. Lessening the competition. I love it. All right.

What Is The Priority When It Comes To Consuming Semantic Mastery Products If I Want To Grow My Company?

Edward's up. Edward's very hungry right now. He says, “My goal is to grow my local business from 5k to 50k month. I have purchased Outsource Kingpin and IFTTT B2. I just bought Mega-Ray. I know I need Local and Content Kingpin, but also RYS. You're killing me. I try to consume all you sell. What do I do too much? What is priority? I want to be the best I can be. Help.” Edward, I really, really, really respect your motivation and your drive. That's what it takes man. My guess is you're going to be very successful because you're like a sponge trying to absorb everything and I get that and I appreciate that. First of all, congratulations.

Second of all, I recommend honestly, this isn't just a shameless plug, but I recommend you join the Mastermind and the reason I say that is because you're buying all of these products of ours. If you were in the Mastermind, first of all, you'd have direct access to my partners and I pretty much whenever you want. Second of all, you have access to all the other Mastermind members. There's some real savvy dudes in our group man. I'm telling you. We learn just as much from them as they learn from us. There's no doubt. We've got some really savvy people in the Mastermind. Third, all the products that you're purchasing most of them would be included in your Mastermind membership so you wouldn't have to purchase all of those products including the Mastery PR products.

For example, Outsource Kingpin and Content Kingpin those are included with the Mastermind purchases, your Mastermind subscription. Local Kingpin, there's a significant discount on that. RYS, a significant discount on that. My point is is going out and spending all these one off to purchase these course, I mean that's great. We appreciate it, but you could have saved yourself a lot of money inside the Mastermind. Plus get a hell of a lot more information and direct access to us, as well as all the other Mastermind members which is a ton of activity on our group all the time guys. I really recommend that you do that Edward. That said, let's see, it really depends on what it is that you're that trying to do.

I know that we talked last week Edward, because you had several questions and I know that we ran out of time and we're probably running run out of time again today. We have the Masterclass and Mastermind webinars that we do biweekly. Today we have a Masterclass webinar. Tomorrow Mastermind webinar. It's something that again you'd have a lot more direct access to us where we could literally help you with specific problems that you're having in your business. That's one thing. The other thing is if you want to do lead gen, I understand that you're doing client services right now. Guys, I get that. There's immediate money in providing client services. Do that. That's fine. I also recommend you start building your own lead gen business on the side so that you control and own the assets, right?

That you stop building up other's people assets and start building your own. That's what I highly recommend that you do. If you need immediate income and you can that by generating client services, that's great. On the side in your off time, in your downtime, start building out your own assets because then you can build out lead gen assets in whatever niche or whatever city you want. I recommend zeroing in one particular industry and sticking within that industry. Seriously. Go all in 100% in one vertical guys and stick with it because then you can become an expert and a big fish in a small pond. If you try to go broad and just say, “I'm going to provide local SEO or consulting services or lead gen services for any business that will take me,” you have to do all the research on every new project.

You have to start from square one. If you select one particular industry and zero in on that, then you can become an expert. Well, you're going to constantly be doing ongoing research anyways, but all you're going be doing is adding to what you already know. You're going to continually get better. You're going to be able to speak the language fluently of those people in that industry so you'll know the vocabulary, you'll be able to speak directly to their pain and you'll be able to charge a hell of a lot higher prices for your services too then if you try to be a jack of all trades if that make sense.

Marco: Can you scroll up real quick to Wayne's comment because Wayne … He's a Mastermind member so that's why I wanted you to read that.

Bradley: “Edward, it's a business not a hobby. It's only expensive if you don't use it. Pick the minds of the Semantic Mastery team and the Mastermind.” I appreciate that Wayne. Totally agree. Look at all questions from Edward. Oh, wow. All right. We're going to have to move on because we're at 4:37 already. Again my best suggestion is to join the Mastermind, Edward, because if you're willing to put in the effort and the work and spend the money on training which obviously you are and you have that desire and that drive, you would be a perfect fit for the Mastermind. You'd save yourself some money and you would literally get all the information that you could possibly need inside there. All right. Next. This is Toby. I remember.

How Long Do I Have To Wait For My Website To Get To Page #1?

“Main money site is three months old. It bounced around from second page to fifth page. Now back to the top of fourth in the last two weeks. Is this the new norm?” Yes, Toby. “Is this the new norm or do we set to decide to build another money site?” Well, I would say both. Yes, it's the new norm, but go ahead if you have the ability and the time, the desire to do so, then build a second property too. That's a Terry Kyle strategy which is anytime going into a new niche and testing a new niche or a new keywords and a new city or whatever, is to build more than just one site. Because if you put all your eggs in one basket, there is that random ranking factor that sometimes domains just perform poorly. Even a brand new domain or expired domain alike, it doesn't matter.

Sometimes domains just are like … I call it an algorithmic anomaly. It's just some domains just are at a disadvantage right out of the gate and there's not really any rhyme or reason to it. If you build multiple sites for the same project essentially, then some are just going to perform better than others naturally. Again it's difficult to do if you're doing a lot of projects. I get that. If you're only working on a couple of projects, it makes sense to instead of just putting all your eggs in one basket, so one site, build out two or three because one of them is going to outperform the others hands down every time. It's just the nature of the game guys. I would say it is a new norm.

Dancing and that whole probationary period, Marco's done a fantastic job on a blog post about that. They called it the Google Dance and making changes and that kind of stuff. Dancing a lot especially for new sites is the new norm, but also if you can build additional sites, you may find that just one site will outperform all the others by leaps and bounds. Then that's your winner, right? Like Terry Kyle because that's a strategy I learned from him that he'll go out and build five sites around a particular set of keywords. Invariably one will always outperform the other four. There will be a mixed ins to how well each one of them performs, but there's one that rises to the top and then that's the one going forward that you put the most effort into, if that make sense.

The other properties guys is not a waste of time because the other properties can be used as feeder properties. Parasites. PBN sites. Sites for back linking purposes. The other sites aren't a waste. You just identify which one's going to perform the best in search and then use that to be your money site and all the other ones become feeder sites.

Hernan: I wanted to add real quick that when you have a winner, when you have a winning domain, you can see it right off the bat. It's crazy. I don't know you could struggling like for months to get a domain to page one, but when you have a winning domain, you only need a couple of tweaks to the onsite SEO. Not even back links. That's the power of having a winning domain. You will make things so much easier. That's why Terry Kyle's approach is this because he's really on par with that. You can really tell when you have a winning domain right off the bat. I don't know why. Maybe it's some randomness in it or maybe there are fluctuations of the algorithm. I don't know why, but there's this randomness that you need to have in mind so it feeds your project.

I would suggest that yeah, go ahead. To test it out is super simple. What you do need to do is set up three WordPress sites with three different articles and optimize them for SEO. The one that gets without links, without anything, with the default WordPress thing, once you have that, the domain that hits the higher rank if you would or page 2 or bottom page 1, whatever, that's the domain you keep. It's super straightforward, super simple. It will take you half an hour and it can save you months of trying hard for ranking your domain.

Marco: He also has a Google site ranking on the first site.

Bradley: Yeah, I saw that.

Marco: I would say optimize that. Make that the hub. Make that where everything starts. Once you have that optimized, then you can push the power any way you want. That's the theory behind or part of the theory behind RYS Academy. We play on the fact that Google is narcicisstic. It's going to love itself before it loves anybody else. If it ever does love anybody else. That's what we play on.

Bradley: He says, “Google site just made it on the first page so this should all tell us something or tell us all something,” and that's exactly what RYS Academy does. I mean yeah, absolutely. We use not only the Google sites, but also the drive files to rank shit and to rank pretty much for anything. It's insane. That's what RYS Academy's all about, Toby. If you're not in that yet, you should really check it out. It's just incredible the power that you can have with that. I love this followup comment. “Video Power House is fantastic. It ranked both my videos almost instantly and they both ranked higher than my money site. Six stars.” That's awesome. Crazy because I'd notice we have 802 sites in the network now and I know we've got a bunch of more coming.

There's a lot in there now guys. We've been dealing with on the backend developing out all the processes and stuff to make it super powerful. We're just really starting to ramp out the deployment of the new sites. It's going to be big. What's our target? Our target number of sites?

Marco: We've got over 2,000. Trying to get it to three by release, but we have over half a million, might be closer to 750,000 on the secondary embed network also. Everything is themed. Everything is relevant. Everything is separated and categorized. Guys, that's the power of Video Power House. We're adding IFTTT networks where necessary. The content team is working. The build team is working. Everybody has been working their butt off to make this what it is right now. If it's like this right now, imagine what it's going to be once it's all set. That's what I have to say on that one. I can't wait. I can't wait for it to go public. They're getting results now guys. What else needs to be said?

Reciprocal Linking

Bradley: Chris is up. He says, “In terms of on page SEO internal linking, what are your thoughts on reciprocal linking? I.E. if article A linked to article B with a targeted anchor, could you also link article B back to the section of article A with a different targeted anchor assuming they're both in the same silo?” That's not considered a reciprocal link, Chris. Well, I don't know technically if that would still be considered a reciprocal link, but when it's the same site, it's an internal link. It's not a reciprocal link. There shouldn't be any problem with doing internal links, reciprocal internal links, from within the same site. You mentioned assuming their both in the same silo so I'm assuming that article A and article B are on the same site within the same silo and that's absolutely fine.

Internal linking is not going to harm you. I've never experienced any problems with internal linking period. I know that people have said, “Well, you don't want to do internal linking with the same keyword over and over again.” To be honest with you, I've never experienced negative impact from that. I still vary. I still try to add diversification to my anchor text even with internal links. I've never seen a negative … Now I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying I personally have never experienced a negative side effect from too many internal links with the same anchor text. Just to let you know. It's typically a penguin thing which would be an off page inbound link penalty for over optimization of anchor text.

Just to point this out and clarify this, if you're linking from article A to article B and then you want to link back from article B back to article A and their on the same silo, there's no problem. The only problem that would come is if you want to link from article A to article B and they're in different silos, different keyword themes. If that's the case, it's different topical themes. That's typically what a silo will do. It categorizes or compartmentizes, right? It creates compartments or containers of keywords and keyword themes and what we call keyword set. If you want to link from article A .. Silo A and silo B, then I recommend no follow in the link because otherwise you drain or bleed the them.

You don't want to bleed one silo over to the other. I would recommend for navigational purposes, you can do a no follow link which makes it easy for readers and visitors, but it doesn't bleed the theme. If you're in the same silo, then absolutely you can do internal linking back and forth and it makes no difference. Does that make sense? Usually you have a top level silo page and then depending on whether it's complex or simple silo will determine whether you have subcategories, an in post or just going with top level categories and posts which would be a simple silo structure. I recommend sticking within simple silo structures as much as possible, but usually you will have the top level page and then you'll have your supporting articles.

You can link from the top level page to any of your supporting articles and you can link from your supporting articles back to the top level page or to any other supporting articles within the same silo. It makes no difference whatsoever. I would recommend that you don't force internal links. If they occur naturally, then yeah, put a link if that make sense.

Switchbox SEO

Brian's up. “Hey, guys. I believe you mentioned that with client SEO you have to ensure you have the ability to turn off your client's rankings when they stop paying you or when the contract period ends. Can you elaborate on how to do that and how you would do this and why?” Well, Brian, it's not that you can turn off the rankings. We talk a lot about creating your own properties like redirects essentially.

For example, if you have a client that's got a WordPress site, what I like to do is I like to go out and buy my own domain, clone the client site, put it on my domain on my hosting account somewhere, then set up … It's literally an exact copy of their site whether I built the site or it was prebuilt, whatever. I like to clone the site and then install it on my own domain and then set up page-by-page redirects. You can do it with a plug-in like Simple 301 Redirects. You can do it with .htaccess. You can do it in cPanel. It doesn't matter. Set up literally individual 301 redirects from page to page, post to post. It's a one to one ratio. Then I like to build links to my domain which ultimately resolve to the client domain, but you can't do that with citations guys obviously.

Citations are going to have to be built directly to the client domain, as well as any content marketing that you're doing for the IFTTT SEO strategy, right? The attribution links are automatically going to point back to the money site which would be the client's domain. That's fine. I get that. All I'm saying is if I'm going to be doing internal or, excuse me, additional external link building, additional inbound link building from other sources other than the content marketing or citations, then I like to build links to my domain that is redirected to the client's domain. That's so that in the event that the client decides that they don't … Again guys this is what I mentioned at the beginning of his webinar about building your own assets.

I was telling Edward I believe, both Edward and Vanita, to build your own assets because that's why. Because if you're always building links to your client's site and they decide that they don't need you anymore because you got them ranked now and they want to go pay some guy that called from some spamming email from India 50 bucks a month or whatever, then they could just say, “Oh, you know what? We don't need you anymore.” You lost all that work. You made money while you did it, sure, but now that revenue stream's gone. It's done. Whereas if you had your own domain that you were building external links to, then when the client decides they want to stop paying you, you just remove all those redirects from your domain. Now obviously you have to go on and change …

You can't just have an exact copy of their site, but you have to go … You'd have to go in and change out logos and contact details and then probably edit the text somewhat. What I like to do is just add curated sections to the original text so that it becomes original and change out some of the details on the site. Now I've got a website that's already prebuilt, just needs some modification and I've already got a bunch of back links built to it. When I remove those 301 redirects, it removes that link juice to the client site. That doesn't mean the client site's going to drop out of the rankings and yours is going to replace it. It doesn't meant that at all. Chances are that's not going to happen.

You start off now with an asset that you already own that already has a lot of work done to it and a lot of inbound links. That now with just some additional work on your part, you can end up ranking that site for the same keyword terms and that same area. You end up becoming a competitor of that client that let you go if that make sense. Now you have a lead gen property that you can sell, rent or just sell leads, right? That's what I like to do. It takes some work. Certainly I would change … Again once you remove the redirects guys, you're going to have to modify the site. You can't just have an exact duplicate of the client's site out there on the web. That could get you in a legal trouble.

You could go on and change the theme, change out logos, contact details and then add some additional content or just have the content rewritten or reworked a bit to where it's not the exact same site as your client site. Now you've got a site already that you've been doing work to for however many months or years you've been working on the client site. Does that make sense? Okay. We're almost out of time. I know we still got a ton of questions, but we're also out of time.

Building IFTTT Network To Different Google My Business Listings

David's up. “I have a client that has four locations that all uses the same website, but all have different Google My Business listings. How would I build out an IFTTT network that?” Same website, but all have different … What I would do is a different … Well, no, I wouldn't.

I would do one IFTTT network for all four locations and then I would just blog out. You can do category type stuff. In other words, each location should have its own category. I would just be posting from the main money site blog and using the blog post to build links to all four locations. That's absolutely fine. In fact, you could even tie all four GMB local pages into one syndication network. In other words, you'd end up going to have four separate buffer accounts or a paid buffer account which his fine and then you could have all four pages I believe under the same buffer account. I'm not 100% sure if you can do that, but you might with a paid buffer account which is only like $10 a month. I think you can connect four Google Plus local pages to the same buffer account.

Where then all you need is one IFTTT account with the buffer applet or buffer recipe and every time you make a post to your money site, it's going to automatically syndicate out to all four Google local pages. However, you could set it up with categories like I just mentioned. Each location have its own category and that way whenever you post in each category, it's going to be location specific if that make sense. It's a good question though. Guys, I wish we had more time. I see Ed's got a ton of questions here. Guys, I don't have time. Did somebody give him Mastermind? Yeah, thank you Marco. We've got Masterclass coming up here in about five minutes and I got to get prepared for that.

We appreciate everybody being. A lot of good questions today guys. Thanks for everybody being here. You guys got any parting words?

Hernan: Keep in touch and stay tune because we're going to have a ton of good stuff coming your way. Keep in touch and we'll see guys next week.

Bradley: We'll see everybody in Masterclass in just a few minutes guys. Thanks for being here. See you all next week. Bye bye.