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dweetwise · 4 years

Note

Felix and Ace having met before. Ace won a grand prize at the table and got an executive suite. Though his next door neighbor was Felix who was here on a business meeting to design a similar casino. (I am sorry I love imagining people meeting people before the fog)

this isn’t exactly what you asked for buuuut i needed to write something for waiter ace and you blessed me with this ask uwu also if you didn’t want a ship i’m sorry but that’s what i assumed! warning for closeted felix and mentions of the s3x but nothing nsfw actually happens

word count: 1860

Felix X Ace: Strictly Business

Felix wasn’t exactly prepared for the fog to transport him into another dimension. He'd read some theories, sure, and he'd seen his father disappear into thin air all those years ago, but to experience it first-hand was another thing entirely.

He also didn't expect the world in question to be controlled by an eldritch being that forced its captured victims into a gruesome game of hide and seek, killing and resurrecting him and others at will.

But he sure as hell didn't expect to come face to face with the biggest mistake of his life.

It takes Felix a minute to recognize the man, the small camp having so many new faces and names to memorize and they’re all speaking over each other—it's a lot to take in. But then he spots a familiar face, and everything the ginger woman is trying to explain to him becomes white noise as the man he focuses on laughs at something a boy in a beanie says.

Felix’s thoughts drift back to what feels like a lifetime ago, when he was on a business trip in Austria, staying at a luxurious casino.

Him and a couple of other junior architects were invited to design an expansion to the building, and the best idea would be hired. Felix hated competition, he hated having to work on the field, and he hated the lavish, over-the-top style of the casino. But he was only starting to get his name out there, and couldn't afford to turn down any opportunities—if he played his cards right, this could be his stepping stone into more high-profile projects. Maybe he'd get to design an entire casino next time, without the twenty fake fountains and fuck-awful gold trims.

They were waited on like VIP:s while attending meetings in lavish conference rooms and bullshit marketing presentations about the brand. It was basically an all-inclusive stay, but Felix still despised it. He would have given anything to skip the unnecessary pleasantries and stay at home to draw the designs in peace.

He hated it right up until one of the waiters serving their mid-presentation coffees caught him suppressing a yawn and gave him a cheeky wink and a smirk. Felix had blinked, thinking he imagined it, but the more he kept staring, the more the waiter's smile seemed to widen.

Felix wasn't gay, but being an architect, he could appreciate aesthetically pleasing things in life. Like the waiter's symmetrical face, high cheekbones and good hairline. And eyes that sparkled with mischief even while he was outwardly completely professional.

And the way his work pants clung to his perky ass.

The waiter was suddenly a hundred times more interesting to him than the entire project. The project was predictable, and Felix once again found himself drawn to the unknown.

It wasn't a challenge to get the man's attention. He only had to linger behind after a dinner, and soon enough, there was a gloved hand brushing fleetingly against his neck as the man collected his plate. With the rest of the group having moved on, and Felix having had more than a few drinks, he'd asked if there was any possibility for room service. He was rewarded a lopsided grin and warm eyes shimmering with promise.

He always was much smoother when drunk off his ass.

He doesn't even remember what he'd designed by the end of his five-day-stay in the casino. He only remembers fucking the cute waiter against the tacky gold-trimmed headboard of the king-sized bed in his suite. And in the hot tub. And in a supply closet. It was a long week, okay?

His companion was named Luca. He'd only been working in the casino for a few months and was thinking of moving back to Italy, not being a fan of gambling or the over-the-top establishment. He had a charming accent and only spoke a couple of words of German, forcing Felix to use his own shaky English.

It was a shallow thing. Felix tried to keep his personal life private, and he definitely left out the part where he had a girlfriend back home. He'd ended up exaggerating his professional success, but wasn’t that what people did? He was just trying to make a good impression,

After the week, Felix never talked to the other man again. He got home, unpacked his bags, and freaked out. He didn't even want to think about how unprofessional he'd been and how risky it was.

And definitely not about how much he'd enjoyed it.

The more he tried suppressing the thoughts, the more insistent they got. His brain was periodically invaded by images of warm brown eyes, expressive lips twisting into a hundred different smiles, and a laugh resonating in his ear, rich like his favorite double-roast coffee. The memories had haunted him for close to a decade, and he thought he'd finally gotten past them, ready to be a good father that had his shit together.

But here he is, seeing the same brown eyes light up with the same carefree smile and the sound of the same damn laugh echoing through the air and all the memories come flooding back.

The woman next to him hollers something to the group, and the familiar face looks his way. Even with the now grey hair and added wrinkles, Felix still finds himself just as transfixed as he'd been ten years ago.

He's introduced to the group, but he only really remembers one name and the overwhelming sense of wrongness that follows it; Ace. The revelation isn’t made any easier when he notices there isn't even a flicker of recognition in the eyes he remembers so fondly.

In the following couple of trials, Felix is only disappointed further. “Ace” doesn’t have an Italian accent anymore, in fact Felix catches him instead saying something in Spanish to the woman in a blazer. He’s also very keen on gambling, and the shiny satin smoker jacket he wears in one trial could have been straight from the tacky casino they met in. Was anything he told Felix about himself true?

It takes him a while to confront the man, debating back and forth inside his head. All of his focus should be on finding his father, and he needs to keep these people at arm’s length. Ace not remembering him is the best possible outcome of their brief past together, he tries to rationalize.

But in the end, curiosity wins over rationality, and when the opportunity presents itself, Felix is unable to resist.

“You really don't remember me, do you?” Felix asks, alone in the camp until Ace returns from a trial. The man pauses, eyebrows pinching together in confusion “I didn't leave you to die on hook, did I?” Ace asks. “That happens sometimes.” “No, I mean back in the other world,” Felix explains. “We've… met?” Ace asks.

Well. If that's what you want to call it.

“Yes,” Felix simply says and immediately, Ace cringes. “I'm sorry?” he offers. “Excuse me?” “I can count on one hand the people I've encountered who remember me fondly. There's a 99% chance you hate my guts, so I figured I'd get it over with quickly," Ace explains, seeming a little wary. “I don't hate you, I just can't believe you'd forget and… lie.” “Oh, I… I do that. Did—whatever. Nothing personal,” Ace shrugs. “I really don’t remember you, sorry.” “Casino in Vienna. 2011. I stayed at the hotel for a week. You were a waiter. You said your name was Luca. We—” Felix hesitates. “…'met'.”

Multiple times on multiple surfaces.

“Vienna, huh? Hmm... Oh!” Ace's face suddenly lights up. “You were one of the suits, right? Some kind of… lawyer?” "Architect,” Felix corrects, a little miffed. “Same deal,” Ace dismisses with a wave of his hand. “So, are you still neck-deep in the closet?” “What?” Felix recoils. “That's—I'm not gay. It was a one-time-thing.” “That would be a yes,” Ace muses, almost as to himself. “So you do remember? All of it?” Felix prods. “Guess so. What, you want a repeat performance?” Ace asks, raising an eyebrow. “No! I just…” Felix falters.

‘Wanted to make sure you didn't forget me because I’ve been thinking about you for the past ten years’? No way he’s admitting to any of that, so he puts on his business face.

“Wanted to come clean. So we're on the same page. To avoid any awkwardness,” Felix says instead, and it’s definitely not as smooth as he would have liked. “Right…” Ace says, regarding him skeptically.

There's a few seconds of extremely awkward silence while Ace just stares at him and Felix looks into the fire, trying to keep his face neutral and not sweat bullets. Eventually Ace sighs.

“Look, can I give you some friendly advice?” he asks. “I… I guess so," Felix says, a little confused. “Drop the act,” Ace says, looking him dead in the eye. “The manly man, excited father, respectable lawyer—” “Architect,” Felix, again, corrects in annoyance. “—suit guy thing, whatever. It's not going to serve you any purpose in here. These people see right through any bullshit, trust me on that one,” Ace adds with a knowing smile that Felix has never seen before.

He doesn't have any time to think of a reply before they're interrupted, the girl with a beanie cussing up a storm while a young guy in a sailor uniform sits down in front of Ace expectantly and the man cracks a joke and immediately starts tending to the bloody gash in the kid's shoulder.

The wound is bleeding heavily but the duo keeps chatting without a care in the world. Felix remembers he got a gauze roll from the… blood web?—and he rifles through his meager belongings before approaching the two.

“You… um,” Felix stammers, holding out the item to Ace. “Would this help?” “Cool!" the teen chirps while Ace takes the offered item silently, regarding Felix with an unreadable expression. "Thanks—uhh, what was your name again?" the kid grins sheepishly. “Felix,” he says. “And… yours?” he asks, swallowing his pride and now hesitantly curious to learn more about his companions. “I'm Steve! This is Ace, and the moping bitch over there is Nea!” Steve exclaims with a bright smile that shows his bloodied teeth. “Dude, fuck off!" the girl, Nea, calls. “Hey Felix, anyone teach you how to use a flashlight yet?" “No, not really," Felix confesses, cautiously approaching the girl. “I understand the need for tools and medical supplies, but… what would you use a torch for?” ------------------ “So how's the new guy holding up?” Steve asks. Ace looks over to where Felix is sitting with Nea. “Allvarligt—förstår du mig inte?” Nea has apparently moved on from flashlight training to Swedish lessons. “For the last time, your Swedish sounds like gibberish to me," Felix explains. "Just because the languages are related—" “Sheiße,” Nea interrupts with a grin, moving to swear in German. “A multilingual genius, I see,” Felix deadpans. “He's learning,” Ace says, hiding his own hopeful smile behind the fluffy hair of the boy he's patching up.

(nea’s line: “seriously, you don’t understand me?”) i’m not 100% happy w this fic, esp since it’s about a new character but it’s a start at least! i also really wanted to throw in a “sure you’re hot but you were so boring i forgot all about you” line but it didn’t fit and now you just have to imagine that’s what ace was thinking

#felix richter #ace visconti #felix richter x ace visconti #dbd fanfic #dbd #dead by daylight #dweetwrites #request

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inkstaineddove · 4 years

Text

Circling Eagles

Characters: Austria, Prussia; mentioned Hungary, France and Holy Rome

Summary: Austria is suddenly summoned to Berlin by Prussia for a vague meeting. Tensions run hot between them as egos due to an over abundance of ego and animosity in both, throwing their discussions off course to air grievances and bait the other.

Berlin, 1806.

Prussia was hunched over his desk in his study. The matter of France’s increasing territorial ambition had left him with more work to do than ever. He found himself a slave to all his papers as they stacked up, growing ever higher each day. He was roused from this by a light tapping on the door. One of his servants stepped in and bowed her head. He flicked his hand towards her as if to beg her to get on with it. "Master Edelstein has arrived, sir."

He harrumphed. "Have him wait five minutes in the parlor before sending him up. I'm in the middle of something." He returned back to his papers, scribbling out correspondence to generals on the front and to ambassadors throughout the European courts.

Not even a minute had gone by before the door slammed open. "Oh for heaven's sake, Gilbert! Who do you think I am, Baden? You can't expect me to wait around like your coy little mistress after you rush me over from Vienna." Roderich was leaning over the desk, in the Prussian's face.

Gilbert grimaced. Why did his beloved cousin have to wear so much fucking perfume? It never smelled good either, making it even less tolerable. "Get over yourself, Roddy. You know I would never treat your mistress like that. How is she, by the way? I've been so busy, I haven't had the chance to call on her. I hope she hasn't wasted away, having to capitulate with a man hardly capable of fulfilling his marital duties."

Roderich straightened up, his face red. Gilbert rose and shut the door. The staff didn't need to hear all this. "You jealous, spiteful little rat. If this is all you have to say to me, when I've been sending men to death to protect your pathetic little state, I've got no qualms signing a treaty with France and ending the whole thing! I'd love to join with him and rid myself of you, but tragically I have honor."

Prussia shrugged, barely suppressing his amusement at the other’s outburst. "I was enjoying myself, but you've always got to ruin the fun." He began rummaging through the stacks of paper on his desk. Eventually, he found what he was looking for. "Have you received any letter from us yet, dated a month ago after Austerlitz? I know your men were at the battle, but no one reported to me seeing you there."

"I know we got our asses handed to us and about the resultant treaty afterwards, as I negotiated that, but that's it. I'm assuming you tried reaching me about something else?" Austria gaped as he watched Prussia toss out the letter he had so valiantly fished for. "What was the point of that?"

"I'll show you instead. It's about that troublesome empire you clung so tightly to." Prussia led him out and down the halls to a darkened room in the basement. "Thankfully, it's really unsettling down here so I've had no trouble keeping my staff away from here. But it sure was a bitch wrapping the kid up in sheets and bringing him down here in the middle of the night. Without making a sound, should I add." He couldn't help the hint of pride in his voice. He lit the candles hanging by the sofa.

Roderich leaned against the wall, needing it for support. He felt queasy. There before him was the body of Holy Rome. It was a wretched sight. He was covered in wounds, his body appearing as if it had began bursting apart. His eyes were rolled to the back of his head, his tongue was swollen, and his face distorted. "What did you do to him?"

"I didn't do anything! He was sent here after Austerlitz in need of expert medical care. He got it, but everyday he kept getting worse. He became so shriveled up, completely disfigured and eventually unable to eat or move. I guess this is what happens when a state's dissolved by treaty. Almost feel bad for him, it might've been better if France had just gutted him with a sword." Prussia yawned, completely unbothered. As the years had gone by, he'd grown less and less fond with the empire-in-name-only. If anything, Francis had done him a personal favor. "I'm sorry you lost the seat of your power."

Austria was not taking this discovery well. He knew that Holy Rome ceased to exist in everything but name - hell, he agreed to it in the treaty - but he expected the embodiment of it to go slowly, peacefully. To eventually fade away till it existed in memory only. This was grotesque. A horror beyond any other imaginable. He wanted to throw up, he wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, to drink till he was numb. So of course, of course, Gilbert would take this as an opportunity to douse the wound in vinegar. "How dare you! Insinuating that was the only reason I cared for him after all these centuries. To stand there, on your high horse, and act as if you're somehow more worthy than me because you're so callous, so uncaring towards this. Marvelous! Further proof that a ghoul has no soul! Are you proud, are you fucking proud Gilbert? Will this help you sleep at night, knowing you have to live in my shadow while I've gotten everything - the girl, the empire, the power - that you've wanted?" As he spoke, he pushed Prussia against the wall, his breath stinging hot against Gilbert's lips.

He saw red. Before he even knew it, he'd punched Roderich in the jaw. Before he even knew it, he'd spat on his cousin’s hunched over body, landing it right on Roderich's cheek. He knelt down and grabbed the Austrian by the collar. "For a little whore who can't defend himself, you really love talking a big game. What do you have that I don't have? I think we know who your wife would rather be with. You know that too, don't even fucking start there. This isn't the fifteen-hundreds anymore, Roderich. All your power comes from who you can get your monarchs to marry off to, whoring yourself around to each nation so maybe they won't recognize the paper tiger in front of them. What power can you really have if you're too weak to truly flex it? As for your empire-" He gestured towards the decrepit corpse of Holy Rome, "-he's over there. Rotting away, no longer any use to you. Now what puppet will you have to prop yourself up with?" He pushed Austria away and stood. "Get over yourself, you'd be less intolerable. Sure, you won't see me crying any tears for this nuisance, but I'm not celebrating. If he really means that much to you, then figure out what to do with the body. That's the reason I called you here. I don't want this shit here any longer. He’s stinking up my cellar.”

Austria spat the blood that was pooling in his mouth out. He wiped the spit off his cheek. "You're a barbarian. Who could ever love that? Uncivilized, uncouth, an ogre. Whoever you appeal to simply lacks taste, that's all. It's not an attachment to you, it's an absence of acculturation to be worked on." He paused. "Vigorously." Collecting his pride, he rose and dusted himself off. Roderich rolled his eyes. "I suppose a proper Catholic burial in Vienna will be due. All the royal honors. I'll invite the other German states, though I doubt they'll show, a fitting tribute to their allegiance."

"Burying it would be a waste. Haven't you heard what the others have been begging for? The whole specter of France has the weaklings begging for a united Germany." Prussia wrinkled his nose up at the concept of it. "If they get their way, it might be worthwhile keeping the damn thing."

"A united Germany? One where Bavaria, Saxony, and the two of us are all working together, fighting for the same goals and for the same nation?" Austria scoffed. "A fantasy. No, if I kept him in an accessible area and the idealists got wind of that, my God. It would be a propaganda victory for them if they believed I sided with them. I can't have that. It would be suicide."

"Just a thought. That whole group keeps clamoring for it more and more. I'm not sure how easily we'll be able to crush the idea. They seem to be putting all their hopes into it." Gilbert laughed. "It's ridiculous. They want every state to be considered equals in it. Can you imagine? Having us be equal to all of them? I'd be embarrassed having to consider Cleves a peer."

Austria gave him a pointed look. "I think what would be worse is us having to consider the other an equal. The day I look at you occupying the same plane as me will be my last. You'll always be that backwater nation with unchecked ambitions to me. Saxony and Bavaria have had the common sense to acknowledge that, it's you who's always been desperate to rise beyond his station. Funny, you'd expect a Calvinist to accept that he was predestined for mediocrity."

Prussia's blood ran cold. He clenched his jaw. "And you'll always be a dying star, clinging to its last streaks of glory. Too proud to admit when he's washed up and no longer en vogue. For all your trappings of wealth and culture, it never seemed to get you any class. You're still here, in the mud, where you'll always be. Come on, don't be afraid to admit that you like it." Austria shifted nervously. Prussia smiled. "I'll send the body to you. I figure you don't want it riding in your carriage with you, you're welcome."

They tersely went back up the stairs to the main hallway. Roderich collected his coat and checked his appearance in the mirror. "You're beautiful, please leave my home now." Prussia opened the door and, as Austria walked out, said, "Make sure to give my regards to the misses."

Roderich stopped and leaned in close to Gilbert's ear. "I will as we're going to bed tonight after I've fucked her so good. And I'll think of you, sleeping in that big bed alone, and I'll sleep like a baby." He strode off, leaving Gilbert in the dust. Another meeting of unfinished business.

#aph prussia #aph austria #hws austria #hws prussia #pruhun #aushun #hws pruhun #aph pruhun #aph pruaus #aph aushun #hws aushun #hws pruaus #pruaus #HETALIA FANFIC #hetalia fanfiction

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lovestrucked-again · 5 years

Text

Planes Pt3 - Shawn Mendes

Summary: Unaware of who the handsome boy seated next to you is, the two of you start talking…

Part 1, Part 2

You sit in your seat till the very end. Till everyone around you is slowly shuffling out, gossiping with one another still humming in excitement. The security guards are ushering people out as cleaners file in, collecting all the rubbish left behind. The security guard who led you in before comes to your aisle.

“Miss?” he says, signalling you out of your daze. You look at him, stand up and follow as he begins to walk back the way he came from. The corridors aren’t as busy anymore, people are chatting in groups talking about the successful night. You’re led back to Shawn’s dressing room and the guard knocks twice against the door before opening it and stepping back. Your stomach fills with butterflies and your head is buzzing with questions. You falter in your steps as you walk through the door, it was empty.

“Shawn will be here in a few minutes, his just talking with his manager.” The guard informs, “your welcome to take a seat and wait for him.” He leaves the room, shutting the door behind him and leaving you alone.

Your still in shock a little when your phone beeps in your pocket. Picking up your phone you see a notification from your mum but you ignore it and click into Instagram searching up Shawn Mendes. His account pops up with the blue tick icon beside it. 42million followers. Immediately you begin scrolling through his photos of his stages from the UK, Austria, France and all over Europe. The excitement and energy flickering beneath his eyes was mesmerising to you. So this is his passion.

“Hey,” You almost drop your phone in surprise before looking up.

“Hi,” you mumbled out. Shawn’s still dressed in his stage outfit, hair a complete mess but still managing to look just as attractive as the few hours before.

“Did you enjoy it?” he asks, sitting down across from you.

“Yeah, I did.” You sort of just stare at him, then the room, then your hands, then back to him, and back to your phone. Your eyes were darting everywhere from the build-up of your nerves.

“Sooo…. you’re a singer?” you ask

“Yeah,” He responds, and you nod. “Do you hate me?” The sudden question threw you off a little and you almost choked.

“Why would I hate you? I admit that I’m a little shocked but I don't hate you,” you quickly defend the idea.

“I’m sorry I didn't tell you properly but it was so nice just to be seen as a stranger.” You understood where he was coming from but now that you knew who he was, you were a little more self-conscious of your posture, your outfit, your words and everything else.

“You’ve got a really nice voice,” You say, realising that you haven’t commented on his performance yet.

“Thanks, it comes in handy when I’m trying to serenade someone.” He jokes, giving you a wink. You blush and awkwardly look away, trying to laugh it off.

“Shawn! Are you planning to wear your stage outfit home?! Come and change!” Someone yells.

“I’ll be right back,” he says. You take the chance to breath in as deep as you can and breathe out. You can’t help but smile and your stomach sinks in or at least, it feels like it. Your hearts still racing and you start to think about everything you just said, worried about your expressions. You worry that you laughed too much or looked too awkward.

“Do you wanna get some dinner?” he asks, walking back into the room.

“Sure, I’d love to!” You exclaim, suddenly standing up. And then you realise your standing awkwardly so you sort of just scratch your arm and play with your bracelet as his packing his guitar up.

“What do you feel like? Maybe you could suggest something since you know the area.”

“We could go to the city,” you say without thinking.

“That sounds nice.” Shawn replies. He knows that it’s technically out of bounds to be in the city whenever his on tour but he didn't want to risk ruining anything. So he chose to take the chance and hope for the best.

_________

“So this is what its’ like to be famous?” You laugh sitting cross legged around the table facing Shawn.

“It’s a hard job,” he chuckles, opening the pizza box and spreading out the food across the table. Fans had managed to find Shawn in just 30minutes once you both had left the arena which forced you two to go into hiding. Shawn offered for you to join him for dinner at his hotel instead to which you gladly agreed on. He was apologetic the entire ride saying how he wanted to treat you to something nice as an appreciative gesture for the night before. However, you weren’t dressed for anything nice so you were thankful for just eating casual.

“Are you allowed to do this?” you ask, “I mean like, should I be here?”

“Yeah why not?” he gives you a questioning look.

“Isn’t it bad for show?” You didn't know how to bring it up but you thought there was something more than just friends. Nothing serious but just something out of the ordinary. The hand-holding he always started which would make your heart race but thinking back now, he didn't really seem fazed. Maybe it was normal to him.

“Fans will probably assume I’m meeting with an old friend in LA if they see us,” he says casually. You nod in reply, keeping your eyes on the pizza slice in your hand.

“So what do you do here? Are you a student?” he asks.

“Yeah I’m a student in first year doing science and arts.”

“Ohh cool, I was never a sciencey student but definitely more towards the arts.” You both laugh a little. Eventually the food gets cold as your conversation continues about his music career, how he got into music, how you got into science and arts, and all the little details about your lives. You both moved from the floor to the couch, sitting next to each other and leaning against the backing as you talked. You got the chance to ask about his tattoos and he explained them to you. He turned to sit facing you cross legged on the couch, and you copied him. He showed you the tattoos on his hands last, grabbing your hands at the same time.

Your eyes scanned his tattoo briefly but took the opportunity to look at his hands. His hands were soft but slightly calloused. His nails were cut short and the veins on his wrists to the backside of his hands were prominent. You stop when you notice his watch. You notice the time on his watch. It was 3am.

“Omg it’s 3am,” you whisper, not realising you had cut him off mid-sentence.

“Oh,” Shawn says, just as surprised as you. You look up at him from his hands and he looks a little stressed, like his debating in his head. “If you want to, you can stay here the night,” he offers.

_______

You hear sounds in the shower and naturally curious, you lean against the door, ear against it. He’s singing in the shower. His voice was smooth and clear and quiet yet powerful. It was soothing. And I know you don’t commonly call a guy’s voice beautiful, but his was. You sit down on the floor, back against the door reading the one book from the bedside table and gradually you learn the tune, humming along with him. You hear silence for a bit but don't bother moving, thinking that his most likely changing or still occupied. The book you were reading turned out to be quite appealing and the short chapters felt like you were going through the book extremely fast.

“Y/N y-,” he opens the door and you fall back suddenly, dropping the book beside you. He tries to supress a laugh but lets it out when he sees you go red in the cheeks. His got a towel around his waist and water dripping down his hair to his body.

“I-I was just listening to you sing.” You stutter out, still on the floor. “I haven’t even tried charming you yet but I guess I was a born natural.” He chuckles as his giving you a hand to help you up. You smack him against the chest trying to defend yourself without words. If you said anything now, it would definitely embarrass you more. He laughs at your defence and walks over to his suitcase, pulling out a shirt.

“Here,” he says, chucking the shirt at you. “You can wear this after you shower, its clean.”

“Thanks,” you say before quickly disappearing into the bathroom. Your shower process is relatively slow in comparison to him. You wanted to procrastinate and rehearse all possible lines if things got awkward. You took the chance to text your 2 best friends about the situation, obviously not mentioning the guy was Shawn Mendes. They were like the angel and devil voices for you, one completely supporting you to just stay the night and ‘see where it goes’, the other telling you to go home immediately.

You slip on his shirt over yourself and it reaches down to your mid-thighs. You were debating whether to wear your denim shorts to sleep but seeing the length his shirt went to, you couldn't be bothered. You dry your hair roughly with the towel and you can smell the slightly vanilla scented shampoo Shawn uses. You keep a mental note of the brand and walk back into the bedroom. The lights are out already and you can make out his figure in the bed. Fuck this is crazy.

You walk over to your side of the bed and pull the sheets back slowly. You can’t tell if Shawn’s asleep but his completely still, facing the middle. You carefully crawl into the queen sized bed and pull the covers up to your chin. You face the ceiling, not wanting to seem creepy by looking at him or rude by turning away. How am I meant to fall asleep like this? You sigh internally and roll over to your side, back facing Shawn.

A hand lazily rolls over on your stomach and you suck in. He wraps an arm around your body, gently pulling you closer to his bare skin. Despite the unsettling nerves in your stomach, it flutters at the feeling of his body against yours. Slowly, you sink into the warmth of his body.

__________________

@gangofhoes @sweetcoldpeach @damselindistressanu @suckerformendes @to-the-road @maddigriffin @perfectywrong @thatpersonwithissues @thecraziestcrayon @bieberxmendes @wholesome-mendes @courage-means-angel-wings @kinglyhemmings @kaybee87 @sofjariv @marvelousmendess @shawnsassymendes @fanatic-af @marvelfanatic02 @sadsonofabich

#shawn mendes #shawn mendes imagine #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes cute #fanfiction #imagines

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gumnut-logic · 6 years

Text

Love

Title: Love Part 6 of 6, directly after Learn Author: Gumnut 14-16 Aug 2018 Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/Thunderbirds: TOS Rating: Teen Summary: For the world is unkind and it needs your touch. Word count: 5076 Spoilers & warnings: None Author’s note: I have no idea whether this worked or not. I claim no knowledge of any of the subjects so I apologise if my mad Librarian skillz haven’t been up to task. No beta, because I’m too lazy. I really hope you enjoy it in any case. Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

The piano stool was a little high for him, but not high enough to daunt his determination. If Mom could sit up there, so could he. He shoved his chest onto the soft cover, pushing himself up, feet dangling below as he twisted his hips, attempting to get a leg up. An extra swing and his knee caught the edge and he pulled himself up.

Pushing himself upright, he finally found himself sitting at the piano. His feet dangled way off the ground.

But he could reach those wonderful keys.

Reaching out, he touched one slice of ivory just gently. A single note thrummed softly. Another. A higher note.

Balancing on his butt, he brought both hands into play, just like Mom did. Several keys at once. One, two, three. Up in scale. Three, two, one. Down in scale. Two, one, three. Three, one, two. He giggled. He could make music.

Five, two, three, one, four. One, five, six, four, two, three. More giggles.

“That is beautiful, honey.”

He startled, looking up to see his Mom smiling down at him.

“Mommy, play?”

She smiled at him. “Perhaps a little. Scoot over, sweetie.”

He shuffled to one side on the stool and his Mom sat beside him, her fingers automatically dropping to the keys and dancing out a little tune.

“Do you like the piano, Virgil?”

He nodded. “Sounds nice.”

“Would you like to learn how to play it?”

“Can I?”

“You can do anything you want to, honey.”

“Can you teach me?”

Another smile. “I can help you, but only you can learn what you want to learn.”

“Yes, Mom.” Hopeful. “Can I try?”

She lifted him onto her lap and holding out both his little hands, she splayed his fingers. “Your fingers will make the music. You need to practise until they make music without you thinking about it. Do you think you can do that?”

“I can try, Mom.”

She kissed his hair. “Good boy.” She touched a key in the centre of the keyboard. “This is called Middle C. It all begins here.”

-o-o-o-

Scott stared at his brother’s chest, watching it rise and fall with each breath. The soft sound of inhalation and exhalation was keeping him sane.

Hypovolemic shock, cardiac arrest, gastrointestinal tract perforation, associated peritonitis and threatened sepsis.

Concussion.

Virgil no longer had an appendix.

And his large intestine was full of stitched up holes.

But he was breathing.

In.

Out.

All by himself.

Scott stared.

Breathe.

-o-o-o-

He watched his mother’s hands. “You can play the chords with your left hand and the melody with your right.” To demonstrate she played a simple tune backed by several chords. Her left hand paused and the her right slipped into a more complicated melody. “Or not.” She looked at him. “Would you like to try.”

“Sure.” His fingers weren’t quite long enough for some of the stretches, but he had a few dependable ones up his sleeve.

He sat next to her on the stool and she leant back giving him room.

Left hand C Major followed by F Major, then G Major, repeat. Right hand, simple tune dancing up and down the scale.

“Lovely, Virgil. Where did you find that one?”

He shrugged. “Made it up.”

Her expression was unreadable for a moment before she suddenly stood up and walked across the room to a cabinet. She rummaged in there for a moment before returning to him with a simple tablet. “Here, honey. If you are going to create music, you should write it down so you can play it again.”

She opened a program on the tablet. “Touch here to write the notes, and here to record the music as you play.”

His eyes widened. “Thanks, Mom.”

She smiled at him. “Do you remember that song I used to sing to you?”

“Which one?”

She sat forward, her back automatically straightening, her fingers hovering over the keys, before gently touching out the music.

And she sang.

Listen, my son. Listen and learn Be what you can And make what you will be Love with your all Share with your heart And know I am there for you And will always be

If you can hear Answer If you have voice Sing For the world is unkind And it needs your touch.

A run of notes and it ended. It was familiar, but he wasn’t sure from where.

She reached over and touched the tablet. A list of compositions appeared. She chose one. It was titled ‘Virgil’. “I wrote that shortly after you were born.” She smiled a little self-consciously. “Think of it as some of my thoughts for the future of my new baby boy.” Her eyes sparkled.

Virgil stared down at the notes. Wow.

He gently placed the tablet up on the music rack, and straightening his back, began to play.

The first time around he focussed on the playing of the music. On the second he sung the words.

There was silence for a moment after he finished. He looked up at his Mom to find her staring at him, her eyes wide.

“Do you like singing, Virgil?”

He shrugged again. “It’s okay.”

The following week found him at an audition for the local choir.

He was successful.

-o-o-o-

Time in hospital is a weird thing. Sometimes it stretches out and seems to last forever, other times it moves so fast, you could blink and lose everything.

One step forward, two steps backward.

That morning Virgil was improving. That afternoon, he was back in intensive care, his fever skyrocketing.

Scott was reduced to sitting beside the bed, simply holding his brother’s hand.

And begging.

-o-o-o-

His mother straightened his collar, the lipstick on her lips shining in the overhead lighting. “You’ll do wonderfully, Virgil.”

He nodded, too nervous to say anything.

“Trust me, honey, I know. You were made for this.”

He smiled just a little at her before suddenly grabbing her in a desperate hug. “Thanks, Mom.”

Her arms wrapped around him and she kissed his hair. “Now, don’t mess yourself up. It is nearly time.” She ran a finger down his cheek. “Your brothers and I will be in the audience. We are there for you. Remember that.”

“I will, Mom.” Her fingers brushed his chin before she turned and left, forcing him to face the fact that within minutes, he would be out on stage, in the spotlights singing his heart out.

“Come now, Virgil, we can’t have our lead wandering off.” The choir master was an excellent singer and conductor, but a little odd in everything else. Including the peacock hat she was wearing tonight.

The feather bounced off beat.

The lights were bright, the music loud, but the atmosphere was vibrant. And he was singing.

First with the entire choir, then separate alone, a single pure voice above the music. He felt alive. This was what he wanted to do. This was everything.

He had wings.

-o-o-o-

The doctors couldn’t give him any definitive answers.

Virgil’s body had taken such a beating, between the injury and the infections, they couldn’t guarantee his brother had it in him to survive.

Scott’s spirit steeled at that. Virgil was one of the strongest people he knew. He was fit, he was healthy, he was as stubborn as the Thunderbird he flew.

And he had four brothers who dearly wanted to see him fly her again.

International Rescue shut down its services for an indefinite amount of time. The world complained, but Scott didn’t have the ears for it.

He spent his days beside his fallen brother, attempting to give him what he could in his fight.

But no matter what he did, Virgil lay there waxen and drawn, not waking, not reacting.

To anything.

Now there was talk of maybe he would never wake up.

Gordon ended up yelling at the doctor and had to be restrained, Scott pulling him back into his arms, desperately trying to give what little comfort he could.

Alan looked like a ghost, there but not.

John disappeared into research desperately looking for something that might help.

And Scott…Scott wept when no one was looking. Dropped his forehead onto his brother’s and pleaded with him to come back. Please, Virgil. Please.

Days turned into weeks.

-o-o-o-

The tablet in his hand trembled.

The email had arrived. “Mom, it’s here.” Even his voice shook.

His mother who had been attending to Alan in the nursery, hurried down the hall. “Really?”

“I think so, Mom” He bit his lip, nervous as he could be. “Should I open it?”

“Of course, you should, honey.” She wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “We’ll celebrate if they said yes, or we’ll celebrate if they said no.”

He touched the subject line and his breath hitched.

‘Dear Mr Tracy,

We are happy to inform you that your application for the Austrian Boys Performing Choir has been accepted. You are one of five successful applicants of over three thousand, and should be congratulated.

Please report to our choral hall in Vienna…’

Oh my god. “Mom! I got in!”

And then there was hugging, and cheering, and yelling for John and Scott. His father was contacted. There were celebrations all round.

Plans were made for the following month. The whole family would go to take advantage of the travel opportunity. Much discussion was had about what they could do in Austria. There were museums, piles of history to wade through, hiking and definitely some skiing. The Austrian Alps were a must see.

But Virgil’s head was in the clouds. This was it. A world class choir. This was his opportunity and he was going to take it.

-o-o-o-

“C’mon, man, you have to eat something.”

“Gordon, I said, I’m not hungry. Please just leave it.”

The aquanaut sat down beside his eldest brother and joined his stare at the wan figure on the bed. There was less of Virgil there every day. “Scott, if you don’t eat, you’ll end up in the bed beside him. I can’t afford to lose both of you.” His voice cracked.

Scott’s voice was smouldering flame. “We’re not losing anyone.”

“We will if you don’t eat!”

“Please, just leave it, Gordon.” The sound of pain.

“I can’t, Scott.”

His brother didn’t answer, his head just dropping into his hand, his elbow on the bed.

Gordon knew he was losing both of them. If Virgil didn’t wake up… He could take it personally. Didn’t Scott have three more brothers to live for? But he understood it far too well.

His mother. His father. His brother.

How much more were they expected to lose before they lost everything?

Please, Virgil, just wake up.

It had been nearly three weeks now. His brother’s body was healing, the wounds sealed, the infections defeated, but he refused to stir. The doctors didn’t know why. The longer he was under the less likely it would be that he would ever wake.

Gordon let his hand drop onto his brother’s blanket covered leg, gripping his lax limb lightly as if to pass on some of his own energy through the bedclothes.

Out of all his brothers, Gordon understood his second eldest the least, but there was something about the man, his quiet smile, gentle demeanour and fierce loyalty that drew him in. Drew them all in. Virgil was their fulcrum. An ironic thought, him being an engineer, but true nonetheless. Scott led them, but Virgil…Virgil kept them together.

“He was singing. Just before we reached him. I guess he was trying to keep the kids entertained.” Scott was staring at Virgil, but his eyes were focussed elsewhere.

“Singing? Virgil doesn’t sing.”

Scott snorted.

“What? He doesn’t. Well, all except for that one night with the Hollies.” Now that had been an eyeopener. Not to mention completely mystifying. Whoever wrote He’s not heavy, he’s your brother obviously had never tried picking up Virgil. His brother was built like a tank.

Scott shifted in his chair, turning to look at Gordon. “Haven’t you ever wondered why, in a family full of stars, Virgil has never shone as brightly?”

Gordon frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Look at you, you are an Olympic Gold Medallist. Alan is a champion race car driver. John an astronaut – you don’t get much higher in achievement than astronaut, so that adds even more shine to Alan. Me, I’m top of the line Air Force. Dad, another astronaut and one of the most successful businessmen on the planet.” He paused for breath. “But what is Virgil?”

Gordon’s hackles rose. “Virgil is a brilliant engineer. What the hell are you saying, Scott?”

“Gordon.” His brother reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Engineering was Virgil’s second choice in career. Not his first.”

-o-o-o-

He loved it. It was everything he could have dreamt of.

And they loved him too. Two months in and he was lead soloist, the choirmaster having taken a particular shine to his vocal offering.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect. Put a bunch of young boys together in any setting and there will eventually be scuffles of all kinds, no matter the interest in common. But he managed to keep out of trouble, despite the occasional spat of jealousy from his choirmates.

His mother moved the family temporarily to Vienna, the older brothers taking classes online for the last few months of the year. John loved it. Scott grumbled that he was missing his friends. Gordon and Alan were more excited about the snow than anything else.

Even Grandma and Grandpa came to stay for a while. The only person who didn’t join them was Dad. He had important business in the States he couldn’t ignore. But he kept in contact and visited regularly.

Everything was wonderful.

His main focus was the end of year concert, a large production to be televised across the world. A last secular offering before the Magic of Christmas three weeks after that. Virgil had been asked to perform in both and was consumed with practise.

The family had rented a house with a small studio out back. His mother hired a piano specially for this space and when she could grab a moment away from his brothers, she would play and he would sing.

He suspected she enjoyed it as much as he did.

And he would cherish the memories of those moments with her for the rest of his life.

Because the weekend before the final performance, everything came to an end.

Father was there. Grandma was there. Scott looked so pale. Where was Grandpa? He found himself with an armful of distraught Alan, John beside him equally clutching Gordon. Scott’s hand gripping his shoulder.

His father’s tear-filled eyes.

Mom was gone.

Gone.

-o-o-o-

Gordon stared at his brother. “What?”

Scott blinked a moment and let his hand drop. He looked away, staring once again at Virgil’s pale face. “Virgil was a world class choral singer.” Scott swallowed. “Or he could have been. He never gave himself the chance to win his gold medal.”

Incredulous frown. “Wha-?! When the hell did that happen?”

Scott looked back at him. “Why were we in Austria, Gordon?”

“When, Mom-? We were skiing!” Stupid Austria, never wanted to step foot inside that country ever again. Well, only if they were calling for help. Stupid country.

“We were there for Virgil. He had an opportunity to perform with the Austrian Boys Performing Choir.”

Gordon blinked. Even he had heard of them. “Really?”

“Lead soloist.”

His eyes shot to his unconscious brother, his dark hair stark against his pale skin and the white bed sheets “But Mom died.”

“Yes, she did.”

-o-o-o-

“You cannot possibly expect him to perform.”

“He has to. We have no replacement.”

“No understudy?”

“He has taken ill. We need Virgil to perform.” The choirmaster’s Austrian accent was getting stronger by the minute. “The world will be watching.”

“He has just lost his mother!” Something in Virgil’s stomach twisted at the pain in his father’s voice. “How can you possibly ask him to do this?”

“This is his opportunity! His chance! The world must hear his beautiful voice.” The ‘master was pleading now. “This is what his mother would have wanted.”

Virgil stared at the man. What his mother would have wanted?

Beside him he could almost feel his father’s body temperature increase. “How the hell would you-!“

“Dad. I’ll do it.”

His father’s attention immediately focussed on him. “Virgil-“

“He’s right Dad. She loved this. I want to do it for her.”

“You don’t have to, son.”

He pressed his lips together. “Yes. I do.”

-o-o-o-

The last few days leading up to the performance were a blur. A blur of sympathetic looks, concerned questions and lone practise.

When the night finally came, Virgil was exhausted. There was no question of his resolve. He was going to do this. The question was – was he able?

Scott stood with him in the wings. Dad and his brothers were in the audience. None of them were at their best and he felt guilty for dragging them all here. They would be going home tomorrow, taking Mom with them. His understudy would be taking the Christmas performance, Virgil just needed to get through tonight.

He fiddled with his suit.

“You’ll do great, Virgil.” Scott’s voice was soft, his blue eyes shining, a small encouraging smile on his face.

Virgil grabbed him and hugged with everything he had. “Thanks, big bro.”

“Do it for, Mom.”

Looking up at his brother, he smiled. “For Mom.”

Giving his arms one last squeeze, Virgil stepped away from his brother and strode out on the stage, taking up his lone forward position behind the curtain, the rest of the choir rustling into place behind him. A quick glance back at his brother in the wings.

Scott smiled sadly at him.

For Mom.

The stage hands counted down.

He drew in breath, deep in his core.

The curtain opened.

He opened his mouth.

And he sang.

-o-o-o-

“The newscasts had him front and centre for weeks afterwards.” Scott’s expression managed to be both proud and bleak at the same time. “We fled. Buried Mom. And hid.”

Gordon frowned, trying to remember back that far. He had been so young at the time. He remembered the funeral, but not much else. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why was he on the newscasts so much? Why did we hide? Why isn’t he a famous singer? Pick a question, Scott!”

His brother pressed his lips together before reaching into his back pocket for a mini holoprojector. He brought up a search screen, hooked into the nets and within moments a fifteen-year-old holocast of a young Virgil Tracy was hovering above the device.

“This is why.” Scott hit the play button.

His brother opened his mouth and sang.

From his heart.

The song wasn’t in English. It was in German, but it didn’t need to be understood intellectually. His voice spoke emotion and emotion responded. Gordon could hear the sadness in his brother, he could hear what he was feeling.

A verse in, and the back of the stage lit up, revealing the rest of the choir who joined in, harmonising with Virgil’s lead. But their spirit lacked his fire and were merely a vague echo.

Gordon had seen Virgil lose himself to the piano before, but this was something else.

His brother’s voice truly was golden, even to a tin ear like his own, but it was the power behind it, the loss he knew his brother was experiencing, the painfilled energy and passion. His brother was an artist, and this was the artist in his defining medium.

The holographic Virgil had tears running down his face.

No orchestral accompaniment. The whole structure of the piece rested of Virgil’s lead. He controlled it. His voice cut the air, the others strung behind him. He held the ebb and flow and he drew it to a crescendo. Again. And again. And then he shut it down.

Two more softly sung words and silence.

Virgil let his head drop.

And the auditorium erupted with applause and screaming ovations.

Young Virgil turned and walked off the stage.

Scott flicked off the projector.

And Gordon discovered two soft brown eyes staring directly at him.

-o-o-o-

Scott saw Gordon’s eyes widen and turned abruptly to find Virgil, eyes open and staring at his younger brother.

“Virgil?”

Those eyes flicked to him, drooped closed, then opened again. His dry lips parted. “Wha-?”

Scott grabbed the jug of water from beside the bed and shakily poured a sip of water into a plastic cup and offered it to his brother. “Here, a little at a time.”

Virgil swallowed, looking over the cup at the both of them. He handed the empty cup back to Scott. “What were you doing?”

“Distracting Gordon.”

“From what?”

“From you.”

“With me?”

“You saw that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re a good singer.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t.”

“Did he have to?”

“I think so.”

“Okay.”

And Virgil’s eyes slipped closed again, his body relaxing into sleep.

Scott felt his face heating up, a stupid grin battling with the tears welling in his eyes. Gordon grabbed him in an excited hug, an incoherent sob his only words.

Oh, thank god!

-o-o-o-

Days passed and Virgil slowly woke more often and for longer periods. All his brothers, Grandma, Kayo, even Lady Penelope and Parker dropped in to visit.

Gordon was there the second time he woke up and was interrogated on the condition of Thunderbird Two. Something about damaging her wing on exiting the hanger. Gordon blamed it on the man’s illness. How could he possibly think he would be foolish enough to endanger his own life by damaging his brother’s ‘Bird? There were much better ways to die. Like being burnt alive.

Of course, waking up was only the first step in a long recovery. Rehabilitation, particularly for his abdominal muscles was in the journey ahead, but after such desolation, the simple act of his brother opening his eyes had lifted the pall hovering over them.

Gordon had to admit to some curiosity about the past though. Why hadn’t his brother continued singing? He was obviously damn good at it.

He considered asking Virgil, and he was certainly planning on discussing it with him sometime in the future, but he could see it was a sensitive subject and now was definitely not the time.

John was eagerly discussing something with his dark-haired brother. Something no doubt to do with monitoring lifesigns no matter what they were wearing. He’d been raving about the lack of information on Virgil’s condition during the situation since it had happened. Gordon was pretty sure that not-so-Big Brother would soon be watching his body functions from afar at all times. He rolled his eyes.

Maybe he could rig one that let John know, with the appropriate sound effects, each time he passed wind.

Squeezing Virgil’s knee, he indicated he would be back in a moment to rescue him, and then set off to find Scott. The real big brother had wandered off on a mission to acquire lunch and he had taken so long, Gordon wondered if he’d been attacked by the hospital tea lady and stuck in a freezer some where for safe keeping.

So it was with some surprise he found his brother sitting quietly in the corner of the cafeteria drinking mineral water. A pair of tired blue eyes glanced up at him as he approached.

“Watcha doin, big bro? I thought there would be lunch.”

“There is. It is being prepared.”

Gordon took the seat opposite Scott. “So you’re hanging out here in the meantime?”

Scott shrugged. “I thought perhaps John might like some time with Virgil for a bit.”

“Uh huh.”

“What?”

Gordon eyed him a moment. “Nothin’.”

Lips thinning. “What do you want, Gordon?’

“What, I can’t sit next to you? Is this seat taken? Got some hot chick waiting for me to move my butt?”

Scott rolled his eyes.

“I repeat. What do you want, Gordon?”

“I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“Why Virgil doesn’t sing, despite being damn good at it.”

“Mom died.”

“Well, yeah.”

“He barely spoke for nearly a month after that concert, much less sang anything.” Scott grimaced. “We were all worried. Dad was beside himself. Virgil simply shut down. We took him to specialists, but he wouldn’t respond. It was like he just didn’t want to use his voice anymore. So, when he did finally start talking again, we didn’t want to push it. We were just happy to have him back.” Scott paused. “That ‘night with the Hollies’ was the first time I had heard him sing in fifteen years. I wasn’t even sure he could anymore.” Scott put down his drink, staring at it. “He was really close to Mom. He took it really hard.”

“But he plays the piano.”

Scott looked up. “Honestly, I think he’s meeting her halfway. I’m sure part of it is grief, but I’m also damn convinced that a good chunk of it is anger.”

“Virgil? Angry? You’re kidding.”

Scott shrugged. “Each to his own. We cope how we cope.” He drank the last of his drink and stood up. “It appears lunch is ready.” And Scott grabbed the crate of food offered to him by the tea lady.

Gordon frowned.

-o-o-o-

Virgil knew he was getting better because he was getting more and more frustrated about being stuck in bed. Sure, he could now get out of bed any time he liked, but the exercise was one of pain and embarrassment.

And he needed help.

He had no strength in anything and it was annoying.

So, he was sitting up in bed, a pile of pillows securing him so he wouldn’t strain his injuries, doodling aimlessly on the hospital menu when Angela walked in the door.

“You up for a visitor or two?”

His mood immediately lifted, his face splitting into a grin. “Angela!”

She grinned back and rushed over to him, her hug gentle, but no less heartfelt.

“Mr Virgil?”

“Daniel?!” He looked towards the door again.

“And Jana, Marissa, Alex and Johnny!” The eight-year-old bounded into the room, followed by his little posse. Alex had his arm in plaster and Jana was still sporting the red remains of the scrape on the side of her face, but all of them were grinning like crazy.

“C’mon here, all you.” And he held out his arms. With a squawk of ‘Be careful!’ from Angela, he found himself hugged gently all over by the five children.

“How are you all?”

“Better!” This from Jana.

“What about you, Mr Virgil? They wouldn’t let us visit you for such a long time.”

A soft smile. “Getting better every day.” He didn’t fail to notice Scott smiling in the doorway. “Hey, Daniel, did you want to meet the pilot of Thunderbird One?”

“Really, can I?” His eyes lit up like twin moons.

Virgil grinned. “Turn around. This is my brother Scott. He likes to fly fast.”

Scott straightened up, a flash of trepidation crossing his face before his Field Commander professional façade slipped on.

Daniel and the other kids stared up at him. There were a couple of dropped jaws.

“Hi, guys. V-…Mr Virgil tells me you like Thunderbird One.”

“So cool!” Daniel’s head looked like it was about to explode. “How fast can you go? Can you go into space like Thunderbird Three? Can you go faster than Thunderbird Three? Can I see her?”

And those were just Daniel’s questions. Virgil grinned as the kids swarmed his brother.

Angela smiled at him. “They’ve been asking about you since that first day.”

“How are they?”

Her smile slipped a bit. “As well as can be expected. They’ve all lost friends, so they’ve banded together with their shared experience.” She tilted her head. “The only team member who has been missing is you.”

“Me?”

Her lips twisted slightly. “I hear rumour you’re not a bad singer.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Really? I hear rumour you are going for the record number of rescues by International Rescue.”

A blush and an awkward smile. “Well, then, Mr Virgil.” She poked him in the shoulder. “I expect you to get well as soon as possible so you will be available for the next one. I expect only the best in my rescuing.”

Another smile and she lent closer and whispered, “Besides Thunderbird Two really is the coolest.”

-o-o-o-

Scott found his brother sitting on the front porch steps. The day was cool, but dry, the winter sun low on the horizon. Kansas stretched out before them and a light breeze tousled his hair.

“Hey, Virgil.” He received no response, but then he didn’t expect one. Virgil said very little now.

He plopped himself down beside his brother. Virgil had his head in one hand, his elbow held up by his knee. He was staring into the distance.

“I’ve got something for you.”

His brother’s eyes darted towards him for a moment, before returning to their distant stare.

Scott brought the sketchbook around onto his lap and opened it. “I figured that if you weren’t going to talk, then to have a good conversation, you could write or draw things.” He grabbed the pencil. “For example, here is me sitting on the porch.” He drew a stick figure sitting on a step with a sketchbook on its knees. Well, that’s what it was supposed to be.

Looking up to see if Virgil understood what he was drawing, he was surprised to find his brother’s eyes pinned to the sketchbook.

“What, you think you can do better?”

Those brown eyes flicked up at him before reaching over and gently taking the book and pencil out of Scott’s hands.

Scott bit his lip as an artful facsimile of his brother appeared next to his stick figure.

His eyes widened. “Okay, so you can. Got yourself a full load of artistic genes there, bro.”

Virgil stared at him for a moment before returning the pencil to the paper.

The stick figure changed. Darker lines taking over as Scott appeared on the paper. Virgil’s frown of concentration was almost amusing.

“So mine not good enough, huh?”

Virgil sent him a half-lidded glare.

“Okay, okay, I bow to your artistic prowess, oh great brother of mine.”

That earned him some eye-rolling.

Scott hid a smile.

And Virgil kept drawing.

-o-o-o-

FIN

Epilogue

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #virgil tracy #scott tracy #gordon tracy #gumnutfic

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this-is-hunting · 5 years

Text

Driven boar hunt. Novska, Croatia

15-16 December 2018

When I got the invite from my good friend Max from Austria I was very excited and started planning my trip immediately.

The advert in waffengebraucht.at posted by Walter from Klagenfurt was inspiring, showing the picture of a mighty Keiler (male boar with big tusks). The promise was a rustic 3-star Hotel with big rooms, breakfast and a swimmingpool. The advert stated that many beaters would be there and 30-40 dogs and last year‘s bag was 35 boar for 25 guns.

The reality was sobering.

I didn’t see more than 6 beaters and 10 dogs. The accommodation was a 2-star hostel without breakfast, the transport from and to the hunting lodge and breakfast was dangerous in a borderline legal mini-bus.

The preparation

Because this was my first driven boar hunt, the choice of clothes and weapon were essential for me for this hunt. It is the first time for me and I wanted to make sure I’ll get it right. 2 days in the forest at any weather conditions can be challenging and I didn’t want to get caught out. I already have the Harkila Pro Hunter X jacket and added the hunting trousers and cap to it. This completed my outfit and waterproofed me. For shoes I decided to take the Meindl Winter boots. I didn’t want to take my Le Chameau wellies because of their bulkiness.

An important aspect of a hunt is the gun. I decided to take my Benelli Super Black Eagle II semi-automatic shotgun with Aimpoint S1 using Rothweil Exact 32g Cal.12 slugs, an excellent combination for a driven hunt in Croatia. All Croatian hunting videos I watched and the areal map of the hunt suggested short distance, dynamic, fast shots, ideal for a shogun hunter. This turned out to be absolutely true for each and every drive. No successful shot further away than 15 m.

Travelling with a gun requires an European Weapons pass, which is easily available from your firearms department, they simply print one off and post it to you free of charge. I booked KLM from Leeds that take guns. The flight included a transfer in Amsterdam and the second leg of the journey from Amsterdam to Zagreb by Croatian Airlines, which also takes guns. A great solution and I rang each airline to make sure the gun is booked for each leg of the flight. Full of optimism, I checked-in my gun in Leeds, which went smoothly and after filling in a form and having someone check over the gun’s serial number, all was done. Arriving in Zagreb was less joyful because the gun didn’t make it into the flight to Zagreb. It stayed in Amsterdam and was booked onto the next flight, arriving in Saturday at 13.00, while the hunt was already in full flow. I was disappointed because of all the effort and training that went into my preparation with my gun and I knew that I had to borrow an unfamiliar gun for the hunt. According to Miljenko, the Croatian hunting owner and organiser, and my mate Max, it happens a lot that the gun arrives with the next flight. None of them were under the illusion that the transfer would be smoothly. Looking back, I should have factored in an extra day for arrival.

Max picked me up from the airport and the adventure was set to start. Our first stop was CineLov, a shooting cinema near the airport in Zagreb, where we put 60 training shoots through Max’s Steyr Mannlicher .30-06 with Swarovski 3-12x42 scope. Even though the gun was completely unfamiliar to me, I hit very well. Max struggled a bit and had some flyers that were well off the target. This was shot standing onto a cinema screen with the gun in position, looking through the scope at 3x magnification. As a shotgun shooter the balance is very odd and the weight of the heavy scope is weird.

My high shooting score was encouraging and I felt ready for the hunt.

We then drove to Novska while it was lightly snowing. About 5cm snow was had already fallen, with more snow predicted for the next 24h. We arrived at the hunting lodge with the rest of the shooting party of 30 hunters, mainly from Germany and Austria. After a drink and general Hallo we were shown our accommodation, Restoran Babić in Novska, a 10min drive from the hunting lodge. This BnB had been given 2-Star and was clean but very basic and old. Not more than a bed for the night and by no means better than the most basic hostel. The info sheet in the room said that it cost 200 kr (£24) per night for 2 twin room which can only be considered too expensive for this place.

After a change of clothes we drove back to the shooting lodge for dinner, which was marinated chicken, pork and Cevapcici with cabbage salad, Ajvar and beer. Heavy, archery clogging grub for real hunters. Many hunters in our party were very overweight and drinking beer and brandy at every opportunity. I had serious doubt about their ability to shoot dynamically, or even last the day in the forest. I was later reassured, when I saw hat they all had their comfy fishing-chairs and got chauffeured to their peg.

Our excitement for the next morning lead Max and me straight to bed, leaving the shooting party behind, drinking and telling each-other their favourite hunting stories. The hunting experiences and shared interests brings many people from different walks of life together and onto common ground.

I had a wonderful night sleep because I brought my sleep ear plugs with me, but everyone else was woken up at 4am by the neighbour's noisy cockerel. I’m surprised no one opened the window and took care of the shouty bugger, giving everyone was heavily armed.

Day 1

We met at 6.45 to drive to Breakfast which was organised in a different restaurant in Novska, called Pivnica, but shifting 30 hungover hunters can take time and there was a lot of waiting around. We got picked up in a very old and borderline legal people carrier van, squeezing 15 people and equipment into a very small space. The breakfast was entirely protein based, consisting of ham and eggs, chipolatas and boiled eggs. The 6 litres of juice also didn’t go very far and the bartender struggled to make espressos and put the food out at the same time. Though unhealthy it was tasty and set me up for the day. One of the hunter there had been to the hunt before and brought his own breakfast, wise man. The obesity-crew loved it and got their fill.

It was still snowing in the morning and more snow had fallen over night. By now about 15 cm were already on the ground. It looked very picturesque but everyone knew that it would be a challenging day for everyone.

After the shooting party had been shifted to the hunting lodge here was unfortunately more admin to be done. Croatian hunting licences were issued and Miljenko started the payment procedure, something that could have been done the day or weeks before. Some hunters were on the spirits again and toasted to a good day's shooting.

Pic 1: The hunting lodge on the first morning.

At around 9am we got a move on and drove into the forest. Excitement was in the air. There was no apparent structure on who was positioned where, as no numbers were pulled. Some people were assigned based on their ability to walk or sit, others were driven to their stand by Miljenko himself, not that anyone shot anything anyway, but there was some apparent favouritism with pushy and long standing hunting clients. I really didn't like it and would have hoped for a more transparent process.

Pic 2: the road into the forest

First drive

Under snowy conditions we made to our pegs in the east end of the forest. Each hunter was stood about 50m apart along roads or paths, pointing into the forest where the beaters came from. Because of the snow it was easy to see the contrasts on the floor and any animal would have been easily visible.

My peg was quite a walk from the car at the east end of the hunt. I was on a slight hill looking down into the shrubs. My visibility was about 5 to 10 meters. I was gutted that I didn’t have my shotgun with Aimpoint, but instead a heavy rifle for long distance shooting. Max was to my right but I couldn’t see him as he was behind a big tree. I saw the hunter to my left who brought his seat which was very smart. It was a very long drive and totally quiet for over 1 h. Then we heard the dogs coming closer. I never heard working pig dogs but it was obvious to me that they were on the trail of a boar. I heard 3 different barks, between high pitch yells to deep barks. I could hear them coming closer and they couldn’t have been further away than 20 meters in the thick shrubs. I had my run in position, waiting, any second anticipating to see anything appear in my vision. Then boom. The hunter to the left fired a shot straight in front of him. The dogs went totally quiet. It was eerie. Had he shot a dog? If he shot a pig, the dogs would have kept on it. He kept looking into the shrubs to where he shot but I had no indication if he had shot anything. The dogs kept running back and forth but had lost their trail. They were quiet and trying to pick up scent again, but without success.

After 2.5 h the drive was over and I was eager to talk to my neighbour and find out what happened, so close to me. He explained that he saw a boar being chased by dogs and fired at it though the branches. The boar run off and he didn’t think he hit it. Exciting for me that a pig got so close and it could have easily been my chance to shoot.

For the first drive I counted 6 shots, but only one small pig got shot, by Miljenko himself. Most people hadn’t seen anything and there were long faces all-round.

We went to the hunting lodge for tea and brandy, then off to the next drive at 13.00.

Second drive

The second drive went to the north of the hunting ground and we were positioned in a line on a road at the starting line of the drive where the beaters set off. The drive was over quickly and I didn’t hear a shot. The faces of the frozen hunters got longer.

Third drive

At 14.30 we got into position for the next drive and I had a peg on a small forest track near a feeding place for the pigs.

Pic 3: walking to the pegs at the 3rd drive.

The dogs came closer and the excitement was big but I didn’t see anything.

A few hunters saw a jackal, a slender long-legged wild dog, and one got shot.

At this point you could tell that the hunters were really pissed off. Many had expected to have a bag of 15+ boar by this point.

First day evening

After a change and hot shower we had dinner in the hunting lodge, which was pork, cooked on the bone with paprika sauce and cabbage salad, washed down with 2 frustration-beers.

The hunt organiser’s excuse was that because this was the first snow of the year, the pigs have dug themselves into the undergrowth and stayed put until the are hungry. The dogs can’t pick up their scent and flush them because the snow has covered all tracks and scent.

The hope was that the boar would come out at night to feed and the dogs could pick up the scent better the following day. Max and many other hunters wondered if it was worth going out again the following day or just go home. Max mentioned that I hadn't been there, he would have left.

Many hunter washed down their sorrows with beer and brandy and I wondered how they would get up for the next morning.

Day 2

I had an amazing sleep after all that fresh air and the 4am cockerel didn’t disturb me at all.

The same breakfast routine and menu was presented but there was more sense of urgency to get the hunt started. At 8.45 we were all in position for the first drive. To my surprise all hunters looked fresh and keen with little signs of a hangover.

4th drive

Pic 4: my view to the right down the line of fellow hunters. The beaters were coming from the direction of the forest (left) towards us.

We were positioned along a forest road looking into the woods with little undergrowth. The visibility into the woods was about 15 m. There were plenty of wild boar tracks from the night before. I was at a peg where a big boar had gone into the forest in front of me and I saw a patch of dug-up snow behind me. I was excited and hopeful that something would happen at my stand. Wild boar had clearly been here during the night.

To my left was a very overweight hunter on a raised hide, who just about managed to make it up the ladder. He had the best spot and he was clearly put there by the hunting guide as a special favour, which I found annoying and felt uneasy about. I stood on the ground and because he was on a raised stand, it also meant that I had a wider range to shoot safely, should anything bolt out of the forest and across the path to my left.

Pic 5: my view to the left with the high stand at a distance of about 50m.

About 1 h in and with no dogs or shooting noises, I looked to my right, where Max had his peg, 2 down from me, about 100 m away. He must have been cold and started to do push-ups which amused me. As I looked into his direction I saw about 500m down the path 3 pigs bolting across the path at an area where no hunters were lined up. An amazing sight that got me excited and hopefully that something would come at our stands soon. A short while afterwards I looked to my neighbour who was crouched into his comfy 4-leg camping seat. I thought he was one of the piss-heads from the night before and had fallen asleep when I suddenly heard “boom” …a single shot fired. He shot a boar right in front of him, maybe 10 m. It came without dogs or any noise and because of the snow it was perfectly visible. It collapsed in the shot.

Only a few moments later Max fired a shot, right in front of him and shot a Jackal at close range.

Looking down the line of hunters after all the shenanigans and 300m down the path, where the 3 boar crossed earlier, 2 red deer crossed calmly and gracefully, then stopped and looked at us, well knowing that there were save today.

5th and last drive

After some lunch we went out for the last drive at 12.30 to the south end of the hunt. By now several hunters had left the shoot because they were pissed off and didn’t think this hunting trip could be saved. They cut their losses and at least got home sooner.

I was on my first raised hide overlooking some 2 meter tall growth with the back to the forest. Max was next to me along the road, also on a raised hide. The sun had just come out and although a blistery wind blew us in our necks it was the setting I was hoping for when I dreamed about this hunting trip (see the panorama picture at the top of the page).

I was stood up again and my shoulders were aching from holding the heavy gun all weekend.

The drive started quite far away from our peg and it was a while before we heard the first shots and dogs barking. Some dogs were barking from the same spots for ages without moving which indicated that the boar were dug in and couldn't be moved from their hiding places. A great sight were the white-tailed eagle circling above our heads during the drive.

After about 2 hours when the beaters and dogs came closer I had a sense that I could hear something in the undergrowth in front of me. I gripped my gun with both hands and my senses were in high alert. Then, a boar ran out of the shrubs on the left. I turned, raised the gun and had the boar in my scope and squeezed the trigger. Immediately did I realise that I had missed, but you don't get a second chance. The boar run off into the forest and was gone for good. An exciting split second experience that got my juices flowing. I was grateful that I had a chance, much better than most in our hunting party, and annoyed that I missed. The distance was no more than 40m.

Pic 6: The position where the boar crossed the path and in the red circle is where I later found the signs of the bullet hitting the ground. (The beater in the picture was not there when I fired the shot, however the car was still parked there).

Could I have hit it with my own gun? Could I have placed a second shot with my semi-automatic? We'll never know, but the excitement of the experience and the chance of a shot was amazing. The what if, is that keeps you going and makes you go back, again and again. More luck next time, more training for next time, better gun next time. The thoughts and mind games don't stop.

Pic 7: The disappointing bag. Not much to show for 30 hunters and 10 beaters with dogs.

The final bag of 6 boar and 4 jackal was embarrassing and Miljenko felt very uncomfortable, trying to explain what went wrong and they tried their best to make this a good a hunt as possible.

He offered to give a free hunt to me and Max for that night and we took him up on the opportunity. If was free to go out but we would have to pay a discounted list price for anything we shot. I wanted to see if I could get a jackal or fox and Max wanted to shoot a boar. We were driven to different areas of the hunt and too our place on one of the fully enclosed raised hides, with silently openable windows. I had the Blaser R8 again, but this time with thermal vision scope. A great set-up but I saw nothing at my spot in the 2.5 hours that I waited there.

Max had his normal scope and because of the half-moon and snow a night-vision or thermal scope was not necessary. After about 1 hour I heard a shot and Max shot a 100 kg young male boar, which cost him €250. A great finish to an otherwise disappointing hunting trip.

Pic 8: 100 kg male wild boar (Keiler) shot under moonlight.

Pic 9: The hunting ground and the positions of my pegs.

On the way back to the airport we dreamed about our next hunting adventure and hunting trip we'll do together, ranging from Islandic goose hunting to UK rabbit shooting.

Good hunting and waidmanns heil

#wild boar #driven hunt #novska #aimpoint s1 #keiler #treibjagd

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padfootagain · 7 years

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Destiny Strikes By Accident (IV)

Part 4 : Interview Accident

I know it took me a long time to update this series, but I had so much to write with the 200 followers celebration, I couldn't find any time to do this.

But now the event is over and I can find time to write this story again! So here comes the fourth part. Part 5 coming very soon.

I hope you all like it and that you won't want to kill me by the end of this chapter ;)

Pairing: Ben Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 4257

You giggled as Ben played with your hair. You chased his hand away, but he merely pouted in response, making you laugh even more.

After three months of relationship you could still barely believe that this was real, that he was by your side. You couldn't believe that he was yours and you were his.

He was so sweet and adorable and funny and just... everything you had been looking for. Now you could realize it. It was too soon into your relationship to tell him about how you felt but there was no mystery around your emotions for him.

You loved him.

You loved him like you had never loved anyone in your life and... it felt good. It felt wonderful. It was like a dream. Everything was blur except when you were with him. Perhaps it was too intense to be reasonable, but you didn't care. Ben was like a drug you were addicted to by now, and you didn't want to find a cure.

He wrapped his arm around you, pulling you close to his chest, and he buried his face in the crook of your neck, making sure his beard brushed against your bare shoulder in the process, and he smirked as you shivered under his touch.

"Stop doing that!" you protested despite the smile on your face. "I hate it."

"Liar, I know you love it," he whispered in a husky voice, repeating the motion again, making you close your eyes.

"Okay, I do love it," you admitted, losing your fingers in his hair.

You took a look at his watch on your bedside table, and heaved a sigh.

"We have to get up," you said. "I have to go to work, and you have to get prepared for this interview of yours."

He groaned, holding you more tightly against him.

"Or we could stay here and pretend we didn't wake up this morning..." he proposed.

"And then I could get fired and your agent could get really pissed off," you replied.

"Sounds like troubles."

"Too many for me to deal with."

He looked up at you, resting his head on his pillow again. He took your hand slowly in his. Your wrist was healed, but he was still hesitant whenever he touched your hand, still afraid to hurt you. He stared at you in silence for a while. He seemed lost in thought, a dreamy smile on his lips.

"I'll watch you, you know," you smiled.

He raised an eyebrow.

"How could you? You'll be at work when I give my interview."

"I'll take a break," you shrugged.

"You don't have to do that, you know?"

"Why... you don't want me to watch your interview?" you asked, laughing at him.

He rolled his eyes.

"Of course you can watch it. But I don't want you to be in trouble with your boss on my behalf."

"I won't be in trouble," you reassured him. "Unless I'm late for work."

Ben moaned, wincing, before finally letting go of you.

"Alright, go on then... leave me here alone!" he dramatically cried.

"Oh... poor Ben..." you purred, biting his earlobe, and you knew he had closed his eyes.

"It's not nice to tease," he said.

"I guess you'll get your revenge tonight then," you said in a husky voice.

He looked at you, raising an eyebrow, a dangerous glint alit in his eyes.

"Are you sure you want to play this game with me?" he asked, pecking your lips several times.

You merely nodded, capturing his lips with yours.

When you pulled away, he moaned in disappointment.

"You're so damn cruel," he complained.

You merely laughed, sitting up and stealing his shirt to cover yourself.

"I hope your interview goes well," you said, standing up as you buttoned his shirt.

"I reckon it's just gonna be dull," he reassured you, putting on his pants.

"Want some tea?" you offered, walking to the kitchen.

He didn't answer and merely wrapped his arms around you as you poured some water in your kettle, and he pressed your back against his chest, kissing your neck.

"Your place or mine tonight?" he asked, his lips still resting against your skin, and his warm breath made you shiver.

"I'll probably finish late tonight," you replied, trying to hide your reaction as he moaned against your neck, his low voice trembling through your skin.

"What if I pick up some food and come here with diner then?" he offered, his lips close to your ear now. "Chinese?"

You nodded, a grin that you couldn't hide crossing your face.

"That would be perfect."

You let him drop a sweet kiss on your cheek, your grin still on your face. You were so happy with him... you guessed that everything was perfect.

But things were never perfect for long...

When your boss called for you, you thought you were going to be in trouble. What other reason could make your boss call for you to meet her in her office?

You knocked on her door, timidly entering when she invited you in.

"Y/N! Come on, sit down," she invited you, her eyes still fixed on her computer.

You did as you were told, looking cautiously at your boss as she turned towards you.

"Did I do something wrong?" you asked earnestly, unwilling to lose your time with meaningless talk.

But your boss merely laughed.

"You did nothing wrong, Y/N! On the contrary."

She leaned over her desk, and there was a malicious smile that curled up her lips.

"Actually, you've been doing an extremely good job for a while now. And I thought that such a hard work deserved to pay off. So..."

She took a file from one of her drawers, and opened it before her.

"I've received a demand, there is a job to fulfill. And I thought about you."

You narrowed your eyes, and her smile widened.

"Would you like to have a promotion?"

Your eyes grew round, a grin ghosting your lips.

"I know you've been waiting for quite a while for this," she said slowly.

"I have indeed," you nodded.

That was true. You had been working so hard for so long now. But it was finally worth it. The long evenings when you stayed alone at the office, working when everyone had left...

"You're perfect for the job," she went on. "I know you are. And there is another advantage, besides inflating your ego..."

She presented the contract to you, and pointed at the last lines.

Your eyes grew even rounder than before, and the numbers written there elicited a grin from you. You blinked several times, but the numbers didn't change.

You were to be paid almost twice the money you earned for now...

"So?" your boss asked. "It's a yes, right?"

You started to slowly nod, but you quickly cleared your mind.

You had longed for this for a long while now. It didn't mean that you should take a leap blindly.

"I'll read the contract first, though," you said cautiously.

"Of course," your boss smiled. "Although, judging by how hard you've been working lately, I know you're going to accept."

You didn't reply, your eyes quickly scanning the document until...

Until you found it. The trap that was set for you to jump in.

Because things were never perfect for long...

"The job is in Austria..." you breathed.

"Indeed, it is," your boss said, matter-of-factly, drinking some of her coffee.

"I live in London," you breathed.

"Yes, but there's no job available in London," she laughed.

"But... My life is here..."

She suddenly felt that you were about to decline her offer. But how could you accept? Yes, you had craved for this for a while now but... there was another variable in the equation that had changed your whole life lately.

What about Ben?

He was already staying in London for you, you knew he was. He couldn't possibly move to Austria, you knew it, and anyway you couldn't ask him to do something like this for you.

And the rest of your life was here as well : your family, your friends... You couldn't possibly let everything behind you and leave...

Oh but you had worked so hard and sacrificed so much...

Your boss cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, her voice was low and predatory.

"Y/N, you should consider this offer very seriously. There might not be another offer like this one for years..."

You nodded slowly. You understood the opportunity that was offered to you. You understood that it was rare, and that you were lucky that your boss believed in you enough to put her own reputation in danger for you, by recommending you for the job. And if you were being honest with yourself, you knew that three months before, you wouldn't have hesitated a single second and you would have agreed for this right away. You would have gone home and packed your things and grabbed a flight before the end of the week.

But now there was Ben in your life, and you didn't want to lose him...

"I need to think about it," you said slowly.

"I need an answer before the end of the week," your boss warned you. "You would be leaving next Monday."

You nodded slowly.

"I am conscious of the opportunity you're offering me," you said slowly. "I understand that you're entrusting me with something very important, and in which you are personally involved. But moving to Austria is a big change of life and... I need to think about it before giving you my decision."

Your boss nodded slowly as you stood from your chair, holding the file in your hands.

"What's his name?" she asked as you rested your hand on the doorknob of her door.

You turned slowly towards her. But she smiled at you.

"You were so motivated to get a promotion. And suddenly you hesitate? There's only one plausible reason for this sudden change of attitude. So, what's his name?"

"Ben," you breathed softly.

She nodded slowly.

"Well, I hope he's worth it."

You didn't reply, opening the door and walking out of her office.

You walked back to your desk and started to read with careful attention the entire document.

It was exactly what you wanted. Exactly the job you longed for.

But it was in Austria.

You didn't know what to do. You guessed that you would have to wait to talk about this with Ben. Because deep down, you knew that if he didn't agree to stay with you despite the distance, if he stated that he would never follow you there, you would decline the offer.

You couldn't leave without him.

You couldn't live without him...

You stopped working ten minutes before the hour of his interview on TV and you walked to a deserted corridor. You knew the interview could be found online as well. So you waited for the right time, before searching for the channel website. You searched for several minutes before finding the right link, and finally you managed to catch up on the TV talk-show.

You waited patiently through the first part of the TV show, until Ben was finally called.

Your heart skipped a beat at the sight of his bright smile and grey suit.

The beginning of the interview went on smoothly, as Ben answered to questions asked about the movie he was promoting. A tender smile formed on your lips throughout the interview, as you listened to his shy jokes and kind remarks. But then...

"And your character goes through quite a difficult time on a personal point of view as well in this movie, doesn't he?" the presenter asked.

"Indeed, he doesn't really know how to deal with his life in general and he can't see how to handle a relationship at this point of his life," Ben answered, nodding.

"Has it ever been a problem for you in real life?" the journalist asked.

He laughed, blushing hard. He was clearly uncomfortable now, and the smile on your face slowly faded.

"Like everyone, I guess," he answered elusively.

"Do you have a girlfriend at the moment?" the journalist asked him. "Come on, you can tell us!"

But Ben shook his head.

"I'm single."

Your phone fell to the ground, slipping through your fingers, your eyes wide with shock. The dropped thing kept on playing the video and you vaguely heard that the interview was over, but your brain couldn't analyze any information for now...

You could barely breathe. You didn't notice the tears in your eyes, nor your trembling hands. You were too much in shock to realize anything. The earth could have been shaken by an earthquake under you, the walls could have exploded all around you, you wouldn't have noticed anything. Your brain was still trying to process Ben's words, trying to find their real meaning.

He had just said on TV that he was single when... when he wasn't single at all. He was with you.

It felt like he had erased you from existence with just one sentence. Like you didn't exist. It was as if... as if you were nothing to him.

The tears rolled down your cheeks, but you weren't aware of the salty drops falling from your eyes.

Ben had just said in front of the whole world that he was single. He had just told the world that you didn't exist.

You shook yourself.

Perhaps you were overreacting though. Perhaps he didn't mean that. Perhaps... but he had said the words right? I'm single...

Perhaps you were overreacting, but for now you felt like he had torn your heart away from your chest, and stamped upon it, crushing the fragile organ until it was nothing but a bruised and pitiful thing beating slowly on the ground.

You couldn't stay at your workplace. You boss would hate it, but you just couldn't. Now that you had realized how much you were crying, you couldn't just there, sitting on the ground in the middle of a deserted corridor.

You picked up your phone, and slowly rose from the ground.

You needed to think... you needed to think about a thousand things...

Ben hurried to your home. From his car to your door, he almost ran. He was eager to see you. He was eager to forget this interview of his. Boring and personal questions, it had been torture to him. So when he hurried to your home, carrying a bag filled with your favourite Chinese food, he had an excited grin on his lips.

He knocked, but you didn't answer.

He knocked again, harder this time. Perhaps you hadn't heard him the first time...

But his knocking on your door was met by nothing but silence once more.

He frowned hard, checking his watch.

It was almost nine, surely you were home by now, even if you had finished to work late.

He pressed his ear to the door, and he could guess the sound of TV coming from inside.

You were home. But for some reason, you were not coming to open the door for him...

He tried to knock again, but as he received no answer once more, he tried the doorknob.

The door was open.

He came in, his smile back on his face. For sure you had told him to walk in but he hadn't heard you.

He closed the door behind him, shouting a merry 'Hey baby!' at you, and he put his bag full of food on your table.

Finally, he walked to the sofa where you were sitting, shrugging off his jacket and throwing it on a chair.

"Hey, baby!" he cried again, falling next to you on the sofa.

But when he made a movement to kiss your cheek, you backed away. You turned off the TV, and slowly looked at him.

Your eyes were red and swollen. Clearly you had been crying. Although now, your eyes were dry and full of anger.

Ben frowned hard, worry painted all over his face.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked softly. "What happened?"

But when he made a movement to touch you, you backed away again.

He frowned hard.

"Y/N? Baby?"

But you clenched your jaw, and he knew he was the cause for your sorrow and your fury.

"What did I do?" he asked cautiously.

"You really have no idea?" you asked, your voice bitter.

But he shook his head, and you could see in his eyes that he really was left clueless by your anger.

"What did I do wrong?" he asked again.

You sniffed, feeling tears covering your eyes again, but you managed to keep a steady voice despite your sorrow.

"During the interview... you said you were single, remember that?"

He frowned hard.

"Y/N... it was a question coming from a journalist. Of course I said that I was single."

"BUT YOU'RE NOT SINGLE!"

Your voice had turned from a shaking whisper to a loud shout in just a second, and Ben couldn't help but lean back slightly. He was frowning slightly, his chocolate eyes throwing a cautious look at you.

"Y/N... That's not what I meant," he said slowly, his voice calm.

But you were tired of remaining calm. You were exhausted. You had had too many emotions in just one single day.

And perhaps he hadn't realized it, but he had broken your heart.

"What did you mean then?! I reckon it was explicit enough!" you replied, still shouting.

"Y/N, it was a personal question. Of course I lied!"

"Are you really sure that you were lying? Cause you were pretty convincing!"

You stared at each other for a while.

"I'm nothing to you, right?!" you spat.

"Don't be ridiculous! You know it's not true!" he said, raising his voice as well now.

"You told this journalist, in front of the entire country... in front of the entire world, that I don't exist!"

"That's not what I did! I protected us!"

"Oh really? And how so?"

"I don't want paparazzi in our lives. I don't want the journalists to know anything about my personal life. I don't want them to know about us, because I don't want you to have to answer questions about us."

You didn't answer for a while, so he went on.

"If I had told them the truth, then they would have tried to know who you are. And I don't want them into our lives, Y/N."

"It made me feel so bad!" you said, crying by now, your voice nothing more than a low and shaking mess. "It hurt me so much! It made me feel like I was nothing to you."

"But you know it's not true," he said, and his voice was tender now.

"What am I to you? Really, I need to know."

"You're my girlfriend," he answered, frowning, as if it was the stupidest question in the world.

Although to you it was everything but stupid.

"How do you see our relationship evolve?" you asked back, sniffing again.

He shrugged, staring at you, and he seemed to be a bit lost again.

"I don't know, Y/N... we'll see."

But you shook your head, looking down at your hands.

"Hey..."

You didn't push him away this time when he took your face in his hands.

"I'm sorry I lied. But it's what is best for us."

"Next time, let me decide what is best for me," you said coldly.

You freed your face from his tender grasp, and he remained there, sitting motionless next to you.

He knew you were mad at him about this interview of his. But he also could guess that there was something else bothering you.

"There's something else, right?" he said slowly, watching you carefully, trying to read through your reactions. "What else did I do wrong?"

You shook your head, drying your cheeks with your sleeves.

"It's not you..." you said softly.

But he could see that it was not completely true. You were avoiding his intense stare.

"But it's about me all the same, am I right?" he said softly.

You finally looked up at him.

"My boss offered me a promotion today," you said slowly.

"That's wonderful!" he exclaimed, trying to hide the fact that he couldn't see the link between this news and your sorrow.

"It's in Austria," you added.

His smile vanished instantly.

"What?" he breathed, taken aback.

"The job is in Austria," you repeated.

"In Austria?"

"Yeah."

"But... I can't find a job in Austria," he said, his eyes wandering in the room, shaking his head, and you knew he was more talking to himself than to you now. "I don't speak the language, I... I can't live there."

He looked at you again.

"How long do you have to decide?" he asked.

"Till the end of the week," you answered. "But I don't think I'll need so much time to decide."

He looked cautiously at you,

"Really?"

"I've been working for months and months so hard to get a promotion..." you said earnestly.

He nodded slowly.

"I see," he breathed.

"If we hadn't met, I would have agreed right away. But we met. And when she offered me this job I... you hadn't given your interview yet."

"So you're hesitating for me?" he asked softly, and you could read both hope and joy in his eyes.

But you shrugged.

"I was. Then you gave this shitty answer in your interview and I... I don't know anymore."

"Y/N..."

"I've sacrificed so many things for this job..." you breathed, shaking your head. "I can't let it slip between my fingers, unless I have a very good reason to give up on it."

You intensely stared at each other for a while, both of you wrapped in silence.

"Do I have a good reason to miss this opportunity?" you asked him, trying to control your shaking voice as your throat tightened uncontrollably.

"What am I supposed to answer to that?" he asked back.

"Convince me? Or not," you answered.

He shrugged.

"You can do whatever you want," he said, his voice colder than before.

And it wasn't the right answer to give you at all...

"Then I guess you really were honest this afternoon during this interview," you said bitterly.

"Of course I wasn't!" he replied, raising his voice again, anger painted all over his face. "But what am I supposed to answer to such a question? Who am I to tell you to stay or leave?"

"You're supposed to be my boyfriend."

"I am your boyfriend."

"Then just tell me not to leave," you said earnestly, your voice low and begging. "Or tell me that you don't care. I just need to know what you see in me. Do you have feelings for me? Do you think it's serious between us? I can't give up on this job over nothing!"

He clenched his jaw. He didn't know what to do. He told himself that it was because he didn't want you to regret your decision if he asked you to stay.

But the truth was, he was just terrified. He knew what he needed to do to make you stay. And he wasn't ready. He didn't know if you felt the same...

So he left you the choice. Hoping you wouldn't leave.

But you needed to know what you meant for him...

"You should decide what is best for you," he said softly.

You nodded, tears back in your eyes.

"I'll take the job then."

It was his time to nod slowly.

"Alright," he said, but he struggled to hide the lump that crept up his throat. "I guess I could call and... see you on your computer and... try to go see you for the weekends..."

"We both know it's not going to work, Ben," you interrupted him, and you distinguished the withheld tears in his eyes that he was trying to control.

"We could try..." he said, his voice shaking.

"It's not going to work. I'm not leaving for a few months. I'm leaving for good."

He nodded, before standing up, and you were taken aback by his sudden movement.

You thought he would try to convince you to stay, that he would try to talk you out of it... but he was just giving up without a fight...

"When will you be leaving?" he asked.

"Next Monday," you answered.

"I guess it means that it's over between us, right?"

"I guess, yes," you whispered.

He nodded. But again, he didn't try to convince you. He merely walked to the door without a word, and left.

He rested his back for a few seconds against your wooden door. But he couldn't hear you. He wondered if you were crying.

He walked to his car, and drove home. All the while he had remained calm, silent, not a single tear was wetting his cheeks.

It's only when he had parked his car that he clenched his jaw. He unfastened his seatbelt slowly, and rested his hands on the wheel. He tightened his grip, more, and more, and more until his knuckles turned white. His jaw was so tightly clenched, it was painful.

Then a tear rolled down his eye, and he crumbled. A second later, he was sobbing. He regretted his decision already. He threw punches at the wheel several times in frustration, his hand now painful, although he didn't care about the pain.

His broken heart was much more painful than his hand anyway...

#ben barnes #ben barnes imagine #ben barnes fic #ben barnes x reader #imagine #fanfic #writing

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amertsi · 7 years

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Help Me Fly

A story of flown away dreams, broken glass, and one helpful hand.

Human AU. PruAus. Contains paraplegic Austria. Warnings: PTSD, panic attack, mentions of death.

Read on FFN. Read on AO3.

The beautiful, melodic sound of a grand piano could be heard through the halls of the apartment complex’s second floor. Anyone with an ear for music could tell it was an expensive instrument, owned by someone from money and played by talented hands. Roderich, in the comfort of his home, had allowed himself the rare opportunity to lose himself in his music, to forget his life, forget the apartments around him, forget the uselessness of his legs. Still deft fingers plucked out note by note, flying across black and white. Roderich’s eyes were closed. In his mind, he could see the music, each separate key and each flowing chord formed like paintings in his mind’s eye. The song had no name, had never been heard before. Roderich himself did not know it. But regardless, he played.

As he brought the song to a slow but dramatic end, he mourned the loss of the sound, the growing silence dragging him kicking and screaming to reality. Escape was for only a moment, only when he allowed it, only when he played.

A soft sigh spilling from partially parted lips, Roderich adjusted the cuffs of his jacket, much too fancy to be worn when so alone, and fiddled with his glasses that had slid partially down the bridge of his nose. That was enough music for one day. Feeling suddenly exhausted, Roderich stood from the piano bench.

And then he promptly collapsed to the ground with an indignant yelp as his traitorous legs crumpled beneath him, unable to support his own weight. Weak arms, stronger than his legs from pushing a wheelchair, but not by much, flailed about in an attempt to catch onto something. Delicate fingers grasped the cloth atop a side table, but that quickly gave in to Roderich’s weight, and he and the vase that sat upon the small table tumbled to the ground with a crash and a rather loud, rather frustrated German curse.

Roderich lay on the floor, a heap of broken glass and dignity, wondering just where he had gone wrong. Oh but of course, how could he forget? His legs were but two useless weights permanently attached to his body. His own personal ball and chain, the key to freedom forever lost in the crash with his parents. Burnt, bloody, gone. If he closed his eyes now, he would no longer see the whimsical notes of a melody never heard, but the screech of tires and blinding, searing pain. Roderich dared not close his eyes. Those were nightmares best kept secret until the dark of night, when he could do nothing but lie in bed, stuck, immobile, just as he had been, trapped wedged between the steering wheel and driver’s seat, frozen in time.

Laying stuck, just as he was now. But now he was on the ground, shards of glass stuck in his skin, a sharp, painful reminder of his disability. His glasses sat crooked on his nose, and for a moment, all Roderich wished to do was stay there and sleep. Who gave a damn about the pain, at least he could feel it, the way the glass pierced through his coat and into his arms, his chest. But not his legs. Surely, he’d been cut there as well, but it was nothing but an inconvenience. An inconvenience, just like his damn legs.

And Roderich almost did resign himself to lying there for the remainder of the day, much too drained to fetch his phone from his pocket, let alone dial in the digits required to call for help. He almost let his eyes slip shut, almost let the flames of his mind consume his thoughts, but the unmistakable sound of the the front door unlocking stopped him from doing anything of the sort. Heavy footsteps echoed through the house, sent vibrations through the hard, cold wood flooring.

“Hey, Prinz, I heard something so I thought-- holy fuck what did you do now?”

The statement didn’t come out as harsh or even remotely surprised, but it still took every ounce of Roderich’s self control to not cuss the man out. He strained his neck to find two red eyes peering down at him. He might not have cursed his apparent rescuer, but he did muster his finest glare. “What do you think I did, fool?” he spat.

The man, his neighbor, laughed, a boisterous, loud sound. Roderich wished to smack that smile right off his face.

“Really, Prinz? Get so lost in your pretty little head that you forgot you can’t walk for shit?” The man grinned, almost smug, but as he did so, lifted Roderich as if he weighed not much more than air. “Seriously though, this is the second time in a month. How the fuck do you forget you can’t... I dunno, walk?”

His dignity left behind, shattered to pieces with the glass, Roderich only let out a small huff, putting on a false air of pride that clashed with the image of him; bloody, glasses crooked, and clinging tightly to his neighbor as if he might drop him, let him fall back into the flames. But the smug man held him tight, supporting his back with one arm, his legs with the other. “It’s not as if I have been paraplegic my entire life, idiot. In fact, it’s been only--”

“A year and three months, yeah, I know. You made the same excuse last time.”

Roderich shot his neighbor an offended glare. “Don’t interrupt me!”

The man scoffed. “Or what? You gonna piano me to death? Watch yourself, Prinz, I might just drop you.” But even as he said that, he was placing Roderich delicately on his couch, the smallest hint of concern in his eyes as the musician let out a low hiss from the glass in his skin. Unfortunately, that concern failed to translate to his words. “Hey, I don’t wanna hear any complaining from you! It’s only gonna hurt more when I pull the things out, so better brace yourself ‘cause I’m not gonna stop if you start crying.”

Roderich didn’t bother to stop himself from rolling his eyes. “What do you take me for, a child? Just get on with-- ah! Give me a warning at least!”

His neighbor grinned up at him smugly, one larger piece of glass already plucked from red, irritated skin. “One down~” he practically sang. “Only a shit ton to go!” He flashed another grin. “Don’t cry too hard, Prinz. I’ll be more gentle with the next one billion.” Roderich sighed, resigning to the next several painful minutes, thinking he could still be on the floor, not needing to put up with this attitude and teasing smirk.

Piece by piece, the glass was removed, larger pieces that stuck through his shirt first, then smaller ones that required tweezers to remove, all in his hands and arms. His neighbor was surprisingly steady handed, not once making a wrong move or poking Roderich in such a way that he might wish to slap him again. A silence fell between them, and Roderich, now used to the sharp pinch that accompanied each tug of the tweezers, felt numb in both body and mind. His thoughts wandered, as they had a tendency to do.

He was back in the hospital room. Wires and tubing jutting each and every way out of his body, his mind drifting in and out of consciousness, only semi aware of the brace around his neck and the monotonous, gentle tug of a doctor’s tweezers, pulling shattered glass and hopes from Roderich’s skin, each one tossed aside, the glass falling to the wastebin and his dreams flying out through the hospital walls, out into the day, into freedom that he could never taste again, not in the same way. No, now he was bound, bound by wheelchair, bound my memories, bound by his own insufferable fear and grief and guilt and regret. Freer now than his parents, buried in cold, uncaring coffins six feet underground, but at least they had rest, at least they had peace, at least they had left their only son with a fortune large enough that he might live out the rest of his days with not a single worry. Not a single worry except for the worry in his neighbor’s eyes each time Roderich’s thoughts slipped away, back to happier days when he could walk and run and jump and stand so simply from his piano bench without crumbling to the ground in a mess of broken glass. Not a care or a wish in the world, except for dreams flown away.

“Hey.”

For the second time that afternoon, Roderich was forced from the personal hellfires of his mind and back to reality by that overconfident, smug voice. Except now, it was soft, quiet, almost kind. Roderich blinked, his gaze meeting a concerned expression.

“You okay there, Prinz? You got all quiet then just started crying all of a sudden.”

Roderich wanted to scoff at the man. “Crying? What are you talking about...” But there was quiver in his voice, a tremble to his lip, and a distinct trail of dampness running from his eyes to his chin. “I’m not--” A weak, shuddering gasp escaped him, and Roderich’s hand flew to cover his mouth, as if to smother the sound from existence. He felt like a child again, waking from a nightmare, wanting nothing more than to rush to the arms of his mother and father, but he couldn’t. They were gone, flown off with those pesky dreams of his. There were no warm embraces, no feather soft forehead kisses to lull him back to sleep, back to pleasant thoughts. Only the sad, pitying eyes of his neighbor and the sharp sting of glass now removed.

No warm embrace, except for one, almost awkward, almost uncertain arm around his shoulder. His neighbor sat next to him on the couch, pulled their bodies close together, and didn’t say a word.

And Roderich cried.

He cried into his neighbor’s shirt, who sat, unfazed, unmoving, just one strong arm around delicate shoulders wracked with sobs. He cried for his music, never again the same, not without feet to push the pedals and draw out notes, cried for his legs and the pain they’d never feel, cried for his parents and his dreams as they flew away with his stolen freedom. He cried, and the man was silent.

When he stopped, Roderich wished it was all of him that was paralyzed, not just his legs, so that he wouldn’t have to feel the soreness in his eyes or the weakness in his lungs as he gasped and shuddered for breath. But, he hadn’t been so lucky. Or perhaps he was lucky, for now he could shift away from his neighbor’s embrace, take off his glasses and wipe his eyes, pretend like nothing had happened. And it almost seemed that was what his neighbor wished to do as well, for he simply got up with a stretch and a sigh, straightening his shirt, now rumpled by Roderich’s hands.

“Welp, Prinz, all the glass is out. You’re welcome.” He spoke plainly, as if he hadn’t just held close the whimpering, crying body of his neighbor. “Put some bandaids on some of ‘em, too. Don’t want your pretty little hands getting all infected, then you wouldn’t be able to play and forget you can’t walk all over again, and then I wouldn’t be able to come and save you!” He laughed. “Guess I’ll get going, though, you’re probably tired from your little adventure today.”

Roderich hesitated, then spoke. “Wait, I--”

His neighbor, just about to turn to leave, stopped. “Sup?”

Violet eyes met a pair of red ones, just briefly. “...Thank you, Gilbert. For everything.”

There was a pause, then Gilbert smiled. Not a boisterous, smug smirk, but a real, genuine smile that lit up his eyes. “Of course, Prinz.” And he turned to leave, but stopped again, looking back. “Oh, and next time--”

In the light of the window, filtered through parted curtains, he seemed to sprout wings.

“Call me next time you’re gonna play, ‘kay? I’ll be there to catch you when you fall.”

And in that moment, Roderich wanted nothing more than to take Gilbert’s hand and fly away with those wings, chasing lost dreams.

#hetalia #pruaus #aph austria #aph prussia #mertsi fic #drabble

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jenniferbowley · 5 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We’re live. Yeah, thanks. I’m not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we’re live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it’s Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we’re going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we’re going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we’re definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You’ve got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It’s going to be a good one. And we’ll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We’ll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: I’m good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don’t. I’m not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can’t do it. I don’t know how you guys do it. But so I’m so backed up. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I’m just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don’t know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we’re going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you’re not in the Facebook group, join it, I’ll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you’re subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you’ll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it’s a bummer you can’t join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I’m back in Florida I’m super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you’re wrong to Get out of here just in time I’m still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I’m good man I’m actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven’t smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it’s gonna, you know, you can’t get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that’s awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you’re just joining us and you’re wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you’re in the right place. We’re going to dive into your questions. If you’ve got any questions about digital marketing, we’re here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people’s questions. But if you can’t join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That’s going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it’s dealing with your on-page SEO whether it’s dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that’ll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I’m on my laptop, and I’m having a hard time scrolling while I’m looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don’t use it enough or who are new and don’t know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you’ve got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren’t doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it’s really important that people not only understand what’s available, but why it’s available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I’m going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you’re interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn’t make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn’t make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It’s tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I’ll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let’s do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we’re good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn’t work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it’s been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it’s pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that’s the URL anyways, it’ll you can buy the pro version, it’s like 20 bucks, it’s inexpensive, it’s really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I’m doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I’m going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we’ll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that’s just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That’s something else that you can do. I know that Marco’s got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don’t know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don’t know if he still can. I’m not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you’ve got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there’s a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that’s the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that’s my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I’ve even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I’m taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven’t checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn’t recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven’t tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I’m thinking that Google won’t like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you’re going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you’re going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it’s called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn’t recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you’ve got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you’re using the same address and it’s like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they’re going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it’s going to the same address but that A and B actually create we’re creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you’re going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It’s going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I’d like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don’t have this kind of experience what’s your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What’s your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you’re putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That’s typically how I’ve done it. I’ve only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He’s as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don’t have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I’m setting it up for a foreign language, it’s pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he’s working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it’s relevant. So there’s you’ll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it’s that way, then you’re not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it’s two things that you’re targeting that are totally unrelated. And you’re trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it’s all about entities. And it’s all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that’s a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn’t as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That’s not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you’re you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don’t see any issue with that, because that’s, that’s pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t cause any problem as Hernan said, You’re like, I’m assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I’m just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you’re going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve used plugins, that’s what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn’t have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn’t intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there’s no doubt. So if you’re going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you’re probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don’t know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can’t have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it’ll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you’re serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don’t want to use a separate domain because I don’t want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon’s up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it’s going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you’re right and local. It’s nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it’s going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that’s fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that’s a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you’re trying to your top-level keywords that you’re trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there’s no reason that you can’t still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You’re just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it’s going to be different if you’re in mud lick Kentucky, or if you’re going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it’s just going to have it so it’s any big city in the US, which is why it’s so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you’re targeting. Now if for example, as as we’ve seen in the land when we’re doing that there’s just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there’s still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it’s what’s going to make it or break it, so to speak. It’s how you’re going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you’re trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it’s going to pull up everything that’s related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we’re targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don’t work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it’s really important to understand the market and what you’re after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it’s not really what’s in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It’s understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you’re targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don’t base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn’t matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that’s just an indication of how much work and efforts it’s going to take to be able to get results for that. That’s all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn’t design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he’s talking about, I’m assuming that what you mean is when he’s talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we’ve been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you’re in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that’s within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it’s a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that’s what you’re talking about, which again, I can only assume that that’s what you’re talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it’s a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what’s up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven’t electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it’s very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It’s not that it can’t be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We’ve done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it’s it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I’ve got just quickly on us on a side I’ve got a pest control client. It’s the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I’m talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they’re not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she’s been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we’re going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you’re still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we’re going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I’ve created silos for them. There’s, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we’re in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there’s a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn’t about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they’re physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it’s just because of the relevancy that she’s been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that’s really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don’t recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don’t know what you’d be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it’s actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you’re going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you’re that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you’re centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it’s that relationship where the centroid can be related and we’ve seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you’re targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I’ve discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it’s specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I’m not gonna share of course in here, because it’s paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don’t know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It’s a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it’s another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it’s ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it’s a way to get into the maps pack. I don’t know if he’s in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that’s, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they’ve ranked in there with it, but it’s an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there’s nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don’t even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you’ll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it’s a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that’s just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I’ll do is I’ll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I’ll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it’s, it’s really come a long way, guys, I can’t say it’s still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it’s in my opinion if you haven’t, I don’t know. Again, I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it’s just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it’s something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it’s something that if you’re not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul’s up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I’ve only in all of my years now that I’ve been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I’m not saying that.

It can’t happen. But I’ve only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I’ve been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I’m talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I’ve managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I’m saying. And I’ve only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I’ve got many, many of them out there that I’ve done that with and I’ve only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here’s why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you’ve got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we’re going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I’ve mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can’t you just throw all that stuff out? It’s junk mail, and they wouldn’t do it because I’d say like, I’m gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There’s nothing I need there and they said, doesn’t matter. You either come get it or we’re going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I’ve only had two that I’ve ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I’m actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I’ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don’t know because I haven’t had to do it. Since Google’s made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I’ve had to revert or I’ve had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don’t know now because it’s changed so much the GMB like how they’re handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don’t know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that’s the Nate that that’s one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it’s part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That’s why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I’ll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that’s giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn’t do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he’s talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I’m relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I’d like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don’t skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don’t know somebody brought it to Google’s attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there’s a big GMB spam team right now that’s been out there. That’s just you know, their, that’s their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it’s very, I mean, it’s easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I’ve not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn’t done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I’m assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I’m assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I’ve noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that’s much better. But if it’s not been you know, if it’s not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it’s being it’s being left for for review. I know for a fact that there’s an issue with that we’ve heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee’s home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it’s a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I’d say a month ago, and it’s still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there’s just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it’s pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What’s that the map won’t go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it’s verified. Your pending verification if it’s verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything’s there, but it’s just whatever change you know, I’m telling you that my the one that I’m talking about specifically.

It’s been I’ve submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it’s been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there’s no maps listing. And so the GMB post won’t show up in a knowledge panel because there’s no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn’t there. What I’m saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it’s in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don’t know I don’t know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I’ve had in the past I’ve had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it’s unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it’s, if it’s still in that pending status, it’s not going to publish, which means you can’t do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. You just have to wait. I don’t know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we’re almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It’s not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they’re only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn’t bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there’s really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that’s, that’s just ugly and nobody’s going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don’t mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don’t do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that’s what that’s for that it’s really for beginners. I mean, it’s for beginners and it’s just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it’s a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn’t matter. Okay, so haven’t gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you’re just doing GMB stuff like there’s no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that’s going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it’s very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don’t skip on parts don’t just do 25% of it and contact us and say that’s not working. doesn’t work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There’s It doesn’t mean you’re going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That’s when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I’ve had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it’s not going live both went live a week after I called that’s a good idea. That’s something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 syndicated from https://medium.com/@SpanishFly

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beyondvapepage · 5 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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youngwinnertragedy · 5 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I��ve closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that’s it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It’s ridiculous. And I just don’t renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It’s very unlikely that you’re ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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localwebmgmt · 5 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

pledje · 5 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

oasisoptimization · 5 years

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 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: What? We want it? We're live. Yeah, thanks. I'm not seeing it on my screen. All right, well, hopefully, we're live. Welcome, everybody to Hump Day hangout number 259 was Semantic Mastery. Before we get going, I want to say, you know, it's Episode 259. And we were just talking about what that makes next week. Next week will be Episode 260, which is five years of Hump Day Hangouts.

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Adm: Definitely. So we're going to have some good stuff coming up. What we do, though, and we're going to continue this kind of the way we roll our Hump Day hangout anniversary, is we definitely reward the people who show up. So we're definitely going to have some good stuff going on next week. Make sure you show up. You've got to be there live, to be in on this. So show up next week, clear out your schedule, come join us. It's going to be a good one. And we'll have some great stuff going on and maybe a couple of things to give away. We'll see how that goes.

Before we get into that, though, let's say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let's see, I'll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how's it going?

Bradley: I'm good, man, happy to be home. After being in Denver for a week. You know, I don't. I'm not like some of you guys,my partners that can work when travel. When I travel, I get very little work done. I just, I just can't do it. I don't know how you guys do it. But so I'm so backed up. It's ridiculous. I've been working 14 hours a day this week, trying to get caught up. I worked on Sunday to which is a very rare occasion for me anymore. So I'm just happy to be home, trying to get caught up so that I can breathe again.

Adam: Awesome. Yeah. And for those of you who don't know where Bradley was, he was in Denver, with us for POFU Live 2019. And we know Well, obviously, most of you are not able to join us live, which is a bummer. But the good news is this year we're going to be able to get you access to the recordings. And that is going to be happening early next week. So definitely keep your eyes and ears open. If you're not in the Facebook group, join it, I'll pop the link on the page here shortly. Or if you're subscribed to Semantic Mastery, you'll get an email about that and that is going to be a great way to get caught up on all that stuff really quick. You know, it's a bummer you can't join live and get all the networking and after hours, insights and all that but you can still get a lot of the core really meaty information from the recording.

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don't record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn't know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can't Yeah, don't let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You're back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: yes I'm back in Florida I'm super super happy with you know meeting a lot of great people at fulfil live some repeat offenders as well you know they went they went on POFU Live 2018 2019 and it was awesome it was really really great really happy and we have some good good good big plans coming up for this year as well so stay tuned if you're wrong to Get out of here just in time I'm still in Denver and snows coming in so Hernan you left just in time.

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

Marco: I'm good man I'm actually in a really mellow mood today. Well although I haven't smoked any gonna say, man, what do you smoke? Sam Cooke I smoked some Sam Cooke so it's gonna, you know, you can't get in in a hard mood when you listen to Sam Cooke

Adam: Yes, that's awesome. Well, I want to say to you if you're just joining us and you're wondering what the heck is going on here? Well, you're in the right place. We're going to dive into your questions. If you've got any questions about digital marketing, we're here to help answer them or point you in the right direction. This is the place you want to be every week semanticmastery.com/hdquestions you can ask your questions live. Of course, we tell people to put them up there ahead of time, please try to limit yourself to one question at a time so we can go through and answer people's questions. But if you can't join us live, you can pop it on there ahead of time and you can check out the replay on our YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to. Because you can watch these replays as well as other videos that we post about digital marketing, SEO, getting clients all that sort of good stuff. And then the next step because we always have people ask us where should I start with Semantic Mastery? Should I join the mastermind should I do this? Should I do that? Grab the battle plan, go over to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. Grab that. That's going to give you repeatable processes get a lot of the stuff knocked out whether it's dealing with your on-page SEO whether it's dealing with a brand new site, a YouTube channel, you need to find out about GMB, whatever it is just go over there, that'll get you sorted out. And the next step would definitely be to join the mastermind at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.

And since I'm on my laptop, and I'm having a hard time scrolling while I'm looking at the screen, last but not least, certainly head over to mgyb.co. I know I sound like a little bit of a broken record each week. But I want to remind people about this who don't use it enough or who are new and don't know about you know how easy it is to outsource some of the stuff we get a lot of questions about syndication networks about RYS Drive stacks, about press releases, and you can get all of this stuff done for you over at mgyb.co. All right, this is what we do for ourselves is what we tell people to do. If you've got a client, you know, build that into the project costs so you aren't doing the work that you can go over here, get it done professionally and then move on, get more clients and build your revenue. Anything else you guys want to add on to that, I think say about the same thing every week about GMB. But I think it's really important that people not only understand what's available, but why it's available there.

Yeah. Are we ready for questions I was reading, I was pre-reading questions? So Oh, gotcha. All right. Well, then no, I'm going to keep on going here. I do want to circle back to something I mentioned in the intro. You know, last year, we never released, you know, the POFU Live recordings were not available for sale on their own. And so this year, this is definitely a good opportunity for you if you're interested in POFU Live either. I know we had a lot of people couldn't make it due to calendar, you know, complex, people who couldn't make it either due to travel or whatever it was. You know, like Bradley said, It's tough. You know, you do get a lot out of the networking, the after-hours stuff, but you can get caught up to date and really see where, you know, not only we think things are going where you should be aiming yourself for 2020.

But as well as the guest speakers, we had some fantastic guest speakers. And I'll be sharing the links on both the Facebook page and through emails and you can go and find out more about that starting early next week. And we will definitely have an early action takers discount for people who know that this is what they want to grab. Going to take action on that and do that. So keep your eyes open next week. Definitely be worth it.

Sweet. Cool. Other than that, guys, anything else we need to cover before we dive into questions? else? Alright, let's do it. Cool. All right, let me grab the screen standby for a moment. Chris pushed my image of me in a speedo off slacks and nobody gets to see that. I found a better image of you But anyways, Alright, let me grab this. I think we're good now. Can you guys see my screen? Yeah, yep.

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Alright, it looks like Mike is up first he says Hello guys, thanks for the great information. Which way do you recommend to create a short URL? I understand that Google shortener goo.gl doesn't work anymore. And you good alternative? Can you please share some best practices on how to use short links and why? Thanks a lot.

For redirects that I create now, I just use my own domain we actually have one in MGYB that is just super powerful now because it's been used in so many drive stacks and link building. People build links to them and all that kind of stuff. So it's actually pretty strong. Some of the mgyb.co links that we create will actually show up in search and in the top 10 for like brand searches and such it's pretty. But so the reason I mentioned that is because I do that with clients and such I actually will install Pretty Links Pro which is a plugin if you go to semanticmastery.com/pretty links.

I think I think that's the URL anyways, it'll you can buy the pro version, it's like 20 bucks, it's inexpensive, it's really good. We use that a lot for my clients, I install it on their own domain. And if I'm doing short stuff short URLs I for like redirects and press releases, for example, or if I'm going to order a drive stack for them or add to a drive stack, then we'll do short URLs for the drive stack files through their Pretty Link pro plugin, so that we can actually use their domain. And that's just because it adds just, you know, kind of pushes some additional power into their own domain. Or you could always set one up like on your own domain that you use specifically just for redirects. That's something else that you can do. I know that Marco's got some suggestions on some of the short URLs for creators that you can use out there that already have some authority built or a lot of authority built to them.

I know like owly, which was a Hootsuite shortener, I don't know if you can still use that unless you have an account Hootsuite, but those are pretty powerful t.co, which was a Twitter shortener you can use to be able to use that. I don't know if he still can. I'm not a Twitter user. But there are some other URL shorteners out there. And it just makes sense to do it to create additional redirects, for SEO purposes as well as to honestly to short and really long, ugly URLs. But for the SEO benefits, you can use those to create additional URLs to build links to and do some other cool stuff. Marco, what say you about that? I know you've got some suggestions.

Marco: Yeah. I there's a list in Zapier I think it is of the top shorteners, and then I would have to find new york because that's the one that I always give everyone in like RYS Academy reloaded and when they ask the questions in Facebook, that's my go-to a URL. And I sent I send them to their list

Bradley: right here, the eight best alternatives to you go Google your shortener and Zapier right there. So it says Bitly careful with Bitly. Guys though, like I use Bitly, I've even got the Bitly Chrome extension, I use Bitly quite a bit for like, shortening URLs when I'm taking notes for my own stuff or for process docs and things like that for my VA, but for SEO purposes Bitly at least they used to, I haven't checked it in a long time. They used to arbitrarily sometimes add a change it from a 312 or 302 redirect, which kills any SEO value.

So I wouldn't recommend using Bitly for SEO purposes, but a lot of these other ones here you can still use I haven't tested all of these by the way, but I would just check them and see what ones you know go to like wheregoes.com or redirect detective or something like that and check a redirect that you create with them to see what they look like but just keep in mind that Bitly will sometimes just add it will change it to a 302 redirect for no-no apparent reason and it will kill any SEO value. Okay. There you go. URL shorteners.

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Next is Ralph. He says, Hey guys, I have a client who has two companies at the same address. And using the same phone number they have a GMB setup for both companies. I'm thinking that Google won't like that they are using the same phone number. I guess the better way to ask the question is, is it okay for two different companies to use the same phone number in GMB? Well, I mean, you can get away with it. But the problem is if you're going to be building citations, it invigorates the data, right? And that causes problems you It causes NAP issues, you should really have NAP you should have three or four including the URL, you should have three unique data points within that if you're going to do it.

So for example, if you have a company that has multiple locations, you can use the same GMB name right the same business name, but then your address, phone, and URL or should be unique because otherwise, you can create any NAP issues in it's called ambiguation, right you can ambiguous the data which makes it difficult for Google to determine, which is what. And so having two different company names sharing the same phone number and the same location, unless you have like a, you know, different suite number or something behind it that can cause problems. So I wouldn't recommend it at all, what I would recommend that you would do would be to get a tracking phone number for one of them, like a forwarding phone number, and go into Google and update, change the phone number in one of the listings so that both listings have a unique phone number. That makes sense. But you've got the same address too. So we using the same address and the same phone number will absolutely cause issues.

If you're using the same address and it's like you know your client has two different businesses at the address then they should be able to all they have to do usually is notify the post office that they're going to add suite one or a or like a and b or suite one and two or something like that. You should get permission from the post office to do that or notify that. So the mail carrier will bring will still deliver in the mail. But I would update the GMB address to include some sort of unique identifier for each business as well. All it takes is like I said, like, you know, it could be 123 Main Street a and 123 Main Street be, it's going to the same address but that A and B actually create we're creating makes the address unique. So do that and do that. Do it make a unique phone number, otherwise, you're going to have a hard time getting results. Anytime you go to build citations. It's going to kind of muddy the waters for both businesses. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Next up, he says I'd like to hear about your or hear your experience if you have built a website that is targeted for two different target market base, target markets based on demography and language-wise. But if you don't have this kind of experience what's your take on this issue, for example, target market a country using English language target market big country using be language, foreign language? What's your take if this website is built brand name calm brand name com/so in a folder, this website provide similar services for a newbie, I look forward to hearing your feedback and recommendations. Yeah, I mean, you can do that if you're putting that the brand like the, the foreign language version of it in a subdirectory. You can do that you can also do it on a subdomain. That's typically how I've done it. I've only done it a few times.

One of my biggest Tree Service clients or contract service, lead generation service providers that I do Tree Service stuff for. He's as he speaks Spanish, and so we set up Spanish subdomain for several of the locations not all of them, but several of the locations and that that tends to work fairly well because so because you know, obviously some people go and in the US cities go and search for stuff and Google in Spanish and so that works what I typically would do it underneath the subdomain but you can do it in a subdirectory I don't have a lot of experience on that. Although I know Hernan and Marco both do so what do you guys? What can you guys suggest about something like that?

Hernan: I'm setting it up for a foreign language, it's pretty easy. Like, you could definitely do what you suggested Bradley, and then basically can hammer them with links in terms of Spanish. Like, you know, all of the stuff that he's working on the English speaking market usually works really really well on foreign languages because if you can get ranked and you can push power and relevancy on the English speaking markets and you can definitely do enough Spanish market. So tactics do not change this just become cheap, or easier, I should say. Does that make sense?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Marco: Yeah, I mean, this is just as simple as a subdomain or, or a folder, right? That I mean, you want to take advantage of the fact. So unless it's relevant. So there's you'll be publishing relevant content. And I think that the only difference is, is the age, the age of the people and the language. But the product or service is going to be the same as long as it's that way, then you're not going to run into problems, your problem will come if it's two things that you're targeting that are totally unrelated. And you're trying to push that on the same website. That could create an issue, right? Because right now, it's all about entities. And it's all about relating your entity to the keywords in the niche. And if you have two separate sets of keywords for the niche than that, then that's a recipe for disaster.

Bradley: Yeah, so he said, I heard is this going to affect how SEO should work? work? How SEO works? should be done for a which would be the English site? No, it doesn't as Marco said as long as like. So for example, we had another site that we had Semantic Mastery actually that we had a translator that we had hired to translate it into Spanish. And we put it on an ES subdomain and it was all she did was she was just translating all the pages on the main site, the root domain into Spanish that we had a mirrored site. So basically, all we did was clone the site, and then install it on a subdomain and ES dot subdomain. And then she went through page by page and post by post and translated everything. And again, as Marco said, That's not going to create any issues there. Then what you can do and you could do it in a subfolder too. But then all you would do is put like, you know, a link in the navigation menu or in the footer or wherever on the group domain that would point people to the Spanish version of the site or the whatever language it is that you're you want to translate to and vice versa.

Right. So on the foreign language site, it would point back to the English site. And I don't see any issue with that, because that's, that's pretty normal for sites that have multi that serve multiple markets or multiple countries, different languages. So yeah, it shouldn't, it shouldn't cause any problem as Hernan said, You're like, I'm assuming you would try to be ranking the foreign language site in a different country. I can, I'm just making that assumption. So focus on the site, right, which would be your English site, I guess, for the SEO part of it. And that should bleed over to your foreign-language site. Right? If you can rank it in the English version on the US, essentially, you're going to you should be able to rank in almost any other country, especially foreign language speaking countries. That makes sense. So he says note, I heard that using a plugin translation is not recommended if we want to make our website rank higher based on the target market demographics.

Well, I don't know. I mean, I've used plugins, that's what I did for my Tree Service sites, and I didn't have any issues with it. And we did. We did get traffic. I mean, I wasn't intentionally trying to rank for Spanish terms. But I know that for a fact that we got traffic leads from people spoke Spanish that had found the pages. And all we all I use for that was a plugin. However, like I just mentioned, the site that we had built Semantic Mastery for a project, we had hired a translator to actually manually translate those pages. I think it does a better job, there's no doubt. So if you're going to be sending a lot of traffic to that on your foreign language site, you're probably better off there might be something out there that does really, really well with that. I don't know. You could do some searching for it, or else just get a translator to do it manually. So he says I use Go ahead. Yeah, before you move on, you have to use a combination, right? Because you can't have it translated word for word, use Google Translate, and then have someone edit my phone. Because a lot of times when you go from one language to the other through Google Translate, it'll spit back garbage it the stuff will sometimes be on an intelligible. So you do have to have a human editor go in and clean it up, especially if you're serving it to an end-user whom you want to convert on the website. Yeah. The last part of that was I don't want to use a separate domain because I don't want to be people to get confused. Yeah, again, just link within the navigation menu or the sidebar or something like that to the English version of the site, and vice versa. So that you anybody that comes that lands on either one of the sites will know that they have that all they have to do is click, you know, the call to action to point them to the right to the site that they want to watch. They want to be visiting. Right.

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

Simon's up he says in Jeffrey Smith boot camp top of siloed keywords have 1 million-plus competing pages, but in local SEO top of siloed keywords have nowhere near 1 million competing pages. Can we consider the keywords we want to target as our top of siloed keywords regardless of the number of competing pages they have? He also recommends using a sidebar with links but our page design has no side, can we just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Okay, um, yeah, number of competing pages just as an indication of what your competition is going to look like, right, the more the higher the competing pages for your exact match keyword, then that usually means you know, it's going to be tougher generally, for you to rank for that type of a term. But you're right and local. It's nowhere near what depends on the market, but and the keyword. But generally, it's going to be a hell of a lot lower than that. But that's fine, you can still get an idea of what your competition levels are going to be by, for example, all your top-level keywords across that your particular project, do it in URL or in the title search, right? So that's a Boolean operator Boolean search and do an in title search with your keyword in quotes and see how many pages are competing for across all of the keywords that you're trying to your top-level keywords that you're trying to target. target for your market your area, and you could also do that across some other locations, right?

So for the same keyword, but with other local modifier is included, just to get an idea of what the competition levels are like that can. That is how you can determine your benchmark or your baseline. Right? And then from there, you can use that kind of number two, very quickly determine what your competition levels are going to be for the same type of keywords in different areas if that makes sense. And then from there, but yeah, I mean, there's no reason that you can't still target those types of keywords just because as your top-level keywords, just because there are not a million pages. Does that make sense? You're just its competition is relative Marco always says local is relative well, competition is relative as well, right? Your competition for the same keyword that you may be looking at a new if you were to search that same top-level local keyword in New York City, it may very well have over a million competing pages, but in a smaller, much smaller city it may not get anywhere near that. But that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a top-level keyword. That makes sense. Does anybody want to comment on that before going to the next part of that?

Marco: Yeah. Yeah, give Just give me a second. Sorry. This is again, as with everything, it depends on right Cup competition, it's going to be different if you're in mud lick Kentucky, or if you're going after New York City, because I can tell you that anything local, in New York City, is going to have competition in the millions, it's just going to have it so it's any big city in the US, which is why it's so important to understand your market and to understand what it is that you're targeting. Now if for example, as as we've seen in the land when we're doing that there's just a few keywords that you have to go after, but there's still a top market level category right? This still at a top keyword, sell land or buy land.

What you do with that keyword thereafter, it's what's going to make it or break it, so to speak. It's how you're going to push for that top-level so that you try, what you're trying to do is appear to sell land or buy land. But it's going to pull up everything that's related to that. This is what I could set a bottom-feeding what what what we're targeting now, which is working from the bottom, and excuse me, from the top of bringing everything up, we don't work, bottom-feeding and then work our way up.

We kind of switched it, because we can push so much power. But it's really important to understand the market and what you're after, whether your keywords are related to the location, and also understand what your competitors are doing. So the most important part of all this is it's not really what's in Jeffrey Smith training. Although it is top-notch. It's understanding who your competition is no, regardless, the numbers might switch by zero or by two zeros. So instead of a million competing pages, you might be dealing with 100,000 or 10 thousand, it depends which but your top-level category is going to be determined by the competition. Still. So like Bradley said, your competition and what your target becomes relative to the population size that you're targeting. Right?

Bradley: Yeah, don't base your top-level keywords based upon the number of competing pages base your top-level keywords upon logic, right like what is logical what is the actual top-level keyword, the top market level keyword. And then from there, you build your solid structure out. So it really doesn't matter what the number of competing pages is it just again, that's just an indication of how much work and efforts it's going to take to be able to get results for that. That's all that means.

He also recommends using a sidebar with links, but our page doesn't design has no sidebar, can you just add navigation links to the bottom of the page instead? Thank you. Yeah, and I think what he's talking about, I'm assuming that what you mean is when he's talking about the siloed specific, like category, or post URLs, like the hierarchy, in other words in the plugin that he has, which the new ones coming out very, very soon. I know we've been saying that for months, but we really mean it this time. It has an SEO or like a silo function built into it to where if you're in any particular category, right, which is a silo then only posts and subcategories, you know, anything that's within that particular silo will show up in that menu, right? And so it's a way to kind of create a navigational and kind of like a silo loop, like almost like a link wheel within the navigational or you know, sidebar or the footer or something like that. So, yes, if you have a widget area, and if that's what you're talking about, which again, I can only assume that that's what you're talking about, then you could put that SEO silo menu, the widget in the footer. And it would still do the same thing as it would in the sidebar. That makes sense. Okay.

You could also do those manually by the way if you use stuff like widget logic as a plugin to like set up logic like says only display this if in this category but it's a pain in the ass. So just use the SEO plugin is much easier.

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

So wills Up next, what's up? Well, he says, Hey guys, I haven't electrician with a GMB and a and website who wants to expand their reach further than the presumed 10 k proximity radius and forced by Google My Business. Would it be a matter of creating new landing pages for the suburbs/cities they want to expand into and in those pages also describe the services they would like to offer, then proceed with the usual battle plan strategy to get those new locations to rank? Also by creating the ranking of this new content, creating and ranking this new content would the GMB then start to rank for the new locations or have I got this wrong?

Well, it may but it's very difficult to overcome the proximity issue with GMB. It's not that it can't be done Marco, you know, we Marco will tell you it can be done and we know it can be done. We've done it, but it requires a lot of effort depending again, it's it depends on a lot of factors but like what we teach in local GMB pro can help you to overcome those proximity issues, but it requires work and consistent effort to do so.

But what other What are your other options, right, your only options are to rank organically by doing what you just mentioned, which is to create location-based silos essentially or landing pages which can be become silos which is honestly how you should do it? I've got just quickly on us on a side I've got a pest control client. It's the same Pest Control client that had their GMB suspended for like two months for just some stupid edit that I made to their page anyways, and finally, we finally got it reinstated. And because of proximity issues, they are not ranking in near as many people repackage they used to we used to dominate in a very broad area like I'm talking like five County area, and now they predominantly rank in the county that the business is physically located in. But a lot of the, you know, adjacent areas are not, they're not getting very good results. And as far as the three-pack goes, so I actually had my blogger, she, she's been blogging for them for, you know, years, this client has been a client of mine for years. Well, I sent her some training on how to, I went in, set some silos up in the site, and I said, Look, we're going to switch from doing more topical type post to doing more geographically latest, you're still going to have, you know, obviously, topical relevance, but we're going to target every post we do three posts per week for this client. We have been for years. So what I did is I said, Okay, look, here are the counties, I've created silos for them. There's, you know, this many cities within the county. What I want you to do is for the next, you know, and every single time you create a post, I want you to create a topical post, but I want you to target a specific area within that county, optimize it for that area, and then add it to that category, that location-based silo. And then we do the silo linking structure, internal linking structure, which is like daisy chaining post together with no reciprocal links. Anyways, we started this about three, maybe four weeks ago now. And just yesterday, as a matter of fact, or maybe it was Monday. Anyways, this week, I was just reviewing one of the blog posts that she created, and we're in a very specific county right now. And she has been for the last several weeks because there's a lot of locations in this county. So I was looking at her blog posts and I was just curious, and I was like, Oh, let me go see how this is performing. And I did a search for that particular, you know, their primary service plus the location that was mentioned in the blog post. Even though the blog post was not about their primary service. It was a bug related, like a pest. It was about silverfish. Actually, this company does mosquito

Take control like outdoor pest control. But this blog post was about a was about silverfish, but she optimized it for that particular location. So I did a search for mosquito control plus that location. And lo and behold, not only was that post ranked even though it wasn't about mosquito control, the post is ranked an organic section, but so is the homepage of the site for which it is optimized for mosquito control. But it was again, it was way outside of where they're physically located. So they got to organic rankings from that. And it's just because of the relevancy that she's been able to create the location relevancy, by creating that Mondo silo structure. I showed her how to do it. So I provided her with some training videos. We talked about this in the mastermind too, by the way, and then by linking from those what from some of those internal posts are from within that silo to the homepage and actually pushed not only the post but the homepage to rank on-page. One for organic for that keyword. So, my point is you can do all of this organically and that's really the only option you have or else. The other option would be to get spam GMB listings, which I don't recommend doing anymore because of Google being on you know, Warpath or rampage lately, or for the last many months and or the or the other option is to do the organic SEO as well as employee or implement the local GMB pro methods which again, requires consistent effort to get results. If you combine those two though, it is very possible that you can get the GMB to start ranking in some of the other areas, but it takes a lot of effort. And so what does that cost worth? Do you know what I mean? Like how much are you getting paid to do it? Yeah, I don't know what you'd be compensated enough to do it. It really depends on the level of competition. Marco, I know you got some comments on that.

Marco: Yeah, it all the time and effort versus what this client is willing to pay you for your work. I mean, this is for a client and you have to understand the math here, whether it's actually worth it for the client to go there. Now if it is and you're going to be paid for it, there are specific things that you could do. You have to create a relationship. Because as Bradley did, between that location that you're that you want to be displayed in, and your business center because you're centered, as you said, 10 kilometers away, maybe more, maybe less, who knows, only Google knows. But it's that relationship where the centroid can be related and we've seen a bleed over into nearby cities into a nearby county maybe. But you have to give the bot right you have to give that that the math, the algorithm a reason to create that relationship between your business centroid, which is where your business is located and the surroundings and that area that you're targeting outside of that proximity.

We have to override what we call our overriding the proximity factor. And there are very specific things that you could do that I've discussed in both our mastermind and in local GMB Pro to accomplish that. And it's specifically through the GMB and in conjunction with what Bradley just shared in here, I'm not gonna share of course in here, because it's paid training, and people have paid a lot of money to get that. And so but I mean, what Bradley gave you a great suggestion, I don't know. Will is in Australia, they have a post office with a street address in Australia, then, by all means, go get a pin in the area where you want to rank. It's a lot easier to work in another GMB. Now that it's another thing that we teach in local GMB Pro how to optimize your Google My Business listing so that it's ready in and ready to go by the time the pin comes back.

Bradley: Yeah, and the last thing I would recommend is, you know, this is not SEO, but it's a way to get into the maps pack. I don't know if he's in Australia if they do this. In Australia, but in here in the United States, if you have a GMB, and you use Google ads, search ads, and you enable the location extension, as long as you end up with a high the highest quality score, which that's, you know, your max cost per click bid or your or your max cost per click Yeah, your max CPC bid, but also increasing your quality score. So just having really good ads hype, you know, super optimized ads, really good landing page, that kind of stuff. You can get your GMB to rank in the maps three pack above the three-pack like in other words, they've ranked in there with it, but it's an ad and so and it will rank in the three pack as well as if somebody clicks to expand the maps pack to show more, it will rank at the top there. And you can do that by using Google ads, search ads, with the location extension enabled. And if there's nobody else competing, like if there are no other advertisers, other companies using Google Search Ads with the local extension enabled, then you don't even have to have a high quality score to get in that maps pack, you'll be the only one.

If you are competing with other companies that are doing the same thing, then the way to outrank them in the maps three-pack, even though it's a paid ad is to get your your quality score higher, which means a more relevant ad higher click-through rate that our landing page experience, all of that kind of stuff, which again, that's just, you know, standard, basic Google Ads stuff, which by the way, Google Ads has been, I mean, come such a long way as far as their platform with their machine learning, artificial intelligence. They have automated bidding strategies now. They provide you with recommendations three years ago, any recommendation to Google, the ads platform would have given me out to tell you I used to say to my screen, go shut your hat. I mean, because they were awful, they would usually end up costing a lot of money and with very poor results, but I can tell you for a fact because I still managed a lot of bad stuff now. That the automated bidding strategies are really, really, really good. Now, in fact, all I do now is set up manual campaigns just long enough to get enough data into the account where the recommendations start to appear. And what I'll do is I'll test different recommend recommendations that the ads platform provides. And kind of, you know, it takes screenshots and things like that. And I'll test different targeting strap bidding, automated bidding strategies, things like that, to see which ones provide the better results, lowers cost per conversion, all of that kind of stuff. And it's, it's really come a long way, guys, I can't say it's still can be expensive. It still takes time to dial a campaign in, but it's in my opinion if you haven't, I don't know. Again, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but here in the States. They keep pushing more and more add stuff above the fold and more and more SEO related ranking type stuff, right. So organic and organic maps listings below the fold.

With the carousels now like the Google guaranteed ads regular Google Ads ads in the maps pack like it's just insane. So I would recommend that, um, you know, you may want to look at adding ads to your repertoire of services because it's something that I think Google is going to continue pushing more people to paid services including potentially GMB stuff. So I think it's something that if you're not proficient with yet, you probably should start looking into it now. Okay.

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Paul's up he says, Hey, guys, if you run a PO Box to verify GMB, what happens if you stop paying the monthly PO Box rental, I need to re-verify the GMB later that PO Box number will be gone. Can you rent a new PO Box number and get the verification card sent to it somehow? All right. I've only in all of my years now that I've been doing maps SEO and again, knock on wood. I'm not saying that.

It can't happen. But I've only had to re-verify a location via us mail twice. And all the years that I've been doing this which is about 10 now and, and that I mean, I'm talking about, you know, well over 100 GMB listings that I've managed between, you know, lead gen stuff and client stuff well into the hundreds is what I'm saying. And I've only had to re-verify two of them at like, especially the lead gen listings which are spam but you know, their spam listings. PO Box I did you know, I've got many, many of them out there that I've done that with and I've only had to re-verify two of them over all these years. So I used to always renew my P o box PO Boxes that I had verified with. But the problem that I found and this is I stopped doing it and here's why because I would get a phone call from the post office every six or eight months and they would say you have to come in and collect all your mail because your post office boxes full and they would literally put a box like a cardboard box underneath the post office box on the other side where they you know, put the mail in and all that and they would continue

Fill the box up until the box started to overflow. And then then I would get a call from the postmaster at that office location. And they would be mad, like, hey, you've got to come in and clear all this stuff out, or we're going to close your box. And so I would literally once every six months or so I would schedule like two days out of a week, to continuous days to live. And I've mapped it all out. And I would drive from post office location to location to location and collect all this mail. And I used to ask the post office managers, hey, can't you just throw all that stuff out? It's junk mail, and they wouldn't do it because I'd say like, I'm gonna have to drive to your location just to pick up the mail and put it in the trash. There's nothing I need there and they said, doesn't matter. You either come get it or we're going to close your box. And I did that for years, guys. And finally, it got to the point where it was just too cumbersome like it was unmanageable because I have so many of them. So I just said fuck it. I've only had two that I've ever had to re-verify the postcard. So I just stopped paying and I'm actually let every single one of my

Except for the ones that I actually do want to receive mail at which you know, like some valid businesses, I've closed all of my P o boxes. So now just so you know what I do when I do set up which I still do it that way but I still set up PO Boxes for GM bs is it works. I just do a three month, right you can go right online, run a PO Box for three months, very inexpensive. You still got to go to the post office to fill out the paperwork, sign the documents, get the key and the boxes signed and all of that. But then I go back a week later, or 10 days later, get the postcard from Google, verify my GMB listing, then I go right back online, and I cancel the account. And that's it. So it cost me three, three months, which depending on the area, and it could be as low as nine bucks. It's ridiculous. And I just don't renew them anymore. So my answer is, you know, let it go. It's very unlikely that you're ever going to have to re-verify it that way. If you do.

I don't know because I haven't had to do it. Since Google's made all these changes. In the past, I would just go in and you the address the physical location of you know it because I have done that in the past where I've had to revert or I've had to get another box in the same location. And I just went in and change the actual box number and then updated it and requested a new verification card at that point. And then I was able to re-verify it, but I don't know now because it's changed so much the GMB like how they're handling everything, it you may not be able to even do that now or it might cause a suspension and I don't know.

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn't worry about it, though. It's highly unlikely.

You know, remember guys, that's the Nate that that's one of the risks we take when we do something like that. It just it's part of the process. So and I think destroying mail, even by the post office violates federal law. That's why they make you come and pick up your garbage. You

I know I said, I even told him, I'll send something in writing. Like I was like, Okay, I can fax you or send via us mail or email, anyone, any which way you prefer, I can send something that's giving my authorization for you to discard the mail and my P o box and they wouldn't do it. They know like, so I used to do that driving shit. Like, it got to the point where it was ridiculous. They would have to spend literally two full days going around and those are just the ones that were local. So I just stopped doing

our next question says, Okay, guys, thank you so much for the enlightenment. I was battling previously whether to buy another domain or not. Okay, so he's talking about the foreign language stuff. Now I'm relieved to know what to do next. I bought the battle plan version three yesterday. I'd like to implement it for this. Very good. Awesome, thank you. Battle Plan. Yes. Don't skip any of the steps carry it through to the end. And let us know how it

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

Yeah. JACK says I had a temporary office address for our business. I don't know somebody brought it to Google's attention but they can get with all of the reviews, SEO work, etc. and not have to set up a new one from their home address which is verified but it just is sitting there waiting. On review. I saw your post somewhere recently where you liked the PO Box better than the temporary office. Yes, I still still think, you know, it could have very well been that just there was some sort of manual. Remember, there's a big GMB spam team right now that's been out there. That's just you know, their, that's their entire job is to just go try to identify spam listings and terminate them suspend them. And it's very, I mean, it's easy to do it with a PO Box too, but I you know, because the street address is the post office address. However, I've not I have had one recently suspended one of my Tree Service sites. And I think that was the reason because I hadn't done anything in the GMB at all for four months and and I just noticed it was suspended about maybe three weeks ago. And I'm assuming that that got caught up in the same type of thing that I'm assuming yours got caught up in which is just it was man reviewed by the spam team and they saw that it was at a post office so they, they, they suspended it. But I've noticed that those read those offices those shared workspaces and you know things like that as well as using places like ups stores, they tend to get suspended almost immediately or get caught much quicker and sooner than po boxes do. So, unfortunately, it is what it is. As far as if you have now a verified one to a home address that's much better. But if it's not been you know, if it's not been reviewed like in other words, if you submitted the if you verified it because you received the card and entered the number of the pin number and and all of that and submitted it but now it's being it's being left for for review. I know for a fact that there's an issue with that we've heard about it in our mastermind as well as I have a client that tried to verify we you know, I tried to verify another GMB listing for him at an employee's home address.

In a different city, and it was the same thing, it's a valid home address. But once I submitted the pin, because we received it, he sent me a, you know, screen. He took a photo with his phone and sent me the pen. And I verified it. And that was, I'd say a month ago, and it's still pending, still pending for whatever reason. So I think there's just a glitch going on with that. Marco, do you got any comments on that?

Marco: Well, even though it's pending, if it was already verified, everything will go live at the post will go live. So I said, just leave it because I got one go live though. What's that the map won't go live. Yeah, but the post and everything. Everything should be a website in the post. If it's verified. Your pending verification if it's verified, and it goes into pending, then yes, the map, the map listing is there, everything's there, but it's just whatever change you know, I'm telling you that my the one that I'm talking about specifically.

It's been I've submitted the verification number and it says it will be. You know, it takes up to three days to be reviewed before it goes live on Google Maps and it's been stuck in that position like in pending for about a month now and the GMB website is live and published and the GMB posts will will publish to the GMB website. But there's no maps listing. And so the GMB post won't show up in a knowledge panel because there's no knowledge panel either because it the maps listing isn't there. What I'm saying is the GMB website is the only thing out of that entire setup that I did for the GMB that is live, everything else is still not published because it's in pending status. Does that make sense? Yep. So unfortunately, I don't know I don't know how to how to force that either. It used to be that you could have an unverified listing and you could verify it and it would it but it would be published but it would still show as unverified even though you verified it. And then I've had in the past I've had people like our you know, one of our members in our Semantic Mastery mastermind

Who was a high-level local guide? Just go post a review because it was a published listing, although it was unverified. publicly, it showed on verified, and I would have somebody that was a high-level local guide, go post a review. And within a matter of days, sometimes hours it would go, it would say verified, right, but no longer if it's unverified, even if you submitted the verification number, at least in my experience, if it's, if it's still in that pending status, it's not going to publish, which means you can't do anything about it. So, unfortunately, I can't help you with that. You just have to wait. I don't know what else to say.

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Okay, next question. And we're almost out of time. We only got a few minutes left guys. He goes when using the sidebar and listening to post in the category. How many posts did we display if there were 100 posts in the category, what would be the max to display I would just, you know, do 10 something like that. It's not even really 100% necessary it you know it as long as they're only posted URLs that are showing from within that category doesn't bleed the silo the theme of the silo if that makes sense, but there's really no reason to put 100 post URLs or you know, links to post in a sidebar or footer that's, that's just ugly and nobody's going to click through all of that. So, you know, put 5, 10 max maybe I would just do whatever looks an aesthetic you know, whatever looks good, right for your particular design.

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

By the way. Another question. If you don't mind. Guys, do you have any experience using virtual offices to verify your new GMB profile? No, don't do that. I just answered that. Really? And do you also cover the GMB topic in the battle plan for a beginner? Yeah, that's what that's for that it's really for beginners. I mean, it's for beginners and it's just the process the step by step process that we use, whether it's a new site, an established site, local, nonlocal, doesn't matter. Okay, so haven't gone through all the things pages yet, if not which Semantic Mastery product do you recommend for beginners to start building? GMB? Thanks, guys? I am a sheet slasher Oh, sorry.

Okay, uh, what I would recommend is, if you're just doing GMB stuff like there's no better product in my opinion than Local GMB Pro you know, with local, local PR Pro a great add on for that because you can get some really good results using press releases to but if you were, like I said local gym before the battle plan will help you a lot, right because it really points you to the done for you services and MGYB which is your best bet. Use the money that your client gives you to purchase done for you services. But if you want to understand the concepts and how everything goes together on a much deeper level than honestly by local GMB Pro, and that's going to show you how to get much better results out of a single GMB listing instead of trying to build multiple GMB listings. And then obviously we have stuff like local PR pro which is a great complement to that or RYS Academy 16 offensive, but it's very, very powerful. But once again, you can buy done for you drive stacks, which can push GMBs very, very powerfully. You can buy those directly from MGYB. So just go through the battle plan, do that first. And then once you start implementing all everything that we talked about in there, don't skip on parts don't just do 25% of it and contact us and say that's not working. doesn't work like that. If you put all the pieces together will work. There's It doesn't mean you're going to rank every time you put all the pieces together because it depends on the level of competition, a lot of other variables but you do that at link building to it. Posting consistently that kind of stuff. You should get results. If you need additional push after putting those components together. That's when you can get into the advanced training and do the advanced steps. Okay.

Okay, great. This is a good tip. He says I've had two GMBs that got stuck in pending I called the GMB team and acted really stupid. Marco always recommends it when you call G, Google support it all you always ask you act really stupid. He says and asked why it's not going live both went live a week after I called that's a good idea. That's something I have not tried. So thank you for that comment on that.

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there's no other questions, guys. I'm good. I think we're gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let's do it. We're close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

#Semantic Mastery

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daynamartinez22 · 5 years

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 259 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Bradley: Unbelievable.

Before we get into that, though, let’s say hi to everybody real quick. And I, let’s see, I’ll just start the top of my screen Bradley, how’s it going?

Bradley: Yeah, because the most valuable stuff is shared over drinks after the event. So, unfortunately, we don’t record that stuff.

Adam: So next All right, Chris. How are you doing man?

Chris: Doing good. super happy to be back in Austria. Like that Australian Swiss chocolate not like the stuff from dinner.

Adam: All right. I didn’t know that. That was a deal. Well, you got to bring your own supply next time.

Bradley: You can’t Yeah, don’t let that shit on the plane today.

Adam: Hernn, re how you doing you back? You’re back on the East Coast right?

Hernan: So thank you man

Adam: Marco speaking of the weather How you doing man?

What Are Some Good Alternatives For Google Shortener?

Is It Okay For Two Different Companies to Use The Same Phone Number In GMB?

Marco: No, I was fine. Okay.

How Would You Create An SEO Strategy For A Website That Targets Two Demography And Language?

Bradley: Yeah, Marco, what do you think?

Is It Okay To Use Your Target Keywords As Top Of Silo Keywords Regardless Of The Number Of Competing Pages?

How Would You Expand The Proximity Radius Of A GMB Page And Website Of An Electrician Using The Battle Plan?

What Will Happen If You Stop Paying The Monthly PO Box Rental And Need To Reverify The GMB Later?

Marco, would you know about that?

Marco: No, okay. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. It’s highly unlikely.

Is PO Box Better Than Temporary Office?

How Many Posts Do We Need To Display In The Sidebar?

Can I get the charity link please fits ask for it? Okay, cool. He gets you gave it to him.

Do You Have Any Experience When Using Virtual Office Address To Verify A New GMB Profile?

Nope. Nobody has any comments. Well, there’s no other questions, guys. I’m good. I think we’re gonna wrap it up.

Okay, cool. Let’s do it. We’re close enough. Thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Thank you guys, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 259 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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