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Announcement
Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 326. Today is the 10th of February 2021. I was about to say if you’re watching live and you can’t see this refresh the broken debris fresh the page, but don’t really do you much good if you’re watching live and can’t see this. So if you’re ever watching live and you can’t see it, just make sure that you refresh the page. And that takes a little bit for the page to get updated. So, as usual, we’re going to go through we got some announcements. We’ll keep that short and then we’re going to get in we got a bunch of questions of pretty good, wide variety. So we will start we got I know Marco’s out taking some time with the family. Hernan must have gotten held up somewhere, but the rest of us are here and ready to go. So we’ll start off with Chris, how are you doing today?
thing, Goodyear super happy here today. Lots of new snow. So like, everything is right. Everything is more bright and stuff. So I really enjoyed it.
Very nice. Nice. Nice. All right. And Bradley, are you readily available for comments?
Oh, yeah, I’m trying to get logged into stuff. But yeah,
gotcha. How are you doing? I’m good. I’m glad to be here. Cool. Let’s jump into it. I got a couple of things I want to go over before we start answering questions. First of all, if you’re new to semantic mastery, thanks for watching. You’re in the right place every Wednesday at 4 pm Eastern. You can check us out either live on semantic mastery comm slash h v questions or you can subscribe on the YouTube channel and stay up to date that way. And check out the replay. We also put out little clips of the questions. But the best way to do it is to come to live or if you can’t make it live. You can ask your questions ahead of time. Yeah, semanticmastery.com/hdquestions, and then check out the replay we understand you there got things to do got a job got clients, whatever. Last but not least, I want to name a few things that we get asked a lot. And to kind of talk on that real quick. If you are new to semantic mastery, you’re new to MGYB you’re new to heavy hitters club, then you should find out how to shield your site. I’m using the air quotes here because the shield comes up a lot, right. But this is if you don’t want to worry about algorithm updates and you want to find out what the hell the SEO shield is go over to the SEO shield.com that’s the word de Seo shield.com. And then beyond that, if you want to expand beyond that and get our step by step processes for getting SEO results, then check out the battle plan. And you can find out more about that at battle plan dot semantic mastery comm kind of moving up the list, what we also get asked a lot is Hey, I’m either consultant or I’ve got a small agency but I want to get more clients, I want to grow my revenue, I want to scale my team. I know I fit into that core category I think a lot of other people do. But if you want to find out more about that there’s great training available at two x your agency.com. And then if you’re ready to grow your digital marketing business, or you even have a brick and mortar physical business, you’ve got people working for you, or you’re more experienced with the agency or consulting model than the mastermind is definitely the place for you. And you can find out more about that at mastermind dot semantic mastery.com. And last but certainly not least, I’ve mentioned this before mg y b.co that’s placed to get done for you services. All right, I recently, you know, this is the stuff we’ve used ourselves and we do use ourselves I recently bought the deep keyword research package for a new project I’m working on. I love that it saves a ton of time you get a bunch of not only just great keywords, but it’s also organized very well you can find out more about that at mg y b.co. And beyond that you can get the SEO shield syndication networks, press releases link building all sorts of good stuff. So before we jump into it just gonna say hi to Hernan looks like he made it here. How you doing, man?
I’m good, man. Sorry about the slight delay. I was in a meeting that runs late. It was supposed to be five minutes by the end of being seven. That’s all right. You’re gonna get detention, but I hate that man. I hate that. So anyway, happy to be here. Awesome. All right. Well, that’s about it. Let’s get into it unless anybody else had I think we got one more thing.
What’s up, man? especially for all our full being Muslim mastermind members. So for the next two weeks, if you’re struggling with your Facebook convergence API, I will help you for free but only for the next two weeks and with no trial subscription. So like you need to be a fully subscribed mastermind member. And I will post a link where you can subscribe to the mastermind. If you’re struggling or needs help with that just hit me up in the Facebook group. The semantic mastermind Facebook group and yeah, that’s it. Awesome.
Hell of a deal.
Definitely.
I guess. Let’s get into it. Bradley. You’re good to go. Yeah, I’m good. Now let me grab the screen. You know, I’m still fighting through. I got a new PC last week and boy, and I remember why over six years, I kept my old one for six years because it’s a nightmare, transferring everything from, you know, one PC to another just takes forever. It’s been a week and I’m still not done.
So I got a question for you, Bradley. And hopefully, some other people can relate. And I know the answer, like from her nine, because I know he plays PC games. And so I bet you know, he nerds out on like putting together his PC or like getting a new one. Do you do that to Bradley? Or is it has it always just been like a work machine for you? And it just works. Okay. So like I transition because I used to, like, nerd out, you know, I’m like researching and doing all this and building my own PC. And now I’m like, dreading upgrading, because I’m like, Oh, my God, I don’t want to deal with having to like download programs and do this. And I never understood people who were like that before. Now. That’s to me, like one of the things I’m like, shit, I’m getting old. I know. Yeah.
Well, I used, I used this program, but it’s a company called Laplink. It’s called PC mover. And I use the professional version, which like 60 bucks or something like that. But it was great. It had it was overnight, it transferred everything from one PC to the other, all programs and everything, but you still got to log back into the programs, and then kind of like reset them or re-register them and all that kind of stuff. So and then obviously, some of the settings aren’t all the same, but it definitely helped. You know, before I’ve always done that shit manually, and it would literally take days of doing nothing but working on the PC like the transfer stuff. And this made everything a lot easier. But it’s still you know, I’m still going in and have to modify things. Do you know what I mean? So
that’s cool. What was that called? Again?
It’s called a sea mover by Laplink.
Sure. What rockets Did you get like that’s the curious question on everybody’s mind? The what? What kind of rocket computer did you get? Well, I got a good one was 64 megabytes RAM because that was my biggest issue. I use a browser to still, God forbid. And when I got a shit ton of Chrome profiles open, it slows my computer way down. I went from 32 gigabytes ram to 64 and it’s um, it’s definitely better. It’s faster. There are no questions.
I got a recommendation for you there right there. Was that is a fucking VPS man? Now to float the whole thing of like, 500 open tabs.
I just bought a new PC, so I don’t need to do that shit.
So you can even do this like a week Chromebook and run that operation.
moving into question.
There we go. Alright, guys, we’re gonna get into it. Now. We’re gonna start with chassis that GIF anyways, maybe we’ll get to it. Keep going.
Which one?
Nevermind, just keep going.
I don’t see it.
Okay.
Is It Okay To Add A Company’s Wiki Page To Its Schema Data In SEO Ultimate?
All right. Anyway, moving on. Chad says Hey, guys. Well, it looks like I don’t remember answering this one last week. So we’ll go with this one. If a company has a Wikipedia page or something similar, like Crunchbase Is it a good idea to include it as a link in things schema using something like SEO ultimate for the name of the brand and variations of the brand to help with branded SERPs? Or is this a stupid idea and better to just put in sameas schema? Yeah, I mean, I’m I don’t fully understand the question or what you’re attempting to do. So if you want to clarify that, I’ll try to give you a better answer. But honestly just put it in the same as schema. That’s sameas schemas. Actually, it’s for your primary social accounts. However, we’ve had for years now we’ve been listing all of what we did, we feel are the most powerful properties that are, you know, branded profiles for a project to brand a company. And so I’ll use what I consider to be the most powerful citations, so to speak, or places where I have a profile, so it’ll be the main social media accounts, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, or excuse me, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, Instagram, if you have it, I typically don’t use Instagram, but so the main social media accounts and then, like the Google Site GMB website, if you’re if you have a GMB the GMB map URL, you can also use the hash map designation and schema for that also, but I also put that in same as the Google site if you got an SEO shield, which you should press advantage organization page part of the SEO shield, right. And then also, I’ll put in top-level citations, if it’s for local, I’ve talked about how to do this many times. But typically, what I’ll do is just go to Google and search for the company name plus the phone number and then whatever listings or citations show up or any sort of profiles period that show up in the top two pages of Google search results for that brand plus phone number. By the way, if the top two pages are filled up with a lot of pages from the company domain, right from the, from that entities domain, then you can always put in a modifier like minus, then the domain name right the domain itself, so you know, mydomain.com, so minus the minus sign, then my domain.com, and it will strip those from the results that it shows. So again, I’ll do a search for the brand name plus phone number. And then I’ll do the minus domain comm as part of it, and then whatever shows up on those top two pages, I’ve just put those in my same as click through and make sure that they’re relevant. You know, if there’s not really any data on the page, then it’s unnecessary to put it in the schema, same as schema. But if it’s got the name, address, and phone number listed, and preferably with the link back to the site, and I will put that back in, or I’ll put that in the same schema. So again, top-level social media, the top syndication, network profiles, not all of them, but I put the top ones in like blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, for example, about me is another good one, press advantage, Google Site GMB website, GMB map share URL, or preferably the CI d equals URL not to share URL, and then the top two pages of citations or when I say citations, I don’t just mean structured citations like business directories, I mean, any anything that Google determines in the top two pages for that type of a search, why I just do the top two pages, because those are the ones that Google thinks are the most important, or the most authoritative, that are referencing your project site, right the brand itself. So that’s why I just stick with those. I don’t spam it to death. I know some people that will put everything that they ever create for their brand and same as, and it’s like super long. And I don’t think that that hurts it. But I just think that’s overkill. And there’s some sort of diminishing return there. So I like I said, I just stick with the top-level ones. And that’s basically it and typically gets really good results. And that can all be done with sameas schema. I wouldn’t attempt any of these other things that well first of all, I’m not 100% sure what you were asking, but you run the risk of ambiguating the entity if you start messing with it, so that’s why sameas is a particular designation that works well for that kind of thing. comments on that, guys, I know. It’s probably gonna be mostly me today.
How Do You Get The Twitter SEO Profile Addon When You Purchase The SEO Power Shield?
Nope, no, man. Okay, looks good. All right, moving on. So Chad says, Hey, guys, I’m looking to purchase a done for you SEO power shield. I noticed that with our ys reloaded package, there’s a Twitter SEO profile add on option since the SEO power shield includes an RYS stack? Is the Twitter SEO profile included? And if not, how do I go about adding that before or during checkout? Last thing? Fuck Google? It’s funny. Marco would be proud jazz? Um, that’s a really good question. Honestly, I know, I don’t typically use the Twitter SEO add on. And it’s just because I don’t really like Twitter. I know it’s good for SEO and all that. I’ve never been a fan of Twitter. So it’s just something I don’t use. If it’s something that you want to add to an SEO power shield, and that that does not come with it. Okay. If you’re ordering just a drive stack, then you can have that as an add on right? Or you can buy that package with the Twitter SEO and the SEO power show because it’s not something that people commonly purchased the Twitter SEO network, then we don’t include that in the SEO PowerSuite. Because again, those are like the bundled services, which people mostly purchase, right. So that’s the SEO shield packages are bundles that are the most commonly purchased bundles, so to speak. So if you want that add on, I would just contact support and ask how they want to handle that because I don’t think we have a that’s kind of just customization but I’m sure that support will accommodate you just contact support@mgyb.co and tell them what you’re trying to do and they’ll get you sorted I’m sure. Okay.
Would Creating Online Tools Like WhoIs Checker Inadvertently Benefit Competitors As Their Domains Will Be Crawled?
Okay, the next question is from Pierce he says, Hey guys looking to build out some online tools for my web hosting business like an online who is checker, etc. which will create new domains with info about different domains. With info about different domains, okay, with doing this inadvertently benefit my competitors as their domains may get crawled and listed on the Whois tool. Won’t there be any links going to the domains just information like brand name image of the homepage and who is registration? I don’t fully understand that question Is anybody else? You guys probably weren’t even paying attention. Were you? I know I don’t fully understand this question. So we try one more time. Hey, guys, looking to build out some online tools for my web hosting business like an online who is checker, which will create new domains with info about different domains. I don’t understand the point of that.
I’m just wondering if that’s like, sorry, I don’t know the right terminology for this, but like you’re creating pages on the fly, like as people query it, you’re like, hey, let’s find out about this page. And then it builds a page with the information that, you know, in, like, builds it on the fly, maybe, but probably not a different domain. I mean, it could be a subdomain, but it probably is a page, but I don’t know.
Yeah. Yeah, I don’t fully understand the question. I don’t understand what creating new domains with info about different domains means. So just go, let’s assume he’s talking about subdomain. So like, every time someone does a query, he goes to go to his site, to go to domain.com, and say, Hey, tell me about semantic mastery. And it did some information on semantic mastery. And it creates a page called semantic mastery.is domain calm, and it shows some information about it. And just as of right, then that page is created on the fly and the domain exists.
As their domains may get crowded, listed on. Yeah, okay. If that’s what you’re, and that that was a great interpretation, Adam, because that may very well be what he’s trying to do. And I’m just going to assume that that is the case. For now. Maybe there’s some clarification down further?
No. All right. Well, I’m gonna run with what Adams interpretation of that question was, if that were the case, then, you know, that’s a good question. I don’t know 100%? No, if you’re not linking back to the competitor domain, then most likely not I mean, it’s still considered a citation. Right? If you’re listing information about the brand, the domain itself, right, then it could be considered a citation, which would be you know, remember, a citation doesn’t have to include a link, it’s just the publishing of entity information, typically name, address and phone number, right NAP. Sometimes the link sometimes without but just publishing that, even if it’s not hyperlinked is not clickable, none of that can count as a citation that’s more beneficial for local projects than it is for like national or global or whatever. But it still is it can help with SEO. But since if there’s no link whatsoever, you’re likely it’s likely that it wouldn’t, you know, it wouldn’t move the needle and is what I’m saying for your competitors. So I don’t think that that would be a problem. And again, that’s just me assuming that that is what you’re trying to do is create a subdomain page anytime somebody doesn’t create a query because I don’t really fully understand the question. So anyway, that said, hopefully, that answers your question. I don’t think it would be an issue if it’s just listing like text-based data about that domain. But again, still not 100% sure why you would want to do that.
Will You Get Topics Related To Law When You Submit A Deep Keyword Research For Lawyers?
So anyway, there he says, Lanre. I think I got it right this time, man. Landre, right. I think so. Anyways, if I need to do a keyword for divorce lawyers, if I need to do keywords, or key okay for divorce lawyers, do I need to submit for keyword research for lawyers or divorce lawyers? Okay, so if you’re going to order a keyword research package because I’m assuming that’s what you’re asking if you’re going to order a keyword search package from MGYB. for divorce lawyers do I submit for keyword research, for lawyers, or for divorce lawyers? Well, if you’re going specifically after divorce lawyers, then if you were to just submit lawyers as your keyword, then it’s going to pull back divorce lawyers and personal injury attorneys and family law and, you know, criminal attorneys, and it’s going to pull all that back, which would be not relevant to your project, right. So if your project is all about divorce lawyers, then I would use divorce lawyers or attorneys, you know, they’re kind of interchangeable as your keyword. And then they’ll start pulling it from there and extracting all of the keywords, you know, subsets or theme sub-themes from divorce lawyers. And I’m kind of compiling and optimizing the keyword file for you that way if it’s the, you know, the top whatever the top-level keyword packages, so that’s, that’s what I would suggest because remember, if you’re going with the broader term, you’re going to get broader results too, which aren’t going to be relevant to your product or your project, excuse me. So I would go with divorce lawyers. Okay, don’t include any local modifiers though. We don’t need that for the deep keyword research.
If I submit for deep keyword research for lawyers, will I be able to select various areas of law to build my site or Well, I have to build a law site that covers various ways I’d be able to select various areas of law to build my site? Or will I have to build a law site that covers various areas of law Okay, um, all right, I won’t be able to select various areas of law to build my site? Yeah, I mean, as I said, if you go with the lawyers like for D word, if you just went with lawyers, right, which is very broad, then it’s going to return everything. And there will be suggested silos and all that, which then, you know, you can determine whether you want to use them or not. It’s up to your, you know, what, what your project is about? Because you, if you again, if you go with lawyers, there’s going to be all kinds of environmental law, immigration lawyers, there’s going to be all kinds of stuff in there, that is probably not going to be relevant to you. I mean, again, I don’t know what you mentioned in the previous question, divorce lawyers. So I’m assuming that you want to be optimized more for that. more specialized right. So I would go with just divorce lawyers. But again, if you want to do a more general type of law website that covers multiple subcategories for attorneys or lawyers, then you want to go with the broader term. Does that make sense? And then you can just select which, you know, silos or suggested silos that you want to use. And again, they’re suggested you still have to go through and, you know, stack the content or the keywords, the way that you want them to be, we do our best to give you you know, things and keyword groups or keyword themes, which would be suggested silos essentially. But it’s still up to you to go through and actually, you know, choose which ones of those keywords are fully relevant to your project, and to select which ones you’re going to create content for or optimized content for is that if that makes sense? Okay. All right. Moving on. hopefully, that answered that question. It was a little bit of a difficult question, I guess.
Is It Wise To Point Tier 2 Links From MGYB Or Other Sources To Bit.ly Linking Back To The Money Site?
Christopher says, Hey, SM crew, when it comes to pop pushing power behind links, is it wise? Is it a wise idea to point tier two legs from MGYB? or other sources to Bitly? linking back to the money site? Or is it better to direct somewhere else? Okay, Christopher, that’s a good question. But there are a few things that I would recommend. So tier two links from MGYB or other sources to Bitly. Okay. Bitly, I don’t recommend using Bitly for shortening links, your money sites, and stuff, because this has been a known issue with Bitly. Now, it may have changed, it may be updated. And they don’t do this anymore. I don’t know. I just know from years ago, I’m talking like, you know, six, seven years ago, Bitly was infamous for. They’re supposed to be 301 redirect URLs, short shorteners, right, which creates a 301 redirect, but for whatever reason, and there was no like, rhyme, or reason behind it. Bentley will sometimes convert some Bitly redirects to three Oh, twos, right, which is it, it doesn’t allow PageRank to pass. And if that’s the case, then building links to Bitly shortened URLs that have been tagged as 302, you know, have been converted to 302 redirects, then you lose all of any potential benefit from the link building to that short link is completely lost at that point. So we have for years and years, we stopped using Bitly for short URLs other than like, when you’re using them for SEO purposes, I use Bitly all the time in like internal documents and things like that. Because it’s not SEO related, right? It’s but when I’m doing when I’m creating redirects for SEO purposes, I don’t like to use Bitly. Because of that very reason. There’s sometimes you’ll look at Bit.ly links and through like a redirect checker and it’ll be a 301. Other times you’ll look at Bitly links, and there’ll be 3.0s in Bitly just does that on their own, at least they used to again, it’s been many years since I’ve really tested any of that because I just stopped using Bitly years ago because of that reason. So I don’t know if that’s still the case or not. But I know that at some point, they were doing that and so it made Bitly not a good tool for SEO purposes. That said, Remember, MGYB has a link shortener, right. And that’s why we use it because we do a lot of what you’re asking about here. For example, if you go to mgyb.co/s, which is the link shortener, you’ll see what I’m talking about, okay.
And that was not what I wanted to do. Right there, mgyb.co/s is the link shortener. So you can sign up, you know, you can have a free account or you can pay for a paid account, which is very, very inexpensive and gives you some additional functionality. But that’s part of the reason when we deliver like an SEO shield, for example, all of the five links that were included in the order originally like your syndication, network profiles, then all of the files and folders that are created throughout the building of the drive stack. All of those links also get shortened. And if you take a look at like for example, the links sheet That comes with an SEO shield order. You’ll see on the so the Google Sheet when I say sheet, that’s what I mean. You’ll see on there, there will be all of the URLs listed for all the files and folders in the drive stack in one column. And then in the column to the right of it, there will be all the short URLs that are MGYB. Seo short, shortened URLs. And the reason why we do that is that, you know, with all the link building that gets done to drive stacks and everything else, people will also submit link building, you know, the target, the mgyb.co short URLs as target URLs. And so over time, this has gotten really, really powerful. In fact, there’s, it’s funny, but oftentimes, the MGYB.co short URLs will rank in search results as opposed to the unfurled or the target destination URLs. So like, for example, Google, My Maps, my map URL, typically I see for a lot of the projects that I have SEO shields done when the mind maps are ranking. It’s the MGYB.co short URL, as opposed to the actual Google URL. Does that make sense? that’s showing in the search results. So if you want to use a link shortener use ours, because that’s specifically why we set it up was for that reason, and there is some benefit to that. Now, remember, there’s a little bit of PageRank, that drops through redirects, right, you lose a little bit of loss PageRank loss through every redirect, I don’t know what that number is. It’s, you know, a small percentage, like 10 to 15%, or something like that. And I don’t know that that’s completely accurate anyways. So there is a little bit of a loss there. But there is some benefit to it as well because again, our short URL link URL, and probably all the big ones Bitly probably has a shit ton of power built to it. But if it arbitrarily converts it to a 302, you’re not going to benefit from that. Does that make sense? So there are other options out there, there’s ours, then there are other options out there that won’t arbitrarily assign a 302 redirect? Okay. That’s a good question.
What Other Places Where We Can Secure Citations For Local SEO Clients Aside From Yelp And Manta?
Okay, moving on. George, the SEO, aside from places like Yelp Manta and other directories and press releases, where are some other places we can see secure psychic citations, excuse me, for local SEO clients? Um, well, you know, there’s the normal business directories. But one of the things out here, I’ll, I’ll go through a little exercise with you guys. And this works really well for stuff to remember, there are a few things that you guys should be doing for citations, besides the standard citations, which everybody and their brother is on, you should be looking for niche-specific directories. So like industry-specific directories, let me pull this up. Industry directories and also local directories. Right. So what I mean by that, so for example, if I, you know, Tree Service stuff is what I do. So if I say tree service business directory, go through here and see. I don’t understand what that means. Anyways, look at that later. Okay, so what I would do is go just do a search for you know, your industry business directory, and just start clicking through and see which ones you can get listed on, some are going to be paid, but many of them will be free, and compile a list. If there are similar or tangent industries, that would also be good places to get listed. So for example, a tree service business directory, I could get listed on as many of these in here that I could find, that makes sense that, you know, again, some are going to be paid some of they’re going to are going to be free. just compile a list of industry-specific directories. then like I said, look for a tangent market or industry directories. So for example, I could look for landscaping, business directories, right, those could be some of the other ones that I could get listed on because of tree services. Oftentimes, landscapers also provide tree services, and oftentimes tree services also provide landscaping services. Right? That makes sense. So that that’d be another word one, something else for in the tree service industry would be like maybe land clearing. Let’s do this. Right. So just you guys understand what I’m saying. Right? I was and I don’t know, because land clearing isn’t probably searched enough on its own for it to have specific directories, maybe it does. I’d have to do some research. But my point is just going through and try to compile a list of what could be industry-related or somewhat related industry-specific directories that you can try to attempt to get listed on so that’s going to help okay for talking relevancy, but then for location, relevancy, or geographic relevancy, then you could look for local business directories. So for example, if I was going to look for, you know, say, Fairfax, Virginia, I’m just going to use that or Richmond, Virginia, which is the capital of Virginia. So let me do that, let’s say Richmond, VA, or Richmond, Virginia, Business Directory. And then I would just go right on through here and just start clicking through and opening up, that’s richmond.com, the Chamber of Commerce, obviously, that’d be another good one. There, all of these different try to put it back over there. This is this is richmond.com. This is the Chamber of Commerce 804 area.com, Richmond gov.com, you might even be able to get listed on like the local municipality or local government site, Richmond light pages in like all of these does that make sense, you just go through and look for your city business directories. And then you could also even look for not just your city, but your state, right, you could go like, in my case, Virginia business directory, and then go in and start getting listed on those. So there you go, you’ve got three additional options right there, something else you could look for is local blogs, it doesn’t have to just be directories. You could also look out for local blogs, local event, local events would be something else that you might be able to get listed on. So you just got to click through and do a little bit of research. But guys, these types of citations are actually way more powerful than the big ones like the big national directories because those are general business directories that cover all types of business categories. And all over the United States, sometimes even more. So those are there’s a place for those. There’s no question. But I found for SEO purposes, you get better results from industry-specific and local business directories. And even you know, state business directories are also helpful. Does that make sense? Does anybody want to comment on that?
And nothing, man. Okay.
Should I Use A Gsite Or Buy A Domain For Local Service Lead Gen Site?
bb’s up? Hey, guys, should I use a G site Or buy a domain for local service lead gen, please explain for short term and long term strategy. Okay. Um, you know, Rob, he does everything with just a G site, he doesn’t do any, like self-hosted sites at all. And he’s, you know, he kills it. There’s, I like to still build a brand with a self-hosted site. For the most part, if I’m doing a standalone GMB lead gen, that isn’t going to be like some brand that I plan to expand, then, which I try not to do that anymore at all. If I’m going to start building lead gen assets, I try to always create a brand that I’m going to use across multiple locations. Okay, because, as we’ve talked about many, many times before, now, you don’t have to have a self-hosted site for that, though, right? You can create it and here’s the thing BB. Whatever route you go, whether you want to self-hosted site, right, so by domain for that, or just use Google sites and drive stacks, you know, the SEO shield, essentially, without a self-hosted site, you can do it, either way, it doesn’t matter. It’s up to you. I tend to like to have a WordPress site still because it gives me additional functionality. But I know that you can do it with just a G site. What my recommendation is, is that you target just a brand on the primary g site, if you want to go that route where you’re you don’t have to buy domains, you don’t have to have a hosting account. You don’t have to set up and maintain or manage WordPress, you can do it with just a Google site. But what I recommend is instead of localizing the Google site, for the initial, the initial one, you want to set it up as a brand, right? So essentially, let’s just call it Bs, lead gen, right? We’re gonna call it that. So your first your G site and your SEO shield, I would set it up on to where it’s optimized for specifically the brand. That’s it. All right, so that you order the SEO power field for Bibi’s lead gen. So that’s the brand so that Google site would be sites.google.com slash views, slash Bs, lead gen. And I wouldn’t add or associate it with a particular location. At that point, if there’s going to be a standalone, then you could do that. You’re right, you’d want to be maybes lead gen for whatever you’re sitting in, right? So plus city. But if you’re going to create a brand out of it, which is what I recommend and create, that you can expand from multiple locations, then I would do it for just the brand at the top level. And then for every location. Even if you’re starting off with just one location, I would create that as an inner page of the G site. So it’s optimized, you know, has it like basically a location page and inner page on the sight as well as an ROI is expansion. White, which you order that an mg y b as well, which would be optimized for that particular location. And then for each subsequent location that you add, it gets another ROI is expansion stack, or ROI is expansion. Stack expansion, excuse me, whatever you get what I’m saying I would have an expansion for each individual location. And each location would be optimized for that, you know, whatever your primary keyword is plus the location. That’s the way I do it. And the reason why is because you can really build that entity up that brand name up, so that initially, it’s all going to be the same. But over time, as you add more like you continue to link build into it and everything else, it’s going to start to gain authority. And each time you want to add another location expand to a new area, then when you add another ArcGIS expansion, another inner, you know, inner page on the G site, it’s going to instantly benefit from all of the power that’s been accrued into that branded stack, and G site. Does that make sense? So initially, your workload is going to be the same. In fact, it might even be a little bit higher initially, because instead of optimizing the drive stack and the G site homepage for a particular location, you optimize it for the brand only. And then you have to have an expansion to target the specific location. So upfront, it might be a little bit more work just a tiny bit, but over time, it’s going to pay off, it’s going to produce a significant payoff, because each time you add a niche, another location is going to instantly benefit from the power of crude and will be a hell of a lot easier to get results from then starting over from scratch each time. So that makes sense. So that’s why I prefer to do it that way. I mean, I still like to have a WordPress site, guys unless like, as I said, it’s just a standalone, like a test project or something like that. But if it’s something that I plan on expanding, I like to have a WordPress site. But that’s just personal preference. As I said, Rob does everything with just g sites and just crushes it. So it’s up to you how you want to handle that. Okay.
Should You Use A Branded Or A Service Name For A Local Business Lead Gen?
What name should we use for local business Legion branded or service name included or end this limits locality? wanting to know if that will rank faster? Yeah. I don’t recommend Well, I reckon Semantic Mastery has been talking about branding for years, we got away from using EMD his exact match domains A long time ago, I always go for a brand. There can be a partial keyword in the brand name a lot of tree contractors do that. Like, you know, though, a lot of tree contractors will have the city name and their, their, their company name or, or Tree Service, obviously, what we’ll be at, which is a keyword tool. But I prefer to go with branded domains and brands, you know, I don’t like keyword stuffing the name. Why? Because think about this, guys. A lot of the times company names are like, especially for service contractors is really just a keyword. Right? It’s like, again, like call pepper Tree Service. If I was going to run with that as a name, right, I live in Cole pepper, called pepper Tree Service. That’s a keyword. So it’s hard to make it a brand. Because there’s ambiguation right off the bat because it’s technically a keyword. Right? It could also be a brand, but you have to overcome the fact that it’s a keyword in Google’s eyes to be recognized as a brand. Does that make sense? So you’re starting from an entity-based SEO standpoint, you’re starting at a disadvantage when you try to go after a generic or keyword-based type entity name. You’re better off going with something unique, that’s branded, it can have a partial match keyword in it, that’s okay. But my point is like I wouldn’t, especially if it’s going to be like you plan on expanding outside of a particular location that I wouldn’t want to include a location name, a specific city name in the brand name, because then you’d be pigeonholing yourself or limiting yourself to that one location. Right? So hopefully that makes sense.
Can You Target A Keyword That Is Searched On Google Even If It’s Not Understandable To Humans?
Can you target a keyword that is searched on Google, but there’s no meaning of it for humans, and they will not understand it. Yeah, sure, you can. That’s how a lot of people do single variable SEO tests. Again, why would you want to do that BB, you always ask these theoretical questions. And I have to ask you why I don’t understand why you would want to target a keyword that is searched on Google, but there is no meaning for it to humans. I’m not sure what you would want to do that for but yeah, sure you can. But no meaning to humans. Why? Like I don’t understand what the point of that would be. Anyway.
And the new number and company name. Will Google understand that the other place was a mistake. Not No. I don’t. And again, I don’t fully understand that question either but
No, because here’s the thing, if you’ve got an old phone number that’s outdated, and it’s published on the web, you know, all those places that are published, how you’d have to update all of them is my point. That’s why it’s better if you’ve got like, for example, NAP errors, right? We have data inaccuracy is for NAP for a particular business, it’s better, it’s wiser, it’s more effective to go clean up or correct. Incorrect citation data than it is to start publishing new citations with the correct data. Because all you’re doing at that point is diluting bad data. Right? You get weight. And trust me, I’ve, I’ve over the years, I’ve dealt with a lot of clients that had significant NAP issues. When I when they came to me, and I’ve learned over the years, the best thing to do is not start building news. I mean, starting to build new citations is going to happen naturally anyway, from the content marketing that we do. But the best way to get results from you know maps pack issues or maps ranking issues when there are any NAP data issues inconsistencies. The best thing to do the most effective thing to do is to update existing citations with correct data, which for that the best service that I’ve ever used is Loganix’s service. So if you go to semanticmastery.com/loganix, that’s L-o-g-a-n-i-x. It’s going to take you to their service, and they have a citation cleanup service, which I think 500 bucks might even be 600 bucks. It’s really good, though. It’s the best one. I’ve done this a number of times for clients over the years. And their services. I’ve used a bunch of services to do citation cleanups. And I’m telling you there is by far the most thorough service period. And to this day, every time I got a project or new client that has nav issues, the first thing I include the cost of this service, right in the proposal, when I get a new client, and typically I mark it up, and I also purchase through their account Loganix account that I set up for them through my own affiliate link as a Loganix affiliate, so that I get a markup Plus, I think it’s only 10% Commission, but I get a 10% commission as well. And then Loganix does all the work, and they’ve got their citation cleanup service, which is really, really good. Okay. So if their page loaded a little bit quicker, I’d show you that. Let’s go here, local SEO. And then they have some citation cleanup right here. And it looks like it starts at 497. And it takes about they say a six-week campaign, and they typically will run it for eight to 10 weeks, though. And it’s multiple stages, and it works really, really well. Okay.
How Would You Deal With Existing Social Profiles And Drive Stacks If Your Client Decides To Rebrand?
Jose says Hi there, say you have a client that decides to rebrand and merge multiple websites together or change over to a completely new brand for the domains, I would throw one. everything over to the right place. But how would you deal with social profiles and drive stacks? Would you rebuild from scratch? don’t want to waste link juice from the old stacks? Ooh, that’s a really good question. Um, well, with the drive stacks, remember, if you’re wanting the target the original site URLs to the new one, that you consolidate it, everything right, so the other domains that were now all redirected to the new one. So what I’m saying is that drive stacks are going to be targeting, if you had drive stacks built for these other brands or these other domains, right? That was pointing to those domains. And now those domains are 3012, the new money site, then all of that link flow is still going to be going through that redirect to the money site. The problem that I see with that, though, is it’s not from it from a link juice point, there’s no problem but from the data point and the information like the entity information, right, if you’ve got stuff out there from older brands that have now been consolidated into something new, and you’ve got those still remember on SEO from an SEO juice, right, so like a link equity standpoint, it’s flowing through the 301 redirects to your new domain, your new brand, it’s fine, you’re still gonna benefit from that. But you could ambiguous the entity information of the new entity because all of that is flowing from previously published stuff that had old entity info on it. So again, if you think about it from an SEO juice point, it’s fine. It’s still all flows through. But at the same time, I would worry about having all that other published data about an entity that no longer exists because it’s been consolidated in the new one. So that’s a really good question.
I’m not sure how I would handle that, I understand not wanting to lose all that power, but without, without going in and you know, editing the file, like the text and stuff like that on the phone, the files, essentially, the G sites and stuff too. You know, mentioned the entity information like NAP, for example, name, address phone number of the new entity, then I would be concerned that that might ambiguous the data, which in my case, and I’ve done that in the past, I’ve just killed the folders like just set them to, you know, not know, not public, so that the SEO juice will still flow, but they’re not, you know, being indexed and all that kind of stuff. So I don’t know, that’s the way that I’ve done it in the past was I’ve just set that in the folders too, you know, private, essentially. But go in, but again, it’s either that or kill it altogether, but I understand not wanting to waste the juice, but at the same time, if you want to, if you want to keep the public, then you’d have to go in and actually edit all and from what I know, I would want to go in and edit all of the, you know, published data about the old entity and update it with the new and that would be a shit ton of work. There’s a lot of there’s no question about that. That’s how I would do it. What I rebuild from scratch Yeah, I would have a new drive stack built for the new brand new consolidated brand. Absolutely. It but I understand not wanting to waste all the power built to the previous ones. So that’s about the only thing I could think of to do with that would be to you know, in the past, like I said, I’ve just set them to not public and kept them but they weren’t, you know, indexable or killed the folders entirely. Which sucks because then you lose all that juice, but it is what it is. Okay.
How Are You Managing Freelancers When You Start To Grow Your Team?
Jays up. He says, How are you guys managing freelancers, writers, Link builders, etc. When do you start to grow your team? Are you just using something like up work with teams? Or something better? Yeah, I mean, I, I just my team has only two people now. Well, I’ve got bloggers, but they’re, I don’t really manage them much. I’ve got two assistants that work for me on you know, Monday through Friday, though. And I just manage everything through slack. We’ve got a CRM that we use, Well, a couple of CRMs. I’ve got a high level for agency staff. And then I use a different CRM for real estate stuff. And then I’ve got slack channels that I manage everybody in, you know what Adam would be the better one to answer this one.
Yeah, I think it’s a this is this could be its own, like, full-on conversation. So I’ll try to keep this somewhat short. But I think it depends on what your needs are, like, Don’t go looking for a problem to solve before you have one. So if you’re feeling the crunch, and it sounds like j, you’re maybe looking at you’ve got a small team and you’re growing, you know, if it’s not working, then now’s a good time, you got the pain point. So I would start simple though, like for me right now I use ClickUp. And I work, you know, between full time, part-time and contractors have had like seven or eight people from different groups. So that’s one there’s a lot of these services like ClickUp Monday, trying to think of other ones, but you know, those are two good examples, you can go and check out and they usually have some sort of free tier, but they can get complicated and you can spend a lot of time figuring them out. So Trello is definitely a good place where you could get started with the simple like maybe you have one list of ideas or things or templates and then you have one have in progress and one has finished or needs to review something like that just to get you in the mindset of delegating more, because as you build up your team, your time should shift towards more effectively delegating and doing a very good job and spending a lot of time on that upfront so that you don’t spend as much time doing or as much time fixing because you gave someone shooting instructions and I say that because I’m you know growing pains myself going from a couple of people to more you know, shrinking, growing, you know, seeing that again and again. So just make sure that you have an actual need for this don’t do more than what you need, but be aware of what your options are and stay simple rather than get complicated fast.
No, that’s an mgyb.co/process finger there that you’ll see. You gotta it’s behind an opt-in. Well, now guys, you got to submit your email to get to it. But if it’s MGYB.co/process and that was built in process Street, yes,
gotcha. Okay, yeah, I have that mixed up. And so I would just say, if you’re going to spend time somewhere, to spend it on the process side, and it doesn’t have to be paid service, could be Google Docs could be Trello. With a checklist, or, you know, if you like something sleek, like process Street, something that you can easily duplicate it’s made for this. But yeah, put your time and effort into the processes. And then you can fill out the rest of that over time. And for years, all I did for process docs was Google, Google Docs, and screencast, which I would upload to YouTube screencast recorder, and that would so for years, that’s all I did. And to this day, when I’m first developing a process, that’s where I do it the same way I record a screencast video and I type, I start typing out the steps in a Google Doc. And then once I get the rough draft of the process, done, the process documentation is done, then I transfer that now to process street, and I process Street, it’s paid, I think I only pay like 35 bucks a month or something. So it’s worth it to me. But it makes it much more polished. And you can create checklists and things like that from and embed videos directly into it. And you know, all kinds of really cool stuff that you can do with process Street. But still to this day, when I’m first starting to develop a process document, I do it with just Google Docs and a screencast video until I get my first you know, the rough first draft of it done. And it works really, really well guys, and for many years, that’s all I did was Google Drive, and YouTube, well, you know, screencasts that I would upload to YouTube. And that worked for years. So you don’t need to overcomplicate that either.
One thing I will say is two things rather a little bit of shiny object. But check out the notion as well. If you like putting stuff together yourself, that’s a great one took me a while to realize the power there. I’m using that for marketing calendars and some other stuff too. And then last but not least, if you do Google 360, the numbers 360 delegations, there’s a great article, I forget who it is or who referred me, but it’s profitfactory.com/360delegation, it’s a fantastic article on why you should be delegating and doing the processed stuff and where you should be spending your time. And you know, kind of directed my attention for. I really do need to be putting in more time. For example, the vision of a project, you know, this isn’t for a tiny little task, but for maybe a project, like what do I want? You know, what does it look like? Why are we doing this and sharing a little bit with the team? So it’s not just, hey, go build this. And this doesn’t have to be some complex product process, but sharing with the team, so they understand a little bit of the bigger picture, because anyone who’s involved in this type of stuff, probably would like and benefit from a little bit of it. And then the resources like what resources do they need? Do you already have LastPass? or whatever? are you sharing all the passwords? Do you need to record anything? Do they need software? like running through this checklist? And then going and what’s the definition of done? Do you have screenshots of what is a good done project or task is do you have an example? Do you have something they can compare it to? Is there a schedule? And he was going through this and saying, Oh wow, for myself? who’s like, Yeah, I got to spend more time upfront so that I spend less time getting involved in it down the road when it Yeah, I just told him to get started and lucked out 20% of what they needed.
So yeah, very true.
Is There Any Harm In Running Too Many PRs In A Short Period Of Time?
We’re almost out of time, let’s run through the last couple. Let’s see, we’ll say hey, gents, I have a client that wants to run one press release every three days, the manufacturing plant is supplying a range of new products, and they want to be number one, before any other supplier, I did a test with four times or four PRs in four weeks, and it worked a treat. He now wants me to push that further and do about 10 PRs in one month. These are four different products, and each has a separate landing page. Is there any harm in running this many PRs?
No, not at all.
I’ve got a few projects that I typically publish eight PRs per month on and then I know Rob has done. He’s just spam the shit out. Like I say, spam, it’s not really spam, but he’s done a whole bunch of press releases in a week. Like, I don’t know what the number is, but I know he’s done multiple press releases in a week for a particular project, just to test it and it always produces good results. So no more won’t hurt you. Okay. Good question. By the way, Gordon says, Hey, guys, hope everyone is still well and COVID. Free. I believe it used to be imperative for a local business to have their site ranking on the first page of Google or at least on the second page. In order to rank in the GMB three-pack, is that currently essential? Or can their site rank way down and organic search results and you can still get a three-pack ranking by doing completely on-page GMB listing optimization. And by targeting the GMB listing itself, with press releases, citations, drive stacks, etc, from MGYB? And if so, can you do it with the middle of the road quantity and quality of reviews? Thank you very much. As usual for you. Yeah, no, I know what you mean about there’s been a connection between maps ranking and organic ranking, but I could talk for years, all I did was optimized for maps, and I didn’t give a shit at all about organic rankings, I’ve started to do more on the organic side of things now because the maps proximity filter is much tighter now it’s much narrower. So getting maps listing to rank, you know, outside of its immediate physical location area is more difficult now. So that’s why I’ve started working also on organic rankings again. Because it’s but long story short, I know what you mean about the connection between the two, but I’ve got a ton of GMB assets that the organic rankings are basically nonexistent like I just didn’t even try ever. And so some of them are ranking in the three-pack. But I’ve got you know, it’s page four before you find the first organic ranking for that, you know, keyword, for example. So I don’t know that the connection is still there. I know that I will, you know, I try to do a balance of the two now for, you know, new projects, but for older projects that all I did was focused on GMB ranking. I’ve got many, many examples of that, that the organic rankings are just really shitty, you know, page three, page four, whatever. But it’s ranking in the three-pack if that makes sense. So I don’t think it matters. Honestly. I could be wrong. They might, somebody else might have some now, if you get your organic ranking to rank well, will it help to benefit the maps ranking? I think so. But if you’re just focusing on maps, I don’t think that the organic rankings make much of a difference, at least in my own experience. Now, again, there might be some other data out there that conflicts with But for my from my own experience, it doesn’t really matter for maps rankings. That makes sense.
What’s The Best Use Of A Newly Acquired Domain With 100+ Links?
Okay, the last question is going to be from Robert and we’re going to wrap it up. Robert says, Thanks for continuing Hump Day hanging out with us all. You’re welcome. We enjoy this. If I have a money site, I just acquired a domain with 100 plus links, mostly follow links with high authority and relative anchors. Great. What’s the best way to use this newly acquired domain 301 redirects? Yeah, if it’s relevant, you can do that. I don’t like to do that a lot. But if it was a domain, where it was topically relevant to what you’re going to be forwarding it to, or 301 redirecting it to, then that means the inbound link profile from that domain that you purchased is likely relevant. Also double-check that if it’s relevant, then yes, do a 301 redirect directly to the money site. If it’s not fully irrelevant, but there’s a lot of power built to it, then what I would recommend that you do is 301. redirect that to a buffer page, like an ID page, for example, hosted on an s3 bucket and Amazon s3 bucket as opposed direct, instead of direct to the root domain, the multi-site domain, that makes sense, it’s fully relevant. And it’s got a clean link profile with you know, the inbound link profiles topically relevant and yes, you can redirect directly to the money site, the root domain is fine. But if it’s not 100% relevant, but it’s got a lot of power and a somewhat clean link profile, but it’s just not fully relevant, then I would 301 redirect that to a buffer site. I prefer to use the Amazon s3 hosted ID page for that. But you could do it like a G site would be great for that. You know, pretty much any one of your tier one branded entity profiles. You could redirect to that but the G site would be a really good one for that Id page. Might is one I typically use for that. That makes sense. Okay, guys, so I can get to all the questions but most of them did get answered. So thank you guys for being here.
Source: Semantic Mastery
Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 326 published first on your-t1-blog-url
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