Tumgik
#yes i put the 196 there because i want people to see it because nobody would probably see this otherwise
capn-o-my-soul · 9 months
Text
can someone pls help me determine whether or not i accidentally mansplained to someone
(long ass post)
<head>
ok so im going to give quite an excessive amount of detail here but i feel like it is necessary because i think i might have mansplained to one of my only friends today and i feel really bad about it.
(btw im (a senior) in high school)
also my friend Anon mentioned in this post is not male.
also also i don't think i ordinarily exhibit traits of toxic masculinity or even masculinity (i've been told i could tell people i was a girl and they'd believe me if i changed my outfits a little bit)
</head>
<exposition>
so the marching band season started last week and basically that means we are learning how to march football game halftime shows for 11 hours a day for 5 days a week in the middle of summer.
in the morning we work on marching technique as well as setting the formations (the big shapes and patterns made of people) and in the afternoons we work on music (and a little more marching fundamentals), separated by an hour's lunch
today was especially hot (irrelevant)
</exposition>
<body>
so today i came inside the school after the morning practice and put my stuff down in the trumpet room (each section puts their stuff in a classroom) and then i washed the sunscreen off of me and went to sit down with my friend Anon for lunch (i don't normally eat lunch but i still like to sit with them while they eat lunch)
and so Anon was eating lunch and we were talking and then Anon sees one of their friends (who is in the color guard (the people with the fun flags and (fake) rifles)) and was like "HI [name]!!!" and Anon's friend came over and was like y'know talking and stuff like a normal person might.
<irrelevant section>
the color guard at my school does marching outside with the band during the morning then has a four hour break then comes back in the evening to work on flag twirling technique
so Anon's friend was on their four-hour break which starts at the same time as my lunch
</irrelevant section>
so Anon's friend came over (i'm in a computer science club with them (them as in Anon's friend) so i've spoken to them a couple times) and i was like "hi" and then Anon asked what Anon's friend was up to. Anon's friend said that they were studying for the upcoming August SAT (which i am also in the process of studying for) and i said "omg im working on that too!" and they were like "omg cool yeah i'm trying really hard to get a good score on this one because i DO NOT want to have to have it hanging over my head until the october SAT" (the october SAT is the only one after august until december and college applications are due in between november and january)
<relevant side note section>
my school makes all sophomores and juniors take the PSAT for free on one day in october. on the same day, seniors optionally take the SAT for free.
additionally, there is another date that the SAT is offered (not for free and not by my school) that is also in october
</relevant side note section>
and then Anon was like "yeah i'm not doing early action or early decision or anything so i'm probably going to take some extra time to study up for the october SAT"
[here's where i think i went wrong]
then i asked Anon "are you taking the free SAT at our school or are you taking the other one?"
then they seemed a little bit confused which to me seemed to indicate that they weren't aware of the one offered by our school.
then i said "the one offered by our school as in the one on that one day in october each year where all the sophomores and juniors take the PSAT and the seniors take the SAT for free"
and they seemed to hesitate a little bit before resuming the normal pace of conversation (which could have been my imagination as i was exhausted) which to me seemed to indicate that i did something wrong
at this point i don't even recall the rest of the conversation or even the rest of lunch for the most part because i was thinking about this the whole time.
(Anon didn't seem upset or anything and there was no perceptible change in the mood)
</body>
so what do you guys think
did i mansplain to them
thank you for your time and as a reward for reading this whole thing i shall grant thee a silly, low-quality picture of my cat
Tumblr media
4 notes · View notes
trashlie · 2 years
Note
Hi Ashlie! Sorry if you've been asked this before (maybe if u could pls link up a past reply to this if u have before?? ;-;) but in ILY how do you think we'll return back to the scene with Nol & Shinae (w/ Shinae gripping Nol's wrist) ? (and perhaps u may have a brand new look on this after recent events in the chapters as of lately?)
In the beginning of this flashback arc I use to think we are running this arc as Shinae's retelling it to Nol (as if she's finally letting Nol (not yeongi) to get to really know her, as if they are meeting for the first time) but now i feel such memories are too intimate and personal to share all of sudden. I have a feeling we're gonna have this drama cliche where they get interrupted by someone (or something) like right after she tells him "Nobody is allowed to touch that", but I really hope that's not the case ! >< I want something new & refreshing if anything i want that scene between Nol & Shinae to last even longer because we've just been waiting for it for months ! (even years!!)
I've only briefly touched on it in other asks responses, so don't worry! I think my thoughts flipflop every time I'm asked, anyway, so I don't mind digging in to this!
Firstly, I think we are within 3 (fast pass) episodes of returning to the present, and that's a VERY generous estimate. After seeing the direction of FP 196, I feel very strongly that 197 MIGHT take us to Shinae's Fall, but I think it's more likely to be in 198 or 199? I hope I get the brain energy to make a quick post about what I THINK might go down, because I have some IDEAS. If it does happen next episode, I think it might feel a little too swift....? I think the timeline has to inch along JUST a smidge further, but I'll get to that in that "prediction" (lol) post. THAT SAID we are SO SO CLOSE!
I think I've said it before in here, or maybe on reddit, but I've always had the sense that yes, this is not a recollection from Shinae to Nol. Based on her reaction to him, I don't think she's inclined to tell him what happened - or rather, if she does, she's going to give him a vague summary of it. But more than that, I think this flashback arc serves multiple purposes, or else it wouldn't be so drawn out and rich in detail. Part of it is, yes, for our sake as viewers to finally have the full story and really understand Shinae's situation, to understand just how Alyssa caused so much hurt that she's carried around forever. Alyssa was not simply the straw that broke the camel's back like I had believed before. Shinae didn't shut down and put up a guard solely because she'd had enough of being stomped on by people. Alyssa like, broke Shinae and she is only just starting to recover from the ramifications of placing so much trust in someone who turned around and hurt her so much.
But I think by now we can also see that it was always a more nuanced story than we thought. I was actually looking at some webtoon comments earlier on some of the episodes up to 188 (which I rarely do) and even at that point a lot of people were... I'm going to say willfully ignorant lol to a lot of the nuanced complexity in the situation, and a lot of that is only being made richer in 196. What I'm getting at with this is: I think Shinae doesn't hold a lot of animosity because she realizes there was a lot more going on than she ever knew or understood - in fact, she actually addressed this during the Kim formal arc, when she noted that Alyssa is afraid she'll tell Nol what happened, and admits that she herself doesn't even fully know the truth. I'll get more into this in another post, but the basic gist is that there are clearly a lot of layers to their relationship, and things aren't always what they appear on the surface, and middle school Shinae certainly didn't know that and even at the formal, Shinae didn't yet know the truth.
I'm thinking, then, that this flashback is also for Shinae. She hides her scar and represses her memories of middle school, locking them away, and given the way her recollection of the fall appeared so hazy and distorted in episode 16 as well as the way Alyssa appeared in Shinae's mind as a result of "Think of everything that makes you mad" while beating up the bear suit and she paused - it's safe to say it's not something Shinae thinks about, and lol why would she? It's clearly a painful memory wrought with emotions. But moreover, think of this: prior to Alyssa, the people Shinae is angry at, the ones she thinks "you make me mad" towards - Nol, Kousuke, Yui - are all people who have actively and recently hurt her and done things to make her angry. But everyone else who follows - Alyssa, her mother, her dad, herself - are people who make her angry because she doesn't understand. She doesn't understand why Alyssa had a change of heart, she doesn't understand why her mother left and separated her from her sister and never stayed in touch, she doesn't understand why her father is failing at being a father and put them in such great risk out of pride and shame, and she doesn't understand why she keeps letting herself get hurt by people why she keeps letting them in only to deceive and hurt her. So I think maybe when Nol addressed her scar, when he asked if it was punishment and dared to address the very thing she actively hides and represses and refuses to acknowledge or think about, she was forced to deal with an onslaught of recollection that she's kept at bay. He broke a dam and now she's faced with the very thing she's avoided, and I think maybe it's to provide her with insight.
Much like with Nol, while neither of them handled things in a good way, Alyssa was dealing with more than Shinae saw the surface, had secrets she was too afraid to reveal, secrets she thought would scare away the only friend she had, so she acts in defense and it leaves Shinae confused. Without knowing what Alyssa is hiding, what she's guarding, how is Shinae to understand? How is she supposed to move on? In 196, I think it's implied that Shinae doesn't understand why Alyssa is being bullied - I think up until now she, like the rest of us, has thought Alyssa is being picked on for being nerdy, for hanging around with Shinae, for not "fitting in", and given the way that Shinae admitted to herself at the formal that she doesn't know the whole truth, I'm guessing that means she isn't fully picking up what they're putting down, she doesn't get what is Alyssa is being bullied over. Now that she's older, though, now that she's a little more removed from the situation, maybe these memories will offer a little enlightenment to what really went on.
The scar can only be a punishment if Shinae did something wrong. She didn't put her trust in a person who didn't care about her and turned on her the moment she could. She put her trust in a person who wasn't ready to reveal their secrets - just like she did with Nol. She piled on hope and trust and cared for someone who only "betrayed her" in that she didn't understand. Shinae wanted to be let in neither of them were willing to do that. But I think it's important that it's emphasizing Alyssa wasn't as malicious or mean-spirited as believed before.
Shinae was not punished for trusting the wrong people. They were just people not ready to share that part of them yet. And look, isn't that the same with her? Only just now is she revealing to Nol why she was this way, what made her so guarded, and still it's so vague and only in response to their similar experiences.
I know this a lot of preamble lol but this is my new insight on this arc that this may be a moment of revelation for Shinae, who has refused to acknowledge the past and locked it all away as she built up walls around her. But Nol has, yet again, managed to knock down those walls and she's bared a little more vulnerable, having confessed that she, too, has been dogged by misfortune, her scar now seen by him. I DO think, in a way, it is Nol and Shinae meeting each other for the first time, though. Nol is not hiding his true self from him and she is revealing little truths she hasn't even admitted to herself until this moment, and I've said it before, but I think it's putting them on a really level ground with each other. Shinae has now seen a glimpse into the secrets and Nol carries, has learned who he is when he isn't wearing his Yeonggi mask, and I think...? it's a moment of shared honesty? Nol has to have known that Shinae would feel antagonized by him calling out the scar - he knows he's never seen it before, that it means she must carefully keep it hidden, that she's always been cagey and guarded and this would be no different - so does he address it in hopes that she will bare some of her secrets to him, as he's unwittingly done with her?
What I'm hoping - especially if this is a moment of insight for Shinae - is when we return to the present, maybe we'll see her with mixed emotions on her face, as realization dawns on her? Maybe a moment of vague honesty - that she realizes this scar wasn't really a punishment after all, or that sometimes situations are more complex than they realize at the time? Something to allude that though this scar is a private, formative foundation of who she is, that it's just another series of unfortunate events in her life? Maybe we'll even come back to the present and she'll tell him a vague recollection of what happened - about a time someone she trusted and cared about accidentally hurt her, and how it damaged her in a way she couldn't begin to undo until he broke her shell? God, I would LOVE that, actually - I don't need her to say WHO hurt her, I just want her to admit that it was an event that altered the entire trajectory of her life, and that it was Nol's friendship that helped to undo the damage it caused, so that he can understand his importance in her life. Suddenly, it is not enough for me for her to tell him he's important to her, I want him to understand why he was something worth chasing down in the rain as she anguished and pleaded with him, and so he understands what it means for her to take him back.
I know the fear of an interruption is high, and I do go back and forth on whether or not I think it will happen. It IS highly cliche and frankly.... it's a cheap tactic lol. An interruption is meant to prolong a conflict, to ensure there is no closure reached, to carry on some kind of tension, but the tension has, thus far, been diffused by this flashback. Wouldn't an interruption be overkill? There was so much build up to this moment - from the moment Nol pleaded guilty and became unreachable, every time he slipped right through everyone's fingers, every time he did something to add fuel to the fire, the curveball (if you will lol) of Shinae's moment with her dad, it was all rising action leading to the climatic confession of "I really like her! She's special to me". They are in the process of re-establishing their relationship, re-establishing their boundaries. It is Nol's grand return to the people from who he ran away, and for their tension to be broken by anything but their own choices, before they've resolved anything, would be CRUEL and, frankly speaking, shitty storytelling. Nol said it himself - this is his last night before he leaves, and I think when he made that decision to climb up onto the roof with Shinae, it was yes, to get some closure and maybe to reassure himself of his standing? Does he have friends to return to when his sentence is up? Does he deserve to return to them when his sentence is up?
So yes, I agree - and ardently hope! - that they won't be interrupted. I think we'll return to the present and maybe the tension will be diffused, or at least it will be shortly thereafter, and I REALLY hope that Nol will join the party. When Shinae said she doesn't need him here, he said he needs him here, so I hope he plans to go see Soushi and Dieter and make up with them, too, and to maybe allow himself one night (or, really a couple hours at this point lol) to really truly enjoy something - not for absolution, not with the fear that he will be punished for having fun, but to make an active choice to enjoy the moment while he has the chance. God I want that SO BADLY. I also think that returning to the present, if Shinae reveals even a vague truth to Nol and they release their weird hold lol it would be, hmmm, I guess acceptance? Nol knowing Shinae is done running, Shinae deciding it's okay to put her trust in him again?
I mean, a really cheesy thing I'd like to see but I don't know if we'll get is some kind of, idk, plans...? For visitation or something? I think Nol wouldn't want anyone to visit him but wouldn't it be nice if they did, anyway? Ground him to who he is, tether him so that he doesn't lose himself while locked up - and always serve a reminder that there are people waiting for him on the other side, people who support and cherish him. UGGGHHH feelings! lol
I do want to see a little more of this new dynamic for Nol and Shinae - this kind of honesty and equal footing, this new evolution of their relationship where neither of them has the upper hand, neither of them have ulterior motives, neither of them running and chasing each other but finally facing each other as formidable allies. It's SO satisfying to see, even if they are both on edge at this moment. I want to see that soften, if only a little, as they accept each other again. I know we probably won't have a lot of episodes left before the morning comes to take Nol away, but I hope we get to see him at the party and feel real enjoyment for once.
Oops, late add on but, now that I'm thinking about it.... I do think there is a possibility that after they've resolved things themselves - relinquished their hold on each other, lowered their defenses, I think there's a chance Minhyuk could show up? ONLY because we all know Nol and Minhyuk meeting will likely NOT go well, and if Nol goes and joins the party, it feels like.... hmmm it doesn't feel, narratively, like that would flow as well. There's too many people around. But if Minhyuk comes looking for Shinae and finds Nol there, he might get his opportunity to go hulking oppressive brother lol and say a few choice words - but more importantly, Shinae would have the opportunity to tell Minhyuk that it's okay, that things are fine now or something. (I still see Minhyuk giving him the "I have my eye on you buddy" stink-eye, though lol) And I'm fine with that! As long as it's not an interruption that is further delaying their resolution, I'm fine with anyone coming to the rooftop (especially if it involves Nol saying "I'll be joining" or something lol) but especially in this case!
#I Love Yoo#ILY#ILY Brainrot#Shinae Yoo#Nol#Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn#no spoilers in here for once huhuhu! i do vaguely mention events of 196 but i don't SAY anything so!#I could talk forever and ever about this so please know how difficult it was for me to curb myself in this answer lmao#i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this new chapter of shinae and nol's relationship and what i hope is in store for them#but also yes about how i really really really need them to have the time they need to resolve things to not be interrupted before they#decide they are ready. IT WOULD BE LIKE HAVING TO SNEEZE AND IT NEVER HAPPENS YOU KNOW? we'd have to wait for the time jump to see ANY#resolution and UGH NO that's just bad writing all around lol. you don't take a moment that's finally hit a climax it was building to and go#TO BE CONTINUED TEEHEE#ESP after a flashback arc that's gone on for literally MONTHS lol#i have to believe it means Shinae and Nol will have the opportunity to make their amends with each other#I think this is also really setting up Nol + Shinae's relationship for the timeskip#like i know we are still a ways off from that because I believe we will see Shinae and co graduate high school after a brief time jump#following this party and at that time we might get to see what Yujing has been working on and THEN big time jump#but it's really important to reestablish that relationship to define that dynamic and to prepare it for when they are full fledged adults#tie up these loose ends and give us a taste of what is to come maybe?#which is also why i hope we get to see Nol at the party making amends with Dieter and Soushi so that he is part of their future too#AND ALSO BECAUSE I JUST DESPERATELY WANT NOL TO JUST... FOR ONE MOMENT EMBRACE HAPPINESS EMBRACE THE CHOICES HE WANTS TO MAKE#TO STOP DENYING HIMSELF WHAT HE DESIRES BECAUSE HE'S AFRAID FOR THEM TO GET HURT#TO STOP DENYING HIMSELF THE HAPPINESS HE DOESN'T THINK HE DESERVES ;AAAA;#LET HIM! HAVE! A MOMENT OF PEACE! OF HAPPINESS!#something to hang on to when the sun steals him away and he has to leave#something to remind him he is deserving of the happiness people choose to give him and that he deserves to indulge in it#;AAAAAAAAAAAAAA;#oh nonny did you expect all this feel barf lmao aaahhhhhhhhhh
5 notes · View notes
gammija · 3 years
Text
The final Web!Martin evidence list
Now that canon is done, and we’ve got word of god confirmation that Web!Martin wasn’t complete nonsense, I decided to go back to my lil chronological evidence list and actually clean it up a bit, delete parts that in hindsight weren't all that indicative, and put everything in a slightly more readable format. (Obligatory disclaimer that i don’t and never did believe or advocate for some kind of evil web!martin, and that I'm not intending to connect a moral judgement to martin (or anyone else for that matter) having some of these traits)
So here: The (hopefully, please) final list with Web!Martin Evidence! Presented in order of importance, according to. me
The final (hopefully) Web!Martin evidence list
(In order from most to least obvious)
Spiders
I mean, it’s called the Web. TMA reiterates quite a few times that Martin liked spiders. Sometimes it IS that easy.
MAG022: Martin: "I like spiders. Big ones, at least. Y’know, y’know the ones you can see some fur on; I actually think they’re sort of cute -"
MAG038: | Sasha: "A spider?" Jon: "Yeah. I tried to kill it…" [...] Sasha: [Chuckles] "Well, I won’t tell Martin." Jon: "Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem."
MAG059: Jon: "I have done my best to prevent Martin reading this statement in too much detail. I have no interest in having another argument about spiders."
MAG079: Jon: "Apparently, biologically, his account of the spiders doesn’t make any sense according to Martin."
MAG197: Martin: “What? Because I like spiders? Well, used to.”
Lies and subterfuge
Martin is able to use lying and subterfuge to achieve his goals, and is called manipulative a few times.
Lies:
MAG022: Martin: "[He] became slightly more co-operative after I lied to him and told him that one of the upstairs residents had buzzed me in."
MAG056: Martin: "I lied on my CV."
MAG158: Peter: “But you said –” Martin: “Honestly, I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to hear.”
MAG164: Jon: "You – I actually believed you!"
MAG189: Martin: “Sorry. Sorry, John. Not sure how much everything up there actually understood what was going on. But, y’know, I didn’t want to take any chances so it made sense to… um…” Jon: “Put on a show?” Martin: “Yeah, basically, more or less.”
MAG191: Martin: "That's not true." Arun: "Liar!"
Subterfuge:
The plan in 118, which revolved around convincing Elias that Martin was only “acting out”, to create a distraction for Melanie. (Also compare the way he evades giving a straight answer here with the way Annabelle talks in 196.)
Working with Peter in s4 under false pretenses, to distract him from Jon and eventually try to learn what Peter wanted.
Manipulation accusations:
These, I know, are somewhat contentious, since it’s mostly villains saying this to him. I’m still including them, since
1): From a media analysis standpoint, being mentioned 3 times is a sign to pay attention, even when it may not be the full truth.
2): I only see it as describing Martin’s behaviour in the previous points, not as a moral judgement; Especially since he almost always ‘manipulates’ people in positions of power over him.
Still, if it bothers anyone, feel free to ignore these.
MAG138: Martin: "That’s it? No, no monologue, no mind games? You love manipulating people!" Elias: "That makes two of us."
MAG186: Martin: “I can be a real manipulative prick, you know that?” Also Martin: “Oh yeah.”
MAG196: Annabelle: “Because you always managed to get what you wanted through smiles and shrugs and stammerings that weren’t nearly as awkward as they seemed.” [SMALL SOUND OF MARTIN’S CONCESSION TO THE POINT] Martin: “Point taken.”
The Lonely/the Web
The Lonely and the Web sometimes affect Martin to similar degrees.
In season 3, when Martin is getting used to reading statements for the first time, most of them leave him emotionally affected: MAG084, MAG088, MAG090,
MAG095: Martin: “S-S-Statement… done.” [HEAVY BREATHING & TREMBLING AS MARTIN STEADIES HIMSELF] “I don’t like recording these. There. I-I said it.”,
MAG098: Martin: [Panting] “End of statement.” [Deep breath] “I, um, I think I might need to sit down. Oh. Yeah, I am. Right. I don’t, uh, I’m not really sure if these are actually getting easier or harder. I mean I don’t feel –”
Only the last two statements he reads are remarkably easier. This might be a hint that Martin is just getting used to reading them, but the quote from MAG098 seems to contradict that. Either way, it’s likely not a coincidence that those last two happen to be the Lonely and the Web:
MAG108: Martin: “Statement ends.” (exhale) “That wasn’t so bad…”
MAG110: Martin: “Statement ends.” [...] “I mean, I think it sounds like a Jurgen Leitner book. About spiders. Hm. Good John didn’t have to read this one, anyway. I know he’s not a fan. Although, this one wasn’t too bad, actually! I – yeah. Anyway.”
In season 5, there are two powers’ Domains that actually affected Martin mentally, as opposed to only physically: the Lonely’s, in 170 (and arguably 186), and, depending on your interpretation, in 172, when Martin went exploring without knowing why he did so.
Proximity
Martin investigates a lot of the Web statements during season 1 to 3 (in other words, when the archive team still researches statements). The only ones he isn’t mentioned in during this period are MAG019 and MAG020, when he’s being harrassed by worms, and MAG081, which Jon records by himself outside of the institute.
Most notably, he’s the one who discovered the statement in MAG114, ‘Cracked Foundations’, which is the one statement in the entire show that sets up the interdimensional properties of HTR.
The Web!Lighter passed through Martin's hands first, before he gave it to Jon.
Similarly, Annabelle mostly spoke to Martin in season 5, despite most other Avatars usually focusing on Jon.
Aesthetics
Apart from the above obviously Web related areas, there are some other aesthetics which are mentioned in connection to both the Web and Martin, throughout canon.
These are describing the Web;
These are describing Martin.
Tapes:
Martin is the only character to treat the tape recorders as friends - any other character is either indifferent, or treats them as enemies.
MAG039: Martin: "I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm."
MAG154 Martin: “Oh. Hi. Hello again.” … (small laugh) “Sorry pal, false alarm this time.”
MAG156 Martin: “Mm? Oh.” [HE LAUGHS, GENTLY.] “Yeah. (rustling paper) I was going to read one. Hate for you to miss it!” [SHORT, FORCED LAUGH, AS HE FLAPS THE STATEMENT AROUND.]
MAG170 Martin: “Oh. Oh, hello. What’s this? Wow, retro! What are you up to, little buddy; just – listening? That’s okay. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”
MAG190 Jon: "[The tapes] seem to like [Martin]."
Retro:
MAG069: Statement: “I only saw Annabelle Cane once during this period. She wasn’t hard to pick out. She dressed like a vintage clothing store exploded on her, and her short bleach-blonde hair stood out sharply against dark skin.”
MAG160: Jon: “Anyways, don’t tell me the phonebox down there doesn’t appeal to your retro aesthetic.” Martin: “It – might. Maybe.”
MAG163: Annabelle/the Web callying Martin via an old payphone: [ A PHONE RINGS. IT’S NOT THE TINNY, ELECTRONIC SOUND OF A CELLPHONE – NO, THIS IS A TRUE, HEAVY, CLASSIC RING.] Martin: “Uh. John? Uh, J, John – the, uh, payphone that’s – here, for some reason – it’s ringing?”
Hatred of burns:
MAG067: Jack Barnabas’ statement: “I looked up and noticed within the corner of the room, where there had been a spider’s web this morning, there was just a faint wisp of smoke.” “Another held a bag that seemed to be full of candles, while a third had a clear plastic container filled with hundreds of tiny spiders.”
MAG139: Statement by member of Cult of the Lightless Flame: “The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand; all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.” Agnes burned down Hilltop Road.
MAG145: The Web ties Gertrude to Agnes, stopping the Desolation’s ritual (the only Power whose ritual the Web is known to have prevented).
MAG167: Gertrude enlists Agnes’/the Desolation’s help in order to burn her assistant Emma, who was Web aligned.
MAG169: Martin: "Look, I just – don’t want to get burned, all right? It’s, it’s like my least favorite pain ever. [...] I, I legitimately hate burns, alright? They’re, they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just – it – it just makes me sick; I, I hate it. Hate it!"
Phrasing:
MAG039: Martin: "I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. [...] It's just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think."
MAG079: Martin's poem: "The threads of people walking, living, lovi–"
MAG117: Martin: "This last couple of years, I’ve always been running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but, but now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good leaving my own little web. Oh, oh, Christ, I hope John doesn’t actually listen to these. “Good lord, is Martin becoming some sort of spider person?” No, John, it’s an expression, chill out! Besides, spiders are fine. I mean, yes, people are scared of them, obviously, but actual spiders, they just want to help you out with flies."
MAG167: Jon: “Methinks the Spider dost protest too much.” Martin: “Jon –” Jon: “Joking! Just joking.”
Personality:
How applicable these are depends heavily on how you interpret Martin's own personality, so your mileage may vary.
MAG008: Statement: “Nobody ever said a word against Raymond himself, though, who was by all accounts a kind and gentle soul [...]”
MAG123: Jon: "The Web does seem to have a preference for those who prefer not to assert themselves."
MAG147: Annabelles statement: "I discovered a deep and enduring talent inside myself for lying. [...] My manipulations were not intricate, but they were far beyond what was expected of a child my age, and I have always believed that the key to manipulating people is to ensure that they always under- or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans."
Word of God and Annabelle
I kinda wanted to ‘prove’ that Web!Martin had quite a bit of evidence to back it up, hence this header being last. But of course, in this post-canon world, there are a few lines that most obviously confirm the theory:
MAG197: Martin is Web enough to be able to read the 'vibrations', like Annabelle, and see Jon and Basira (the latter being especially notable, as he hadn't known she was there beforehand): [CHITTERING, BUZZING AND HIGH-PITCHED SQUEALS CHANGE CADENCE] Martin: "Wait… Wait, hang on, is that him?" Annabelle: "Yes. I guess you’re better with the Web than we thought." Martin: "And – Wait, ha– No, uh… is that… Basira? He – He’s got Basira with him!" Annabelle: "Yes."
Season 5 Q&A part 2: Jonny: “Essentially, it was fascinating looking at the fandom and, like, the Web!Martin believers, because what they were doing was correctly picking up on hints dropped in the early seasons that were later, like, not exactly abandoned, but it was much more like, ‘Well, no, he does have like aspects of The Web to him, but he is moreover The Lonely.’ And that came about very… very organically, really. Because throughout Season 3 and going into Season 4, we had this conversation and we were like, ‘No, actually he's like-” Alex: “‘It can't be, it cannot be, it must be the other way round’ Yeah.”
(Note that they say “throughout season 3 and going into season 4,” which likely means that season 1, season 2, and at least part of season 3, aka half of the entire show, were written with Web!Martin as an intentional possibility.)
If you read all that, thanks so much! Obviously, Web!Martin never really came to fruition, so it's fine if you still don't like it. This is just a post explaining where it was coming from, at least for me and the other theorists I've spoken to.
304 notes · View notes
Text
Some Quotes
I re read the Harry Potter books and here are some quotes I felt I wanted to remember
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them. Page 192
‘And you’re not sitting with the Prefects today, either,’ said George. ‘Christmas is a time for family.’ Page 218
(Dumbledore) It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Page 230
(Neville) ‘I’m worth twelve of you, Malfoy,’ he stammered. Page 240
(Hermione) ‘Flitwick told me in secret that I got a hundred and twelve percent on his exam. They’re not throwing me out after that.’ Page 291
(Hermione) ‘Books! And cleverness! There are more important things - friendship and bravery.’ Page 308
(Dumbledore) ‘It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.’ Page 329
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the end, he chose the same new subjects as Ron, feeling that if he was rubbish at them, at least he’d have someone friendly to help him. Page 267
‘Because that’s what Hermione does,’ says Ron, shrugging. ‘When in doubt, go to the library.’ Page 269
(Dumbledore) It is out choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, for more than our abilities. Page 352
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
(Hermione) ‘Poor Crookshanks, that witch said he’d been in there for ages: no one wanted him.’ Page 64
‘We - shall I make a cup of tea?’ said Ron. Harry stared at him.   ‘It’s what my mum does whenever someone’s upset,’ Ron muttered, shrugging. Page 232
Even without Divination, she was taking more subjects than anybody else. Page 319
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Yes, that would be Hermione’s advice: go straight to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult the book. Page 18
Hermione, who had turned rather pink again, seemed to be trying not to look too pleased with herself. Page 196
But Harry didn’t care, he wouldn’t have cared if Karkaroff had given him a zero; Ron’s indignation on his behalf was worth about a hundred points to him. He didn’t tell Ron this, of course, but his heart felt lighter than air as he turned to leave the enclosure. Page 304
He was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort’s feet...he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defence was possible... Page 558
(Dumbledore) ‘Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right, and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory.’ Page 608
As Hagrid had said, what would come, would come...and he would have to meet it when it did. Page 617
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 
‘Bill doesn’t like him either, said Ginny, as though that settled the matter. Page 64
‘Yeah, size is no guarantee of power,’ said George. ‘Look at Ginny.’ Page 92
‘The witch spoke in a fluttery, girlish, high-pitched voice that took harry aback; he had been expecting a croak. Page 135
‘Well, congratulations,’ said Moody, still glaring at Ron with his normal eye, ‘authority figures always attract trouble, but I suppose Dumbledore thinks you can withstand most major jinxes or he wouldn’t have appointed you...’ Page 156
Harry’s mood suddenly lifted. His father had not been a prefect either. Page 157
Seeing Hagrid again was one of the things he’d been looking forward to most. Page 181
Harry could not remember Hermione ever neglecting to read when instructed to, or indeed resisting the temptation to open any book that came under her nose. Page 223
Hermione drew herself up to her full height; her eyes were narrowed and her bushy hair seemed to crackle with electricity. Page 236
‘Wow, I wonder what it’d be like to have a difficult life?’ said Harry sarcastically. Page 242
Who cared about a stupid flying horse; Cho thought he had been really brave. For a moment, he considered accidentally-on-purpose showing her his cut hand as he helped her tie her parcel on to the owl... Page 263
She (Hermione) looked up at Ron and her frostiness seemed to melt. Page 272
(Luna) ‘Just because you’re so narrow-minded you need to have everything shoved under your nose before you-’ Page 319
‘Haven’t e got a counter-jinx or this?’ Fudge asked Umbridge impatiently, gesturing at Marietta’s face. ‘So she can speak freely?’  ‘I have not yet managed to find one,’ Umbridge admitted grudgingly, and Harry felt a surge of pride in Hermione’s jinxing ability. Page 566
‘Well usually when a person shakes their head,’ said McGonagall coldly, ‘ they mean “no”. So unless Miss Edgecombe is using a form of sign-language as yet unknown to humans -’ Page 569
Harry struggled around to see who was half strangling him and saw Professor McGonagall crouched beside him; she had forced both him and Marietta out of harms way. Page 573
(Dumbledore) ‘On the contrary...the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.’ Page 758
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
(Snape) ‘You think he is mistaken? Or that I have somehow hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen?’ Page 23
‘I enjoyed the meetings, too,’ said Luna serenely. ‘It was like having friends.’ Page 115
...and watched Pansy stroke the sleek blond hair off Malfoy’s forehead, smirking as she did so, as though anyone would have loved to have been in her place. Page 125
It was a mark of the strength of their friendship that Ron did not laugh. Page 141
‘Humph,’ snorted Professor McGonagall. ‘It’s high time your (Neville’s) grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she’s got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have - particularly after what happened at the Ministry.’ Page 145
He did not usually lie in bed reading his textbooks; that sort of behaviour, as Ron rightly said, was indecent in anybody except Hermione, who was simply weird that way. Page 198
On the other hand, the Prince had proved a much more effective teacher than Snape so far. Page 199
‘I like really good Quidditch players,’ Hermione corrected her, still smiling. Page 260
She (Hermione) looked too fierce to argue with at that moment, so Harry dropped the subject of Ron and recounted all that he had overheard between Malfoy and Snape. Page 294
(Slughorn) ‘Had a house-elf taste every bottle after what happened to your poor friend Rupert.’ Page 403
It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. Page 536
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(Yaxley) ‘He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks...’ Page 2
‘This isn’t your average book,’ said Ron. ‘It’s pure gold: Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches... You’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.’ Page 90
Kreacher’s thin arms trembled with the weight of the pan, still held aloft. ‘Perhaps just one more, Master Harry, for luck?’ Page 178
The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ mouldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent and unknowing. Page 267
(Hermione) ‘Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn’t it?’ Page 312
(Hermione) I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!’ Page 335
The three of them spoke at the same time; Hermione said, ‘the Clock,’ Ron said, ‘the wand,’ and Harry said, ‘the stone.’ Page 337
Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautiful painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits of Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realised that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends ... friends ... friends ... Page 340
(Neville) ‘The thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you did it, Harry.’ Page 467
His eyes feasted on her (Lily), and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough. Page 571
95 notes · View notes
mill3nniumforc3 · 5 years
Text
200: My crush’s name is: Russell :) 199: I was born in: April 1994 198: I am really: energetic 197: My cellphone company is: Verizon 196: My eye color is: hazel 195: My shoe size is: 7.5-8.5, depending on the shoe 194: My ring size is: 7.5 193: My height is: 5′5″ 192: I am allergic to: penicillin, cats, pollen, and strong scents 191: My 1st car was: I’ve never owned my own car. 190: My 1st job was: babysitting. First real job was a desk job at my university 189: Last book you read: I don’t remember. I don’t have time to read for leisure. 188: My bed is: comfy 187: My pet: Seamus the miniature schnauzer and Sugar the Aussie-mo 186: My best friend: Ashlyn 185: My favorite shampoo is: Dove 184: Xbox or ps3: neither 183: Piggy banks are: for kids and rainy days 182: In my pockets: nothing 181: On my calendar: going river tubing on Saturday, party next Saturday, trip for T’s birthday weekend, and possibly going to Kennywood and Kings Island sometime in August. 180: Marriage is: something for my future self 179: Spongebob can: do anything 178: My mom: is the bestest 177: The last three songs I bought were?: who buys music anymore? 176: Last YouTube video watched: probably an ASMR video 175: How many cousins do you have?: too many to count 174: Do you have any siblings?: three sisters 173: Are your parents divorced?: no 172: Are you taller than your mom?: yep 171: Do you play an instrument?: piano, drums, bells, and I know three chords of the guitar 170: What did you do yesterday?: sleep [ I Believe In ] 169: Love at first sight: sure 168: Luck: yes 167: Fate: maybe? 166: Yourself: depends on the day 165: Aliens: not really... 164: Heaven: yes 163: Hell: Do I believe in it? Yes, because God is just. Do I believe people are damned there? No, because God is loving. 162: God: yes 161: Horoscopes: no. It’s funny to see “horoscope” posts and see if they apply to me, but it’s a bunch of b.s. A bunch of Aries aren’t going to have the same day/month/year. That’s ridiculous. 160: Soul mates: I’m not sure if I do or don’t, but I do believe in love. 159: Ghosts: no 158: Gay Marriage: of course! 157: War: it’s an unfortunate and unnecessary part of life 156: Orbs: no 155: Magic: yes [ This or That ] 154: Hugs or Kisses: both 153: Drunk or High: drunk 152: Phone or Online: online 151: Red heads or Black haired: no comment 150: Blondes or Brunettes: brunettes 149: Hot or cold: hot 148: Summer or winter: summer 147: Autumn or Spring: spring 146: Chocolate or vanilla: chocolate 145: Night or Day: night 144: Oranges or Apples: apples 143: Curly or Straight hair: straight 142: McDonalds or Burger King: McD’s (though I’m probably biased because I work there) 141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: both 140: Mac or PC: PC 139: Flip flops or high heals: flip flops 138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: sweet and poor 137: Coke or Pepsi: neither 136: Hillary or Obama: Obama 135: Burried or cremated: I want to be cremated and have my ashes buried with a seed and grow into a tree 134: Singing or Dancing: dancing 133: Coach or Chanel: neither 132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: Kat 131: Small town or Big city: small town 130: Wal-Mart or Target: Target 129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: Ben 128: Manicure or Pedicure: mani 127: East Coast or West Coast: east coast 126: Your Birthday or Christmas: Christmas. My birthday stopped being special after I turned 19. I get good food every year on Christmas. 125: Chocolate or Flowers: chocolate 124: Disney or Six Flags: Six Flags 123: Yankees or Red Sox: Indians [ Here’s What I Think About ] 122: War: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. 121: George Bush: he had some good policies. Better than Trump, that’s for damn sure. 120: Gay Marriage: should never be illegal again. 119: The presidential election: #FuckTrump #VoteBlueNoMatterWho #ImpeachTheMF 118: Abortion: all my life, I was told to be pro-life. These days, I don’t know anymore, but I think my beliefs are closer to pro-choice than pro-life. 117: MySpace: it’s not 2008 anymore. 116: Reality TV: glad it’s not my life 115: Parents: they’re doing their best. I’m not looking to be one anytime soon though. 114: Back stabbers: bye! 113: Ebay: Amazon is better. 112: Facebook: these days, I use it to get laughs and memes. I don’t interact with people I know IRL much. 111: Work: good for the money. Not good for my mental health. 110: My Neighbors: they’re ok. 109: Gas Prices: #ThanksTrump 108: Designer Clothes: I can get good clothes at Target. The only “splurge” I do for clothes is at Spencer’s or Kohl’s. 107: College: I plan to go back soon. 106: Sports: entertaining. 105: My family: family is life. 104: The future: anything can happen [ Last time I ] 103: Hugged someone: Tuesday. 102: Last time you ate: a couple hours ago (chik’n patties and cheese) 101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: last week. I saw a manager I hadn’t worked with in like a month. 100: Cried in front of someone: Monday 99: Went to a movie theater: July 2nd 98: Took a vacation: June 97: Swam in a pool: back in February 96: Changed a diaper: I don’t remember 95: Got my nails done: way too long ago 94: Went to a wedding: in April 93: Broke a bone: 2017 (broke my toe) 92: Got a piercing: 2006 91: Broke the law: never. I’m a good person. 90: Texted: three hours ago [ MISC ] 89: Who makes you laugh the most: Russell 88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: my dog 87: The last movie I saw: in theatres, Toy Story 4. At home, Adventures in Babysitting. 86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: being off on Saturday 85: The thing im not looking forward to: working tomorrow 84: People call me: Vonnie, Vonn, Bonbon, Sophia, and “the girl” 83: The most difficult thing to do is: not cry while watching Grey’s Anatomy 82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: never 81: My zodiac sign is: Aries 80: The first person i talked to today was: my sister 79: First time you had a crush: kindergarten. His name was Wally, and we were “boyfriend and girlfriend” til about third grade, and we remained friends til we graduated 8th grade. Haven’t talked to him much since. 78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: Russell 77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: Sunday 76: Right now I am talking to: nobody because it’s 3:30am 75: What are you going to do when you grow up: I hope to be teaching English education 74: I have/will get a job: I currently work at McDonald’s, but within the next 6-12 months, I’ll be moving out of state, so who knows where I’ll work.  73: Tomorrow: work 72: Today: work 71: Next Summer: I’ll be in a whole new state, so that means new amusement parks to visit and rollies to ride. 70: Next Weekend: party. Oh, and next Saturday makes officially 18 months with me and Russell, so go us! 69: I have these pets: two dogs 68: The worst sound in the world: the beeping in the headset when I work back cash. It haunts my nightmares 67: The person that makes me cry the most is: Heather because she sends me to back cash all the time 66: People that make you happy: Russell, my mom, my dogs, Ashlyn, and Aunt Dolly because she sends me lives on Candy Crush 65: Last time I cried: Monday 64: My friends are: Ashlyn, Mikayla, Jon, Rilee, Lamar, Tae, Alexus, Clare, Katie, Mario, and Kel 63: My computer is: all mine because I bought it with my own money 62: My School: not in school  61: My Car: don’t have one 60: I lose all respect for people who: lie 59: The movie I cried at was: Avengers: Endgame 58: Your hair color is: natural 57: TV shows you watch: Grey’s Anatomy, Once Upon a Time, House, The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, and... I don’t really watch TV because I don’t have cable. 56: Favorite web site: YouTube 55: Your dream vacation: Just a big coaster trip 54: The worst pain I was ever in was: my period this month. I had cramps for days leading up to my period that were so bad that, the day my period actually came, I couldn’t stand straight. 53: How do you like your steak cooked: I don’t eat steak 52: My room is: a mess, like my life 51: My favorite celebrity is: NPH 50: Where would you like to be: with my boyfriend 49: Do you want children: someday, but not today 48: Ever been in love: ohhh yes. 47: Who’s your best friend: not answering again 46: More guy friends or girl friends: i think i have a fair amount of both 45: One thing that makes you feel great is: this is tmi, but sex with my bf. 44: One person that you wish you could see right now: Russell 43: Do you have a 5 year plan: no 42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: yes 41: Have you pre-named your children: I don’t have any definitive names, but I’m thinking MaryGrace Linda for a girl, and James Sebastian for a boy 40: Last person I got mad at: Anna because she put me on back cash 39: I would like to move to: someplace south 38: I wish I was a professional: dancer.... no, writer.... no, why not both? [ My Favorites ] 37: Candy: peanut butter cups 36: Vehicle: Jeep 35: President: FDR 34: State visited: North Carolina (not just saying that because I lived there for two months) 33: Cellphone provider: Verizon 32: Athlete: Trevor Bauer 31: Actor: Justin Chambers 30: Actress: Amy Poehler 29: Singer: Chester Bennington 28: Band: Linkin Park 27: Clothing store: Kohl’s 26: Grocery store: Marc’s 25: TV show: Grey’s Anatomy 24: Movie: 13 Going on 30 23: Website: Pogo 22: Animal: seal 21: Theme park: Cedar Point 20: Holiday: Christmas 19: Sport to watch: baseball 18: Sport to play: softball 17: Magazine: I only read magazines at the dentist office, and I’ll read whichever has an interesting cover story 16: Book: A Series of Unfortunate Events 15: Day of the week: Saturday, as long as I’m not at work. If I’m working, then Mondays, I guess... 14: Beach: Huntington 13: Concert attended: Winter Jam, because I got to see Skillet play, and I met Matthew West. 12: Thing to cook: desserts 11: Food: eggplant parm 10: Restaurant: Olive Garden 9: Radio station: Star 102 8: Yankee candle scent: vanilla 7: Perfume: I don’t wear perfume 6: Flower: Daisies 5: Color: pink 4: Talk show host: Ellen DeGeneres 3: Comedian: Steve Rannazzisi 2: Dog breed: I really like terriers lol 1: did you answer all these truthfully ?: For me to know and you to find out :)
0 notes
quackspot · 5 years
Note
imagine someone just going 1-200 and you have to answer 200 questions for a stranger
well u better strap up becuase im about to do it
200: My crush’s name is: i dunno who do u think my crush’s name is199: I was born in: a year which is 2004198: I am really: a homo sapien197: My cellphone company is:  i think its samsung196: My eye color is: brown195: My shoe size is: 9 or 9.5 i think just 9194: My ring size is: WAIT RINGS HAD SIZES????? i dunno193: My height is: 5′4 ISH but i just say 5′4 because im actually really sensitive about my height and the less than an inch that brings me to 5′4 makes me somewhat happier with myself192: I am allergic to: maybe dustmites 191: My 1st car was: not yet190: My 1st job was: NOT YET189: Last book you read: technically a book called Dad Jokes theyre really funny jokes but if you mean story with plot then probably Grand & Humble unless if you include everything then yesterday i peeked in some books188: My bed is: a bed which i sleep in and that’s pretty much it actually i havent really made my bed in a while 187: My pet: jax and nibsy r the family pets jax is a shih-poo shihtzu poodle mix and nibsy is a cat186: My best friend: my brother185: My favorite shampoo is: shampoo184: Xbox or ps3: hard choice there’s xbox overall and little big planet this is actually a very hard choice lksiiro3jedsklmf,gsda little big planet is great........................183: Piggy banks are: piggy banks. theyre great182: In my pockets: I DONT HAVE POCKETS IM A WOMAN181: On my calendar: whats a calendar lol!!!!180: Marriage is: marriage 179: Spongebob can: dodod od odo dodooo178: My mom: IS GREAT i lov her shes a good mom177: The last three songs I bought were? i dont buy songs i listen to them176: Last YouTube video watched: i mean im listening to boyfriend big time rush on youtube right now but if you mean actual watching its snufkin saying “hi moomin” to moomin a quick 6 second clip175: How many cousins do you have? i duno174: Do you have any siblings? yeah173: Are your parents divorced? yeah172: Are you taller than your mom? probably not :(171: Do you play an instrument? i play the trumpet i did it today and it was really boring i dont want to go to any more graduations not even my own170: What did you do yesterday? things[ I Believe In ]169: Love at first sight: not really but somewhat and i like it because its a fun little thing to put in fiction 168: Luck: yea im very lucky167: Fate: its my destiny to die someday . . .. .  in the futuuuuuuuuuuure
166: Yourself: as far as im aware no165: Aliens: yeah probably164: Heaven: i know it probably isnt real but i cant help believing163: Hell:i know it probably isnt real but i cant help believing162: God: only to blame them for stuff161: Horoscopes: yea theyre fun to read160: Soul mates: ehehehehehhe fun in fanfiction and would greatly b ok with it irl159: Ghosts: who else would hold my hand at night...... not even a ghost :) (but yea i do believe in them when i grow up i wana be a ghost)158: Gay Marriage: why wouldnt i believe in gay marriage 157: War: what is it good for156: Orbs: borb155: Magic: i like magic so i will believe in it [ This or That ]154: Hugs or Kisses: yes153: Drunk or High: probably high i guess152: Phone or Online: ONLINE151: Red heads or Black haired: black haired 150: Blondes or Brunettes: BRUNETTES dude blondes r ok but i personally like darker hair149: Hot or cold: hot148: Summer or winter: SUMMER I HATE WINTER SO FUCKIGNT OASJKU*($@IRWJKOSDIUOKLJEZUDIFLK:LDSK:LKF:LJIODSKZVDJFKL mostly becuase i hate being cold and i hate snow becuase i have to shovel snow and its so cold147: Autumn or Spring: either one 146: Chocolate or vanilla: choc o late145: Night or Day: night144: Oranges or Apples: apples143: Curly or Straight hair: curly but i guess straight is ok142: McDonalds or Burger King: burbger king good milkshakese141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: idk uhh milk chocolate140: Mac or PC: pc139: Flip flops or high heals: neither......138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: ugly and rich i can just buy surgeries to make me prettier lmao137: Coke or Pepsi: coke136: Hillary or Obama: i dont wanna answer this :(((((( i dont like being bullied135: Burried or cremated: cremated babye put me in the flames ;3c134: Singing or Dancing: i like singing i like dancing i like trains 133: Coach or Chanel: what132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: who are these people131: Small town or Big city: im just a mere small town babye ;3c big cities sound scary 130: Wal-Mart or Target: target has the good cheeseballs129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: i only know adam sandler128: Manicure or Pedicure: i dont do my nails 127: East Coast or West Coast: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh both are coasts126: Your Birthday or Christmas: birthday i get more gifts then uwu125: Chocolate or Flowers: chocolate124: Disney or Six Flags: disney because idk what six flags is isnt it a restaurant or something123: Yankees or Red Sox: a baseball bat [ Here’s What I Think About ]122: War: what is it good for!121: George Bush: idk 120: Gay Marriage: yeah gay rights119: The presidential election: im not that into politics so i dont understand the elections and i dont think their fair since i get all my facts from adam ruins everything this isnt even a joke118: Abortion: pro choice i dont giv a crap about some lifeless baby. its only alive if it can properly move its arms or cry or feel.117: MySpace: haha dead116: Reality TV: idk 115: Parents: theyre parents 114: Back stabbers: ow my back113: Ebay: website.... money112: Facebook: lizard man111: Work: what110: My Neighbors: idk who they are but my old neighbor was one of my best friends i should talk to him this summer109: Gas Prices: probably too high108: Designer Clothes: clothes107: College: something i dont plan on going to any time soon106: Sports: something i dont plan on doing any time soon105: My family: a family104: The future: spooky. very scary. idk what my job will be[ Last time I ]103: Hugged someone: idk (update it was today)102: Last time you ate: 4:13 ish i made ramne101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: i duno100: Cried in front of someone: today i suppose i almost cried???? maybe my dentist appointment a few weeks ago??99: Went to a movie theater: lego movie 2 i think98: Took a vacation: 6th grade im in 9th grade now its been like 3 years97: Swam in a pool: over 1 year i dont go to the pool anymore96: Changed a diaper: NEVER AND I NEVER PLAN ON IT95: Got my nails done: i duno94: Went to a wedding: i also dunno its been too long93: Broke a bone: not that i can recal92: Got a peircing: never and never will91: Broke the law: i duno90: Texted: just now i told my mommy to pick me up it wasl ike 1 hour ago[ MISC ]89: Who makes you laugh the most: me88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: my momy and nibsy and jax and probably zach but he’d already move out by the time i leave87: The last movie I saw: i dont remember probably lego movie 2 or osmething on tv86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: next year drama club85: The thing im not looking forward to: dying?????? idk man 84: People call me: moto moto (not really idk what they call me)83: The most difficult thing to do is: the most difficult thing82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: never though i probs will someday81: My zodiac sign is: aquarius sun leo moon aries rising80: The first person i talked to today was: probably kiley79: First time you had a crush: kindergarten i think78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: myself77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: idk76: Right now I am talking to: nobody 75: What are you going to do when you grow up: *has a crisis over my future plans as i do not know*74: I have/will get a job: im gona work at target or burger king next year maybe it depends on if they like me73: Tomorrow: 5/20..............72: Today: today71: Next Summer: in a theater near u70: Next Weekend: my first summer weekend 69: I have these pets: I ALREAD YSAID WHAT PETS I HAVE I LOVE NIBSY WITH ALL MY HEART and jax with some extra parts of my heart68: The worst sound in the world: a sound67: The person that makes me cry the most is: me66: People that make you happy: me65: Last time I cried: ealier today64: My friends are: online63: My computer is: on62: My School: is a school61: My Car: nonexistent 60: I lose all respect for people who: are really mean and seem to hate people for being happy. people who make jokes that make me uncomfortable. i generally avoid them.59: The movie I cried at was: all of them58: Your hair color is: brown57: TV shows you watch: idk56: Favorite web site: idk probs youtube55: Your dream vacation: nowhere 54: The worst pain I was ever in was: A FEW WEEKS AGO I GOT STITCHES IN MY MOUTH AND IT REALLY HURT UGHGTUERIJOKFLDc53: How do you like your steak cooked: edible52: My room is: a room51: My favorite celebrity is: myslef..... just kidding idk any celebs 50: Where would you like to be: where i am 49: Do you want children: no 48: Ever been in love: hoo ha hoo ha i duno how love feels exactly47: Who’s your best friend: MY BROTHER46: More guy friends or girl friends: guys i think 99% of my friends are my brothers friends so45: One thing that makes you feel great is: being happy44: One person that you wish you could see right now: nobody right now but sometimes kiley43: Do you have a 5 year plan: 5 years??? haha no i only plan on using savings accounts to make a bit more money and MAYBE moving to kiley but idk for sure since i like my parents and my brother and my parents plan on driving around in an rv but idk man moving to another state would be HARD and im kinda lazy and i’d have to get a whole new driver’s license 42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: no41: Have you pre-named your children: lmao all my ideas are jokes40: Last person I got mad at: probably myslef39: I would like to move to: my bed???????38: I wish I was a professional: personer. talker. socialer. [ My Favorites ]37: Candy: probably snickers or a salted nut roll36: Vehicle: big car. tahoe shape. tahoe size. idk. something like a tahoe thats my only reference35: President: I Don’t Care34: State visited: probably florida its the only one of 3 states i’ve been to33: Cellphone provider: what32: Athlete: WHAT31: Actor: idk 30: Actress: idk29: Singer: not me? me? idk28: Band: taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally hall??? ? ?? ? ?? ? ? ? I DONT KNOWIJ DSKJZLFKSJKLDSHDLfjklskl;fdkl;sfk;laf 27: Clothing store: i legit have like no faves god this is the hardest part26: Grocery store: target probably25: TV show: maybe the simpsons???24: Movie: idk ive seen a lot of movies23: Website: one of them22: Animal: one of them21: Theme park: universal studios20: Holiday: none of them theyre all ok but ??? meh19: Sport to watch: none.18: Sport to play: idk i dont like being competitive but??????? gym class is a fun sport! :)17: Magazine: none of them16: Book: one of them15: Day of the week: wednesday sounds like a good day. maybe sundays. 14: Beach: what13: Concert attended: frankly the only concerts i’ve been to are my own12: Thing to cook: probably ramen11: Food: cheeseballs??????? burger king milkshake, a drink?10: Restaurant: buuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrger kiiiiiiiiiiing?9: Radio station: 101.9 kelo eff emmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm8: Yankee candle scent: what7: Perfume: what6: Flower: what5: Color: red or purple4: Talk show host: wha
3: Comedian: i duno2: Dog breed: one of them1: Did you answer all these truthfully?  yeah i tried but i kinda gave up slightly after i came back from a graduation party though i also kind of gave up from the start so
1 note · View note
parkersharthook · 6 years
Text
Oneshot Prompts
Requests are open!!!
crossed through means already done but request again if you want :)
1. “Go to hell” 2. “Fuck You” 3. “Fuck me!” 4. “Fuck” 5. “I’m so happy I could kiss you” 6. "Forever?” …"Forever!” 7. "Sorry I’m late” 8. "I’m so sorry…” 9. "Why me?” 10. "Stop it!” 11. "Don’t you dare!” 12. "Truth or Dare?’ 13. "Do you trust me?” …"Always” 14. "Don’t you trust me?” 15. "What? Didn’t see that coming?” 16. "Please come home safe…” 17. "I can’t lose you, Not again…” 18. "Take it out on me…” 19. "What happened?” 20. "Have you been crying?” 21. "I always know” 22. "It’s midnight, what do you want?” 23. "Kiss me” 24. "Why?”  25. ”Son of a bitch” 26. "How are you?” 27. "Where have you been?” 28. "I swear” 29. "You don’t need to be so demanding” 30. "I need a strong drink and some pain killers” 31. "This is the end, isn’t it?” 32. "I miss you” 33. "See you at home” 34. "You, me, bed now” 35. "Care to explain?” 36. "Can we please_____”  37. "For the love of god” 38. "We can never catch a break can we?” 39. "Now, where’s the fun in that?” 40. "Do me a favour? Stand back.” 41. "Stand down” 42. "Hold me” 43. "You better hope my mom doesn’t find out” 44. "Where are we?”  45. "Did you even look at a map?” 46. "Hallelujah” 47. "Is that blood?” 48. “Do you want me to leave?” 49. "I swear it won’t happen again.” 50. "I’m not jealous.” 51. "You can’t keep doing this.” 52. "I’m going to take care of you, okay?” 53. "You can’t die. Please don’t die.” 54. "You did what?!” 55. "Were you ever going to tell me?” 56. "Don’t ask me that.” 57. "Say it!” 58. "I could kiss you right now!” 59. "Are you still awake…?” 60. "Excuse you?” 61. "This is all your fault!” 62. "I shouldn’t be in love with you.” 63. "I could kill you right now!” 64. "Just admit I’m right.” 65. "That doesn’t even make sense.” 66. "That’s irrational.” 67. "Just pretend to be my date.” 68. "Are you really going to leave without asking me the question you’ve been dying to ask me?” 69. "When you love someone, you don’t just stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy… even then. Especially then!” 70. "I think I’ve been holding myself from falling in love with you all over again.” 71. "I’m not going to apologize for this. Not anymore.” 72. "That’s almost exactly the opposite of what I meant.” 73. "It must be hard with your sense of direction, never being able to find your way to a decent pickup line.” 74. "Can I sit here? The other tables are full.” 75. "You weren’t supposed to laugh!” 76. "This is, by far, the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.” 77. "I’m not going to stop poking you until you give me some attention.” 78. "Before I do this, I need you to know that I have always loved you.” 79. "Did I say that out loud?” 80. "Do you think you could have loved me?” 81. "Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy.” 82. "How long have you been standing there?” 83. "Have I ever lied to you?” 84. "Have you lost your fucking mind?” 85. "I am not losing you again!” 86. "I had a nightmare about you and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” 87. "When I picture myself happy… It’s with you.” 88. "I made a mistake.” 89. "I may be an idiot, but I’m your idiot.” 90. "I see the way you look at me when you think I’m not looking.” 91. "I think I’m in love with you and that scares me half to death.” 92. "I’m not good enough for you.” 93. "I fell in love with my best friend.” 94. "I’m sorry, what? I keep getting lost in your eyes.” 95. "I’m up for the challenge.” 96. "I’m yours.” 97. "If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me.” 98. "If you go anywhere near them, you’ll have to deal with me!” 99. "It’s okay to cry…” 100. "Talk to me.” 101. "Look at me—just breathe, okay?” 102. "Look, I don’t have much time, but I wanted to say I love you.” 103. "Well, this is where I live.” 104. "What are you afraid of?” 105. "You are the single best thing that has ever happened to me.” 106. "You deserve so much better.” 107. "You don’t have to stay.” 108. "They don’t know you the way I do.” 109. "You fainted, straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention, you didn’t have to go to such extremes.” 110. "You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.” 111. "You shouldn’t have even been there!” 112. "You weren’t supposed to hear that.” 113. "You’re safe now. I’ve got you.” 114. "Teach me?” 115. "We’re in the middle of a thunderstorm and you want to stop and feel the rain?” 116. "Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while.” 117. "Just once.” 118. "I can’t believe you talked me into this.” 119. "It’s not what it looks like.” 120. "I got you a present.” 121. "Hey! I was gonna eat that!” 122. "See, now, what that so bad?” 123. “You’re the best part of me.” 124. "I don’t want to think about what I’d be like without you.” 125. "Can I hold your hand?” 126. "It’s a real shame nobody asked for your opinion.” 127. "What time is it?” 128. "Just wait a second.” 129. "Here, let me.” 130. "You’re so cute when you pout like that.” 131. "I don’t care what they said, it doesn’t mean shit!” 132. "This isn’t gonna end well!” 133. "Did you enjoy yourself last night?”  134. "Are you kidding me? We’re not ‘fine’!” 135. “You’ve only heard his side of the story. You never asked for mine.” 136. "Oh my God! You’re in love with him/her!”  137. "You make me feel like I’m not good enough.”  138. "For some reason I’m attracted to you.” 139. "I am not losing you again.” 140. "Why don’t they just kiss already?”  141. Why do you keep pushing me away?” 142. "I can’t explain right now, but I need you to trust me.”  143. I’ve never felt this way before….and it scares the shit out of me.” 144. "Don’t fucking touch me!”  145. "Are you really taking his side against me?” 146. "Wait a second are you jealous?”  147. "I wish I could hate you.” 148. "Come over here and make me.” 149. "This is by far the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.”  150. "You’re the only one I trust to do this.”  151. "I thought you were dead.”  152. "This isn’t just about you. It’s about what’s best for all of us.”  153. "I love you, you asshole.”  154. "You did this for me?”  155. "You can’t protect me.” 156. "You know I wouldn’t do this if I had any other choice.” 157. "I’m so stupid to make the mistake of falling in love with my best friend.”  158. "The way you flirt is shameful/shameless.” 159. “I just wanted an easy day with my girlfriend/boyfriend. What’s so wrong with that?” 160. "Go then, leave! See if I care!”  161. "You braided his hair?”  162. "Have you lost your damn mind?!” 163. "Please don’t argue. You have to leave right now, you aren’t safe here.”  164. "I’m not surprised that you murdered him.” 165. Am I supposed to be scared of you?” 166. "Is that what you’re doing? Trying to make me to hate you?” 167. "If he’s going to treat you like shit I’m going to kick his ass.”  168. "You’re hiding something from me.” 169. "You better have a good reason for waking me up at the ass-crack of dawn.” 170. "I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”  171. "Don’t you dare to ever do that again!” 172. "Man, you are a dream come true.”  173. "Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy.” 174. "I made a mistake.” 175. "H-How long have you been standing there?”  176. "Is the skirt is supposed to be this short?” 177. “This is why you don’t ever have any shirts to wear.” 178. "Please, don’t give up on me.” 179. "When are you going to realize that I don’t care?” 180. "Those things you said in there… Did you mean them?” 181. "I know that you have reached a decision, but given that it is a stupid ass decision I have elected to ignore it” 182. "Who gave you that black eye?!” 183. "What the hell are you doing here?! I told you I never wanted to see you again!” 184. "I’m sorry, what were you saying? I keep getting lost in your eyes.” 185. "It’s okay baby, I’m here for you.” 186. "You say the nastiest things when you’re angry, so yes, I’m walking away from you now. 187. "I’m starting an idiot jar. Any time you do or say anything idiotic, you have to put at least a dollar in it—more depending on how stupid the thing that you said or did was.” 188. "You haven’t even touched your food. What’s going on?” 189. "If you don’t want to talk about what happened, then say so. Don’t just lie and say it’s fine.” 190. "Don’t you dare say you love me!” 191. “It’s a hobby of mine to prove you wrong.” 192. "I swear I didn’t mean to touch your butt.” 193. "Why are you wearing my shirt? Please, don’t take it off. It looks good on you.” 194. "enjoying the view?” 195. "go on, just leave! that’s what everyone does anyway.” 196. "who did this to you?” 197. "that’s a bad idea.”"name a better idea, then.” 198. "quick, kiss me.” 199. "you’re such a distraction.” 200. "i’m doing this to protect you.” 201. "get the fuck back to sleep, (y/n).” 202. "we’re not dating— ugh whatever.” 203. "i can’t let anything happen to you.” 204. "i leave for just a minute and this happens!” 205. "what? i thought you two were a thing.
7 notes · View notes
sonofthesaiyans · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
I posted 481 times in 2021
225 posts created (47%)
256 posts reblogged (53%)
For every post I created, I reblogged 1.1 posts.
I added 2,135 tags in 2021
#eren yeager - 249 posts
#mikasa ackerman - 248 posts
#armin arlert - 234 posts
#attack on titan - 229 posts
#shingeki no kyojin - 227 posts
#levi ackerman - 226 posts
#hajime isayama - 203 posts
#snk spoilers - 196 posts
#i hate isayama - 176 posts
#sasha braus - 147 posts
Longest Tag: 68 characters
#falbi gabi braun falco grice sasha braus sasha blouse hajime isayama
My Top Posts in 2021
#5
Petra Deserved Better
Just happened to run into some really cool fanart of Levi’s best girl, Petra. And all I could think was, “What Could Have Been.” 
Tumblr media Tumblr media
See the full post
94 notes • Posted 2021-10-21 02:31:59 GMT
#4
I’m not going to stop...
Until we get justice for Sasha Braus. I will not stop hounding on Isayama for what he did. I don’t give a fuck that it’s just an anime. 
Tumblr media
I’ve suffered disappointment. BUT THIS. This messed with me, everything that bastard did to her in Season Four and Chapter 105, taking her away and removing anything remotely likable in a story that pretty much said fuck all to the characters who were worth a damn. In favor of some c**t tagalong that nobody asked for. I was more than just heartbroken and angry, I cannot. Get this off my fucking mind. And it’s all because of Isayama. 
He’s not going to stop us from enjoying Sasha again one day. I wish so hard I could tell him to his face how furious I am at him for what he did. I want him to know it and to see it. Yes, this affected me very badly, and I cannot forgive it. Everything I never wanted to see from AOT, he did it in the span of barely three chapters. I want him to know his work had a deeply adverse affect beyond his crappy narrative and his even crappier final conclusion. A conclusion that did NOT validate this turn of events on any level. 
I hope one day this can be made right and that he is finally forced to feel some shame for all of it. He’s got nothing to take any pride in, I don’t care how many copies he sells of that shit he passes off as a legit manga.
This story ended with the Ocean. 
98 notes • Posted 2021-11-23 07:58:51 GMT
#3
Hey! Remember this guy?
Remember what his name was? Remember when he used to be the biggest deal on the show, practically the series mascot, not counting Eren or Scarf Girl? Remember what an enigmatic personality he had? 
Tumblr media
NEITHER DO I! 
Says something when your Titan has more personality than you do........
119 notes • Posted 2021-12-05 08:11:15 GMT
#2
Stockholm syndrome, aka Eremika....
You know, Mikasa’s attachment to Eren even after he crossed all lines that must never be crossed by any human being, even after he destroyed the world.....why because he was family? The Eren who rescued her the day they met was dead long ago. And yet she still can’t fully come to terms with what a monster he is.
Tumblr media
You know that sure reminds me of another character who was similarly bound to somebody abusive just because they were family, but then realized that they, also a genocidal maniac, was not worthy of their loyalty anymore. Who was it now? 
Oh yeah. THIS GUY. 
See the full post
166 notes • Posted 2021-11-18 02:09:56 GMT
#1
It's been seven months and I really can't believe the audacity of many fans who still insist hating the ending means "you just didn't get it!" And they call you out as if you're an idiot for having the many questions raised by it.
It is exasperating. Honestly did anything about that finale work? Because I can't find one goddamned positive thing to say about the story after the timeskip. What is it these defenders see as redeemable about this final season? You know aside from Eren's hair and abs? Because when people don't even like the look of MAPPA's Titan animation what do you got left to lose?
I may primarily hate this season for what it did to Sasha but I doubt her survival would be enough to make me look past all the other bullshit Yams put into play here. She merely would've made it more watchable. Hange as well. And Historia.
What do these defenders think they are defending?
This story ended with the Ocean.
180 notes • Posted 2021-11-11 23:58:50 GMT
Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →
1 note · View note
Text
Prompt #196 - Christmas Gala
@cali-forniacationn : Claire and Owen go to the company’s Christmas gala for the first time as a couple
23 days til Christmas. 2nd prompt. 
As you will notice, I am posting this per AEST so it will be out of sync for a few of you. 
AO3
CHRISTMAS GALA
Claire Dearing was trying to teach herself not to expect it.
At the end of every year, starting in November, they embarked on a six-week gala spree. Owen had come to shower her with gifts at that time. He draped her in sparkling jewels on the evening of their first outing every year since the beginning. It was hard to not expect his entrance into their bedroom, box in hand, glee in her chest. She knew one year he would stop, simply forgetting or realising it cost far too much to bath her with diamonds and gemstones. Owen insisted he never would.
She heard his groan as he entered the room, Claire bent over her vanity dressed in nothing but a lace number and stockings. He should have known to expect that as much as she knew a jewellery box would be in his hands. ‘Here’s an idea,’ He stepped into position behind her, hands sliding around her waist as his chin found purchase on her shoulder. ‘We don’t go to the party and stay in instead.’ His lips found the sweet spot behind her ear, teasing her mercilessly.
Claire hummed, ‘And miss out on a funding opportunity? No way.’ She shook her head, turning within his embrace to kiss him softly, her fingers sliding across his cheeks. ‘You work too hard at that zoo to miss this and funding for the girls.’ She was his magician, Owen had to admit it, setting off her magic in a crowd of investors. Everyone wanted to talk to her; the excuse of Jurassic World long behind them, her beauty and charisma the main attraction now. With Claire alone, Owen managed to rake in more funding than he could have potentially dreamed on his own. He never set out to use her like that, she just did it on her own, introducing herself via association charming investors so much so that they were sending money his way because they admired her so much.
‘I guess you’ll need this then.’ He pulled a box from his pocket, placing it in her open palms as he kissed her collarbone, lips trailing south as he dropped to his knees. Claire didn’t realise what he was doing until she popped the box open, Owen leaving a wet kiss on her stomach as his hands found the unclasped clips of her garter and promptly attached them to her stockings.
‘Owen.’ His named dropped from her lips soft and surprised. The box held a single ring, white gold band supporting a radiant diamond. It sparkled at her in the light, dazzling the woman who looked upon it.
She barely paid any notice to Owen, on his knees in front of her. ‘Yes, it’s an engagement ring.’ He knew she would ask. ‘I was kind of hoping you’d maybe want to be my wife one day.’ He couldn’t help the lopsided smile that graced his cheeks as he watched her. She stared at the ring with her lips parted, just enough to see the ends of her teeth. When he did speak her eyes snapped from the ring to him and back again.
‘I -‘ She started before stopping. He had managed to slide it right under her nose, Claire none the wiser half expecting earrings or a different sort of ring. She didn’t think he would propose. ‘We’re going to be so late.’ She sighed in wonder, Owen’s hands tugging at her hips gently. She dropped to the floor, landing in his lap as he took the box from her gently.
‘Is that a yes?’ He asked with a smirk, ring pulled from its cushion as he moved to slide it on her finger. Claire only managed a nod, her free hand cupping his cheek as her lips found his skin. ‘Are you still sure you want to go to the gala?’ He asked in mirth as his mouth chased hers, Claire peppering kisses across his face.
[…]
It was almost as though the whole room knew the second they stepped through the door. Holding her clutch between her hips, wrists touching, Claire felt as if she was exposing the new item on her hands, the pose natural as they broke into the room, only ten minutes late.
Owen’s boss was the first to realise, giving them half an hour before he invaded their space. The man already knew, had done so for months since Owen first told him that he was looking at rings. He just didn’t know when the younger man was going to propose. ‘I suppose it’s better that he get in now before he wraps it for Christmas.’ Brandon had teased, kissing Claire’s cheek fondly as he clapped his favourite employee on the back. Claire disappeared shortly after Brandon had, giving her fiancee a simple peck before she moved to mingle with his colleagues and potential investors.  
He could watch her do what she did at that time of year for hours, weaving her way in and out of peoples lives as she graced their arms softly and bid a sweet hello. This wasn’t the same Claire he knew on the island, at least what he thought he knew of her. She was personable and approachable, investors adored her. She just didn’t know how to be like that when she wasn’t trying to milk money out of someone. Unless she was with Owen.
There was someone in each new group who noticed the sparkle on her finger, women bowing to admire the stone he had painstakingly picked out, as they grinned and gleamed about future plans. She wandered back towards him after some time, easing herself into the conversation he was apart of. Claire fit easily against his side, his hand resting on her waist, thumb stroking the fabric of her dress.
‘I’m glad you finally put a ring on that woman, I was worried I would have to do it myself if you left it any longer.’ Brandon, Owen’s boss, laughed, beer in hand as he grinned at the happy couple, Claire’s thumb rolling her engagement ring around her finger. It had taken Owen three years to work up the courage to ask that question, let alone buy a ring. It was done now, stone on her finger,  their whole sphere happy for them. ‘Who needs yet another gala night for investors? We should have made tonight an engagement party!’ He cheered as Claire happily shook her head.
They weren’t big fuss people. Claire donned expensive gowns and sparkling jewellery for the events that called for it. She was just an attendee, not the organiser. Never would they pick to have such an occasion just for themselves. ‘I, however, would like to dance.’ She turned to Owen, smile dazzling as his hand on her hip squeezed his answer.
He did as she asked. He would always do as she asked. Owen had to omit that the trash would remain indoors on days it shouldn’t, his jobs and duties forgotten for an afternoon but he was willing to do whatever it took to be no less than perfect for her. If she wanted to dance, he would dance. If she wanted quiet, he could be quiet. He would spend his days echoing her needs, fulfilling them as well as he could.
‘Why don’t we -’ Her voice was low, fingers toying with his collar, eyelashes batting softly as she looked him in the eye. ‘ - Get out of here early.’ All eyes were on them, faces Owen knew and ones he didn’t. Claire hated the limelight as much as she loved it. Eyes watching them, even with smiles, screamed the days after the incident. She didn’t like the attention, could never pick exactly what it was for. Reasonably, she knew nobody was watching them in particular, just looking about at the couples gliding across the floor.
His proposal had lit a fire in her belly, one that had teased her warmly all night until this moment. Now she just wanted to take him home and let him appreciate the lingerie she had painstakingly put on.
10 notes · View notes
lawrenceseitz22 · 6 years
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
  Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 posted first on your-t1-blog-url from Blogger https://ift.tt/2OybMQ1 via IFTTT
0 notes
brendajhensonblog · 6 years
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
 Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 posted first on your-t1-blog-url
0 notes
beyondvapepage · 6 years
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
 Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com
0 notes
howardkuester22 · 6 years
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
  Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url
0 notes
charlesswink19 · 6 years
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
  Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, ��Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url
0 notes
teresaajones9 · 6 years
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
  Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url
0 notes
Text
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 196 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.  
  Announcement
Adam: Hey yo! Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts Episode 196. We are live on this awesome 8th of the August, at 4 p.m. Eastern. We got almost the whole crew here today. It looks like Chris is missing. It’s pretty late right where he is, so cut him some slack. But we’ll just go down and say hello to everybody real quick. Hernan, how are you doing today?
Hernan: Hey, what’s up everybody? I’m really good. I’m kind of busy but excited to be here. I’m really excited for POFU Live 2018 as well. Things are coming up nicely, so I’m excited for that.
Adam: We’ll be talking more about that in just a minute. Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I’m working on POFU, man, each and every day. If you guys knew – I can’t say, I’m sorry, I’m under NDA – what I was working on to just finally rid myself of this fucking bedbug that’s Google, you’d probably, I mean, you’d line up to pay me. But let’s just say we cracked the code and, well, I’m not gonna keep dropping F-bombs this early. Put the children away so I can go unfiltered. But having said that, man, POFU.
Bradley: ‘Nuff said.
Adam: Bradley, how about yourself, man?
Bradley: I’m good. I’m happy to be here. It’s hot as hell in Virginia right now. They’re like stupid hot. Fortunately, I’m in the air conditioning. It gets hot at my office because it’s in the upstairs. I got the fan running and everything, but it’s still hot.
Adam: Yeah. It just keeps getting hotter as the day goes on.
Bradley: Yeah, it sucks. But it’s all right. I’m still happy to be here. So let’s get to it.
Adam: Good deal. Well, real quick, if you’re just joining us for the first time, thanks for showing up. You can always catch these live like right now, or, if you’re watching this on YouTube, obviously, and catch the replay can ask questions and check it out later, whatever floats your boat. If you’re looking for the place to start with Semantic Mastery, we highly recommend the Battle Plan. You can find the link either on the page, again if you’re watching live or on YouTube.
Real quick, Hernan mentioned POFU Live. Hernan, what is this POFU Live bitch that you speak of?
Hernan: Well, POFU Live is gonna be an awesome event. The first event that we’re doing for Semantic Mastery. It’s gonna take place on October 19, 20, and 21st of October in Washington, DC. The entire Semantic Mastery crew is gonna be talking and we have some guest speakers as well. So we’re really excited about that.
The main point of the event is that we’ll help you guys reach in that POFU. Right? We talk about POFU, POFU, POFU, and whatnot. The entire theme of the event is how you reach that position where you can pretty much grow your business, get new clients, get your clients results faster, and how to scale the business that will put you in a POFU pretty, pretty fast.
The main idea is that we try to make it small so that we can kind of tailor the experience to each of you guys that are gonna be attending. So it’s gonna be pretty amazing.
Bradley: Yes. We’re gonna try to create like a three-step process for everybody that attends. Anybody that joins or wants to attend, when you purchase a ticket, you’re gonna get sent a survey, essentially, that you have to complete so that we can kind of tailor based on your specific business model, like what products and services you sell, what’s your target market, that kind of stuff. So that we can help you apply our three-step process, which is find clients, make the sale, fulfill the service scale. I mean, that was, I guess, four, but some of those can be combined. So it’s essentially prospecting, and selling, fulfilling a service, and then scaling.
That’s really what we want to do. That’s why, in part, why we’re trying to keep the number of attendees very, very small. It’s very limited to only 25 people because, obviously, we wouldn’t be able to sit down and literally help develop a plan for your specific business model if we had 200 people in the room.
That’s just part of the reason why we wanted to start our first one with a very small, limited audience, because we really wanna help everybody that comes walk away with the plan specific to their business and what their needs are, what their financial goals are, and what their needs are and all that.
Again, that’s all going to be information that you’re going to add to the survey before you come to the event so that we can have some time to look over and really custom tailor it for your business.
Adam: Definitely. Yeah. I just had a quick conversation this morning with Jeffrey Smith from SEO Design Solutions, from SEO Bootcamp, excuse me, also the SEO Ultimate Plugin, which we highly recommend. I had really good talk with him. I think you might be able to see it on our Facebook page, about a quick chat about what he’s gonna be talking about as a guest speaker at the event and why he’s excited to be there. I highly suggest heading over this Semantic Mastery Facebook page and checking that out.
Real quick too, speaking about the event, so we got some really cool tickets available for that. You can just come to the event if you want to, we got VIP tickets available for a little bit more where you can spend some time having fun goofing off with us, also networking, and enjoying it the day before we hop into things.
Then, there’s a special too. If you’re interested in joining the MasterMIND and taking things up a few notches, you can get a ticket to the event along with – I’m not gonna go to the details – a bunch of goodies, but also a year’s worth of the MasterMIND. So it’s a hell of a deal you’re basically getting to come to the event for free if you check that out.
I’m gonna put the link, or the links are already up there for the live event. So check that out. If you have any questions, shoot us email to [email protected].
All right. I think that is about it. Does anybody else have anything? No?
Bradley: No.
Hernan: I’m good.
Adam: Let’s get into it.
Bradley: All right. Give me one second. In case we need it. No more tofu. All right. Let me grab the screen. Sorry, I was looking at Greg’s image already. Okay. I think we’re good. Are we good? Can you guys see me? Can you see my screen?
Adam: Yes.
Marco: Yep.
Clarifications On Josh Bachynski’s Statement
Bradley: All right. First up is Paul Williams. Yeah. Okay. I’ve read this earlier a couple of days ago, actually, before it was posted, or at least I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah, last week … Oops, sorry guys. Last week or I don’t know if it was last week, it might have been the week before, anyways, somebody had come on to the Hump Day Hangouts and posted a comment about something that they said Josh Bachynski said. I just wanna clarify that we commented on it and engaged with that comment without actually verifying the comment on our own. So, essentially, somebody came and posted and said, “Hey, this happened on somebody else’s show, this is what they said.”
Well, that could be taken out of context, and we did comment on that comment without having verified the comment ourselves and seen it in full context and that was improper on our part. So I just wanna clear the air on that. Semantic Mastery and is by no means trying to pick a fight with anybody. That’s not what we’re about. I think that’s juvenile and I think that reflects poorly on us.
So I want to kind of clarify that. There was no harm intended. I just wanna make sure everybody understands that. There’s not gonna be any fighting in the SEO world between Semantic Mastery and anybody else. Marco has his own opinions and he’s perfectly entitled to it; that’s part of his charm. But I just wanna make it very clear that we were wrong for comment, or at least I feel like we should have at least verified the comment first and foremost and seen it in full context before we said anything at all. I just wanna clarify that.
I know Marco wants to say something about it. Marco, please feel free.
Marco: Yes. At no point did I take whatever was claimed that Josh said as a criticism of Semantic Mastery nor did it get under my skin. I didn’t feel that that was aimed at Semantic Mastery or at anything that we do. If anyone thinks that all we do is drive stacks, then they don’t know Semantic Mastery. There’s no reason for anything to get under my skin. I went after a specific comment, which may or may not have been made. Some say it was said multiple times, whatever, it doesn’t matter now.
I will tell you this: nobody’s going to control my mouth and nobody’s going to tell me what to say or how to say. I say it how it comes out. If it comes out unfiltered, well, fuck it. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it comes out. I don’t try to control what I say. I just let it flow, man. If it comes out wrong, well, it just comes out wrong.
I was commenting on something that was said specific and I dealt with that. I’m going to leave it at that. Of course, it was my opinion, not the opinion of Semantic Mastery. It’s what I said. I see at the bottom of that, that Josh said to invite us on the show, well, our email is [email protected], you’re welcome to write to us, invite us, and I’ll be happy to show and we can have a discussion.
But again, nobody is going to control my mouth. That’s just the way it is. I’m unfiltered. That’s how it goes.
Bradley: Amen. D Kard posted a reply, and I appreciate this, D, because he says that, “Essentially, this was just a misunderstanding created by an ignorant person who came on Hump Day Hangouts and didn’t tell the full story, which made everyone angry at Semantic Mastery. The whole facade was due to an ignorant person who couldn’t convey the whole story properly.”
I partially agree, but at the same time, it was also, I think we should have reserved any comment until we had seen the comment ourselves or verified the comment and also in its full context. Again, anything can be taken out of context guys and we reacted to something that could have very well been taken out of context. Again, I wanna apologize for that because that wasn’t very professional, at least as a brand from what I think. Again, what Marco said about the specific comment, that’s fine, but I’m just saying there was no attack there and I just wanted to clarify that.
Again, D, I appreciate your reply here. So thank you very much. But we’re gonna move on. As Marco said, we’re happy, [email protected] for anybody to come on our show at any time and we just accepted the offer to come onto his as well. So let’s make it happen. If somebody wants to debate, and that’s perfectly fine.
What Are Your Thoughts On WP Gutenberg Editor?
Jordan says, “Has anyone taken the new WP Gutenberg editor,” I don’t even what the hell that is, “for a spin yet and did it break anything, namely the Semantic Mastery RSS plugin, Ultimate SEO Plus, or anything else we typically use per SM’s recommendations?”
I don’t even know what this is. Is anybody else familiar with this?
Adam: No. I’m just checking it out myself. I’d heard of it, but it looks like it’s the new editor. I’m sure Jordan could enlighten us and let us know if it’s already live or something. But that’s just the name of the new editor that’s out there.
Bradley: Oh, okay. I saw it inside one of my WordPress sites today about a new editor coming soon.
Adam: Yeah. It looks like it’s kind of going the way of the … I forget what it’s called, but … God, I’m having a total brain fart. But anyways, where you have like content blocks instead of more of the text type editor.
Bradley: Yeah, like a modular page-
Adam: Digital composer. That was what I was trying to think of.
Bradley: Yeah. Visual builder.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. Okay. I know I haven’t used it yet. Unfortunately, Jordan, no. But I can imagine it’s a … I don’t know. I mean, it might break shit. I don’t know. I can’t imagine why it would though, because, for example, I use Thrive Themes. We just had to update our subscription to that again, which is freaking expensive. I use Thrive Themes for a lot of sites and that’s a modular page builder, and it doesn’t break anything – that I’ve noticed. Like the Syndication still work, the blog post still syndicate. I haven’t seen anything buggy, but I don’t know. We shall see, Jordan. I’m sure you will see reports in the Syndication Academy group if that happens. Okay.
Have You Tried Manipulating Q&A On A GMB And Saw A Difference In Map Rankings?
Brian says, “Anyone in here manipulate the Q&A on GMB and saw a difference in map rankings?” I have not. I haven’t done much with that yet. In fact, I haven’t done a whole lot with Google My Business other than just maintain client properties recently because I’m working on the prospecting and sales side of it to be added to the Local GMB Pro training once I’ve proven the method. First, I have to develop it, which is in progress now, but then I have to prove it, and then I’m gonna share that with Local GMB Pro.
I haven’t done much in there but maybe Marco has. Marco, what do you say?
Marco: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the things that you have to try. Whether there’s a difference or not, we share our findings inside our Facebook group. We try to keep everything in there as far as what we do inside GMB. Generally, yeah, you can manipulate Q&A and then you could see for yourself whether there’s a difference in map rankings. It’s not that difficult, right? What’s that called? Answer The Public. Go to Answer The Public, get a ton of questions that you could then answer and see if there’s a difference when you do that, see if there’s a difference in map rankings.
Really, Bryon, the whole point behind our GMB training is we don’t care about ranking. We don’t care. It doesn’t make a difference. We concentrate on results. Are we getting phone calls? Are we getting visits to the website? Are we getting direction requests, if you have a brick and mortar or an office where people go? That’s all we care about.
When you’re doing that, you’re getting paid, man. We wanted to give people the ability to do that. Now, as a side effect, let’s call it, of all of this that happens inside GMB, yeah, you will start ranking in the 3-Pack and you will start ranking in organic search.
Bradley: Okay. I locked it on you for a minute because I had to pause the screen because I want to show something. I know this is part of the case study inside Google My–, or excuse me, Local GMB Pro and I just want to point this out because of what Marco just mentioned. I don’t mind showing this.
If we go to Insights here, this is the project that I used as the case study, which, by the way, I’ve got a second case study that I’m gonna be adding in the Local GMB Pro for a contractor, which is awesome because that’s primarily my business, the type of industry that I target. So I’m actually looking forward to that.
This taxi service one was kind of boring for me because it’s not an industry that I have much interest in. Right? But it just worked out that he was a new client right at the time we were launching the Local GMB Pro so I thought it would be a good case study.
But what I wanna point out here, and let me just zoom in very briefly guys, because this is what the point Marco was trying to make, is the fact that, just take a look at this. Look at some of the interactions. He got 16 interactions for the short single term phrase taxi and then 12 interactions in the last 30 days for cab.
Trust me, he’s not ranking for those terms. If you go to Charlottesville, which is where this guy is, where this company is and you search for, or you set your rank tracker to Charlottesville, or any one of those zip codes within the Charlottesville proper or anything like that and use … Because I use BrightLocal and that’s how you set local reports to track for maps, for mobile, and for desktop.
Anyways, you can set the actual search location. That’s not perfect, but it’s better than doing it without setting a specific location. My BrightLocal reports don’t show him ranking anywhere near page two, page three, page four for some of these single phrase keywords. But yet this is absolute proof that in the last month people have been exposed to his business for these short phrases, if you see that.
Again, it has nothing to do with rankings, guys. If you don’t understand what the Local GMB Pro service is or how it produces results, go back and watch one of our webinars where we’ve talked about it – like the launch webinar or whatever – because we go into great detail as to how this works or at least how we know it’s working because it’s producing results.
But it’s not something that can be tracked by regular ranked trackers because it’s pretty much all speaking to the mobile algorithm and to individualized personal search results based upon browsing history, where they’re located, so geolocation and all of that.
Again, it’s very interesting how this stuff works. We’re getting actual exposure and engagement from keywords that we aren’t showing anywhere near page one in the reports. Does that make sense? I wouldn’t even think to track these keywords, to be honest with you, because they’re such short-tailed keywords. In the past, it would be damn near impossible to rank for those, right?
But you can see I’m absolutely getting engagement from those, or this company is anyways. Okay. It’s crazy. Because I, mean, look at this, guys, 81 actions within the last month alone, 29 visits to the website, 51 calls, and one text message chat from only 134 maps exposures. So, I mean, that’s pretty incredible, right?
Marco, do you want to comment on that at all or should I move on?
Marco: No, no, man. We said we were gonna turn SEO on its ear. This is results driven SEO. It’s no longer about ranking; we don’t care. It’s no longer about the 3-pack. We don’t care. It’s all about results. We produce results for clients, clients pay us. ‘Nuff said.
Bradley: Yeah. Again, it’s independent of rankings, guys. Rankings are cool because we’re SEOs. We’d like to see all that and a lot of clients have been conditioned to expect to see ranking in reports too. But I’ve had to re-educate my long-standing clients and my new clients, you know, people that are coming in new, I tell them right off the bat, “Forget about traditional rank trackers, that’s old. Who cares whether you’re ranking or not if nobody’s seen it? Because it’s all mobile algorithm now and it’s mobile indexing first and because of that we should be focused in on mobile data, which Insights is primarily mobile data.
So my point is, if I can show … Remember, Insights is only showing the mobile activity, it’s not showing desktop and laptop activity. So my point is what you’re showing in Insights is actually only a portion of what the type of engagement signals that they should actually be receiving. Because, remember, GMB Insights does not track people that … It might track a click to the website, but if somebody picks up the phone, because they landed on your website and then calls from another phone, unless it’s from their mobile device where it’s a tap to call and Google can now attribute that call directly to either from the search results, from the mobile device directly from the search results, or from a post, a GMB post, or from the website that they can determine that.
But if somebody’s looking on a laptop and they see the maps listings, see the phone number, and then they call from their mobile device that’s not going to track as an engagement signal in GMB Insights if that makes sense.
So my point is the Insights shows so much engagement on mobile but that’s only a portion of the overall engagement or exposure that that business is actually getting because of, like I said, the restrictions on laptop and desktop not being able to track some of the actions that that visitor is taking, if that makes sense. Okay?
Again, it’s one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen. I think it’s incredible how quickly you could generate leads from GMB stuff, guys. So in case you haven’t joined it yet, do so.
Marco: One of the things that I’m constantly harping about in the Facebook group is that you need to be able to track everything just because of what you said. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to track some of the conversions. Some of them will take place on websites, some of them will take place by other means, but maybe they go and fill out a contact form or whatever. You need to be able to track everything so you can get paid for everything.
Do You See Value In Adding GSites To Keep A Site Active?
Bradley: This is cool. Steve. Okay. Steve says, “I know you have described the Google Plus as a wasteland before, so do you see value in this new addition to G sites to keep the site active possibly via IFTTT?” G sites and there’s links here, guys. That’s interesting because this was just published on July 30th, so literally nine days ago or 10 days ago.
That’s crazy because Google Plus has been absolutely, Google has been pooling Google Plus’s integration with all of their other products. They’ve been doing it over the last two years really. They’ve been pulling it out slowly but surely. For example, you don’t see Google Plus as an option inside of GMB anymore, inside of Google My Business. It doesn’t automatically create a brand page anymore. You actually kind of have to dig around to figure out how to create a brand page now. It’s interesting.
They’ve taken it out of YouTube. They’ve taken it out of just pretty much everything. So it’s interesting to see that just 10 days ago they’re posting an article about adding G Plus streams as a new feature to Google sites.
As I’ve said this before, guys, look, as long as Google Plus is still around, it is still available, I think you should still be using it because it’s still a Google product. If you can integrate it and connect it with all of your other Google products – your Google site, your drive stacks, your Google profile, all of those, your YouTube channel – there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use it because once again you’re just giving Google more of what it wants.
I do think that’s a great idea embedding … Look, I’m not gonna … Marco’s our iFrame genius and we had a discussion in our MasterMIND community, actually the Facebook group specifically about iFrames and how freaking fabulously they’re working. Marco was commenting on that just recently, the last couple days.
Again, that’s because if you’ve got an embedded Google stream, Google Plus stream, then yeah, that’s great because you’re just creating this iFrame tunnel, like picture-in-picture type thing, that’s just Google properties and it ends up creating a loop. As long as you close the loop with your G site iFrames and you can iFrame into it, like add ID pages, we talked about that kind of stuff in the Syndication Academy for the February update webinar. Everybody loves that. We call it the iFrame, local iFrame loop.
All those things are incredibly powerful and it’s because they’re utilizing iFrames. If you can utilize Google iFrames, you’re gonna squeeze a lot of juice out of it.
Do you want to comment on that?
Marco: No, man, that’s perfect.
Bradley: Okay. We’re good. We’re gonna keep moving. Steve, thanks for pointing that out because that’s a pretty cool update. I’m gonna have to play around with that a little bit. Okay.
Armand’s up. He says, “Not sure how I’m ignorant for wanting …” Oh, well, maybe that was Armand that posted that before. “I thought it was a bold claim by Josh to say he could have it shut down in a snap of a finger. I wasn’t trying to make anyone angry, just thought that was interesting.”
Yeah. Armand, I appreciate that. If that was you that posted that last week or whatever, I get that. All I was saying was that I don’t think we should have commented until we had verified the comment on our own. Not that I’m saying you’re lying about it, but I’m saying, again, on our part, we should have verified the comment and listened to maybe the conversation in its entirety before replying. That’s how I should have handled it and I didn’t, and I apologize for that.
I’m not attacking anybody or you, Armand. Just so you know, guys. That’s not how we are. That’s not who we are. Hey, what did I say? Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean? But thank you. Yeah.
Really, again, Armand, I don’t wanna get into debate about this. Armand came with a comment and we should have verified it before commenting. That’s all there is to it. Okay.
What Are Your Thoughts On Google Loving HTML Sites Over WordPress Pages?
Gordon’s up. He says, “Hey guys. Thank you very much again for your Hump Days help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Well, you’re welcome, Gordon. He says, “I’ve read everywhere for some time that Google loves WordPress and if you want to rank on the first page more easily you must use WordPress. But lately, I’ve been reading that Google now loves HTML sites much better and that is what we should be using. What is the truth?”
Honestly, you can rank either one. It doesn’t matter. I think it’s funny how things come full circle. It used to be HTML, then it became WordPress. The reason why WordPress has ranked so well is because it’s been industry standard for so long. The problem with WordPress though is, especially now with mobile first indexing, is the fact that WordPress sites are typically a hell of a lot slower and there’s a number of factors that affect that. Right? Hosting being one of the primary factors, but there’s a number of factors that cause WordPress pages, even responsive WordPress themes to load slowly.
Since everything is a mobile indexing first algorithm now, that’s what Google search results are based upon mobile indexing first that rolled out at the end of July. Guys, that’s absolute fact now. Because of that HTML sites load incredibly fast. So much faster than WordPress sites, if you don’t know how to optimize for PageSpeed.
I haven’t read anything about that. I don’t know what the debate is about that specifically right now, because I don’t follow that kind of stuff typically, but I imagine that is a very real debate. I can imagine that is going on right now. I can understand why HTML would probably rank better now because PageSpeed is supposedly a ranking factor, and especially more so now because of the mobile indexing first, mobile first index, excuse me.
Again, HTML sites load incredibly quick. I love HTML sites. I use them a lot for, again, for add Id pages and for a lot of one-off stuff. I just create an HTML page because I can edit it in Notepad++ and then just upload it to a server and it loads quickly. It’s simple to maintain and I don’t have to worry about WordPress updates and security issues and all the other shit that goes on with WordPress.
Anybody wanna comment on that?
Marco: Yeah. We have an AMP plugin and its in Facebook and I’m gonna go to the top and it’s called, on our Facebook group it’s called AMP Creators Mastermind. You can get the plug-in from there, the most up-to-date plug-in. There’s also video that details how to use it and how you can do just some really neat tricks with Google. Google will actually give you ideas and advice on what you need to do with your AMP pages to manipulate Google. How good is that?
AMP Creators Mastermind, the plug-in is in there. It’s free. We’re not charging for it. Just ask to join the group and you’ll get access to the plug-in.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to try and kind of finish up on this question, Gordon, you asked, so what should we be using? Honestly, what’s gonna be easier for you? Right? I mean, here’s the thing. WordPress, the nice thing about WordPress and probably why it has become industry standard for so long, is because there’s so much functionality, between the plugins and all that other stuff.
There’s so much functionality that you can add without having to understand coding, or HTML coding, anyways. So, excuse me. That’s probably why it had become industry standard.
Personally, I can’t do HTML sites other than a simple one pager site. Because I don’t know how to add CSS files and all that, I just don’t know how to do all that. I just know basic HTML. So I always just download an HTML template and then just edit it with the content that I need and upload it for single page stuff. And I do a lot of one page stuff with HTML sites, but I don’t know how to build a full-on website out of HTML and I don’t really care to ever learn how to do that either.
Really, Gordon, it’s what should you be using, whatever is easiest for you and your most efficient with. Because WordPress sites can absolutely be sped up to PageSpeed isn’t the issue. Right? I mean, you might have to be a PageSpeed nerd or expert, happen to be able to do that, but there’s lots of those out there. We’ve got several of them in our Mastermind.
I am not a PageSpeed expert. I know how to do a few things to get it good enough. But I know some of our MasterMIND members that, they tweak and tweak and tweak until they get these incredibly fast load times. I just don’t have the patience to do all that. You know what I mean? If get it fast enough to where it loads quick enough, then it’s not going to be an issue. Okay.
Should You Make All Page Updates And Changes At Once Or Should You Do It As Soon As You’re Done With A Page?
That’s a great question though, by the way. All right. Next one is Greg. Greg. What’s up, Greg? He says, “Hey guys. Over the next few weeks, I will do a significant rewriting and editing of all pages on my site enough so that the rankings will dance all over the place. Do you recommend keeping all updates in draft mode as I write and then posting all the changes on the same day? Or post each page’s edits as they are done over a period of the next few weeks which could keep the site dancing much longer? Thanks.”
That’s a good one. I’ve never tested that, Greg. I can tell you how I’ve done that in the past and that was to just publish the updates as they were completed. Because if it’s a site that’s gonna take a few weeks, because of the amount of content that it’s gonna be updated and it’s gonna take a few weeks, I typically just do all the updates or publish the updates as they occur, as I complete them.
Here’s my logic behind that. Although, guys, I have not tested this, and I’m curious to see what the other guys say, but my logic behind doing it, dripping it out as the changes are completed is that Google’s algorithm, if it’s tuned to identify or to notice that changes are being made in sites, which it is, we know that for sure, but it’s being done slowly over time, it’s logical to me that Google would understand that that site is being updated. There’s a lot of content so it’s gonna take time.
As opposed to doing all the changes in draft mode and then making all the updates at once, that seems more like an activity that an SEO would do. At least, that’s my opinion. But again, guys, this is completely conjectured on my opinion at this point, because I have not tested it. I’ve just always done it in a dripped out fashion because of how I feel it to be a logical reason to do that, if that makes sense.
Again, it’s not tested. That’s just my assumption. Anybody here wanna take a different approach or different angle?
Marco: Yeah. I do it all at once as if it were redesigned. That’s how I take it. I’m redesigning the website, maybe I’m doing the silo architecture, or whatever, and so it just goes live all at once.
Bradley: Okay. As far as dancing, have you tested one against the other to see if-?
Marco: No, because I always do it all at once. I don’t like going back or setting it. You have to set the calendar for each one of those to go out or maybe once it’s done, you have to publish it. Instead, you just have everything ready and then you publish all at once. I think it’s a preference. He may be right, he could set his website dancing time after time after time after time. I haven’t tested that.
Bradley: That’s interesting. That’d be an interesting test, Greg. I mean, I don’t know how I would do. It’s funny because Marco does it one way, I’ve done it the other. So I guess to make a choice. We don’t really know which one’s going … Because we haven’t tested it, I don’t wanna give you a false answer as to which has more of a dancing effect or a prolonged dancing effect versus the other. I can’t tell you honestly. But that would be an interesting test at some point.
Marco: I think Hernan was about to chime in.
Bradley: Were you?
Hernan: Yeah. I was about to say that I agree with you guys. I agree with Bradley in that regard. I was just going to say that I agree.
Does Your Subscription Level In Newswire Influence The Local SEO Power Of A Press Release?
Bradley: Okay. Kay Dee says, “When buying press release from newswire, does the subscription level influence its local SEO power? Is a $97 contributor PR sufficient? As seen here. Also, is it safe to use newswire for repeated weekly submissions or is it necessary to mix up the PR providers?”
Okay, great questions. Newswire is fine. There’s nothing wrong with newswire. As far as I know that the subscription levels shouldn’t make any difference – it’s the distribution level. So, if a higher subscription level gives you better distribution, then yes, the higher subscription levels would produce better results, or they should produce better results, because they mean more distribution. Right?
But as far as I know, if you’re talking about newswire.net, then the subscription levels only adjust, it’s the same distribution network, but they just – and again, I hope I have this right – but I think the different subscription levels, it’s all the same distribution network, it’s just the number of press releases that can be submitted within a given month is what is determined by the subscription level, not the number of distribution sites, if that makes sense.
So, if that’s the case, then no. This wouldn’t make any difference at all because you just get the same distribution level as somebody that might have an agency or a journalist, or whatever the different levels are that they say. Right? It’s the same distribution level or network so the same number of sites that it gets republished to. But somebody with a higher subscription level can submit more press releases within a given timeframe if that makes sense. Now again, if you look at the different pricing options and higher subscription levels have more distribution, then yes, it would make a difference. Okay. So really think about it that way. All right.
Is It Safe To Use Newswire For Repeated Weekly Submissions?
“Also, is it safe to use newswire repeatedly for weekly submissions?” Yeah, it is. The only reason why we talked about mixing up PR providers is because, especially if you’re doing PR stacking, well, even if you’re just doing direct press releases to money sites, for example, as your target URLs, like money sites or maps listings and stuff like that, is if you repeatedly hit it over and over again to the same distribution network, there comes a point where there’s diminishing returns.
I don’t know what that point is, when that threshold occurs or what it takes to cross that threshold. But I do know that I’ve experienced through, especially when I was testing all the stuff that we did for Local PR Pro, which is our training on how to do press release stacking and how to use press releases for ranking and the maps pack really, really quickly. Anyways, when I was doing all my testing for that I found that, when I started to vary the distribution networks, so essentially Newswire.net was one of them, PressCable, which was Chris Munch’s, we also have two press release services in Serp Space that we used. So I have two distribution networks there, plus, you know …
So my point is, I’ve used as many as four different distribution networks for a PR stack for one business. So if I’m going to do four press releases, I might use four different distribution networks and then I get a much more diverse backlink profile. Right? There are a number of sites that are gonna be present on almost every distribution network. They’re common because their press cables that are popular and they’re easy access. But every single distribution network are gonna have some of their own unique distribution partners that the others do not.
That’s why I said that’s the only reason why I would recommend that you have, if PRs or press releases is one of your main services that you provide for your business, then I would recommend that you get some subscriptions in some other press release distribution networks so that you have that diversity available. Right?
Guys, I love press release. I think they’re absolutely amazing. I freaking love them. For SEO purposes, I use press releases like they’re going out of style. It’s one of my primary methods for getting results now, is just using press releases. I mean, in addition to the other SM stuff, like Semantic Mastery stuff that we do – drive stacks, syndication networks, now Local GMB Pro. But press releases are my go-to thing, guys, when I need quick movement, when I need backlinks, when I need citations. It’s just super, super powerful. So I use a number of different services, distribution networks, and I recommend that you do as well. Okay.
Marco: One of the things that works really well for me, and I only do this for stuff that really, really matters, is I’ll set up a press release stack the way that we teach in Local PR Pro, and then somewhere along that stack, sometimes the very last one, I’ll hit it with something like PR web. Now guys, before you go, it’s expensive, right? If you choose, I think, the top level is something like 400 bucks, the next one down is nearly 300 bucks, I always choose the next one down from the top. But you get so much exposure and distribution that it’ll help push everything that you’ve done with the PR stack.
Now again, I do this when it’s something, maybe I’ve come across something that’s really difficult but I know that my client is gonna make a ton of money, and so I’ll go and I’ll get one of these releases. Again, PR Web is one and I forget the one owned by, I always forget the name, the one owned by Warren Buffett. They have a press release service. But either one. I mean, you can’t go wrong, but you will have to spend the money. But then again, just charge the client for it.
Bradley: Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, Kay Dee, a great service. I’m telling you. Actually, yeah, this gives me an opportunity real quick to point something out. So I’m developing prospecting funnel. I’ve been working on it for fucking months, man. No kidding, months and months and months. It’s taken so much longer than I planned. But I’m glad though because, it is difficult to set up through trial and error to get it to work, but because of that not many others out there are willing to do it, which means we’re gonna have a unique product that works incredibly well.
I’m teaching everybody in MasterMIND how to do it, how to build these prospecting funnels. The ultimate goal is, once I have it down and, like the prospecting funnel is absolutely working incredibly well, our sales process still sucks for selling, well, it’s still in development, but the prospecting funnel is working incredibly well.
The reason I bring this up is because, actually my outreach campaign, the cold prospecting emails, because we’re using cold outreach emails right now as our primary prospecting method and it’s working like crazy. I’m gonna show you my pipe drive account here in just a moment for the agency that I’ve been testing all this stuff on, which is my own agency, Big Bamboo Marketing. I’ve been targeting specifically tree service contractors.
But the outreach sequence that I’m using, the cold email sequence that I’m using is a modified sequence that I got from PressCable. I’ve just mentioned that I used Chris Munch’s PressCable as one of my distribution networks for press releases and I have a White Label reseller agency account with them. One of the things that they have inside there is … By the way, we should probably get with Chris Munch at some point and do a promo for his PressCable, because I do use it so much, guys. If somebody wants to make a note of that.
Anyways, it’s a good service. He’s got this White Label agency, like email campaign thing in there, that don’t do all the emailing from their servers. I don’t recommend it, though. Here’s why: because, first of all, it’s templated content. Guys, templated content, if it gets used by too many people, well, Google’s servers and mail filters, it will filter it out. It will send it to spam or send it directly to promotional. Because Google has a machine learning, guys. Google will recognize the same message being sent by dozens and dozens of emails, or even hundreds, or even thousands of emails sending from domains and such. So Google will actually start filtering and automatically classifying certain emails as spam.
So inside PressCable, if you use, and I’m not speaking bad about it, I think it’s good, but what I’m saying is, the templates, the email templates are, I guarantee you that most people don’t go in and edit them considerably, which is what you should do. Right? Anytime somebody gives you an email template, a sequence that’s been templated, you should go in and edit it, customize it specific for your business and change the messaging so that it’s specific for your messaging. Because again, then it becomes unique and it won’t get caught up in the spam filters if too many people use it. So that’s number one.
Number two, they also do the mailing from their own sending domains. I found through testing that most of them are undeliverable or they get rejected by web mail hosts or they go to spam or promotional folder. I know because I’ve tested them. So what I did was I actually pulled all the email copy out, edited everything to be more specific to my business, and then I started sending using GMass in my own sending domains through G suite – so Google apps, Google suite. Now I’m using GMass.co which is fabulous. It’s great for cold outreach prospecting emails. I’m using that, plus my own sending domains, which are alias domains in a G suite account. And we’re getting incredible results.
Here, let me show you, just to prove to you, guys. This is from three weeks of mailing. Take a look at this. I know it’s small on your end, but this is from three weeks of consistent mailing as of yesterday. We only mail Monday through Friday. You can see I’ve got 36 active leads in my pipeline right now. All tree services, because I mentioned that I’m targeting specifically tree service companies.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because I’m using the PressCable sequence that’s a modified version of it, specific to my business, where we’re pitching PR services on the front-end. That’s what’s actually filling this pipeline right now. Again, this is from, we started on Tuesday, three weeks ago, we’ve been mailing five days a week for three weeks. We’ve got 36 inbound leads, which is crazy. Right?
This has been, by far, the most successful prospecting method I’ve used. PRs are a great front-end product especially because you can get really quick wins. So that’s kind of what our pitch is on the front-end right now, is using PR or press releases to kind of get their attention. Okay. Anyways, great that you’re doing that. I like to see it when other people are running with something that works and I know that they work. Okay.
This is Dan, right?
Marco: Yeah, it’s Dan.
Bradley: Okay. “Switched everything to liquidweb.” Cool. That’s awesome, Dan. Remember that conversation we had about hosting and Dan was like, “You got an affiliate link?” I think this was last week or maybe two weeks ago, but yeah, that’s awesome. “How can I get the VIP option?” Just reach out at Support. “Along with the VIP ticket, you’re good to go.” That’s right. Okay, cool. Anyways, Adam got you, Dan. We’ll get you squared.
Yeah, that’s what I saw. Okay. I didn’t realize it was called Gutenberg. Thanks, Jordan. Yeah. Let us know what happens.
Dan, that comes up. The GMB keywords will come up. It’s been rolling out. Not all of my GMB listings show that. Most of them do now, but not all of them. So just be patient. You should start seeing that soon. It’s rolling out I think to all GMB Insights reporting. It’s just, like I said, some of my listings don’t have it, but almost all of them do. So just be patient though, you’ll see that soon.
Yeah. Google Plus has had the world’s longest funeral. Yeah. You know what’s funny about that, guys? You could go back to when we first started Hump Day Hangouts, which I think was in 2013. Maybe ‘14? I guess it was '14. Anyways, whenever it was that we started it, and there was people back then, ever since Google Plus, creation there’s been those people out there, the haters, that said Google Plus is dead. I’m not kidding. You can search probably Google right now, Google Plus is dead, and find articles that were posted like in 2012 that says: Google Plus is dead, it’s a ghost town, it’s going by the wayside.
It was funny because for many years, I would see articles pretty fairly consistently, on social media examiner and all these sites and stuff, that were talking about Google Plus is dead and blah, blah, blah. Yet Google was actually incorporating more and more of Google Plus into its algorithm. Again, when Google first started adding the Semantic Web to how its algorithm worked, like Google Plus was to be used as an identity validator. It was a way to validate somebody as a real person because of the connections that they would have on the web.
Why do you think syndication networks work so well? Because it’s very similar to what Google Plus was trying to do by making all of its products integrate with a singular profile, a Google Plus profile. It was a way to validate an identity of person and tie all of those products to that individual person. Right? That’s part of the reason that they did it.
It’s funny because I remember back in 2012 and '13 and '14 when these articles were coming about Google Plus being dead and Google’s killing it off and all that, I was saying, “No, Google’s not gonna kill it off. It’s so much a part of its semantic algorithm now that there’s no way they’re gonna kill it off.” Well, here we are many years later and I see its death, like Wayne said, it’s a very long and slow funeral, or very long and slow death really. It’s not the funeral yet because it’s not completely dead. But it’s like they’ve been on this terminal illness for the last two years.
I remember years ago, and the reason I brought up the Hump Day Hangouts was because I remember debating that on Hump Day Hangouts and me saying, “I don’t think it’ll ever be taken away. Or if it is, it’s gonna be a long time in the future because it’s been so integrated into how Google identifies or validates an identity and ties all of their products together to one specific person.”
But here we are several years later and they have actually started winding it down, but like Wayne mentioned, it’s been at least two years now that they’ve been pulling this stuff out of products and it’s still in progress, if that makes sense. So it’s interesting to see all these years later the prediction that I made, that it wasn’t gonna be removed entirely, or if it did it was going to take a long time, it’s kind of coming to be true. And all those other people that were like, “Oh, it’s dead,” five, six years ago, they were proven wrong. You know what I mean?
Marco: Who was it? It was Steve Cato that gave us that Google blog and the embed Google stream. Because I just got an idea for a webinar on how we can just totally maximize the use of this with everything that we do, not only in RYS Reloaded, but in Google My Business. Steve, if you’re not in either one, I’m going to invite you to the webinar anyway because you gave me the idea. Guys, if you are in, I’m just gonna give you some monster stuff on how you can manipulate this to death.
Bradley: And that’s in GMB Pro?
Marco: This will be a GMB Pro, but I’m gonna invite the RYS Reloaded guys because they can take advantage of it even if they’re not in Google My Business. I’m going to invite Steve Cato for putting that little itch in my brain on how this can be manipu- … I’ve been thinking about this the whole time we’re talking. I’m thinking, “All this shit and I can do this? And I can do this? And we can circle back doing this?” So it’s gonna be fun.
Bradley: We’ll talk about it, but invite the MasterMIND too then.
Marco: Steve, if you’re not in any of our groups or whatever, if you’re not in Facebook, you should at least be in our free group in Facebook, just reach out to me in Messenger and just give me your email address so I can send you an invitation to the webinar. It’ll take me about two, three, four weeks to set it all up, but once it’s done, I’ll make sure you get invited.
Bradley: Sweet. That’s pretty cool. So you guys you get rewarded for educating us, right?
Greg says, “This looked like a fair comparison.” Thanks, Greg. Actually, I’ve got it open over here. I’m gonna scroll through here and take a look. “Reason to choose HTML, my preference.” Yeah. That’s what I was saying. I mean, if I knew how to do, like build whole HTML websites, honestly, I shouldn’t be building websites anymore anyways, I should be outsourcing that. But there are times that I still do build a lot of single HTML pages because I do a lot of SEO stuff with those, so I do a lot of that on my own. Again, I just added it with Notepad++, it’s very simple to do.
But I don’t know how to build full-on websites with HTML. I don’t think I should be, anyways. I just don’t know how to do that. So if I need to build a whole website, then I just select WordPress. But then I do a few PageSpeed optimizations to cut down on load time. But I agree. I think HTML is a better route to go, but it causes a lot of other issues to not have the functionality that WordPress does.
Anyways, thanks, Greg. I appreciate that. Dominic says, he just had a birthday this week. Happy birthday, Dominic. He says, “Thrive Themes is expensive. I thinking I’m dropping them and moving to Divi 3.0 220 a year for an agency, unlimited sites. That sounds great, because I think we paid almost 600 bucks for our agency license, that we just renewed it this week. “Great drag and drop builder. Any thoughts?”
No. I don’t have any thoughts about it, just because I haven’t used Divi. I’m one of the types of people that I hate testing new WordPress themes or developers because they all have their own unique way of doing things and there’s such a learning curve. I don’t know, I’m not a web designer. So for me, there’s always such a learning curve every time I have to learn how to edit a different WordPress developers theme.
I’ve learned over the years, like I’ve used InkThemes, I-N-K Themes, which aren’t even great themes, to be honest with you, but I used them for years. That was my own. If a client wanted me to build them a website, all I would do was send them to the InkThemes marketplace to choose the template that they wanted, the design that they wanted. If they sent back an email saying, “I don’t really like these. Here are some others that I like,” and they pointed out other developers, I would tell them flat out, “Well, that’s fine, but now the web design cost is going up $1,000. Because I’m gonna have to hire somebody else to do the build instead of me because I don’t know how to do those themes and there’s gonna be a huge learning curve, or I would hire somebody else,”
That’s typically what I would do. If somebody had an existing website on a different theme that they wanted to keep or if they had a specific theme that was built by a developer that I didn’t know, or that I had no experience with, which was pretty much everybody else out there besides InkThemes, then I would either charge them to learn how to work on that theme. Or I would go to Upwork and find somebody that was proficient in that specific developer’s theme and then I would hire them to do it. But I would always add in a premium to that web design service specifically for that reason.
By the way, I’m really not very proficient at Thrive Themes either, but I know enough to be able to build some pages and stuff that look decent. Again, Thrive Themes is my, just, Dominic, for your sake, I know I haven’t used Divi, maybe one of the other guys have, if you’re real proficient with WordPress stuff, it might be easy for you, but for me, I’m sure there’s a learning curve that I don’t want to mess with yet.
Marco: It’s all I’m using now and of course Semantic Mastery has a scissor for all that stuff that we need for anything that needs to be coded or whatever else. But yeah, Divi is what I’ve been using for quite a while now.
Bradley: Yeah. Cool. Check it out, I think we’re done with the questions, guys. Yeah. Dan says he’s in Canada, so maybe next year. Yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s gonna roll out slower in Canada, if you’re talking about the Insights keywords, Dan.
Anyways, guys, all right, I’m gonna wrap it up. Thanks everybody for being here. We’ll see everybody … Oh, we got MasterMIND webinar tomorrow, guys, so be there or be square.
Adam: Outstanding. Just a quick reminder, I wanted to say something before we wrap up, if you saw the emails Leads Recon from Ted Chen, he gave us a heck of a deal for subscribers, I’m gonna put the link on there, but price is going up. I mean, it’s been out for a while and he’s been working on it, it’s like doubling or something, the price tonight at midnight. So last chance to hop in on that if you want. I think between us, we own several licenses already, so I highly recommend this tool for you, if you’re interested in it.
Bradley: Offer leads recon?
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: Did you drop the link again?
Adam: I’m gonna do that right now. I need to make sure I get the right one.
Bradley: Also, just for people that might not be on the event page, what is it, if you have the slug, at semanticmastery.com/ what? Or is it leadsrecon.com/semanticmastery or something?
Adam: You know what? I am logged in. Give me a 10 seconds here. If everyone can hold on, this is worth it to the people who want to grab it. I’ll make sure we get this right. It is Semantic Mastery-
Bradley: I did a walkthrough webinar of how I use the tool. So if you’re curious about how the tool works and everything, please watch the webinar. It’s a great tool and it’s a lifetime license for $297. I think it’s 297. It’s like 300 bucks.
Adam: Correct. Yeah. It’s going to a yearly and it’s gonna be something like double or triple that.
Bradley: Yeah. I think he said he was going like 697 for a lifetime option, but it’ll be 297 yearly. The lifetime option for 697, I think, is gonna go away soon. Anyways, my point is, if you’re interested in it at all, you can watch the webinar, you’ll see exactly how I use it. It’s great for getting lead data very, very quickly.
I use another tool, I use Lead Kahuna for most scraping. But I hired a VA to do it because Lead Kahuna pulls so much freaking data. It takes a long time to run and it pulls a ton of data. Most of the data we don’t use, but it does pull in a lot of additional data. Whereas Leads Recon is more about getting results very quickly and it doesn’t give you a whole shit ton of unnecessary data. So it runs real quick, it’s efficient, and it’s a good tool. I highly recommend that you check it out. Okay.
Adam: That’s good.
Bradley: All right, guys. We’ll see y'all next week. Thanks.
Adam: Bye everyone.
Marco: Bye.
Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 196 published first on your-t1-blog-url
0 notes