Click on the video above to watch Episode 104 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
Adam: Hey everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. Today is, of course, episode 104. Woo hoo! Sorry for the up the nose shot. I’m on my laptop. I’m in Toronto this week and we got people all over the place. So before we get into the celebrations here, let’s go down the line and say hi. So Chris, how’s it going?
Chris: Excellent. Great to be here. Exciting episode today.
Adam: Yeah. No kidding. Hernando, how’s it going man? Where you at?
Hernan: Hey guys. What’s up? It’s really good to be here. I’m in Florida at the moment. I’m in Boca Raton, so I’m enjoying the nice weather over here and I didn’t want to miss the 104. It’s quite a milestone and I’m really happy to be sharing it with you guys.
Adam: Oh yeah. Marco, what’s up, man?
Marco: Man. Episode 104. Lots of good shit in store today, man. Lots of good shit in store for our followers, the people who are always with us, the membership, just everybody. We’ve got tons of good stuff.
Adam: Outstanding. Bradley, how’s it going?
Bradley: Awesome. 104 man. Two years we’ve been at this. We’ve only taken one week off in 104 episodes and that was a scheduled week off. In fact, next week we’re going to be down in Panama, all meeting each other for our annual corporate meeting and we were debating whether we were going to have Hump Day Hangouts next week or not. But we are going to have it next week, just so you guys know. It will be episode 105, but we’re all going to be in Panama, probably half shit-faced. So it’s not going to be like a regular Q&A hangout next week, guys. It’s just going to be, literally, a hangout next week. We’re going to come on. We’ll be sitting by the pool, drinking things with little umbrellas in them. We’ll be hanging out and just having fun next week. Just be aware that next week we’re not really going to do Q&A. It’ll just be kind of like us showing off in Panama.
Adam: The kinder, gentler of the hangouts.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: All right, well, I’ve got a couple of announcements real quick. For those of you who have joined and are checking out Local Kingpin and Maps Kingpin, good on you. We’ve got a lot of good feedback already and we do also have a webinar for that. So if you’re wanting to find out more, I’m going to put the link up in a minute here. Actually, I’m going to do it right now while I’m talking. That’s going to be next week, okay? So if you want to find out more about Local Kingpin and how you can put it to use, that’s going to be the place to go. That’s just going to be a webinar where we do a little more in-depth explanation. We’ve had some people who wanted to find out more about it.
Bradley: Yeah and we’ve been updating it already, just so you guys know, those of you who have purchased. Just checking the update section, the updates module, because I added another one today. I added one yesterday and one the day before, so I’ve added an update everyday for the last three days. One of the updates was a Maps Kingpin only update. That’s in that module, but the other two were inside the main training. So make sure you check those out because I’m going to be adding traditional training videos on a regular basis for the next several months. Because as I learn more, I’m going to be sharing that as well as I continue to optimize the case studies, I’m going to be adding additional videos for that. I added the first video today for the second case study. That’s what, so … You know, there’s going to be a lot of additional content added. Guys, we’re not going to send out notifications every time a new piece is added. So I recommend you just go into it regularly and check. I’m done.
Adam: All right. Marco, I think there’s something going on tonight at about 7:00. Is there something that people are supposed to know about?
Marco: Oh, dude. The beast of the valley has been booked. It’s confirmed. I’m going back and forth right now with his business manager, just finalizing everything, making sure that CT will be there on time. Yes. He is going to be there and he is going to share his successes, his failures, and how he’s grown his social media and his business to where now – I was just telling Bradley – he’s actually franchising his gym. He, in fact, has a new supplement line coming out November 25th, so those of you who like lifting weights, I suggest you check them out. I know that Bradley and I already have them on order. We pre-ordered our stuff.
Bradley: Yup.
Marco: We’re geek, man. We’re really into this. We’re into CT. But the main thing about this is … Guys, don’t approach this just from a weight-lifting type of thing, because the message – when you break it down, which is what we’re going to do today – it’s a whole lot more than that. It’s universal and it reaches out across all niches and you can apply what he has to say, the principles to anything so that you can succeed. So this is what we’re going to be getting into and I think it’s going to be fun.
Bradley: Yeah and it’s not for the faint of heart, guys. CT Fletcher, he’s real aggressive and in-your-face. He’s a kick-your-ass kind of guy. That’s how he talks too. So if you’re easily offended, just don’t show up. Do yourself a favor and avoid it. But for everyone else that’s not easily offended, I highly recommend that you make it because – again – his message is undeniable, it’s universal – as Marco just said. It’s quite an inspiring story and if you need a good swift kick-in-the-ass to get motivated to do something, CT Fletcher is one of the men that can do it for you. So I highly recommend that you check it out tonight and hear his message.
Adam: Awesome and – like we had said – we’ve got some special stuff going on today. Obviously, it’s episode 104 and to show our gratitude to those of you who have been following us since the beginning, those who have just found us and those of you who are maybe just watching today, but regardless we want to give you guys the opportunity to get something back in addition to these Hump Day Hangouts. So we were talking about what we can do for everybody and one of the first things we’re going to do is randomly select three people and what we want to do is give each of those three people one of the books we give our new mastermind members. So when people join the Semantic Mastery Mastermind, one of the first things we talk to them about is how to work the system – literally, I guess. Because that’s the first book, is Work the System. You can also get two more books and those are the 10X Rule and The One Rule.
So we’re going to randomly select three of you and buy those books and ship them to you. I’ll be contacting those people directly and I’ll be posting it on the event page here, but also we’re going to pick and this is going to be kind of best-question style. Chris is going to pick one, Marco is going to pick on, and I’m going to pick one. One person is going to get a free month of the IFTTT SEO Academy V2 and then somebody else is going to get a complete RYS Drive Stack, which is pretty freaking awesome. Then the last but certainly not least, one person is going to get 90 days free of the mastermind, which is nearly $1000 worth of value just in monetary alone, but we’ll be doing that towards the end and be contacting you. So if you’ve got good questions, put them on there. You know, if you haven’t commented yet and you’re kind of a lurker, today is the day to maybe ask a question or be involved. So hopefully we’ll get some good questions from everybody today.
Bradley: All right. So I guess we’re done with announcements?
Adam: That is it on my end. Do you guys got anything?
Bradley: Let’s start.
Chris: Let’s go.
Hernan: Yup.
Successful Self Image Optimization Lead to Successful SEO
Bradley: All right. I’ll grab the screen. Hangouts changed their screen share options. It looks different. Oh well. You guys let me know if you’re not seeing me. I’ll zoom in a little bit. Okay, sweet. We’ll start right at the bottom. We’ve got lots of comments and stuff today, guys. We appreciate that. We’re going to try and roll through that as much as we can. We do have master class today at 5:00 so we can’t go over at all. All right, Mark [inaudible 00:08:17] he’s always here. Plus 1 for always showing up. “104. You guys are beasts. Love it. Keep up the great work.” Thanks Mark. We appreciate that. “My question may be slightly unrelated, I don’t know, but I asked you guys a question a while back about books and I liked your answers. I took Hernan’s advice and after the hangout I got a free trial of audible so I can listen to Grant Cardone narrate his book and it was well worth it. But I read a book not too long ago and would love for you to briefly talk about it if you’ve read it, because I felt like it was a huge book for my mindset.”
Before I finish with that question, audible is awesome because you can listen to most – not every book, obviously – but there are a ton of books that are transcribed, or narrated I should say, that you can listen to from audible. It’s awesome because when you’re driving around in your car you can listen to books and that’s what I do. I don’t really listen to any at the gym because it’s kind of hard to focus on a book while working out, but driving. Whenever I’m driving I like to listen to those because I call it like a university on wheels. That’s a good way to learn and that’s downtime that you probably would be doing something unproductive besides driving anyways, you know what I mean? So that’s awesome. I’m glad, Mark, that you took that advice and used that time wisely.
So, the remainder of the question, he says “The book is Psycho-Cybernetics. It talks about self-image optimization, how you see yourself, and how to change it. So I guess my question is, does successful self-image optimization lead to successful SEO? Thanks guys and well done on your milestone. I’m sure all non-bitter people are very happy with your success. Cheers.”
I can speak from experience. I haven’t read that particular book, Psycho-Cybernetics, but I will make a note of that to check it out. But self-image optimization I think is important. I mean, you can call it self-image optimization. You can call it improving your self-esteem. You know, it’s mindset. That’s a perfect question, Mark, for what we’re going to be … You know, our guest tonight with CT Fletcher. Semantic Mastery with CT Fletcher because it’s all about mindset. He says – pardon my language, guys – but he says “Fuck excuses,” you know? That’s truth. That’s, in part, self-image optimization or improving your self-esteem. Holding yourself in high regard and that’s not an arrogance thing, it’s knowing that you can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish if you set your mind to it and having that kind of confidence in yourself and your own ability – and it takes work.
You’re not just … I guess some people are born with it, but I know it can be something that you can learn, something you can condition yourself to do – to be more confident. Anytime that you can improve your mindset, your enter life is going to be improved, not just becoming a better SEO. I mean, if that’s your life ambition then absolutely or if that’s one of the major parts of your life is doing SEO work then absolutely that would get better. But how about elevating everything in your life by having a better self-esteem, you know. I’m somebody that always listens to self-help books and audio programs. That’s typically what I’m listening to from audible. I don’t read fiction books ever. I’m always reading sales books and mindset books and motivational books because it keeps me going. When I start to get lazy and not do that kind of stuff, I tend to start losing motivation and momentum for projects I’m working on. So I tend to do that on a regular basis.
So, Mark, I think you’re on to something there. I think this particular book I don’t have an opinion on yet, however I will put it on my wish list so that I can check it out at some point. But keep doing what you’re doing, man. I mean we have a bunch of books. We just mentioned three of them that we send out to our mastermind members when they first join over the first three months because they’re books that are so transformative to us and our businesses. Such as Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule, Work the System, what is that? I think it’s Sam Carpenter. Then, what is the other one? Is that Gary Keller? I think it is.
Adam: Yeah and we’re going to have to add the 80/20 Rule pretty soon I think.
Bradley: Yeah. Perry Marshall’s 80/20 Sales and Marketing.
Adam: Yup.
Bradley: Yup. That’s a really good book too. So that’s a good strategy, Mark, and you should keep it up. I encourage everybody to do that too. It’s not necessarily always about learning more tactics about how to rank stuff, guys. Sometimes you’ve just got to feed your minds positive stuff. You know what I mean?
Chris: Yeah. Exactly. That’s exactly what I was going to say – and it’s not just for SEO. If you have the mindset, you can apply it to your entire life, to anything, to how you deal with people, to how you deal with family and how you approach people and look at them in a different way. Because if you’re sure about yourself and you care about yourself, that automatically goes outward and you’ll start caring about others too. It’s just, as he says, the mindset. Changing that internal machine into believing that you can do anything you want. Which is one of the things that we’ll be dealing with CT Fletcher tonight which is, again, excuse me, “Fuck impossible. Don’t let anybody define what’s impossible. You can’t know unless you try it.” So if you set out to become the best SEO that you can be, you can’t let anyone else tell you how successful you can be. That’s up to you to put in the work. It takes work, dedication, focus, and a lot of things. It’s really interesting that mentions this because we’ve been discussing having a mindset series for our mastermind. So that’s a great question. I’m really liking this question.
Bradley: It was a great question, Mark. I just want to add one more thing. Recently I read a few books by who’s quickly become one of my most favorite authors and … Let me rephrase that, I’ve listened to the books on audible because I very rarely have time to read. Ryan Holiday is his name. The first books is Trust Me, I’m Lying, which is absolutely fascinating. It’s not really about mindset. It’s just about how much bullshit the mass media is and how it’s so … It’s a great book. Let’s just put it that way. But the next book is called The Obstacle is the Way and I think it’s an outstanding book. It’s based on stoic philosophy or stoicism, but it’s really powerful. It’s how to find an opportunity in every adversary and if you have that attitude about you, then no matter what life throws at you, you’ll always be able to be successful. You’ll always be able to make it through and again it’s very similar to what we’re going to be hearing tonight from CT Fletcher. So again that book is called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. I highly recommend that you guys put that on your wish list for audible if you’re going to … For me it was very transformative.
His next book is called Ego is the Enemy. I’m listening to that one right now. That’s also a really good book. So that he’s quickly become one of my favorite authors and I encourage you guys to check it out. All right, we’re going to keep moving, but that was a great question, Mark. We appreciate that.
Issues With Tags & Yoast SEO Canonicals With Some WordPress Themes
Greg says, “Two years! Congrats guys.” Thanks, Greg. “Recently I attended a 1 1/2 hour long webinar about how to become a social media expert. The truth is, Bradley, Marco, and Hernando often share more helpful information in a five minute [inaudible 00:15:50] than was learned in that entire webinar. You guys are great. Thanks.” Thanks Greg. We appreciate that.
Greg, it would kind of defeat the purpose if you did a redirect – of having the tag pages. You could still use the tag URL as an additional link point, but if it’s directly 301ed, then essentially it’s just a 301 link. In other words, if you were to be build links to that tag URL and it’s just redirecting to your post then essentially all you’re going to be doing is building links directly to your post. So you’re not hiding anything. The whole canonical method that we talked about in the mastermind which is where he picked this up, is so you can build links to the tag page and the tag page will pass all the equity through the canonical tag back to the original post. But competitors won’t see the inbound links on the tag pages, if that makes sense. You can send them the note index. The whole point is that you build links to the tag page and then have it canonicalized to the post so that you can mask link-building opportunities from prying eyes. That’s what that’s for.
So doing a 301 redirect really isn’t going to help you at all. Okay. So, in other words, if you can’t get the canonicals to work, I would, first of all, see if it’s a plugin conflict of some sort. Disable all other plugins except for the [inaudible 00:17:39] plugin and see if your canonical or tag pages are working correctly. If they’re not working correctly, you can assume that it’s either the theme itself, which in that case I would contact the theme developers – or it’s the Yoast SEO plugin. Most likely, it’s the theme. However, if you’ve disabled all your other plugins and you find out that just with the [inaudible 00:18:02] plugin enabled, it is working, then there’s obviously a conflict with one of your other plugins. For there, you could just go back and start turning on one plugin at a time and checking the tag pages until you’ve identified which plugin is causing the problem. Okay? But yeah. As far as setting a redirect using the tag URLs and redirect, that’ s not really beneficial at all. At least, I can’t see it being beneficial because any links that were built to the tag URL would be viewable from anybody looking at your back link profile. Whereas the tag pages won’t be if you’re doing the canonical method. Okay?
Embedding Google My Maps Code In HTML Websites
All right. Dean’s next. He says, “When building an HTML website, today notepad plus the Google Maps API section displayed as expected on desktop, yet when I launched uploaded the site on the server, I got an error along the lines … “ Marco, this is going to be something you’re going to have to answer because this kind of stuff … Let’s see, I read this briefly earlier. He said something about the problem … Oh, I see. “I had to Google the problem and found the quote ‘If you’re using Google Maps on local host or your domain was not active prior to June 22nd 2016, it will require a key going forward. To fix this problem please see the Google Maps API documentation.’ Okay. I had to sign in to Google and generate a key when in the past I did not have to. Does this mean that Google is now tackling people using a method of embedding maps on websites to help rank in maps? Or does this just mean that when building websites for clients I’m going to have to generate a key attached to my gmail account for their site?”
I’m not sure what you mean because, Dean, I’m not sure why … It sounds like you did something to over-complicate this. I’m not accusing you of anything, but what I’m saying is that My Maps in Google maps will give you the share, the embed code. So if they’re giving you the embed code, they don’t require you to have API access, like a key for all that. I’m not sure what you’re talking about. You must have tried to create something that … I’m just not following you here. Because any map you could pull up and grab the share URL, whether it’s from Google Maps or from Google My Maps. Either one. You can get the embed code.
Adam: I’m not sure why he’s going into the API either. Because even if it’s an HTML website, it shouldn’t matter.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: I mean, that’s old school. That’s how we started out.
Bradley: Yeah. So, Dean, there’s something that you’re doing that’s over-complicating this when it shouldn’t be that complicated. Maybe if you can clarify somehow we can help you, but like I said if you go to Google My Maps you can grab the share URL or, excuse me, the embed code so that you can embed to My Maps and if you’re going to Google Maps for local listings you can grab the share embed code. That’s all you need, so I’m not sure what else you’re doing. Sorry I can’t help you more.
Most Rewarding Experience & Most Surprising Thing That Happened During 2 years Of Hump Day Hangouts
Greg says, “What has been your most rewarding experience during two years of Hump Day Hangouts? What has been the most surprising thing regarding anything online marketing related?” That’s a really good question. I wish I had time to think about it more. Anyone else want to chime in?
Marco: I would want more time to answer it also. I mean, the most rewarding experience is just seeing people from all over the world, literally, coming on here and asking questions that are common to SEO. We answer them and – I know Bradley sometimes gets tired of answering them – but it’s new to the person that’s asking. It’s old to us, but it’s new to the person that’s asking it. I love just seeing people coming in, finding us, asking questions, then telling us time and again, “Look. You guys give more away in hour than gurus and ninjas ask you to pay for.” So that’s very rewarding.
Bradley: I would say, also, getting the testimonials that we get back in a lot of our groups about things that people learned that they’ve put to use or practice and ended up having a lot of success with and then sharing that. Because I think that, to me, is rewarding because we do spend a lot of time, guys, testing. We spend a lot of time trying to put together training for you guys and for all the various groups and the hangouts, webinars, and products we release. We put a lot of work into it, so it’s good to get feedback which is, for the most part, all positive. Of course there’s always trolls out there in the internet land, you know. There’s certainly some trolls that have tacked us too, but for the most part, the vast majority of comments are always really positive.
Adam: Yeah, just to hop on the train and say the same thing. It’s nice when people come back and say something. It’s not that we constantly need the ego boost, but it’s good to get that feedback, you know. Because there’s times … You know, when before I’ve been like “I’m really busy. I’ve got other things to do.” But I show up then to have someone come on and be like “Man, you guys may not realize this but those two minutes you guys took to answer my question totally changed my … You know, got me a client or helped me close a deal or it saved my life because it stopped me from doing something really stupid.” Anything like that.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. “What has been the most surprising thing from the past two years?”
Well, for me, I’ll say something that’s kind of self or personal to me. It’s surprising to me, for me and my business, is that I’m kind of transitioning away from SEO and going more towards paid traffic. I never thought I’d see that day. So I’m just speaking from me, personally, in the last two years. I’ve started doing a lot more paid traffic, hence Local Kingpin, which we just launched. I was telling my partners yesterday, during our corporate meeting, that that’s going to be my main area of focus for the next several months. Getting really good at paid traffic, especially ad words. I never thought I would see that day, so that’s really significant to me. I know that’s probably not what you were looking for, Greg, but that’s been rather a large change in mindset for me. How about you guys?
Marco: What surprised me the most is how much confusion is out there. How much noise there is out there in the SEO world with all the different opinions and all these people saying different things and trying to knock other people down rather than say, “Yeah. You know, there’s a bunch of different ways you could do this. That’s just another way.” Instead they say, “Well no. That shit doesn’t work. Come get our shit.” I don’t like to do that. We say there’s more than one way to skin a cat and there’s more than one way to wreck a website. Paid traffic, social media, tons of ways. There’s really no perfect, guru, or ninja way. There’s the Semantic Mastery way. We do what we do. It works. That’s what we worry about. We don’t worry about anyone else. It just surprises me that other people worry about us.
Bradley: That’s the trolls. I just don’t even engage with them. Guys, it takes a lot of self discipline and restraint to not jump in on those stupid comments we see sometimes. It’s, again, ego is the enemy. Take the ego out of it and recognize it for what it is and that’s just, like Marco said, there’s just a lot of noise out there. That’s why we don’t even engage in that. Just kind of brush it off. Because, for example, the Hump Day Hangouts, that’s what we’re here for. Two year anniversary today. We give an hour of our time every single week for you guys. We enjoy it. We do. I find this rewarding and that’s why we’ve been doing this for so long. I don’t know of any other SEO training companies – well, online marketing gurus I guess you could say that do that. There aren’t a whole lot of them if there are. Not that we’re patting ourselves on the back, but it’s because we enjoy it and like to do it. We try to give back because, obviously, this industry has been good to us too.
Increase CF, TF, PA With IFTTT Networks
Okay. Andrew is next. He says, “With the IFTTT networks, how do you increase the metrics? Citation flow, trust flow, page authority?” Andrew, I don’t even try increasing metrics anymore. Honestly, I just don’t focus on that at all because increasing metrics is only for your own satisfaction because nobody else cares. I’m not being rude to you, Andrew. I’m just saying honestly, it’s a vanity metric in my opinion. To look at it and say … Because metrics don’t rank sites anymore. You can manipulate metrics and it can give you somewhat of an edge, but what we have found through our testing and we stand by this is that it’s all about relevancy more than metrics. It’s not something I particularly sweat about, but, you know, the traditional methods of improving metrics is still whole. Improving page authority, domain authority, which – that’s simple to do, because you can do that with spam. Citation flow, you can increase that by spam. The tricky one is trust flow or topical trust flow. You should be more focused on topical relevancy than either of those metrics, to be honest with you. Marco, comment on that because I know you’ve got an opinion on that too.
Marco: Sorry, I was muted. Totally. Metrics, throw them out the window. Third party metrics are somebody’s idea of what Google’s algorithm could be like and nobody has an idea of Google’s algorithm could possible be since it’s so complicated. The thing that we concentrate on, is it relevant? Not only is what we’re producing relevant to our niche, but the links that we go out and get, are they relevant to the niche that we’re concentrating on? Or is it just so powerful that the niche doesn’t matter. If you get into Wikipedia for example, which is all over the place, but it’s still a directory type place where you’ll be in a certain area, niche, or subject. Something like that. Something that’s just out of this world. If you can do that, that’s fine. Otherwise, don’t even bother. Just keep producing content that’s relevant to your niche and keep trying to link from websites and citations that are relevant to your niche and you’ll be way ahead of the game.
Bradley: Yeah and I’m dropping this line, just because you did ask, “How do you improve metrics?” This is a spam way to improve metrics, if that’s all you’re trying to do, is improve trust flow metrics. Let me get back to the questions. Damn. There’s a lot of comments on this page and we’re not going to … We’ve got a lot to get to. Anyways, I just tested this service, guys. This is ADSthiry.com. I use this service a lot for if I have to pillow a site because I’ve got to lower anchor-text ratio, stuff like that. Then I’ll come here and order links from this company or service provider. They recently sent an email out with a coupon code for 60% off their high trust flow niche blog comments. So I said, “Ah, I’ll give it a day in court. You know, I’ll give it a shot.” So I purchased 50. I thought, “I don’t know what the hell these are.” Oh, right here.
Anyways, I purchased 50 high trust flow log comments links and I was able to take a brand new web 2 site up to a 24 trust flow about 10 days later once I got the report back from them. I took the blog comment URLs and submitted them to a couple different indexing services and about a week later I checked and that particular web 2 was up to either a 22 or 24 trust flow and the citation flow was only like 26 or 28, which is good because you want it close to a one-to-one ratio or a higher trust flower than a citation flow. That’s typically a sign of good metrics. I’ve got no affiliation with these guys, I’m just telling you that I purchased their … Again, it was a 60% off coupon and that’s why I was able to get the 50 niche relevant comments. It was a lot cheaper, I can tell you that. It was like 90 bucks or something like that. So if you get on their email list guys they do send out coupons often. So I highly recommend that you check them out and you know, again, you asked …
If you want to improve metrics so you can look at your numbers in metrics and be happy, that’s probably a good service for it, but I would recommend that you just be careful doing anything like that to money sites, okay?
Choosing HTTPS & WWW Versions Of The Website In Google Search Console
Yeah, go to search console and site settings. You can choose your display URL and force … You have to verify the domain for both versions of the HTTP and HTTPS. So you have to verify that domain under both versions. Essentially you have to add both versions of the site to search console. Then you go to site settings and you can select which one is the display URL and that will … It’s not going to … If you select to always show HTTPS plus the WWW. version of it, right? So the front part of your URL, if you tell google “I always want it to show HTTPS//WWW. and then your domain”. Then once you click save it’s not going to instantly make all those other indexed URLs disappear. It’s going to take some time for those other indexed URLs to drop out of the index, but you can set that in search console. Okay?
Marco: Yeah and make sure you have the canonical set to the HTTPS WWW so you don’t run into any furry black line …
Bradley: But that can be handled automatically – Oh, this is eCommerce. Never mind. If it’s WordPress it’s set automatically by WordPress, but yeah if it’s eCommerce make sure your canonicals are set. I don’t know if you code that in yourself or the platform will do that for you. I don’t know. I don’t do any eCommerce stuff. But yes, make sure that you have that set correctly. But yeah, you can do that in a search console man. Just check it out. All right?
Greg’s up. He says, “Happy 104th! You guys really put it out there, no fear, all the guts, and we share in the glory.” Awesome, Greg. You’re one of our regulars. We appreciate that. I can’t say enough how much we appreciate you all. Thanks man.
Classic View In Google Plus Page
Chris says, “Congratulations guys! My G-Plus pages keep automatically switching to the new G-Plus. Is there a way to tell it to stay on classic? With the new G-Plus does the About page matter as much now?” I don’t know because I don’t have a lot of experience with new G-Plus because I always switch it back too. Chris, most likely it keeps switching you back to the new one because you’re probably clearing cache and cookies. You know, using C Cleaner or something like that. Every time you clear cache and log back in, it’s going to automatically default you to the new Google Plus. The reason I know that is because I do all my SEO stuff in Firefox and I’m always clearing that browser. But I very rarely clear Chrome because I’m always logged into Chrome as my main profile. So I stay on classic. Maybe once a week or something like that I’ll do a clear cache and cookies for everything including chrome and the it will force me back to the new Google Plus until I switch back to classic. Every time I log into Firefox into my various Google profiles, it’s always forced on new because it’s cleared from cache and cookies.
So most likely that’s what causing it, Chris. I know it’s a little bit of an inconvenience, but you know, I’m going to keep using classic Google Plus until I’m absolutely forced to use the new one. I’ll be kicking and screaming when that happens. Okay? Cody says … And I don’t know how to force it stay, Chris. Because Google is trying to force everybody to the new one, is what I’m trying to tell you. So, the bastards.
What Is The Craziest Thing Someone Has Ever Asked On Hump Day?
Cody says, “I see my website as a way to help people and change people’s lives. Thanks for two years or teaching us how to do that more effectively. You guys rock.” Thanks Cody. “My only question would be, what is the craziest thing someone has ever asked on Hump Day?” Well that’s another good one. Man, I don’t know. The craziest thing. Anybody got any ideas?
Marco: I’m just laughing because we haven’t had any crazy, crazy ones in a while. Last year we had some crazies though. Yeah, this is pretty anticlimactic.
Adam: Well I can say one for sure, Cody. This will probably resonate. A lot of you can probably relate to this and I’ve said this before, is, we as SEO’s especially typically want to over-complicate stuff. It happens all the time and I’m 100% guilty of it too – especially in the earlier years of my career. Now I try to keep things as simple as possible. I’ve learned to try to be … To keep it simple stupid, you know what I mean? But we sometimes get questions from aspiring marketers or people who are learning SEO. I know that they put hours and hours into preparing a question because they’re planning out a site for some elaborate silo-structure and they produce a graphic or diagram with all the silos built out and supporting articles and all that links internal – and I’m not kidding, I’ve seen questions that I know have taken somebody four, five, even six hours just to prepare the question. Then they send it to us and I’m like, “It’s way too complicated. You don’t need all this.”
So I can’t specify … There’s not one specific question because this happened on more than one occasion, but that’s probably the craziest thing. It’s like, here I come and take the wind right out of their sails. I don’t say it to be mean, but I’m like “Man, you spent so much time preparing this elaborate silo-structure for a carpet-cleaning site.” It’s like, “Come on, guys. You don’t need to put that much work. Keep it simple, stupid.” I’m not calling you, Cody, stupid, but I’m saying that’s just the kiss. K-I-S-S. Don’t over-complicate it. Keep it simple. Try to get results with as little effort and as little effort as possible. Because you can always add on, but when you come out of the gate with some huge elaborate scheme for something that doesn’t require even a fraction of that, you’re just working to be busy. There’s a difference between being busy and being productive. Right? So that’s what I recommend, guys. Try to do the absolute bare minimum to get the results that you desire.
Marco: The one that always gets to me is just, as an example, “Can I rank for DUI attorney in a week?” Fuck no. Hell no. Come on, man. What kind of question is that.
Bradley: That wasn’t even a question though. That was a “I joined your Mastermind, I built an IFTTT around a default WordPress theme, I published three articles with no images, trying to rank for DUI attorney Toronto and I haven’t ranked. What gives? This stuff doesn’t work.” So, needless to say he’s no longer a Mastermind member. Good riddance.
Adding Extra Relevancy To A Nearby City With Local Kingpin
All right. Richard next. “Happy two years. Since I couldn’t stop by [inaudible 00:38:30] Maps Kingpin – ” I’ll plus one that. “Local Kingpin Questions. In the training you were suggesting adding geo-settings to images with the same geo-location as the GMB. When I want to add extra relevancy to a city close to my business – “ Yeah, you can, Richard. You can. If you’re targeting … If you’re trying to get your maps listing the rank for another city, especially if it’s close in proximity, okay? Because if it’s not real close in proximity, chances are you won’t be able to rank in that map’s pack anyways. But if it’s close enough in proximity, yes you can and you can add additional relevancy by adding other images to the Google My Business page as well as to your website. Particularly in blog posts where you can mention the other cities names. You can target posts. Target the topic of blog posts to target those key words and those city names of those adjacent cities and add images to those posts as well.
Because here’s the thing, if you’re adding geo-metadata to those images that you can upload to your Google My Business listing, that’s awesome. But then you can also use some of those same images and even additional images that are geo-tagged for that other city or cities that you’re blogging. If your blog is connected to your Google My Business page through IFTTT, which is what we teach, then you’re going to be feeding additional relevancy back into that listing every time you publish another blog post. So the IFTTT blogging strategy works well as well as having metadata, geo-data added to or appended to those images.
Inside of the Maps Kingpin Training, one of the videos that I just uploaded – I think it was yesterday – was in the updates module, talking about how to use Google photos. Now using Google photos as part of your images because you can append metadata to your Google photos now and you can basically fill out … You can span the metadata, the information section. You can NAP details in there, lists of keywords. It’s pretty powerful. I would check that out as well.
“We serve services at the customer location, so what about having images made at the customer location and adding geo-settings?” Yes, you can do that. “A tip for all people struggling with markup [inaudible 00:40:41] Try adding Google tag manager to your site.” Yeah. Google tag manager is awesome. I really like it. I’m actually going to be doing more training on how to use tag managers with analytics as part of the … In mastermind, mastermind members will be getting that training and so will Maps King Pin and Local King Pin buyers. Okay. But yeah, absolutely. Tag manager is really cool. It’s not that difficult to learn how to use, guys. In fact, there’s a course on U-Demi by a guy – I dropped a link in the Map’s King Pin training or the Local King Pin training about it. But you can go to U-Demi and look for tag manager training. There’s a course that was, I think, $19 when I bought it. It’s pretty good.
Carol’s up. She’s a relatively new mastermind member. “I listen to Hump Day Hangout [inaudible 00:41:34] yesterday. Question about silos and not using a services page for the top of the silo.” Okay. “I just went through this on a site last week. I left services in the nav menu, but I changed the page title and slugged to the key word. Is that okay or will it be confusing to the bots?” I don’t know, Carol, exactly. The services pages should be navigational pages only. They shouldn’t be part of the silo. That’s what we talked about. I assume that’s what you’re talking about here. “Change the page title and slug to the key word.” Again, a services page is typically just for the visitor. It’s for human optimization, not search engine optimization. Does that make sense? It’s for visitor optimization.
It’s in order to make the site more easily navigable from the visitor stand point. So the services page, typically, isn’t part of a silo because it doesn’t add to the relevancy in any way, shape, or form. So adding a keyword and changing the services page to a keyword and a slug, isn’t going to help the silo unless you have the services page as part of the silo and you’re trying to inject more relevancy by doing so. If that’s the case, honestly I don’t know because I would rearrange the site. I would re-structure the site. Unless, obviously, you’re ranking well already, in which case I wouldn’t bother. I wouldn’t want to chance risking it by restructuring the site. But if you can improve upon your rankings still, I would consider restructuring those URLs and the silos. It depends. If you’ve got a ton of content in each silo already. Then no, don’t restructure it. But if it’s just a handful of articles or pages, pages and/or supporting posts, then I would consider restructuring the site to remove services from the silo because it shouldn’t be part of that.
That’s the way I’m reading the question. If I’m wrong, Carol, we also have master class coming up and mastermind tomorrow. We can clarify that further in one of those webinars.
How Often And Useful Can The Same G Map Be Pushed In The Serp Space Map Powerhouse Program?
Jay Turner. Service based question. “How often and useful can the same G-map be pushed in service-based in map powerhouse program? Or is it a one and done deal then move on to find other G-maps embeds?” That’s a good question. I mean we have the secondary embeds, so I wouldn’t … I don’t know. Marco, you’ve got more experience with that. It shouldn’t matter. You should be able to push … The only thing is you don’t want to spam our network with the same embed code on multiple posts, because then that’s duplicate content on our networks. Does that make sense?
Marco: Yeah I totally agree. He shouldn’t need more than just that with … I suppose that he’s doing RYS and then pushing that My Map through our map powerhouse and the secondary embed network. If that doesn’t get you where you want to go, man. There’s a big problem.
Bradley: Yeah I would add more to the secondary embeds. If you really want to get that map embed out there across as many site embeds as you can, then I would consider keeping the first tier embeds down. Lower your embed count on the first tier which are the video powerhouse credits. You know, the first tier embeds. But the secondary embeds which is the add-on service, you could go crazy with that. That way you would have, essentially, multiple map embed projects or whatever because if you keep your … Let’s say you do ten to your one embeds. Then you do a whole bunch of tier two embeds. Then you still have a whole bunch of other sites left as tier ones that you can embed on. If that makes sense. So that’s what I would do. Just add additional seconds to your embeds.
Marco: He could always build a second map with additional information and push that. There’s nothing wrong with that because it’s not the same thing. It’s a separate URL. It has more or less information or whatever. So you can always do that too. Then make sure it’s there linked to each other. I don’t want to give away too much because what goes on in RYS stays in RYS.
Adding Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, Soundcloud To A Branded IFTTT Network
Bradley: Yeah. Brandon’s up. He says, “Hi. I added extra social properties to one IFTTT network for brand LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, SoundCloud, and a few others. Is that okay? Hope you all have a great 104th party.” Yeah, Brandon. That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. In fact, as part of the IFTTT SEO academy and the update training, the multi-update webinar, that’s what we’re doing. We’re going through and picking out four or five additional properties every month. Well, three to five additional properties every month and walking through. Absolutely guys. Look, you want to get your brands, guys. You want to have a presence on as many social media and web 2 sites as possible. I’m telling you that’s what’s going to validate the entity, it’s going to reinforce your brand, it’s going to improve or increase your authority and it’s going to give your site, your brand more weight in Google’s eyes.
So you want to get ranked or listed on as many sites as possible that are decent sites. I’m not saying go out and get a bunch of forum profile links. That’s not what I’m talking about. So yes, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, SoundCloud – all of those. In fact, we just talked about SoundCloud and Pinterest on the last Hump Day Hangouts – excuse me, the last IFTTT update webinar, which was last week I believe. Okay? So absolutely.
Updating IFTTT Training Videos
Eddie’s up. “I only recently found you guys. Two years of helping people voting your customer base. Congratulations.” Thank you, Eddie. Appreciate that. Greg: “I saw your post earlier and I clicked on that. That’s pretty cool.” Now the next thing is, I know everybody’s going to say, “Well aren’t you going to update all the IFTTT training videos?” My answer is going to be a resounding no. So we’ll talk about this in the next update webinar which will be in about two or three weeks. But yeah, I’m certainly not going to go on and update all the videos. But thanks for pointing this out because I was unaware of it. Of course, the next time I log into IFTTT I’m sure I’d see it. But the process should be relatively the same. I’ll probably add an update video on how to create a recipe under the new user interface, the new what they call “app-lets” now as opposed to recipes. But the principle is the same. I hope that everybody that is a part of the IFTTT academy is smart enough to figure out the proper steps. So thanks for pointing that out, Greg.
Is It A Good Idea To Flood Page One With Multiple Similar Videos?
Okay. Earl: “I’m finally moving into some video marketing on a pay per call basis with clients. Easily a hundred-plus Minnesota townsfolk for first place on Google. Five to seven of our keywords using video marketing blitz.” Awesome, Earl. “Multiple video titles showing up on multiple key words in most towns. Is it a good idea to flood page one with multiple similar videos?” It can be, Earl, but use different channels. If you have a whole bunch of videos ranked for a keyword and it’s all in the same channel, it’s a quick way to get your channel terminated because somebody will complain. They’ll review your channel and terminate it for spam. So if you’re going to do that, make sure you’re using a lot of channels that you’re posting with so that it’s a lot less likely that you’re going to lose all of that if your channel gets terminated. How many times –
Marco: Can I just give him a piece of advice? He’s found where he can go. Now if you really want to make money, change the videos, make them quality, put in your CTA’s properly. Do all the things you need to to make sure you’re going to make as much money from this as possible. Yup. I mean that’s the way to go. Start flipping them into something that will draw people’s attention and make you some money.
Bradley: Yeah. On top of that, I agree with Marco. You’ve poked, so now you know which keywords you can rank for. With Youtube videos I understand. If you can rank a Youtube video with no SEO work, by just uploading it or live streaming it with no additional work. Chances are for those keywords you can rank other properties fairly easily as well. Also you can probably rank that same video or – as Marco suggested, which I highly recommend – because I’m finding spam videos don’t convert nearly as well as they used to because people are becoming more savvy. But you can also – when you’ve got a good video with a strong call to action, a video that’s set up for conversions, then you can also upload that to like Daily Motion, Vimeo, those kind of things so that you can get multiple videos on page one, but not all from just YouTube if that makes sense. So you can start to try to rank other properties, Web 2 properties, create some blog posts, do press releases. You know, stuff like that. All right.
“How many towns with very similar videos front-end changed in varying last slides call to action to different lanes to create variety with manually reworded descriptions can I expect to get away with on the same proxy gmail account before getting slapped by YouTube?” It’s not how many towns. It’s how fast. It’s your velocity. In other words, how many videos are you uploading to that particular channel in a 24-hour period? Now I’ve been aggressive and been able to get away with 15 or 20 videos per channel per day and got away with it. I’ve got one channel that, no kidding, has like 997 videos. They’re all 100% spam videos and it’s been up for 2 1/2 years now. It’s still generating leads today. It’s complete spam videos. I was doing 20 maybe as much as 25 videos in a 24 hour period. I don’t recommend that because I’ve also had channels terminated from that. It’s not a matter of how many towns or how many videos.
It’s really about how fast you do it and I always try to stay at less than 10 videos on a 24 hour period for channel. In fact, to be extra safe I typically like to stay to about 5 videos per channel per 24 hour period. But I have certainly been more aggressive and gotten away with it. But I’ve also had accounts terminated. So just be careful. I’ve found that if you stick, conservative, to 5 or no more than 10 videos in a 24 hour period, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to have any problems unless somebody reports you.
All right. “Should I do multiple keywords for same, larger town on one G-Plus account or should I focus on giving YouTube account to different towns, keywords, titles?” I would spread it out, Earl. I would spread out one channel across multiple areas and use multiple channels to blanket one area, is what I’m saying. Because otherwise you’re putting a great big target on your back, saying “Hey, come slap me.”
Current Best Level Investment Option For Mass Publishing On Youtube
“What’s the current best level investment option for mass publishing on Youtube? I. E. 5 to 7 across a hundred or so towns.” I think, right now, video marketing blitz which is [inaudible 00:52:44] program. We promoted it a few months ago. I think it’s a great program for that. That’s probably what I would suggest.
Damn. We’re almost out of time, guys. I know we’ve got a ton of questions. We’re going to get through just a couple more, but we’ve got to wrap it up because master class is coming.
Adam: Yeah. We’ve got some prizes to give away.
Bradley: Oh that’s right. Well then let me just read Sky’s and then we’ll wrap it up, guys. We appreciate all the comments. Sorry we couldn’t get to everything. Sky says “Rather than asking a dumb question, I would like to thank the semantic mastery team for all the information and help. Yesterday I uploaded a video and used all the techniques learned within semantic mastery training and it ranked on page 1 on Google and position 1 on YouTube instantly.” Awesome. “I then removed the city modifier and my eyes grew a bit bigger when it was still there since this was a high value phrase with buyer intent. I was checking some rankings and identified another good phrase, so I went back to my video and added that phrase to the description – BOOM – I checked the rank for that phrase and was now ranking for that term as well. To all those watching, just follow the training and take action.” Awesome, Sky. Just go get it done. Take action. Go make some money. Appreciate that, man. Thank you.
Marco: Take action, guys. Take it. If you don’t take anything else away from this or from anything else that we tell you, do something. Do something. You can’t just sit there and consume and consume information and then hope for more, for better, for the next big thing. Because you’ll just sit there and you won’t do anything except spend your money. At some point, you have to go and apply and see if you can make money. The satisfaction will be so much that you’re going to get geeked up and you’re going to want to make more money and that’s how you begin building your business. But that doesn’t happen if you don’t take action. It doesn’t happen.
Bradley: All right. Before Adam gets to this, I just want to make two more comments. Number one: Andrew Walker. He’s awesome. He’s a friend of mine, a local guy. That’s awesome that he’s been showing up. I’ve been kind of consulting with him on a one-on-one basis and he’s starting to bring his offline business online and I got some high hopes for you, Andrew. So thanks for showing up, buddy. I appreciate it.
Recommended SEO Tool
And last, Daryl Dressel, I just saw this. I have to answer this one. “If you could only recommend one tool that you started using in the past year, what would it be?” We’ve been using it for over a year, but hands down Click Funnels is an absolute must if you’re in any kind of online marketing in my opinion. I don’t know how we ever survived without it, but I don’t know how I could run my business without it now. So I would say Click Funnels is hands down the most important tool in my business right now that I can think of.
All right, Adam. The floor is yours.
Adam: All right, guys. Bear with me for second. I am on my laptop and things are slowly moving here. Okay. Here we go. You guys can stare at my great picture there. Sorry about that.
Bradley: Oh you don’t have a screen share? I thought you had a screen share. Never mind.
Adam: My connection hasn’t been great. All right, so, guys. How this is going to work for the winners, I’m going to contact you via Google Plus and that’s how I’m going to verify that I’m actually getting the right person. So, for the books, little drum-roll here, Andrew Sexton, Eddie Brim, and Kate Best you guys are going to each get one of those three books and I’ll be telling you which one it is and I’ll be contacting you via Google Plus. If you’re outside the U.S. just let me know your Amazon email address and we’ll get you a Kindle book or something.
Bradley: Cool.
Adam: So please put them to good use. Here we go. So picking the three from the questions. In the background we went through the questions. So a free month of V2 – and if you guys are already members of these memberships or you already have this, then we’ll just pop you on the back end and we’ll get it figured out. Earl, you get a free month of V2. Marco’s going to hook up an RYS doc for Mark O’Connel. So Marco will be in touch with that and we can work with you on the details there because obviously that’s a little bit more complicated. Jay Turner, you’re going to get a 90 days in the mastermind. So I’ll get with you with that and we’ll kind of get you on board in there shortly.
Bradley: That’s awesome. So guys, congratulations. Thanks everybody. Like, for example, Mark O’Connel just got the RYS stack. He’s been attending our Hump Day Hangouts regularly and participating. That’s what we’re looking for guys, we appreciate that so every one of you that won, congratulations. Thanks for being here and making Hump Day Hangouts something that we look forward to on a weekly basis as well. We thank everybody for being here today for 104. Next week, remember no questions, guys. You’re more than welcome to post on the events page, but we’re going to be just having fun and kicking it next week. Everybody should schedule one hour and get your favorite frosty beverages and kick it with us. Okay. So thanks for everybody being here. Master class starts in about 3 or 4 minutes. We’ll see you guys then. Thanks Adam, Chris, and Marco.
Adam: Bye everyone. Take care.
Hernan: Bye.