Click on the video above to watch Episode 100 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: Looks like we’re live. Hey everybody, this is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts episode 100! Woo hoo! It’s all of us today except we are a ship without a rudder today because Adam’s not here and we usually flail around in the wind when he’s not here so we’re going to try to get through these announcements by ourselves. We’ve got Chris and Hernan and Marco with us today. I’m going to go right down the line as I see them. Chris, what’s up?
Chris: Been good, how about you?
Bradley: I’m good. By the way, is my audio popping, or is it good?
Chris: No, you’re good.
Bradley: Okay, because I’ve been having issues with my cable. All right, Hernan, you’re next. What’s up, buddy?
Hernan: Hey guys, what’s up? It’s really good to be here. I really miss Adam but that’s fine. Happy to be in the 100th episode.
Bradley: Are you going to try to keep dry eyes throughout the Hump Day Hangouts?
Hernan: Yeah. I’ll try, I’ll do my best.
Bradley: Last but not least is Marco. What’s up, buddy?
Marco: I’ll be crying in four weeks, not right now. I’ll save my crying for later.
Bradley: You mean when we’re in Panama together?
Marco: Two year episode.
Bradley: Oh, okay. That’s the same week we go to Panama, isn’t it?
Marco: It is, man.
Bradley: I’ll be damned, that’s good timing. That wasn’t even intentional. I didn’t even think about that until just now. All right, cool. We’ve got lots of questions, so we’re going to get to those in just a second. We’ve got a couple of announcements. One thing: it’s funny when Adam has to send us an email to remind us of announcements … Press releases are available now inside of Serp Space, guys. You can order press releases inside of Serp Space. Once the Local Kingpin launch is over at the end of this month, I’m going to be spending some time developing some additional training for inside of Serp Space for the various services that we have, so that will be coming sometime in November, but in the meantime, you can purchase press releases from inside of Serp Space now. I’m going to actually drop the link on the event space. Hernan, do you have something else that we’re supposed to talk about? Do you know?
Hernan: Yeah. Being the 100th episode, we’re going to choose two winners for one month of IFTTT SEO Academy Version 2.0. We’re going to pull one random commenter and the best question. The best question is going to be potentially someone that we decide and the other one is going to be just a random commenter. Put your comments and we’re going to pick somebody at the end of the episode and we’re going to get in touch with you guys. It’s going to be one month of the IFTTT SEO Academy, which is 67 right now, so it’s pretty cool.
Bradley: That’s right, and all you’ve got to do is comment. We’re going to pick the best question, which is subjective, there’s no doubt, and then we’re going to pick one at random. So just post a question in order to enter. If you already have IFTTT SEO Academy we’ll refund you for a month. Is that right?
Chris: And we’ll ask about [inaudible 00:03:09]
Bradley: Yeah. All right, what else do we have? Anything else?
Hernan: I think we’re good. If you guys want to go ahead, and while you’re checking out press releases, we are doing the whole credit system on subspace, so we are revamping that. It’s going to be quite cool because with the same credits, you can purchase a bunch of things from the same place, so it’s in really good shape. You can open a free account, it’s completely free, and then you can [inaudible 00:03:39] whatever you need, so go ahead and do that.
Bradley: Having a credit-based system is awesome because you can purchase any one of our services using your monthly credits if you’re on a subscription plan, or you can buy one-off packages and just use them at will when you need them. One last thing I want to cover very quickly is I put together a very brief survey for anybody doing lead gen. Guys, I’m going to post on the event page and I’ll probably mention it a couple of times throughout the Hump Day Hangout today. I’d like anybody that’s doing lead gen to go answer this three-question survey real quick because Local Kingpin launch is going to be later this month, in 20 days actually from today, and it’s on-demand lead generation. It’s a way to set up local landing pages and funnels and generate leads immediately, like within 48 hours. It’s using AdWords platform primarily as the traffic source, and I want to find out anybody that’s already doing lead gen, whether you’re doing SEO or AdWords or both, I don’t care, I just want to know.
I’m trying to get a feel for, if you’re not using AdWords, why aren’t you using it? If you are using AdWords, what would you like to learn about it, specifically, to get better results? I’m going to post this local lead gen survey on the event page. Anybody that’s watching that doesn’t see the event page, you can find the link at semanticmastery.com/leadgen. It will take you over to the Google form where you can fill it out. It’s only three questions, very simple, it will only take you a minute. I’d like to know where you guys stand with lead gen, if you’re doing it, and if you are, what are your methods and are you using AdWords. If not, why not, that kind of stuff. It should only take you a moment. Please fill that out, it will help me and help you guys, eventually.
All right, I’m going to grab the screen, and we’re going to get into questions. Anything else, guys?
Marco: No, good to go.
Bradley: All right, let’s do it. I saw Wayne’s comment about, “Somebody sober up, please.” That’s awesome, because we were late to the party again. Okay, I think you guys can see my screen better now. All right, here we go. Mark O’Connell, first one, he says, “Hi guys, congratulations on the big 100, I know you Class 104 is the big one, but Hump Day Hangouts episode 100 still looks and sounds pretty cool and you guys have helped me a lot and other people with your content, so a massive thank you for that. I love Hump Day Hangouts.”
Panoramio + IFTTT Network
Thank you, Mark, we certainly appreciate that. “My question is, do you or have you ever used Panoramio. It’s a Google property that gives you a profile with one link to your website allowed. It’s connected to Google images and you geo tag images. I embed them in my site in some places and embed them on IFTTT and citation sites where possible. I can’t imagine using a Google property to embed geo tagged images on other and your sites hurting. Have you played with it? Thanks.”
Yes, Mark. You can do it with Panoramio and it absolutely is beneficial to do so. I know that Panoramio is pretty strict about the images that you submit. They have to be original images. Typically, I don’t deal with that very often, because I usually don’t have original images. I end up using stock images. For that reason, I don’t usually use Panoramio because of those strict guidelines. What I do is use GeoSetter. In fact, I’ve got that right here. It probably needs updated, it’s been a little while since I updated it. GeoSetter will allow you to add the metadata tags and all that stuff to your images as well. Yes, absolutely, you can do that. You can add EXIF data, which is your geo tags, your coordinates, you can add NAP details, all the stuff you can add to the metadata of the images. Obviously, having them in a Google property like Panoramio is great, but even if you were using just something like GeoSetter, and guys if you’re curious about that software, just go to Google and type in GeoSetter, I think it’s geosetter.de, this one right here … You can download it, it’s free, and you can use this tool as well. If you don’t have original images, this is how you can still tag all of those images with EXIF data and all that kind of stuff.
Absolutely, Panoramio is a good site, it’s powerful. It’s been several years, but when I was first introduced … What was it called before Panoramio, do you guys remember that? There was another-
Hernan: Yeah, I do remember, it was something else, but I do not remember the name.
Bradley: It was something else. I learned that from Ivan Budimir from the Maps Magic program many years ago when I first got started in local SEO, and we used to actually add images and put them on the map in various locations, like wherever the service area was for a contractor, for example, and we would put images on the map with different keywords around different areas and it would make a ring around the center point, which is where the business was located. It absolutely helped rank maps listings. It’s powerful. Panoramia’s a good application to use. Again, as far as I remember, they had to be unique images or original images.
OBS + Google Hangout Live
Charles says, “Been watching a few of your videos now and they are very helpful and my question is, how are you able to do Hangouts live, talk with another person using what appears to be Hangouts, and use OBS? That is stumping me because it looks like you can use either/or but Hangouts right now is limited to what I can do with OBS. Thanks! Oh, and if you already covered this, point me to where I can read or view. Thanks.”
Charles, actually, no, probably what you’re referring to is when we were simulcasting from Hangouts to Facebook live as well. We stopped doing that because we kind of switched up how we’re doing that now. We’re using the Google Hangouts on air platform. You have to set it up through Youtube, but we’re still using the Google Hangouts on air platform. We’re not using OBS. The only time we used OBS is when we were streaming to Facebook simultaneously. I would handle that, but it was difficult to work all that software at the same time and still be able to do a presentation and answer questions and all that. It got to be a bit too much to manage, so we stopped that and now we’re just streaming our clips that we cut out of the Hangouts to Facebook live. We’re streaming them as live events on Facebook, and that gives us a little bit more organic reach on Facebook.
As far as OBS, no, we don’t use that for Hangouts. You can do Hangouts on air through Youtube. That way you can still bring other people in like we have here on this. I know you guys are seeing the picture in the picture thing going on, but we’ve got all my partners on here, and that’s just the Hangout on air platform. If we actually go over to Youtube here, just click on new live event, and then you’ll see that under the type you have quick and custom. If you use the quick selection, it actually is still using the Google Hangouts on air platform. That’s the only difference. If you want to run a live event through OBS, which you certainly can, then you would select custom, and then you’d go over and once you’d set up the event, you’d go into your ingestion settings, select your bandwidth, get your stream key, and all that kind of stuff, and if you know about OBS, you know what I’m talking about. Otherwise, if you just want to do a Hangout on air, then use the quick setting.
Posts Vs Pages in Optimization
Jeremy, it really doesn’t matter. Typically, what I do with sites is the pages … I do a lot of contractor-type work, and so I’ll build out pages on the site. Those are the pages that I want to rank in Google, that I’m going to drive traffic to. Then we use the blog to actually build backlinks to those pages, and that’s what the whole IFTTT SEO training is about. It’s about using your blog because every time you post a blog to your WordPress site especially, or any site that has an RSS feed, the blog post will be an item in the RSS feed.
We can take that RSS feed and use that as a trigger to automatically syndicate any published posts to a network of web 2 [inaudible 00:12:34] and social media properties, which is what the tier one IFTTT SEO rings are. They’re just basically a branded network of web 2 and social media and bookmarking and cloud storage properties. It’s a various bunch of other properties that we can syndicate our content to automatically using IFTTT and the RSS Feed, so the only thing you need to do is publish content to your blog and then you use the blog post to build links to your pages on your sites. You use contextual links within the body of the post with anchored text links. You’ve got to be careful, if you know what you’re doing … All of this is covered in the IFTTT SEO Academy training … We build links to the actual pages through the blog posts with contextual links in the body of the posts. That gets syndicated out across a network of sites so those network of sites automatically build backlinks to the post, and that post has a link going to our page. We’re basically funneling link equity through our post up to our pages, which are the ones that we want to rank. It’s entirely up to you. You can use pages.
The problem with using pages for content marketing is that pages don’t, by default, insert themselves into an RSS feed. You can use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages, that’s the name of the plugin, one of probably many that do that, but I don’t particularly like that because if you publish other pages on the site, like for example pages that aren’t critical to your SEO campaign, then they could end up getting syndicated and it wouldn’t make sense. There are certain rules that you can set within those plugins like “Exclude categories” and that sort of thing, but typically we just set up our pages that we want to rank as our money pages, and then we use the blog and content marketing strategy in order to rank the pages. Again, that’s what’s covered inside the IFTTT SEO Academy training. Maybe he’ll be one of the lucky ones to win that today.
Parked Domains SEO Value
If they’ve never had any content or anything on them, I don’t know that they’re any more valuable than a brand-new registered domain. Do you guys have any input on that? Hello?
Chris: The only value that I see is in domain age, but that would be all things being equal, which they never are.
Bradley: Yeah. I can’t imagine if they’re never had any content on them … Maybe because they’ve been registered for 10 years, there’s a bit of an authority boost there, even if you built something new on it, but I don’t know. I’ve never had a domain that I’ve had for 10 years that I didn’t abuse. I really don’t know, Sky, that’s a good question. Hernan, you got any comment on that? Is Hernan still here? He must be somewhere else.
Chris: He just dropped off.
Bradley: He didn’t like the question. All right. No, Sky, I really don’t know. If it hasn’t ever had any content on it, then you might have a little bit of a boost just because it’s been registered for 10 years. Test it is all I could say.
Hernan: Can you hear me?
Bradley: Now we can.
Hernan: All right. Okay, what’s up. Hangout is working. It’s said because Adam is not here as well. Sky, those would be great money sites. If they are pristine, if they do not have any content on them, I think they would be good domains to mount money sites. Being 10 of them, maybe take the best one, but I don’t see any other use, to be honest.
Bradley: Yeah. I agree. If I was going to use a domain like that, I should have seen that second part of the question, I would use those for a money site. The only benefit I could see is the fact that they are 10 years old, but you’d have to test it to see if you got a boost from that. I’m curious to know.
Strategies To Power Up IFTTT Networks In Home Improvement Niche
Yeah, they look basically two tiers out, so the best linking approach would be: do follow outbound link business directory a to business directory b to WordPress T1, business directory c-
That’s confusing. I’m going to need a diagram for this one.
Hernan: He’s basically creating a link reel. If you look at it like a link reel, it doesn’t make sense. He’s over-thinking it, I think.
Bradley: I think so too, way over-thinking it. I’m not picking on you, Rico, I’m saying that honestly, I wouldn’t use a link scheme like that, only because I think at some point it could get you in trouble, if not right off the bat. Even if there’s some level of randomness there, I think that’s over-complicated for what it is that you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to do a business directory-type site, and you’re going to have it niche-specific or at least category-specific, in that if it’s home improvement you could cover multiple industries, landscapers and HVAC, electricians, plumbers, all that kind of stuff, roofers, you could just silo out the site. You build silos out for each industry, or you could build silos out based on locations. It depends on the site. You’re going to probably need to use what’s called a complex silo structure for that, but you can accomplish most of what you’re trying to do just from your internal linking within a site that’s structured properly.
For business directory sites, that’s the way to do it, guys, make sure that you have really solid or tight silo structures, and you can achieve most of your ranking results just from the internal linking structure. Of course, you’re going to need backlinks, but if you have your site siloed properly and internal linking done correctly, then you’re going to be able to flow massive juice through each silo from every subsequent business directory listing that you add within that specific category. The network empire, they call that buoyancy. Essentially, if your silo is tight and your structure is really tight, then every time you add another listing, if you build any links to that listing it’s going to benefit the silo in its entirety, which in turn will benefit the entire site. I would recommend sticking not with this link scheme that you’re planning out here, because it could get complicated very, very quickly, but also just make sure that you have a good, tight silo structure on the site. Plan it out. Take some time.
Sometimes, for the more complex sites, it will take me a few hours of trying to map out the site because there’s a lot of funny things that happen with URLs when you start using complex silos. You have top pages and child pages, top level categories and child categories, and then you have posts. It can get pretty weird with the URLs as far as how you structure your silos, and if you’re using the physical silo structure, which means that you’re showing your categories and posts in the actual URL. If you’re using just the post name, URL structure or permalink structure, then you can create what’s called a virtual silo instead of a physical silo, and that’ll allow you to get away with a lot more … You won’t have crazy URL things to reconcile. Again, it’s something that you’re just going to want to map out. Try to determine what the best strategy is. I would probably say a complex silo structure for a business directory-type site, and just make sure that you keep everything tight within each silo. Anybody want to comment on that?
Hernan: No, I agree with what you were saying, because otherwise, it can be really, really complex really, really quickly, and then at some point you do not know where each post goes.
Bradley: I always recommend trying to keep it as simple as possible. We in the SEO industry always want to over-complicate things. I’m 100% guilty of that in my earlier years. I’m not so much anymore, because I’ve learned over the years that over-complicating things only makes it more difficult on me. It doesn’t make it any better for Google or it doesn’t make it any better for anybody, it just makes it more difficult for me if I’m doing something difficult. I try to keep everything as simple as possible now and do as little work as possible to achieve the results that I desire. When it comes to on-site stuff, I used to plan out these big elaborate sites, and for most local stuff now, it’s not really necessary to do that. It depends on how competitive the industry is or your particular market is, there’s no doubt. If it’s really competitive, then sometimes having those elaborate silo structures and stuff is necessary, but for most stuff it’s probably not. For business directories, like I said, depending on how you silo that site, you can end up generating … Over time, it takes time, but the more posts or listings that you add to the business directory site, the more power and authority the site ends up getting over time. That’s why all the big directory sites are as powerful as they are, because they have so many pages, so many listings on the site.
All right, “This can be expanded with all my tier one properties, [inaudible 00:22:44] links, topical relevant”-
Yeah, what I would do is create a tier one branded network for the business directory. Your saying business directory a, b, c, all this other stuff. I don’t know what you mean by that because unless you’re having multiple different directories … But if you have everything under one directory, and you just silo it out, use categories and silo the site out for different types of industries, which is what I would do, then you only need one branded network, which would be the name or the brand of the business directory. Every single post you do could go out across that network. That will work because again, you’re going to have a lot of posts going out. The interesting thing is if you’re doing a business directory-style site, make sure that you are adding the NAP details of the listings as structured data, because you want that structured data on the post so that when it syndicates, you’re actually getting citation links from your IFTTT networks. It’s pretty powerful.
Another question about powering up the IFTTT [inaudible 00:23:51] site: “In one video it mentioned the service-to-purchase credits to get visitors to increase CTA, reduce bounce rate, et cetera. Can you give me the link to this video since I can’t find it?” Do you guys know which one he’s talking about? He must be talking about CTR, click-through rate. He’s probably talking about crowd search.
Hernan: I think that’s exactly what he’s talking about, the crowd search.
Bradley: Just go to Google and type in crowd search 2016 demo or something like that. Is Google not working for me? You guys hearing me?
Hernan: Yes.
Bradley: Okay, because Google’s not working. Son of a bitch.
Hernan: You broke Google.
Bradley: I swear, I broke Google, man! Hangouts is acting up today. It’s our 100th episode and Google doesn’t like it, apparently.
Hernan: Yeah. Adam is missing.
Bradley: Crowd search 2016. Now it’s working. Look, we’re number one for that. I’ll be damned. Just search that. Crowd search 2016 and go watch. We did a full webinar on that, it’s an hour and nine minutes, there it is right there, talking about how to use click-through spam, CT spam, to be able to help rank sites. There’s various ways to do it and we talk about it in that webinar. It’s free. Just go watch it.
Hernan: When everything else fails, just Google it.
IFTTT Icons At Google Plus Bio Section
Bradley: That’s right. When Google’s working, because apparently it’s not working for me today. Bob says, “Hey Bradley, quick question about GMBG+. Can you give a quick explanation of how to add all IFTTT icons to the link section of GMBG+ pages bio area? Also, adding email in the contact area of same. Much appreciated.”
Bob, if you’re not seeing a links section, it may be because it’s a local page. Local pages do not have a links section. If it’s a brand page, it will have a links section. Now, I’m speaking about the classic Google+ interface because the new one’s still funky, and I haven’t spent a lot of time in the new Google+ interface because I’m going to hold out until they absolutely force me to because I don’t like it. Let’s hop over to Google My Business for a minute.
You have to go to brand pages, we’ll go to this one, for example. If it’s a brand page, you can add links, but if it’s a local page, you cannot. There’s not a section for links. On this page, I know this is the classic Google+ view. If it’s the new one, I can’t really help you right now because I’m not logged into an account that’s showing the new Google+ unless I switch to new Google+, which I don’t want to do. If you go over to About right here, we’re on the About tab, you just come down and edit the links section, and then you can add custom links here. As many as you want. At least as far as I know, there’s no limit. I’ve got some out there that have like 40 or 50 links out there and it still allows me to add more. That’s it. You just add the custom link on the About page in the edit section.
If you’re on a local page, a local page will not show that. For example, if we search for Semantic Mastery, this one, you can see a little bit of text at the bottom of that icon. This is our Semantic Mastery local page. This is the one that we have, and any time you’ll see a local page, you’ll see an address and a phone number, or at least a city and a phone number, that’s how you know it’s a local page, and if we go to the About section, you’ll see there is no links section. If you’re not seeing it, it’s most likely because it’s a GMBs locations page instead of a GMB brand page. That’s it, that’s how you edit it.
Also, as far as adding in emails or whatever, if you wanted to you could put the contact details, for example, let’s go back to the other one … In the About section, if we go into the contact information right here, you click edit, and right here’s where you can add an email. You just click email and you add the email in, and then you can set the rules as to who can see your email. Do you want it set to public or only your circles or extended circles, which means anybody in your circles and anybody that’s in their circles, if that makes sense. Extended circles is like you’re connected to those people through somebody else. You can determine who’s going to see that. If you don’t want it to be public, just set it to circles or extended circles or whatever. You can do custom, you can invite certain people, that kind of stuff. You just add that right here on the contact information area.
Also, guys, don’t forget, in your introduction area you can add text in here. You should have a lot of text in here. You can add links here, anchored text links. I’m going to say “Anchor text links,” and then highlight this, and you put a link in there, and now we could say “Semantic Mastery” and put our URL in there, and there we go. Now we’ve got an anchored text link that says “anchor text links pointing to our site.” My point is, you can add … What I like to do for local businesses is add a description, a bio of the company, what the services they offer, and then I’ll say we offer the following services, and then I add bullet points, and I put a link with anchored text to each silo heading on my local site, so that you’re getting an actual link from Google that goes directly to the top of your silos on your site for each service. For example, if it was a tree service I’d have one for tree trimming and one for tree removal, maybe one for storm cleanup or whatever. You can add several links, so just add bullet points and then put anchored text links to their silo headings. Very powerful.
Next. Wayne is awesome, he’s doing … By the way guys, clink on Wayne’s … I read this earlier, Wayne’s crushing it as a Google local guide. He’s got some pretty cool stuff that he’s doing here that I was reading about. Follow suit. Wayne’s in our mastermind and he’s always really helpful with stuff. We appreciate you sharing this stuff, Wayne. It’s really cool. You’ve actually got me jealous that I’m not a level five local guide yet. I’m level two, I’m only like four points away from level three, so I’m trying to get to level five now because I’m jealous of you. That’s awesome.
Goo.gl Limit in Feedburner
Greg says “Happy 100th plus one net. Branded account go.gl has added … Branded account Google has added hundreds of feedburner URLs recently. Then I figured out that is from the socialize feature in FeedBurner. Do you happen to know what the limit is in Google and is this best practice?”
No, I don’t know if there’s a limit. Marco, do you know if there’s a limit?
Marco: No, I have no idea if there’s a limit. I just noticed that all of the links started being displayed again, all of the shortened links. Remember, it had been truncated to something like 35, but now they’re back. They get archived anyway. No, I’ve been using it for a long time and we shorten a lot of stuff. So does our YSPA by the way, he shortens everything with his account. We haven’t run into any limits yet. I don’t know about best practices. If this is auto from FeedBurner to Google, it’s Google properties, I wouldn’t even worry about it.
Bradley: Yeah, I wouldn’t either. If FeedBurner is the one that’s generating those go.gl shortlinks, I wouldn’t sweat it because it’s Google that’s doing it. If it’s you spamming that, then I would say at some point you might end up having that account flagged or whatever, but since it’s FeedBurner that’s doing it, I wouldn’t sweat it. That was a good question, Greg, and I didn’t realize that they did that. I know they have that socialize feature in FeedBurner but I didn’t realize that they made go. shortlinks. That might be a newer feature.
EMD Site Optimization
Michael’s up. He says, “Hey guys, need to ask for clarification on my question from two weeks ago. I created a Web 2 backlink” … Okay, I remember this question somewhat … “I created a Web 2.0 backlink on a webs.com site which has good metrics and topical trust flow of 26. The problem is, I optimized the URL brand product category like Nike running shoes. I want to create an IFTTT network around it to increase its credibility and to protect it as a backlink. According to webs.com, I cannot do a 301 redirect to a new site or a new sub domain of webs.com.”
I think what we were talking about, Michael, was using a custom domain that you redirect to webs.com so that you can have a custom domain as opposed to using a sub domain of the webs.com site. That’s what we were talking about, because I kind of remember this question. Don’t you, Marco, because you commented on it too?
Marco: Yeah, I remember this. We recommended for him to go with webs.com, paying for his own domain. That automatically will get him canonicals up to the domain. We know basically that on free accounts you can’t go from one to the other, he’d have to put a link on one to the other which doesn’t have the same effect as a 301 or as a canonical.
Bradley: I’m not familiar with webs.com. I’ve never gone in and manually set up a page or a site, so I’m not sure if you can use custom domains. I’m assuming you can-
Marco: Yes. Yes, you can. It’s about 6 or 7 bucks.
Bradley: Okay. That’s what we were talking about, Michael. It wasn’t redirecting the webs.com URL to something else. We were talking about setting up a custom domain so that you can use your own domain and remove that over-optimization within the domain. For example, you could say “michaelsshoes.com” if that’s what you wanted, because then it wouldn’t be over-optimized, and you could point that to the webs.com site using their DNS mapping or whatever it is that they allow you to use for custom domains. If that’s available, they’re going to have a process for it. Follow that process and then you should be able to just build links directly to your custom domain and if you’re using naked URLs … Right now, if you’re using naked URLs, Nike running shoes, every time you build links to that with this URL, then you end up with an exact match keyword anchor text. That’s why we were talking about using more of a branding type domain. Redirect that, or not even redirect, you want to map it to this site, so you build all the links to your branded domain instead, and it still benefits the site but you don’t have that exact match anchor text getting spread out all over the web. That was what we were talking about.
Let’s finish the second part of the question. “Possible network options would be: 1) use the same optimized URL, create network with similar name” … Okay, now it’s talking about wordpress.com … “And post about additional brands on the webs.com site. Hernan mentioned a persona network. Would this be like maryjones.wordpress.com? Not sure how that would work or benefit it. Suggestions? Thanks.”
That’s the other option, to use … That’s what I’m saying, Michael, if you had something like michaelsshoes.com, I know that’s very generic but I’m just saying, if that was going to be the brand, then you could have michaelsshoes.wordpress.com, michaelsshoes.blogger.com if you wanted. Or, you could just do, michaelfranks.wordpress.com, maryjones.whatever. You could have a persona-based network that you used to build links to whatever it is that you want to build links to. You don’t have to have a keyword in the sub domain name. In fact, we recommend against it. You can have a brand name in the sub domain for those sites, or you could use a persona name, but that’s how we teach it in the IFTTT SEO Academy. We never talk about putting keywords in as the sub domains because it’s too easy to over-optimize that was. It just looks spammy, too. I would recommend that you build either a persona-based network, or a branded network, but you change the brand name, you swap it out to wear it’s something that’s less spammy-looking. Does that make sense? I don’t know if that’s clear or not, Michael. If you’re in the master class, then you can ask that question again. We can even bring you on so we can maybe get some more clarification. We have master class coming up in about 20 minutes, or mastermind, either one, the mastermind’s tomorrow. If you’re not, we’ll try to answer it as best we can here.
Marco: Let me just clarify something you said. Bradley said that we recommend branding. Bradley did not say that EMDs, PMDs, or whatever else you want to think of, don’t work. We didn’t say that. They work. You just have to know what you’re doing.
Bradley: That’s right.
Marco: If you don’t know what you’re doing, then we recommend to always brand, brand, brand, because we’re talking to a specific section of Google’s algorithm. That’s why we recommend it. Just thought I’d throw that out.
Optimizing 2 Tier 1 IFTTT Networks for 1 Personal Brand
Bradley: Ben says, “Hey Bradley. I’m building two tier one networks around the same Youtube channel. How do I deal with the personal brand given it is the same person? Is it sufficient to make a slight variation like Helen’s Weight Loss Tips for tier one and Helen’s Fat Burner Club for tier one b? What does this even matter?”
I’m not sure why you would do that. Why don’t you just create a whole second persona for the second network, Ben? Maybe I’m not understanding the question, Ben, but what I would do … Let me just explain how I would do it. What I would do is I would have two separate Google accounts entirely so that I had two separate networks, so there was really no connection between them, if that makes sense. Follow the training that we have inside the IFTTT SEO Academy and I would build out two separate personas. If you’ve got Helen whatever for the first persona network then for the second one, I would just create a whole other profile, a whole other persona altogether. That way, they’re separated. It doesn’t really matter so much for Youtube, it really doesn’t. Personally, I wouldn’t create two networks under the same profile for the same channel, I would separate them. I just always do. I always try to keep my networks separated that way. It really shouldn’t matter for Youtube, at least as it stands right now. It may in the future, but I’m just letting you know, Ben, how I would do it, and that would be to separate them and use two separate persona networks altogether. Just create another Google account.
You’ve got to create two networks anyways, right? The only additional work required is to set up a second Google account, because you still have to build up all the other properties twice anyways. The only difference is just setting up a different Google account. I like it cleaner that way. Always try to spread your risk, guys.
Redirect Homepage To Internal Page
Greg says, “Hi Bradley. IFTTT and advanced RSS feeds rock. Half of my posts now index in 35-40 minutes just by posting them.” That’s awesome, Greg. “As I am doing 301 redirects to a new site, is it acceptable to redirect a home page from the old site to an internal page on the new site? The theme of the old home page and all its backlinks and the anchor text matches exactly with an internal page that is a top of a complex silo inside the new site. The new site covers additional related topics and the new home page is only general information. Thanks.”
Yeah, Greg, you can do that. No problem at all. As long as it all matches up well and the inbound links from that 301 redirect will benefit that other page, then yeah. Absolutely, you can do that.
Keywords For Serp Space Link Building Package
No, actually, you’re better off branding using shorter, more broad keywords. This is way long tail. That might be great for blog posts and stuff like that, but what I’m saying, Brandon, is you want to use generic or broader keywords, because remember, the links that we build start at tier two. We build links to your IFTTT properties or to citations or to press releases, anything other than your money site. What we do is we build second tier links, and then we build third tier links behind the second tier links. Whatever it is that you’re starting with, you can go broad. You don’t want to go real long tail or real narrow because it doesn’t make sense. The further you get away from your money site, the broader you go. Does that make sense?
Hernan: That’s why I was suggesting you use something like Keyword Suggest Pro or Keyword Cheater or something like that that will help you get in all of those search-intense keywords where you can generate 500 keywords in a couple of seconds.
Bradley: Jay says-
Hernan: I’m sorry Bradley, I wanted to add that we will add generics and URLs to the keyword list anyways. We ask for 500 keywords for variation purposes, but we will add them. We will add generics and URLs keywords as well because it just works and it makes your profile look more natural. Do not worry if you are not finding the right keywords because just one keyword, we end up working with a couple thousand keywords at the end of the day. Just one keyword doesn’t make any difference at that point.
YouTube Network For Multiple Industries
Bradley: Yeah. The next one is Jay, he says, “Hey guys, first, congratulations on 100 episodes. Sweet. I want to set up a Youtube network based around a big city for multiple industries, niches, rank and rent videos. Not sure how to structure the Youtube account to accommodate this, where I should be using playlists and channels to get the best results. This is the kind of set I have in my head from a website point of view: main city to town, industry to company, keyword. Is there a limit to the number of channels, playlists you can have on one account? Thanks, Jay.”
Yeah, you can only have 50 channels under one account, that’s the limit. I don’t think there’s a limit to playlists per any channel. What I would do, it depends, Jay, if you’re going to base it around one city only, then I would just use one channel, and then I would start siloing the channel out using playlists based on industry. Let’s just say your city’s Atlanta, let’s say that you’re doing video promotion stuff, so let’s say Atlanta promos is your brand. I would have one channel and then I would start siloing the channel out, say maybe you’d have one for a home improvement playlist or a service contractor playlist, in which case you could put all different types of home improvement-style businesses.
You could also niche down even further. For example, within Atlanta, let’s say that you had five different plumbing clients that all wanted to purchase video SEO services from you or whatever. Probably not going to happen that way, but if you did then you could have a plumber silo. You could have a plumber playlist that’s for strictly plumbing companies. Probably you’re going to want to go a bit broader with your categorization so that there’s a common denominator between all the different videos within that particular playlist. Again, you could have a home services playlist and from there you could have electricians videos and HVAC and plumbers, and it makes sense because they’re all part of a broader home services niche. Try to model your categories or your playlists from your Youtube channel similar to how things would be categorized on a directory-style site, a business directory like Yelp or Yellow Pages or something like that. There’s broader categories and then there’s subcategories.
You can’t do a sub-playlist, I know that, but you could do playlists that are broader categories and then keep everything in there. Let’s say that you did the home services playlist like I just mentioned and then at some point down the road, you ended up with three or four different plumbing clients. Then you could create another separate playlist for Atlanta plumbers or plumbers in Atlanta, plumbing contractors in Atlanta, you could call it whatever you want, and then you put all of those plumber videos in that playlist as well. Videos can go in more than one playlist, guys. You just want to keep the playlists related. All the videos in every playlist should be related. They should have some sort of common denominator. You could start broad and then as you start to build out a portfolio of videos and clients, then you could start to actually narrow down and create more niche or industry-specific playlists. You can still keep the videos in the original, more broader general playlist too. You don’t have to remove it from one playlist to add it to another. Start off broad and then you can narrow your way down as you start to develop that out more. That’s how I would do it, I would keep one channel but have a bunch of playlists, because the one channel, the common theme would be that it was Atlanta businesses. Good question, though.
Boosting Domain Authority (DA) of a Website
Jamie, first of all, boosting DA has a very small effect now on ranking. It used to have a huge effect but over the last two years, it’s really declined a lot, so it’s not really all that valuable to do that. Even the little boost that you do get from it, you have to wait for Moz to update their data before you’ll see any effects that you gave to it. You can’t just point a whole bunch of domain authority at something and then expect tomorrow for the metrics to change. Sometimes it can take 60-90 days before you’ll see it. I don’t know how often Moz updates those metrics, but I know that I’ve done it in the past … And I used to do a bunch of domain authority-boosting, I just don’t do it anymore. To me it doesn’t provide as much benefit, it’s not worth the effort for the small amount of ranking benefit that it gives in my opinion, so I just don’t do it anymore. If you do it sometimes it will be 60 days before you see any domain authority boost in the Moz metrics, and that’s just because Moz is slow to update. That’s all that is, Jamie. You will see a boost, I’m sure, but it’s just going to take time for Moz’ metrics to update.
She says “It is a local lead gen site that has two cities on it. The first city I built out has maintained its rankings, while the second city I built out dropped from around page two to nowhere.”
There’s a lot of weird stuff going on in the maps algorithm at least right now, Jamie, and plus with all the new updates to the Google album and the Penguin update, there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on, a lot of movement right now. Just be patient.
“Is this coincidence or did I do something wrong? It’s strange to me that only one city has moved while the other has not dropped.”
There’s a lot of stuff going on, there’s a lot of volatility right now, Jamie, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much. Just be patient. Again, I don’t really care to do DA-boosting stuff anymore. It’s just not as effective as it used to be.
“I do have an IFTTT link wheel set up and am blogging regularly. Otherwise, no links are being built. Congrats on 100.”
Something you could do is power up your IFTTT ring, Jamie. Start building links to that. That’s going to help so that as you’re blogging regularly, those blog posts will actually push more equity back into your site. Just be patient on that.
Setting Up Lead Gen YouTube Channel
All right, we’re almost out of time. We’ll answer a couple more and then we’re going to do the winners of the contest for today. I’ll answer just a couple more, guys. By the way, love the photo, Paul. Thanks. Keith says, “Hey guys, I just joined IFTTT SEO Academy yesterday. Just started going through the training now and loving it. +1. I have been following you for a couple of months now and going through some of the older Hangouts, about one third of the way through.” There’s a lot of them, Keith. “Bradley has mentioned a few times about ranking client videos on your own channels. I can understand why you do that but I’m a bit confused about setting it up. Like you, I’m just starting to work with a video production company who has clients from various niches. There are two ways I see this working: 1) create a persona brand channel on a niche, i.e., manufacturing, all of the videos from manufacturing companies would go onto that channel; or 2) create a persona brand for a niche like manufacturing, under that persona brand create a channel for each of the manufacturing clients. I would probably do option two because I think that in option one clients would not be too happy seeing their videos in the same channels as their competitors, but then if you go for option two you have to power up each channel”-
That’s correct, Keith.
“Sorry for the long question, especially if the answer’s in the training I haven’t gotten to yet. Congratulations.”
Yeah, I wouldn’t do that. When I do SEO services for the video production companies, I just flat-out tell them, “Look, I have a channel that’s built up and I have multiple channels, depending on the industry, that are built up. They have all of these syndication networks attached to them, I’ve built links to them, they’re aged now because I’ve been using them for several years, they’re incredible powerful, so I’ll take your videos and I’ll upload them to my channel to get you the desired results. Yes, my branding is on my networks, it’s on my channel, and that’s the only way that I’m going to be able to do it for you unless you want me to build you a network, in which case I’ll be happy to do that but it’s going to cost you this amount of money” … And then I give them the quote for whatever network size, how many tiers, how many rings, all of that, I quote them on a price, and then I tell them, “And it’s going to take time before your networks are going to be able to achieve the same results that my networks do because mine are aged and they’ve been built up, so it’s going to take time.”
I always recommend that to them because I don’t care that I use my own networks other than the fact that they get me the results that I want quickly. If they have a problem, and I’ve had this conversation, Keith, with some of my clients, about this, because they say “Well why is your branding on these syndication points and all that?” Because it’s my network, that’s why. If you want your own network I’ll be happy to build you one, but you’re going to have to pay for it, and this is the cost. I don’t say it like a dick, I’m not saying it to be a dick, I’m just saying “You want results, I can provide results with this network at this cost, which is a very low cost. I only charge $100 a month per video to rank for my video production companies. It’s dirt cheap. If you guys want your own network with your own branding, which I encourage you to do, it’s better for you and your clients, that’s great, I’ll build you a network. It’s going to cost you three grand or four grand or five grand or whatever it is.” That’s when they always say “Oh no, we’ll just use your networks.” And stop complaining. You know what I mean? If you’re not willing to put up the money and invest in your own infrastructure, then that’s the only way that I’m going to be able to do it.
What I would do, Keith, is I would build out one channel and then build out a ton of networks for that one channel so that you can really boost the hell out of that one channel, and then again use playlists to be able to separate clients or separate different industries and clients that way. Good question, though. Keep coming by and asking on Hump Day Hangouts, I’ll be happy to answer questions about this because working with video production companies is a great strategy but there are some things that you have to deal with when you do that. I do think it’s a great strategy.
Last one, Greg Driebert: “Could RYS stacks be working already within 24 hours?” They damn well could be, Greg. Marco, you want to comment on that?
Marco: We’ve had them work inside of eight hours. Twenty-four is three times longer than what we’ve used to rank, so I don’t see why not.
Bradley: All right. So, who’s our winners, guys?
Hernan: The questions one is a tough one because we have a bunch of good questions. I think the best question would be chosen probably tomorrow, because there are a bunch of questions so we probably need to decide on that. I just cannot pick one. The other one is pretty straightforward. Can you see my screen, Bradley?
Bradley: No, let me switch it over to you. Try again, Hernan. I’m just seeing a black screen. Anybody else seeing that?
Hernan: Black screen.
Bradley: Yeah, black screen, Hernan. You still there? I think you got dropped out again. We were just kidding about the winners guys, it was just all a joke. I’ll be damned, he’s not even on. Oh, shit.
Hernan: It doesn’t one anyone to win.
Bradley: Yeah, I think he froze up. I guess we’ll reach out on the event page and notify the winner since Hernan’s internet connection dropped on him or whatever, so sorry about that guys. A lot of good questions, though, we will post on the event page who the winners are. We’ll tag you or plus mention you or whatever, so you guys will know, and we’ll make sure that you get a free month of IFTTT SEO Academy. If you’re already a member, we’ll just refund you for a month. If you’re not, we’ll get you hooked up. Everybody, thanks for being here. Yeah, he says “Hangouts took a dump on me,” that’s what he said in Slack. He says he’ll pick a winner shortly. Okay guys, we’re good to go. Thanks for everybody being here, masterclass starts in about three minutes, we’ll see you guys there. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week. Thanks, guys.
Marco: Buy everybody.