3rd June, 2019 By April
Welcome to Hump Day hang out Episode 238 the one where I try to sound like an announcer and fail miserably. So moving right along, we're going to say hello to everybody. We got some good analysis for everybody watching. And then we are going to get into it got a load of questions to get through. So I believe Hernan is out gallivanting around the world. I think he's in Miami today so Hernan if you're watching say hello, drop a line. Let us know you're still alive. But barring that, let's start with Chris. How are you doing, man?
Chris: Doing good. Happy to be here again. The studio is set because Game of Thrones is over.
Adam: Ah, that's it. So he took off to Miami to brighten up his day. You could do well It's a small world. I just had a call with somebody from Austria so I forgot to ask him where exactly he was at but over in your neck of the woods so small world.
Nice. Yeah, nice.
Adam: Good time. So, Marco, how are you doing?
Marco: I'm fine. Men proud to say that I never watched a single episode of Game of Thrones.
Bradley: Yeah, me neither. I don't have time Who has time for TV?
Adam: Yeah, I watched it watch it all horribly disappointing. Let me know on the page if you're watching this view agreed with fewer disappointed with the last season it was pretty bad.
Bradley: So I posted a post on Facebook saying all you Game of Thrones fans, nobody cares.
Adam: I care I care. Man, Bradley. Besides Game of Thrones ranting How are you doing?
Bradley: I'm good, man. Yeah, I don't have much time to watch TV. And when I do I just put something on Netflix and watch it and most the time or even get through it before I get bored with it and go to sleep or something. Do you know what I mean? Gotcha.
Marco: I have three young kids ask me about a Disney movie. I got Holly singing all the tunes, but TV and programs and series and all that you got time for that? Yeah.
Adam: Awesome well if you're just watching for the first time Thanks for checking this out. We do eventually talk about other things but we just want to let you know you're in the right place you are watching Hump Day hangouts is the place to get your digital marketing questions answered. You can bookmark it https://wwww.semanticmastery.com/hdquestions come join us every week. can't watch us live that's fine. You can ask your question ahead of time and check out the replay on YouTube.
Also, if you're wondering, the price like the second most. What's the word I'm looking for? a second most common question we get asked is like where to start as you know, I came across your course or I talk someone I saw this video. If you're looking where to start with Semantic Mastery go grab the Battle Plan, battleplan.semanticmastery.com, a great way to get repeatable processes. We've laid everything out in there. It's based upon the processes we use the tools we use the stuff we recommend, and use ourselves. And if you're looking to take your marketing agency or you want to start a digital marketing agency and kind of add some rocket boosters to it, and get going you should join the mastermind. And you can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com.
Because my little one line thing there does not do it justice. You know, it's about more than just starting an agency or growing your agency. It's about being with like-minded people who are pushing, who want to do more who want to deliver better results for their clients. And you know, like I said, adding the rocket boosters doing all of that faster, getting feedback faster and being more successful. Anything you guys want to add on to that? I always wonder if I, you know,
Bradley: I mean, just we've had a lot of really good conversations in just the last week in the mastermind, some of the threads have gotten pretty deep that with just all kinds of various stuff. And you know, it's not just SEO tactics, a lot of times there is that but there's just questions about all kinds of aspects of building a business, running a business, hiring people, managing people, promoting people. We're actually going to have a mastermind webinar tomorrow and that's going to be one of our topics. We've got a few topics we're going to cover tomorrow. But one of the topics is going to be about hiring people, you know, whether it's virtual assistants or personal assistants or whatever, and then training them, managing them, letting them kind of growth within their position. And at what point do we would like to promote them to a higher level, even almost like a management position, or project manager or something like that. And that's, we've all got all every one of us, my partners, and I have experience in that in some degree or another. So we all have our own take or slant on how should be done when it should be done. So we're all going to briefly talk about that tomorrow. For some of our members. That's been a question that's come up recently, and I think it's pretty, pretty valid, pretty important to cover. But you know, we also have a lot of other members in there at the mastermind that has their own businesses at varying levels as well. And so it's really good to have that community because we get to converse and chat about all different kinds of stuff and get input from various sources. It's not just us always talking about things, right. It's a lot of our members contributing. And you know, some of our members are pretty high level two, so are really high level actually. So it's really good to see that I learned almost as much or just as much from our members as they learn from us. There's no question about that. And it's just, it's a lot of fun to be in there. It's certainly helpful. And it doesn't have to be specific about just one type of business model either like SEO or local SEO, because we've got members in there that are doing all different kinds of stuff. And, and I think that's really important to stress that as well.
Adam: Definitely, totally agree. And real quick, I want to say since everybody, no matter what you're doing, you're watching us on YouTube in one way, shape or form whether you've come to the page, semanticmastery.com/hdquestions or if you're checking out the replay, but do a favor subscribe to the YouTube channel. Stay up to date with obviously Hump Day Hangouts, a lot of the other videos we put out, and then if you're coming across a clip and you find it useful and you think it might be useful to someone else do me a favor send it out to them, ask them to check out our channel. And last but not least, if you are looking for done for you services, head over to mgyb.co. I'm not even going to go through the whole list of what you can do but press releases syndication networks are always driving tax we're adding more and more services in there and this again, guys, this is stuff that we've added in there that we use, and that we made public so that we can provide those services as well. So by all means, check it out. It's a great way to save some time and a lot of cases save some money over trying to do it yourself or build up the team. So with that said, Is there anything else we need to talk about you guys before we get going?
I don't think so. I want to revise my statement about TV. There is one show that I like to watch. Oh boy. Yeah, it's impractical jokers if you guys haven't seen it as freakin funny. Yeah, check it out. Never heard I love it because it's just brain dead comedy but it's funny and that's one thing I love to put on because it's like it's always on Tru TV. And it's almost always on. So it's just like it's comfortable, just put that on and just giggle because it's those guys are so dumb. But anyway, I just wanted to update my statement. I do watch some stuff, but not very often. And that's one of the things I watch regularly. So, all right, we'll get into it. We got lots of questions already. That's a good thing. We got the screen.
What Google Adwords Bidding Strategy Do You Recommend For Local Contractor Businesses?
Bradley: Okay, cool. So Jay is up, he says, started an alpha beta AdWords campaign for a local client, but I'm not getting any impressions so far at all. What bidding strategy do you recommend for local contractor businesses?
And then he's got a follow-up question. Well, first of all, if you're not getting in and when it comes to bidding strategies, I don't use any bidding strategies. When I start a campaign. I go manual cost per click bid, right? So it's manual and I always do that because in, you know, two years ago, I would have said don't use any bidding strategies that Google offers because they weren't very good back then at least I never got any good results with them. But now I, I've changed my tune on that my opinion has changed. There's a lot of really good suggestions and automated bidding strategies that you can implement with Google. However, I don't recommend doing that until you've started to get some data into your account, which means activity, right impressions and clicks, and that kind of stuff. Then once you have some data in your account, and I don't mean like a day's worth, but a couple of weeks worth and it really depends on the volume of traffic or activity that you're getting into your account or your campaigns I should say.
But what I typically do is I will always do manual cost per click, and if you're not getting any, any impressions from that, then it means if first of all make sure your ads have been approved. I'm quite sure that you've already checked that if they are approved and you're not getting any, any, any impressions, either your keyword targeting is really far off. But if you're using the alpha-beta campaign structure and you're so essentially you're running a beta campaign right now, it shouldn't be that far off, because you should only be targeting your Bullseye type keywords, which are going to be just a couple of words per search query modified broad match. And from there, that's how you start to develop your exact match search queries through your out which then become your alpha campaigns. So my point is if it's either your keyword selection is very far off, or you're not bidding high enough on your cost per click, maximum cost per click bit. And so that might be what you typically that's going to be the problem and also your quality score. But remember, your quality score is going to be very low. Starting off like a lot of times I've seen I've got I just started recently running a lot of Google Ads again for one of my own businesses.
going to be talking about that business tomorrow. Finally, on the mastermind, I've been teasing it for a month. But I'm actually going to reveal that tomorrow on the master during the mastermind. And so I've started running some campaigns over there. And I've been using the exact same strategy that I've taught, which is the alpha beta campaign structure. And you know, with with with that the keywords, if you're not, if you're bidding not if you're not bidding high enough, you're not going to get impressions but your quality score is usually going to be low when you start off anyways like it starts off. Typically, at least what I've seen recently is around five, five out of 10, right, until you start to get some traffic and don't freak out. If your quality score is low with a brand new campaign. Don't worry about it. Once you start getting some clicks, it'll start to adjust itself, because I haven't done anything with this campaign that I set up for my new business.
And like I haven't done any ad editing to improve the click-through rate yet I've got three sets of ads which I always try to split tests two or three ads at a time. And it started off as a quality score of five out of 10. Just last week, and I haven't done anything to modify yet. And I'm already up to a quality score seven out of 10. And it's just because I'm getting more activity through those, and it just that the algorithm or the quality score algorithm really have to kind of adjust itself based upon the activity that it's getting if that makes sense. So, again, if you're not getting any impressions at all, select manual cost per click, raise your minimum bid. And then also make sure that you're with an alpha-beta campaign structure that you're not going to narrow with your keywords you want to go broader and use modified broad match type, which is you know, use the plus and then each keyword has the plus symbol before it, or each word within the keyword phrase has the plus symbol in front of it. So do that. All right.
As far as do I recommend any competitors buying or bidding tools or apps now I've never used any of them. never used one of them. Honestly, that's part of the reason. I love that Alpha Beta campaign structure for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, by the way, just go to Google and search alpha beta campaign structure or Google Ads alpha beta campaign structure, you'll see a PDF by PQ3 digital, I think, is the name of the publisher of that PDF. And it's a very simple campaign structure, that I like that that's how I always set up my Google ads. And that's why I don't need any competitor spying or bidding tools or apps. If you're in a really complex niche or something, then maybe or if you're doing e-commerce and that kind of stuff, maybe but if you're doing lead generation, I'm telling you, you don't need any of that stuff. It's just an added expense. Because your alpha beta campaigns, your beta campaigns will reveal to you your best performing keywords. And by that, I mean the keywords that generate the most clicks and ultimately, the ones that generate the most conversions. clicks aren't good enough, right clicks mean nothing. What you want are conversions. Whatever your conversion goal is for lead generation is typically a phone call or fill out a contact request more, right. Or if it's for a storefront business, maybe somebody that, you know, comes into the store clicks for driving directions or makes an appointment, something like that. And for those, like I said, what you'll find with that kind of a campaign structure is your your beta campaign will identify to you reveal to you your best performing keywords, at which point you create exact match campaigns, exact match keyword campaigns, and that's called the alpha campaigns and you what used to be what's called a single keyword ad group. That's not necessarily the case anymore, because Google won't even honor a single keyword ad group anymore at the ads platform will actually show even if you use an exact match type.
And you create a single keyword ad group, Google still going to show your ad for what they call close variants. They didn't use so they used to be pretty strict about it. But now those still show close variants, so it's okay to mix very similar exact match terms into the same ad group now. But what I love about that guys is again, it's such a simple way to set up and let the data show you what the best keywords are. And then you create your alpha campaigns around those best keywords. And it's, I learned how to do that also through
what the hell's the guy's name that wrote the Perry, Perry Marshall, the 8020 rule, if you look the 8020 sales and marketing book, go get that on Amazon and read it. It's incredibly powerful that book, and it is, it pertains or applies to Google ads, but it also applies to almost everything like and what, you know, 20% of your 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your keywords. And in fact, it's often closer to 90% of your results come from 10% of your keywords or 95% of your results come from 5% of your keywords. And that's absolutely the truth. And I've seen it time and again, whenever I've been running lead generation campaigns using Google ads. So that's a great question.
But again, I'd save your money on competitors buying bidding tools or apps, and invest that into the campaign itself and let that data tell you what the best keywords are to target and how to fine-tune your campaigns.
Does anybody want to add to that?
No. Okay.
Will A Local Lead Gen Google Site With Syndication Networks, Drive Stacks & MGYB Links Ranks Faster Than A Stand Alone Domain?
Gordon's up next he says, Hey, guys, your generosity and updates is greatly appreciated. As usual. You guys are the best. Thanks, Gordon. He said, should I conclude from comments on previous hump days that using a Google site for local lead gen site and hammering it with RYS drive stack, syndication networks, and link building from the hobby store is more likely to get you a page one ranking faster and easier than using a regular new standalone domain for the site? Or am I wrong? No, you can still use a self-hosted domain. But what we do is and the way that Marco has been really preaching and teaching is is that we use all of the Google properties as tier one properties to power up the domain because of the domain itself
Self, we try to protect the money site, right? If you're going to use a self-hosted domain, which you should if you're running a business for lead generation and stuff, guys, you don't need it. I don't, I don't think you need it. You still can use it if you desire to, but it's not necessary. But if you're doing client work or you're running your own business, I absolutely recommend that you get a branded domain and a self-hosted website. But what we try to do is protect put a firewall around that site, that domain and we can use Google properties to do that and syndication networks and all these things to validate and solidify the entity. We did an MTI be a webinar, which we've got another one coming up
on June 10, Monday, June 10. We're going to be doing another webinar specifically about how to power up Google sites and Dr. stacks, by the way, how to get the best practices or the best practice uses and the best uses of Google Sites. And Dr. stacks. Okay, so that's coming up Monday, June 10. If you guys
Want to drop a link for registration for that, that would be great. But we did. About a month ago, maybe five weeks ago now we did a webinar specifically about how to solidify and why syndication networks are more important now than ever. And they're just as powerful as now in a different way than they used to be. But it's all helped to help validate and solidify an entity. And it's also again, it's always acted as kind of an SEO firewall. We've been talking about that for years. But now we just use the Google sites and the drive stacks to do the same thing as Marco it's called it it's about being in the belly of the beast. Right and, and using those properties is kind of a firewall or a filter, and we can do all of our nasty stuff outside of those, but or to those instead of direct to the money site and it protects our money site. But like I said, if you're running your own business, or doing client work, I always recommend that you do have a money site because it's a little bit it's, in my opinion, is better for branding, and all of that. So Marco, what say you
Marco: I would say that since he's talking about local lead gen, and his purpose should be to rank in the map pack. Now you're going to rank in organic. Anyway, pretty much with whatever you target locally. But yeah, I mean the drives stack plus GSite, the GSite will rank and be Bradley shown at time and again, when looking at Virginia, SEO, SEO Virginia, and that'll get you leads but the idea is to push power then from that from the SEO shield, and as Bradley said, from being in the belly of the beast to the GMB to the map so that you can pop it up in the three pack, which is what most of the action is taking place. Right? And then the more power that you throw at it, the more that will transfer over to that that GMB the post so you get action on the post you get action in the in the three pack. You get all kinds of action. It goes crazy. And I'm glad you mentioned that, that you mentioned that the June 10 webinar because I've been talking for a couple of years now about it about a test that we ran. I couldn't mention the city. And I couldn't mention the niche that we went after I just said that it was in a highly competitive market, highly competitive niche. Well, on May 10, I'm going to reveal what the website is. It's still raining. I'm sorry, on June 10. I'm going to reveal what the niches, what the city is. And you're going to see live that it's ranking number one, still, for the top level. For the market level keyword, it's right there. And the guys still getting calls to this day. And all from one was the 1 million spam link test. So if you're wondering whether it's still works, whether it's still relevant and whatever, we have people killing it either way that you do it, whether as Brittany recommended a TLD where you're establishing your brand and you can go after multiple things through your brand or whether you just go through the make that your money site or you combine it the G site with the GMB that so many things and so many ways that you can do this to generate revenue from whatever lead gen property you have that but to kind of bring it all back and really nail it down. The answer is yes, it is more likely to rank faster and better than a normal to TLD would.
Bradley: Yeah. And so yeah, I again, I just want to stress that if you're just doing local lead gen stuff, then you don't need a website. Not a self-hosted website, I mean, but if you know you can get away with just GMB stuff. And I certainly recommend a Google site as well as it drives tech. That's kind of all part of the process really. But you can just use like the GMB website for example, as your primary website and still use, you know, if you choose but again, if you're doing client work or you're running your own business, I recommend you still use a self-hosted site.
Clarifications On Fake GMBs And Verifications
Alright, so Gordon's upset again he says And could you please help me understand something you mentioned? I thought you said that if you create a fake new GMB listing, the address has to be verified at the time or it won't be published. I thought that Google only looked at stuff like that if you tried to create it and claim it, thanks. Well, I'm not sure I understand that question. Because what I was saying was when you are creating a GMB and remember, I don't verify the GMBs any I mean, other than the manual way that I've done it many, many times over the years, which is using PO boxes with the street address option that you know, obviously you have to have a you that you can go pick up a postcard for that but that's manual because you've got to go rent the PO box, like go sign the paperwork, show your ID pay for it, all that get the key and the box assigned to you then go back and register the GMB and then wait for the card and then go back and pick the card up. So that's a manual process, but as far as like buying them, I'm not honest to God, I bet
I still don't know how it's being done. I never cared. I didn't ask and I don't care. And I wouldn't tell even if I did. No, you don't I mean, so. But what I'm saying is, if you're, if you're trying to verify GMB, at some point, when it's being verified, there has to be a physical location of the physical address entered, or it will not allow you to verify period. Now, if the service area business, you're supposed to clear the address before adding your service areas once it's been verified, right, but Google understands where the physical location of the Google My Business is, because it's a requirement in order to verify or to claim it anyways, to create it and or claim it. Does that make sense? So if somebody if you're talking about if you tried to create it, Google only looks stuff like that if you try to create it and claim it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what other options there are like. If there's an existing GMB out there that's unclaimed, then it's going to have a location associated with it already. If you're creating a new listing, you have to put a physical location and you cannot create a new one without having a physical address. Right? Again, that doesn't, there are other ways to verify them, obviously, than actually going and picking up the mail. That's how people are able to provide that as a service. That's how we've been able to provide it MGYB. But you still have to have a physical address. That's my point. And so what I was saying was, if you're going to be using GMBs with spam addresses, I don't recommend that you build citations, because where is that address? What was that physical address, right? If it's for service area business, you're going to clear the address anyways. But when you get the location when you get the verified location, you should know what the address is because it's going to be up to you to clear the address and start adding your service areas. The problem occurs because if you start sending or building citations
Most citation directories or business directories require a physical address a street address. So you have to enter that in. And it has to be the same as whatever it was. That was associated with the GMB when it was created and claimed and or verified, the right has to be that same address, or else it creates ambiguity and ambiguity. I can't say that right now. But it invigorates the data. In other words, it will create NAP inconsistencies. So it has to be the same well what happens when you start building citations to a location they get put on marketing lists that business that I'm using air quotes, that business that you created, gets put on marketing, this direct mail marketing list, and so all of a sudden that that physical address is going to start receiving mail from credit card companies for business credit accounts and from you know, solicitation offers things like this to print and, you know, check printing places and you know, all that kind of stuff will start to appear at that address. And if it's a spam address, and there's an actual physical location there, whether it's a business or god forbid somebody's house, they're going to be notified that somebody used their address for a fake GMB listing right for a fake business registered their address for business that doesn't exist there. And that's a good way to get your GMB reported. So that's why I recommend if you're going to be using those do not build citations to you. And I've been saying that since way back when we started really pushing on building lead gen assets. So that hasn't changed. But you know, I know some people do it anyways. But don't you know, don't be surprised if you end up getting it reported because somebody is complaining about getting mail for a business that doesn't exist there. So it makes sense.
Any Suggestions In Getting Reviews For A Rank And Rent GMB Site?
Okay, moving on. Jay Darrow says grappling with getting reviews for my GMB. It is for rank and rent any suggestions. thank Joe. Well thanks, Joe. Well
If you have a service provider already, then what you can do is ask the service provider to solicit reviews from their customers. Now, I know that's difficult because a lot of the times if they have their own GMB, they're going to, you know, maybe push people to their own GMB. But what I would do is recommend if again, if you have a service provider, I've done this with many of mine. As I've told them, Listen, I'm the one generating your GMB is not really generating leads for you. I understand you want to build up your reputation for yours as well. But I'm the one that's generating the work for you. So would you mind sending people to leave a review on our on you know, my listings, and I make it easy for them right set up a redirect domain. Even if you're not using an actual website, like a self-hosted website, you can buy a domain that you can just have is redirected to the review page for for Google Maps and make it easy and tell them put shit print them out some business cards that have that on there that says satisfied with their service leave us a review and give them a stack of business cards and say make sure that they pass these out to your clients or your customers at you know after the point of sale, preferably the ones that you know are satisfied with the job done. We've done that I've had you know, for a lot of my Tree Service guys, I've given them business cards or I've offered to pay for the next time they get their paper invoices printed, so that I can add my GMB review link essentially to their invoices, that kind of stuff. It works. Also, if you handle any like digital lead gen, like as far as opt-ins or contact request forms, you can always set up email campaigns for those kinds of people. Like the people that have submitted contact request forms, you can set out send out emails to request solicited or to request leaving a review. Again, make it easy, simple habit go directly to the review. Now if you're looking to just get fake reviews. You know, I think don't recommend that although, you know, you can do it.
There are services out there that you can use to do that. There are some that are better than others. I don't know if we have the LPL robot link for that. That's something again, I would recommend that you're careful with fake reviews, guys, because in some states, it's illegal. So I wouldn't, you know, I can't, I can't recommend that you do that. Use that at your own risk. I am not endorsing or suggesting anybody do it. But if you want to, there are services out there that you can use to do that they're going to automate it or services that will do that.
But if you can get real reviews from real people, that's the better way to do it.
Think about this, if it's your own accounts, and you don't want to, you don't have a service provider yet. So you can't really ask them to do it. Then I would recommend instead of just buying fake reviews, you know, perhaps build up some personas or some profiles on your own. If you're using something like browseo or ghost browser, wouldn't it make sense to have some profiles that you build up with local guides that you use to review multiple businesses before you start reviewing any of your own? But you know, I mean, think about like, in your own town, different businesses that you actually do like or dislike, you know, I don't, I don't advocate leaving bad reviews for people, unless they really are shitty, like, honestly. But think about places that restaurants and services and stores and things like that, that you like gas stations, even, that you could actually leave good reviews with other persona profiles to start building up local guide accounts. That then you could use to review your own stuff. when needed, like if you need that kind of stuff. I again, you got to be careful because in certain states, that could be illegal. But if you're building up a profile, that you're actually leaving reviews on places that you really frequented real businesses that you frequent that you received.
Satisfied with unhappy with, why not you're giving them a good review. It's good for them and at the same time you're building up a profile that then you could use to review some of your own businesses as well. Okay.
So there are multiple options to do that. I'm not a big fan of buying fake reviews just so you're aware of that. Okay.
What Are The Most Effective Things To Focus To In Order To Get The Benefits Of GMBs?
Steve says just about 20 GMBs which I am the process of getting created, how would you use them to get the most benefit I fit IE focus on one niche in one metropolitan area or something else? When set up? What would when setting up what would you recommend us the three most effective things I should focus on to get better rankings and more calls for from them? Okay, um, that strategy, it evolves all the time. So as of today, if you had 20 GMBs, yes, I first of all, I absolutely recommend one industry, because then you only have to learn all the keywords and develop the creatives and the content and the marketing messages and all of that from one industry, if you if you have 20 GMBs and you wanted to do five industries, you have to go through that whole creative process that discovery research and discovery process five times, which is it's enormously time-consuming. So what I recommend is if you just target one industry, you only have to do keyword research once, right? You only have to come up with like, like learn the vocabulary and the pain points and the market, you know, the best marketing terms and messaging and that kind of stuff. One time you can come up with one set of creatives that can be used again and again and again. Right. So first of all, one industry is always what I recommend, you don't have to do that. We know a lot of people that target multiple industries, and that's fine. Just know that it's going to be more work. Okay. Number two, would you focus on one metropolitan area or something else? No, I wouldn't. And again, the strategy is evolved. It went from when the mobile first algorithm or mobile index first really took over at the end of July last year. 2018
There was a huge open hole. And but we started off just targeting like the metro or excuse me, the suburbs of metropolitan areas. But then we found that there was an opportunity by targeting on a zip code by zip code basis, there were open holes that you could actually, you know, get good results from a GMB by finding zip codes that didn't have other businesses registered in that specific zip code, right. But then so so we started teaching that, but then I found out if you have too many locations too close to each other, that you end up experiencing at least I have some pigeon filter issues, which means Google will filter some of the locations out because they're too similar to other locations. So what I recommend now is that you pick you know, a couple of locations in a metropolitan area that is in proximity are further apart from each other. And only focus on you know, the ones that look like lowest hanging fruit of the East, the least competitive ones, but not going crazy. Like at one point, I was building 12 to 15 locations in a metropolitan area. But what I found was, you know, half of them would end up getting filtered out. And it's not that you can't get that filter lifted, it can be done, but it creates an enormous amount of work to do. So the whole point was to rank these things quickly and without a lot of work. And so we were actually kind of shooting ourselves in the foot right hindering our performance or ability to get results because we had too many too close together. So what I recommend now is looking
I think we did.
Oh, well everyone it looks like we're experiencing some technical difficulties. Let's see if we can contact him somewhere else.
I thought it was me yeah
Let's see if he is.
Buddy hang out for a minute. grab a drink do something we'll be back as soon as we figure out what's going on here. Let me check and see if actually, I'm wondering if it's even playing Let me check.
He says he's there.
He just answered in slack. Gotcha. Okay, so it's still playing too so everyone can hear us so that's good weird
Are we back? Yeah, sorry I forgot happened. No, I don't know. It looks like you just got booted the video kept playing. We're still good. Oh, okay. Well, I don't know where I was last at.
So I'm just going to pick up right here guys. Let me grab the screen again. Sorry about that. I don't know what happened here that won't be out. You are 20 GMBs and answering that
Yeah, I know you have it. I don't know where I lost was lost in that. That particular question, but I'm just going to pick up with this right here. Alright, so again guys sorry I don't know what happened I got kicked out of I had to sign back into google it was weird. So anyway, um, when setup what would you recommend is the three most effective things I should focus on to get better rankings and more calls from them we've talked about. Number one use all of the assets available or the tools available within GMB fully optimize your profile use all of those. Okay, that's number one. Number two, syndication network absolutely is still part of it. You can actually even if you're not posting directly to the syndication network, but you can if you're using some sort of tool like rtmp, auto post or briefcase that will give you an RSS feed for GMB posts. As I just said, you want to use all your GMB tools which GMB post is very, very powerful. You can automate the schedule post using a post scheduler doesn't have to be ours. There are others out there that do it but what you can do
was also find ones that create an RSS feed from the GMB posts that you can then syndicate to your network. Because again, there's no need to create self-hosted websites for just lead gen assets guys, it's unnecessary. It's additional work that you don't need to do. So use the GMB asset to post to a syndication network that helps then drive stacks press release a standard operating procedure for me at least one to start with, but I typically publish press releases of one per month per location, sometimes more depending on what they need. But drive stacks, again, hands down, that's gonna be one of the best things you can do and then hitting the DR stacks with link building. That's so that was a few but number one GMB completely optimize us GMB post. Number two is syndication network even if you're not going to post to it I would recommend that you do but still have a syndication network. You can have it for the brand. By the way, if you're going to be in a particular area you can have it for like the brand plus city and cover actually use that one network for multiple locations. That makes sense drive stack, press releases and then link building to all of the above right link building to and guys, again, link building works really, really good to Google properties, believe it or not, okay, we've proven that over and over again.
Marco: I would add to the list that you just gave them local GMB Pro, grow to get in local go get in the course and you'll get better ways on how to rank better and get more calls and how to get more calls without even ranking. That's true.
Does Creating A GSite Link Wheel Boost A Site?
Okay, so next Mike crest he says just creating a G site link will seem like a good idea to boost your site. Is there a better sites to do this like s3 link wheel or combo s3 G Cloud g site? Any minimum amount I should use? Um, that's a really good question, Mike, that we could actually probably dig into on the mastermind webinar, but tomorrow.
Marco: I was gonna say the same thing because that the only thing I'm willing to answer here is, it seems like a good idea. Test it and find out. Yeah.
Bradley: But yeah, I would agree I would I mean, you can test them all right. Do you sites we know work well as three languages. Yeah, the those could work well as also we, you know, we love using s3 HTML bucket hosted html s3 bucket hosted pages, right? I love using those for various things that Id pages for buffer sites for spam injection like for filtering, spam, all that kind of stuff. It's really really, really powerful. So, all set, I haven't done a whole lot of link wheel testing stuff. I really have it but I would say test them but if you want to talk about that a little bit more in-depth tomorrow about specific strategy and things like that. Just post that in the mastermind webinar question form and we will cover some of that tomorrow.
How Do You Load A Verified GMB Listing In MyMaps?
Okay, Mike. Paul's up. He says hello semantic crew. I have a verified GMB listing that shows up at the top of the Google often in maps, however, I cannot pull the same verified listing in the mind maps or load the correct info from Google Earth. Is it a service area business, Paul? Marco, there's an issue with that, right? Yeah, you can't hide the address and then try to find it. That's right. The mind maps can only find the addresses that you give it or it can find an area so so if you're working, for example, Gainesville, Virginia, where our offices are located, right, air quotes, offices, but you can pull in the area, but you cannot pull in an address within the area unless it's not hidden. If the address is hidden that you can't do anything with it. What you can do with with the mind map, I'm not going to give too much away here is general information about the area and include that when you're doing the mind map. Yeah, and you can still link to it. You just can't really put it in as it like an embed, right?
Marco: The idea is to pull in that link to get that link that Google gives you. And the only way that you can get that is if you if the address is listed. Yeah.
Bradley: Yeah. And by the way,
I had to I had a client who's got a second sight a second business. I want to show you guys something. Yeah, we got time. Let's do this. Let's look at Semantic Mastery.
I'll show you something.
Okay, so I have a client that has a second business.
It's kind of a complimentary business or sister business but it's run by kind of a, an employee of his but it's she it's a painting company and they do they have like, you know, they do like house painting and stuff like that. So there are painting contractors the primary site but the secondary business is like interior design, and color design and they do cabinet refinishing or cabinet painting and stuff like that anyways, they have to jam beats because it's it's really two different businesses but they're they're really owned by the parent company. And they asked if I could help promote some services for the the other business the the color design business, and they didn't want to give me access to the GMB for whatever reason, because she's really particular about like, she wants all full control of all that. So I said fine, I'm doing some press releases and some other stuff for them to get it to rank for specifically what they want to rank for. But anyways, long story short, I didn't have access to their GMB dashboard and I was telling you guys I've said this on a couple of Hump Day Hangouts. What the best link is to build links to for GMB maps and the easiest way to find it. If you have access to the GSB is in the GMB dashboard. Click on the Info tab and then where it says view on search or view on maps. Right click the View on maps link, copy to clipboard, paste it into a txt file or notepad file. And then from there you it's going to be a maps. google com domain slash whatever. See ID question mark equals right? And then there's a string of numbers, that string of numbers is the actual map identifier right for the GMB for that for that Google Map listing, it's the identifier. So if you take that, right click that view on maps link, which is a www or excuse me, maps. google. com, and you put it into a redirect checker, it will show that it's a redirect to www.google.com slash maps slash, see ID equals whatever So essentially, and I wish I had a, I probably do actually, let me see if I've got one pulled up here. No, I don't. I say I wish I had an example to show you guys in a text file, but I don't, but I want to show you that if you don't have access to the GMB to get that link, then there's another way that you can do it. And that's just by clicking on to the actual map listing, because I had to do this for this client. And then once you're in the map listing, right click and view page source, and then just click for control f4, fine and input see ID.
And what you'll do is you'll have to scroll down to down. I know it's probably hard to see on your side, guys, but there are the yellow lines where it exists, the sea idea exists and up at the top, that's not where you're gonna find it. If you scroll down here, not that one, scroll down a little bit further. Okay, so down in here, you're going to see where it says see ID, l, you do see ID, for example, I know it's probably really small on your side. Let me see if I can zoom in a little bit for you guys. And we'll scroll back down to that area.
Okay, so like right here where it says Liu, Liu, do see it ID and then there's this backslash backslash, and there's this string right here, that right there, if you copy that and put that into a text notepad file, like this, and I'll increase the view on that as well.
All right, get rid of the first few characters to where it says something 3d. I think that's, I've seen that over and over again, that 3d or whatever, so you get rid of that. And then you get rid of this part right here. And right there as the sea ID equals or whatever, that's the identifier for it. So you can actually just create the map URL from that. So those of you that didn't know and I'm pretty sure it's marked, do you know what it is off the top of your head? It's www google. maps. com
Can you give me that URL Marco? I don't want to go I don't have it off the top of my head. I think it's a question mark. See ID equals
I think it's this.
Pretty sure that's the format but We can find out.
No, it's telling me it can't connect to that. Oh, because I spell goggle instead of Google. That's why straight this way.
Boom, that's it. That was it. So I was right. Okay. So there you guys go it just so you know, that's a quick way that you can get it is just click through. So this is the actual URL. So what I'm saying is if you target if you go in and I'll show you guys with this real quick and then we'll get back to questions, redirect detective.com. Alright, so if you right click inside of Google inside of GMB and select the copy link URL or copy link, whatever. From view on Google view on maps, excuse me, it's going to look like this. Right and there might be some stuff appended to the end of it guys which you can get rid of. You don't need any other that stuff. And this is that what it'll show give you. And if you watch and you'll see if we put this in and click paste and go watch what happens. First it redirects to that www Google version. Then once the page fully loads, it redirects to that really long, ugly maps URL that you can get if you click Share, and you click on send a link, and you copy that link, which is also a redirect and then put it in the browser bar. So in other words, it and ultimately redirects to this long ugly URL. But if you take that URL and look at it in a redirect checker, for example, redirect detective or where goes or something like that, you'll see and this one saying it's not acceptable, which I'm not sure why let's check where it goes.
Okay, you see how to throw to redirect and all it does is says redirects to the instead of maps dot google com. It's www dot google.com slash maps question marks the ID equals, right? So that's why I'm saying all you gotta do is go in, copy that link from the dashboard of your GMB. Right click it, copy it, paste it into notepad file, change the maps. google com, to all you got to do is switch the maps dot part to WWW dot, and then that creates this URL here. And you copy that, and that's the one that you should build links to. So if we actually look at that directly, you're going to see that it's going to say, test, okay, or trace complete. And it's, it's it,
there's no redirect. But what's interesting is when you go read, when you actually paste it in the browser address, the browser bar, you'll see that once the page fully loads, it automatically redirects to that long URL. Does that make sense? So again, but the way to get that from a maps listing, if you don't have access to it to the dashboard, for whatever reason, is just click through to the maps listing, click right click View Source, view page source, then type in control F Find and put CID and it's down here. You know, halfway down
Or two thirds of the way down the page, you'll look for that URL you do CID forwards or backslash, backslash, then there's that string right there. And all you got to do is cut that first part off, whether it's got a letter, and then cut off the end part. And then that's your actual map CID. Right. Does that make sense? So I just kind of wanted to point that out.
I don't know if that was helpful to anybody. But there you go.
So, okay, Paul is up again. He says, Hey, guys, me again. Sorry, I'm on my iPhone having trouble posting anyway. How can I get that listing to show up in my maps?
Should You 301 Redirect Multiple Tag Pages That Cause Duplicate Content?
Okay, so that was the same question. We already answered that one. Alright. Scott's up. He says, I'm doing a website. analysis for client. Yes, they are paying me for this service. Well, that's good cut. The website has a large number of tag pages that are indexed, but also contain a high percentage of duplicate content. Should these tag pages be 301? redirect it to relevant pages left alone or do something else? Thanks. Yeah, I would because you know, tag pages can be used very strategically, we've talked about that in the mastermind quite a bit. The problem with WordPress is if you don't know how to use tags correctly, and you leave your tag pages set to index, which I think by default they are that if you have a unique tag on a post, it creates a duplicate page, right?
If there's only one post that has a particular tag, then the post itself exists. And then there's a tag page with that same post, right? And that's it. That's just it's got tagging the URL, but it's the exact same page. So that is a duplicate content problem. Tags should not be unique unless you know what you're doing right, which you can canonicalization a tag page. So that's something that you can do. We've talked again, we've talked about that in the mastermind, I'm not going to get in any further into that right now. But you you could do that or you could have tags that are more general that so that it
You know, the same tag gets used across more than just one post. If a tag gets used for two posts, then the tag page for that that tag is going to have both posts on it, which is unique to the individual post, right? It's different, it's not the same. So if that makes sense, it tags should be more general, not, you shouldn't have unique tags, unless you're going to canonical lies or redirect those specific tag pages to the, if you're going to leave an index, if you leave in a no index, it doesn't matter. So again, unless you know what you're doing with tags, the easiest thing to do is just set your tag pages usually in just about any SEO plugin, you can go in and tell.
Tell it to no index tag pages and tags in our cut, you know, the archives and there's tag pages and author archives and all those kind of things and you can set all those to no index. If you want the tag pages to stay index, which you can because tag pages can rank well. Then what you want to do is make sure that if you have tags, individual or unique tags that are only used on one post
That you either canonical eyes or redirect those specific tag URLs to the actual post itself. Does that make sense? But if you have tags that are used across more than one post, it's perfectly fine to leave those tag pages indexed, because they're going to be unique. They're not going to be just a duplicate of the single post. Does that make sense?
So there you go.
There's Game of Thrones. Look at that.
How Would You Setup A GMB For An Essential Oils Company That Doesn't Have A Physical Store But Has Pop Up Booths At Festivals?
Todd says Hey guys, I'm working with an essential oils company who does most of their business at pop up this at festivals. Now they want to expand online and I want to set up a GSB for them they don't have a physical location so I would set up as a service area business but not sure if I should make the radius their city or make it the entire country any recommendations cheers and thank you, Marco like this one, because you can, you know, if they sell their essential oils nationwide, then you should put the service area nationwide why limit yourself to just a specific city, which is what you would do if you set it for just a specific city. Now. Don't expect the GMB to rank for local search terms or search with local intent across the country. It's, I don't think I've ever seen that it will likely rank wherever your physical location I'm using air quotes is specifically where the business is registered. I know you said it doesn't have physical location, but if you're going to buy a GMB then there you still have to put an address in like I was talking about earlier. So there will be an actual locality associated with that GMB, but the surface area can be the entire country. That's perfectly fine. Just important thing is the GMB will help to validate solidify the entity it's a great signal for Google. So even if you're not planning on ranking in the maps pack nationwide, because I wouldn't even that's not something I would even you know ever expect that it's still a good signal to use. There's no reason why you shouldn't have a verified GMB for every business even for like an affiliate marketing business. You still have an actual office somewhere, right? Even if it's from your home, if it's a real business
This you can register Jimmy for that. Right? So Mark, what do you say? What do you say?
Okay, so I say What does Google have to say I like oh, Terms of Use regarding this. But what Google says is that it's designed for businesses that deliver to local customers, right when you set your service area, or that you visit or deliver to customers, but but you don't serve customers at the business address. I plumbers, cleaning services or whatever, since it's really meant for something more local, although we're using it. And this this is this is where you're in that gray area. We use it to validate the entity to reinforce the entity. And that's fine right now. There haven't been any problems. Say yo semantic mastery set this way.
Where we serve as several areas, you know, non English speaking countries, and it works well for us. And it's worked well, for other for other businesses that I've worked with that do national and international services, right service based businesses, where they actually deliver the product to the customer, wherever the customer is. So if you have that type of business, you may be able to get away with it. I hope I hope that that answered the question. And what he's asking, because it's kind of it's one of those things where we're actually not
honoring the terms of service set by Google for for service area businesses, and yet we are so this is one of those things is one of those weird things where you can just get away with it. I agree.
All right. We're almost out of time guys will try to roll for the next few. Jay says thanks for the answer. Bradley. Good stuff. My impressions problem with AdWords turned out to be the Google has a three day hold on average.
counts for security measures since new credit card was input for building. Oh, there you go, Jay. I'm glad you got that resolved.
See how I feel about PDFs? I don't know. Oh, okay, gotcha. Micah says yes, I have had someone use a residential address and person received the mail from Google and called and was furious. Yeah. See, that's what I was talking about. Guys. That's why I've been saying since you know, I started we started kind of pitching building GMB lead gen assets that don't Don't you know, I just don't build citations to them unless I can be the one to actually get the mail, which you're going to get physical mail if you start building citations. That's just the nature of of how it works. So, you know, don't do that. If you've got GMB lead gen assets, don't build citations. You know, if they're just lead if they're just spammed addresses is what I'm saying. It's a good way to get them terminated because people will get pissed off and report them.
What Is The Appropriate Number Of GMB Pages For A Chiropractor Targetting Different Addresses In The Same Building?
Brian says am a chiropractor I started using several GMBs with different addresses in the same office. Building I'm taking up real estate nicely and will roll out more conditions specific sites. How many is too many? I have four and was thinking of going to GMBs? Well?
That's a good question because it depends on, you know how similar they are. If it's all the same business name, then I would say don't do that, because you're likely going to have some that are going to get pigeon filtered. If you're giving them unique names, then that's different, right thing is you don't want to have common data points and what you know what we call an AP name, address, phone number or web address, you want to have,
you can have the same domain, but you'd want to have separate landing pages for each location, right? That gives it a unique URL, you'd want to have separate phone numbers, you'd want to have unique business names. Now you can have the same business name, but you want to have separate addresses, separate phone numbers and separate landing page URLs. Right. So that again, you don't want to have to have any of those data points be the same. If one of them is the same. You can It's okay. But if you have more than one data point common across multiple GMBs, then that creates a invigoration. Right, and that can cause this problem end up in consistencies. So and also, like I said, pigeon filter issues now. So I recommend that, you know, if you're going to do that, that you you try to make the names unique. The addresses, which are obviously unique, but I would have separate tracking phone numbers for each listing as well. And if you're going to be using the same domain, I don't know that you are but if you're going to use the same domain, have the landing page or the associated website with the GMB going to separate landing pages right with unique URLs for each.
As far as I haven't tested this type of setup, so I don't know what would be too many and what wouldn't, I wouldn't push that real hard though. If you're already doing well. You know, because I'd be afraid that you you push it too far and then you end up losing a few of them either from suspension or from pigeon filter issues, which can be a bitch to get lifted.
I would just add that too many is when they stop getting ready.
Results are they provide diminishing results, then you know that you're not you're not really getting the most bang for your buck. And you could just try to optimize the ones that you already have somebody for now, as long as you're getting results, I mean, keep doing it. I just I, when I get results, I just do more of it until I can't do any more.
And that's cool. You know what I think one of our mastermind members in Jesus in our mastermind now too, by the way, he's been incredibly active, by the way, which is awesome. Thanks, G. But yeah, I think I think one of our tava or somebody else gave us this link to at some point, I haven't really used it much. But there you go decode place IDs. So that that's pretty cool. Thanks for that, guys. Go copy that URL, because you can probably just get that maps URL that I was showing you earlier. From right there.
Do You Add Tier 1 URLs To The Bottom Of Your Blog Page?
We're almost out of time. Fit says when you create a blog page, do you add to one URLs to the bottom of the page and make them links or do you add a few and leave off the HTTPS?
I don't know what you mean. Or do you? Do you create a blog page? Do you add tier one URL to the bottom of the page and make them links or do you add a few and leave off the H I'm not sure what that means. I'm sorry if it's I don't I'm not I'm not really following the question.
So I can't really answer we're going to we're out of time anyways Brian says back pain CT calm calling it back pain project, yes. to new phone number. Okay, so that must be the what you were talking about appear with the chiropractor stuff. So yeah, as long as you're keeping everything separate, that's what I would do. But I again, I wouldn't push it too far. If you're getting good results. You might want to you know, go slow doing add additional locations slowly so that if you hit some threshold and you start to lose some of them, you don't lose them all at once. So it sounds like you've got it covered. Alright guys, five o'clock. I've got to go. appreciate y'all being here. mastermind webinar tomorrow. Don't forget those of you that are in the mastermind. We got a lot of stuff we're covering tomorrow. So that will be fun. Thanks, Adam. And thanks for
Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.