Click on the video above to watch Episode 65 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 https://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
Announcement
Adam: Hello everybody, and welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the 3rd of February 2016 and this is Episode 65. We're going to go down the panel of fine looking faces here. I think Bradley is the only person not live today. I had some issues with my camera so you guys have to stare at the speaking heads. Chris, how's it going, man?
Chris: Hello champions.
Adam: I like it. Sorry. Hernan, how's it going?
Hernan: Hey everyone. It's really good to be here.
Adam: Marco, what's up?
Marco: Hey man, what's up? I'm bored with all this sun and warm and …
Adam: Okay.
Bradley: You're bored with all the sun, you jerk?
Marco: It's insane, 80 degrees during the day, 60 at night.
Bradley: It's terrible.
Adam: That's …
Bradley: You poor soul, you.
Marco: I know, man.
Adam: I pity you, Marco. Last but not least, Bradley. How's it going?
Bradley: Hey guys, I'm bored with the cold and the rain and the snow and all the other shit that we have on the East Coast right now.
Adam: I've been having a crazy winter up here. We've really haven't add any yet, it's like 45 today, which is bizarre. Usually we've got like 3 feet of snow in the yard, right.
Anyways, spare you guys that and just run through some quick announcements before we get this started today. I just want to remind you guys, if you haven't yet head over to Serp Space, I'll pop a link in here. Again, it's free account. You can sign up. Obviously, that's where we've moved the networks over to and we're in the process of opening up some more services very soon, so stay tuned for that.
Just less than one month, we're going to be launching IFTTT 2.0, so that is for sure. Now, we're going to be getting some more information out to everybody about that. We're pretty pumped about that for a lot of reasons. It's going to have a lot of cool info. There's going to be … I'm not going to say too much about it here but we'll have some more info very shortly.
Also, if you're been thinking about the MasterCLASS but you're not sure you're on the borderline, I suggest again hopping in there at the MasterCLASS. We've reformatted it. We're going to be increasing the price. It's going to have a compressed timeline you're going to get of the classes faster and that's going to be coinciding with IFTTT version 2.0. You're going to want to jump in there sooner rather than later.
Bradley: Yeah. Just to be clear, what we're doing is we're restructuring our funnels to where … Essentially, IFTTT is going to be the frontend product, the IFTTT version 2, which will be subscription-based. There'll be an option to just do it one time purchase on that that won't come with some of the additional benefits that IFTTT version 2. Again, we're not going to getting all the details so that just yet that those are forthcoming, but there will be … either will be a subscription-based if you want some of the additional features that we're going to include with that. That's going to be like the frontend or the first step, and then there's going to be the MasterCLASS which is going to include IFTTT version 2 plus the subscription. In other words, it's going to be like a step system, a tiered system.
A MasterCLASS is going to go up slightly by 50 bucks, so it'll be $147 a month when we launch IFTTT V2. Obviously, our MasterMIND which is our top label, that includes both IFTTT version 2 as well as MasterCLASS plus all of our other products worth under $300 and a 30% discount on anything above that. That's really our top tier. Really, it's just going to be like a tiered system. IFTTT version 1 being Tier 1, MasterCLASS being Tier 2, and MasterMIND being Tier 3 or a top tier. I just want to explain that a little bit better.
Do we have anything else, Adam?
Adam: That's all I got on my end. Do you guys got anything?
Bradley: We're good?
Adam: All right.
Bradley: No, I think we're good. We got a lot of questions today.
Adam: Yeah, let's get to it.
Bradley: All right. We'll look at the screen and we'll jump right into it. Let's just grab the Google screen today so it makes a little easier for you guys to see everything I think. All right, here we go.
Over-optimizing Images with Keywords & Geotagging for Citation Sites, GMB Pages, Etc.
Starting right at the bottom with [Mark O'Connell 00:04:04] and he says, “Hey guys, hope you're doing great, got a very exciting question about images for you. Can you over optimize images on your money site with keywords and geo tagging and stuff like that and do you geo tag the images you use for your citation sites, Google My Business pages, branded networks et cetera, plus having the site name in the metadata of the images as well, is that too much?“
Mark, not if you're using … Yes, I optimize the metadata of the images, especially for local stuff, then yeah, we'll use like an EXIF data editing tool, like I use GeoSetter. That's something I use but you can do a lot of that stuff actually on your own just by right clicking details and checking details and then properties of the file itself. If it's a JPEG, if it's a PNG you can't do that stuff.
Yeah, I'll add metadata in there in the coordinates as EXIF data, that kind of thing, but what I'll do is I'll use a various keywords instead of just like using the same keyword over and over again. I have keyword researched down at that point anyways, right? I'll take a handful of my LSI keywords or supporting keywords and just use those across various images. For example, you've got the file name itself which is typically going to be some sort of a keyword, one of the other things I don't recommend doing is always putting a geo modifier in there like if you're doing local. Go with more of the broad topical typed keywords now, and so you follow the same, in my opinion, and this is the way I do it and I let the other guys chime in here in a moment as well, but what I like to do is, it kind of follow the same type of anchor text strategy that I would use.
It used to be where we would use the exact match keyword across all the images, putting in the description, the title of the image, so there's the file name then there's the title, then there's the tags, the description, then you can have the author URL, the … I can't remember all of them without actually opening it up, but I would put the exact match keyword in there or one of my exact match keywords with the geo modifier. If I was targeting five main keywords, I would use those five main keywords with the geo modifiers across the various fields of the images. I don't do that now because it's almost over optimizing anchor text profile with inbound links. Instead, what I'll do is maybe the final name itself or their … either the file name or the title will be an exact match keyword, but then all of the other metadata details that I add will be broader keywords. They might be related keywords but they don't typically have the geo modifier, especially if I'm adding the coordinates as EXIF data, right? If I'm adding the coordinates then I don't think it's necessary to add like the city name, for example, across all the keywords.
One other thing I like to do is in the comments section of the metadata, I like to put the NAP of the site itself or of the business itself. That's, again, I'm talking about local guys, but if you're doing, because he mentioned Google My Business pages, but you can do the same thing with nonlocal stuff by still optimizing the images to further to answer the rest of the question, do I use the images for citations sites? Yes, and here's why. Because typically the images that I'm going to add to the Google My Business pages are going to be from the website anyways, so they're already been geo tagged and optimized, and then what I'll do is I'll use the same images from the Google My Business pages across my other citation sites. Yes, they will already be tagged, okay?
As far as images within blog post. Now, typically I don't do that within the blog post because I have my VAs that are doing the blogging, and so I haven't trained them to do that within like blog posting, so that was not really get syndicated across the networks. I assume that that would help too but, again, I think that's just a little bit overkill. I do the images for the pages themselves, I optimize those, but when it comes to blogging I typically do not.
You want to add to that, Hernan or anybody else?
Hernan: Yeah. No, I use pretty much the same process that you use, Bradley. What's good about it is that you could actually get your images ranking on Google Images. If you have a call to action on your image you can turn that into another asset. I think that's pretty interesting. I think that Google Images searches or image recognition engine right now, it's intelligent enough to see similarities between images. It's not you can actually fool Google because if you search by images and you search for a face it will come back with the same faces with that image whenever it is online in Google's database. I don't think you can fully but you cannot some extra information to that image as well. I pretty much use the same process as you are doing.
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Bradley: Yeah. Yeah. That absolutely helps. I do that for pages on the site, for images that go on pages and then I end up using those images as part my images for the Google My Business page as well as for other citation sites. That's typically all I will do as the blogging I do not. It probably would help but I think at some point it would be overkill and it's just additional time is like, what is it, the log diminishing returns? At some point, you're going to run the keywords anyways.
Altering YouTube Video Titles, Descriptions, Tags or Links After They Ranked Well
Glenn says, “What's your take on altering YouTube video titles, descriptions, tags or links after they've ranked well? Does Google hate minor tweaks or monetization efforts after the fact?” No, not actually, Glenn, it depends. I've made changes before and sometimes just making changes like not so much the titles. Don't get me wrong, I've done that too. We'll talk about a couple different scenarios that I've done that I've had, and the results of those changes.
Sometimes changing the description it's almost like a blog post like older content, evergreen content but you add some new content to the bottom of the post and refresh it, it makes it fresh again, it can actually give a little bit of a ranking boost. I've done that before where I've just added some additional content to the description area or changed out some content that was perhaps over-optimized a bit to de-optimize it which makes it newer content anyways because it's been, the contents been swapped out or changed out. That I've had worked well. I've been able to take a video that had been sleeping, losing its rank or dropping and then bring it back up that way. That among other things but I've done that to bring it back, so that's one thing that you can do.
Changing the links, the internal links like linking to other YouTube videos. For example, if you're using the YouTube Silo or changing the internal links to click to a different website or whatever, I've never seen that have any really effect either negative or positive. I've never experienced that changing anything as far as the actual links themselves. Titles, I would recommend … With titles that's a bit different because it depends on how drastic of a change it is. If your title was an exact match keyword and you're ranking for that and you've changed your title to something other than what that exact match keyword is, chances are it's going to drop. It might resurface with the new keyword at some point to rank for that but, again, if you're changing the YouTube titles that's pretty much the most significant thing for ranking for YouTube videos, the title itself.
Lastly, tags. Yeah, tags … Usually for tags, I'll use the exact match keyword as the first tag and then I'll take the keyword itself. A lot of the times with the geo modifier, for example, from doing local and I will separate it out, so it'll be like keyword plus city, right, or city plus keyword will be my first tag because that's the exact match keyword I'm trying to rank for. Then I do just the keyword tag then just the city tag, then I'll do a couple LSI keyword. If I'm going to change the tags at a later date, then a lot of the times I'm not messing with the original tags that I had already set, I'm just adding some additional tags.
Hernan: Yup. You make a great point there, Bradley. I think that the best way to go when you are trying to rank videos is to make them generic enough in a way that you can still reap the benefits. For example, if you lessen it you can still reap the benefits from the video once it's ranked. You need to make the least amount of changes to it once it's ranked as possible. For example, if you're adding, I know that we are not advising to that anymore, but if you were adding the client's phone number on the video itself you'll need to edit that. That's why we are saying add a tracking number so that you can redirect that tracking number the same with links so that the least amount of modifications that you make to the video once it's ranked and it has been ranked for a while the better in my opinion.
Bradley: Yeah. Yeah. Again, making small changes in the description area, I haven't seen a lot of negative effects out of. In fact, like I said, I've done that in the past to get a positive effect when I've had something that was ranking well and then started to sleep. As far as titles, I don't like to mess with the titles personally. Tags, like I said, I don't like to mess with the tags other than potentially adding some new tags to what was already there. In the description area, like Hernan said, one of the things I like to do is set up, redirect URL as my URL within the description area so that if I need to change the destination I can change the destination through to redirect itself and not actually changing it from within the description itself, and that's beneficial for protecting your own assets anyways.
Play with it. That's something you could do some testing on. Rank a video for an insignificant keyword. Maybe one that really has no value but you could use it for testing purposes. Rank a video for some obscure keyword and then start changing some things around one at a time and give it a few days to monitor it and see what kind of effect it has. That would be a good test to set up so that you have a better idea of how it's going to behave.
Also wondering, do long-standing well-clicked videos on page one tend to move from exact to broader match queries if they stand the test of time? I'm not really sure, Glenn. My assumption would be yes but I had on how many hard data for that. Yeah. No, I don't have any hard data for that to prove it one way or the other. I would assume that if it's done very well for an exact match query and it's been stuck at number one for months at a time, it may very well-ranked for other keywords, that's something that you want to test and check, but that's why having now well-optimized description is important because you can rank for multiple keywords if you have them in the description without spamming it. Okay. That's for tags coming as well.
Using Shortened URLs of Money Sites for Retweets in IFTTT
Kevin. Kevin says, “Hey guys, I have a question about Twitter. My Twitter account gets … We've got a lot of questions about Twitter today. We've had a lot of questions about Twitter this week, period. You know what we're going to tell you, go get Twitter SEO Academy. A hint to drop the link, Adam. “Hey guys, I have a question about Twitter. My Twitter account gets a lot of retweets of my retweets, okay, but not really any for when I post my own content, blog posts, money site pages et cetera. I am curious if I can add a shortened URL of my money page into my IFTTT recipe so that when my retweets of other people's content get retweeted by my followers, usually 3 to 10 retweets and favs, there will be a link to my money site hiding in there. If this is okay, does Google see this as my money site getting social shares thus giving activity, authority, et cetera back to my money site? Thanks.”
That's a question that I would defer to Marco or Dr. Gary if he's on, because he's our Twitter ninja. Marco, what do you think?
Marco: What I'm looking is they were to have to actually be in activity on that link that he is retweeting, or because his recipe is just the recipe for his retweet. Now, if someone would to retweet that one then yeah. That would be a social share on something that he retweeted that got retweeted, right?
Bradley: Okay.
Marco: Yeah, he could set this up. I won't try it on anything I cared about. You know what we're about, we're about testing. I was just talking to someone early today on how I got Twitter account to 23 Topical Trust Flow in a week all on auto. This is just autopilot. I haven't done anything. I just set up the retweets and everything else that we do, all the recipes and just let it go. It's out of the sandbox. It's retweeting like crazy. It's 500 tweets a day all on auto and it just builds up authority. Pretty soon, it's going to be someone that's really relevant in Twitter, and I haven't read them anything. You can do the same thing.
Once you get to that level, then you'll have people naturally retweeting your own tweets. The reason why we do the retweet recipes and everything else that we do is to get you to that level where other people start taking you into account as someone that's a move or in a shake or in trend setter and an inside Twitter.
Bradley: Right. The question now has remains. If hardcoding, for example, a short URL, and I'm just going to use a Google short link, for example, because that injects analytics into that link itself, so that every time a retweet occurs from Kevin's account because of his recipe is set up to retweet on specific hashtags or whatever, it's going to actually retweet that Google short URL as well because it's been hardcoded into the retweet text, right?
Marco: If he uses a Google and says, “I don't want to get too much. I don't want to give away too much,” but if he does what we say to do inside Twitter SEO Academy then not only is that going to be taking into account as a social share but it's where the magic happens, right, with that shortened URL …
Bradley: Right.
Marco: … and how you can pass of all kinds of juice onto other properties back to you on the side or to right to wherever you want.
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Bradley: What I would suggest Kevin is, as Marco just said, I would test that. Again, guys sometimes my answer is going to be tested, just like I said to Glenn, because we haven't tested everything obviously. This would be a worldly test in my opinion Kevin that would give you some insight as to how what kind of influence you can generate from your Twitter account and what kind of effect it will have on your metrics, like your trust flow metrics and things like that.
Instead of doing a short URL to your money site to start with, take something like your branded Tumblr profile, your branded Tumblr account, or something that's connected to your money site. Shorten that URL, preferably with the [go.gl 00:20:09] short link and then set up your hardcoded data into the retweet just like you mentioned and let it run for a couple days, a couple of weeks, whatever, and then monitor the effects of your Tumblr profile, look [inaudible 00:20:22], perhaps log back in to your Google short URL account and check the click analytics to see if you have any actual click-throughs to the Tumblr account, and then you can get a better idea of whether that's something that you want to point directly at your money site.
I would do something like that where you're running a test like that to one of your branded profile. You still potentially running traffic back into your funnel anyways, right? You're bringing into your branded network anyways, and I'm talking from a traffic standpoint but also from SEO, you'd still be pushing juice back into your Tumblr account or a WordPress or Blog or it doesn't really matter. You could do that as a test, and if it's seems to be working well with no side effects, negative side effects that is, then you could go ahead and reconfigure the retweets to point directly to your money site. That's what I would. That'd be a worthy test. If you end up doing that please share results with us because I'd like to know.
This must be Hernan's cousin or something.
Hernan: Yeah, my niece which is the [inaudible 00:21:30]. Hey Tim, what's up?
Creating Individual IFTTT Networks for Each PBN
Bradley: I know, I was just teasing. Tim says, “Love your stuff. Okay. Here is a question, I may know the answer to but I am not afraid of public or private ridicule. Okay, but here it goes, I've got about 15 PBNs and videos for a local client and I want to use IFTTT. Do I have, not yelling, just crabbing, okay. Do I have to make individual IFTTT accounts for every PBN or is there a shortcut I can use? I'm just dreading at making up a bunch of tiered accounts for every one of them. I had VAs for a while. Thanks again, I really appreciate what you and your staff do to help people.”
Tim, that's a good question. What I recommend doing is not tiered networks for PBNs. I don't even recommend really doing tiered networks for websites period, unless if you've only got one or two or just a very small handful of sites that you're managing. Again, I always recommend sticking with just a branded network for each site. In your case, because you're talking about 15 PBNs, that's a lot of sites that you're managing, and I'm assuming you're managing more than just PBNs. In your case, I would recommend that you just stick with branded networks for each PBN.
Remember, PBN can and should be its own brand, right? Because that's how you make it look as real as possible. As you make the blog itself, seem as if it's a brand, or potentially somebody's personal blog which would be personal branding at that point. My point is, is that, with each PBN that you have you should give it either a sign of persona to it and make it that persona's personal blog so that it seems like a real blog that's themed, right? It's got a particular theme or topic that it blogs about consistently and then you brand the network for that or you give it like an actual brand name for the PBN.
That, again, is topically relevant to whatever industry you're in and then put the IFTTT as an extension of that brand. In other words, all of the IFTTT properties will be branded to match the blog's friend. You can do it either way but, again, it's just a single ring for each as opposed to doing multiple tiered rings because the management of that would be a bit cumbersome and really just it's not really, it's not efficient, it's not something that you would want to maintain for long, trust me. All right?
Is there a shortcut that you can use? Yeah, you can hire us to build your networks. That's a good shortcut. I still recommend you do them on your own. If you got client money that's coming in from that particular project, then you should have a particular budget set aside anyways from whatever the client is paying you to reinvest to maintain their rankings, to provide services, and then just funnel some of that budget to either hiring your own VAs or hiring perhaps us or somebody to build your networks for you.
Marco: A 15 networks, I think we can give them a buck discount.
Bradley: Yeah, probably. [Crosstalk 00:24:26]
Adam: We might be able to talk to you privately.
Bradley: Yeah. If you have any questions Tim, you can contact us. I prefer presales support if you have any questions about that. Guys, for example, a client work for me, I'll take as much as about 40% is what I usually figure on. Whatever my monthly fee is for a client work, I usually take about 40% and reinvest that back into maintaining their SEO for either paying VAs to do work for them or services. That includes the tools some things like that that I use, so 40%. If I'm charging somebody $1,000 a month, then I expect this going to take about $400 a month of that revenue generated to reinvest back into keeping or maintaining their bankings or getting them to where they need to be.
That's just my rule of thumb. Sometimes it's a bit higher than that. Sometimes just a bit lower. Once I get people ranked, I obviously don't have to continue spending for 40%. I can actually reduce that to where more that money is going in to as coming in as profit. That's just a rule of thumb I use. It might be different for you guys, I'm just letting you my particular method.
Creating Individual IFTTT Networks for Each PBN
Jamina, I hope I'm saying that right. “Hello guys, thank you so much for answering my questions. I built three branded networks and I just finished creating the last of three persona networks.” Okay. “I want to use these personas around my branded networks. Can I connect all three personas to all three branded networks? Please tell me if this is correct. I connect a Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress blogs from my personas to my branded networks … It's a bit confusing reading, networks Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress blogs, right? I do this by connecting them in my IFTTT account using each of my blogs, RSS feed or YouTube channel? My RSS feed or YouTube channel recipe would trigger my networks and also my persona networks through their Blogger, or Tumblr, or WordPress feeds.”
All right. The first question I would have is why would you have three branded networks? Unless it's for three separate money sites or money channels if they're YouTube networks. Maybe that's what you have but it almost sounds as if you've got three branded networks for one trigger source which could be either a blog, a website, your money site or a channel. If that's a case, I would say that's a no-no, don't do that. You should only have one branded network per money property, right? Whether that's a YouTube channel or money site, you should only have one branded network for it.
Now, if it is for three separate sites, or three different channels, three different money properties, let's put it that way because that's a catch all, right? If you have three persona networks, I'm assuming you're talking about three rings. Typically, there will be three Tier 2 rings per branded network, per Tier 1 ring. However, if they're all three in the same topical category, right? They don't have to be really niched down. It could be just a more of a general theme.
If all three of the money sites, in this case, all three branded networks because there's three money properties are in the same ballpark neighborhood as far as relevancy or topic, then you could share that Tier 2 ring or those three Tier 2 rings with all three of your Tier 1 rings. You could do that. That's not a problem. It would require a ton of recipes in each IFTTT account for the Tier 2 properties because, for example, your Tier 2A which would be fed by the Blogger account … Anybody who doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, you'd have to look at the diagrams for tiered networks to understand what I'm saying.
If you have Tier 2A network, that's fed it by the Tier 1 Blogger. If you're going to feed Tier 2A from three Tier 1s, three separate Tier 1 networks, you're going to have essentially, let's say there's 15 recipes that you create inside of that Tier 2 IFTTT account to trigger those, you're going to have now three sets of 15 recipes. You're going to have 45 recipes, right? They're all going to be RSS two recipes and it's going to be from Tier 1, the first Tier 1 branded network then you complete all those recipes inside of that then you set up the Tier 2, or excuse me, the second Tier 1 branded network to feed that the same network. I know that might sound a bit confusing but my point is, is that would be pretty much a massive IFTTT account. It doesn't matter, it will still work. You can do that.
Again, I only recommend that you do that, the branded, excuse me, the Tier 2 networks you only share them with other Tier 1 networks if it's in the same topical category. If they're separate, then you're going to want to create separate Tier 2 networks for it for each one because that's the whole point. By the way, if you're going to be using tier networks for money sites instead … For YouTube channels, guys, I know … I'll repeat this all the time but I think some people might not hear it or it gets lost, at some point, you forget or whatever but if you're doing YouTube networks, it's okay to have tiered networks. You don't have to worry about related content feeds. If you're doing tiered networks for blogs syndication, then just make sure that you have additional content triggers on your Tier 2 networks so that you're using related contents or just to post additional content other than your money site content to it.
In this particular example, where if you're trying to use one Tier 2 networks, say, three rings for three Tier 1 properties unless if they are all blogs syndication, now you're going to need related content feeds for your Tier 2s as well. Now, you're talking about like 60 recipes at a minimum per IFTTT account on your Tier 2. Again, it could be done. It could be a bit of a pain in the ass to set up. Was that as clear as mud, guys? Do you all understand that?
Hernan: No.
Marco: No, that was [inaudible 00:30:35]. We ain't got it.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. Let's see. Let me see if I can pull up something real quick that we can share.
Adam: I also posted in there the support links to the tiered networks and how the RSS feeds have been updated for YouTube. We've already got that up there …
Bradley: You put them out this one here?
Adam: Yup.
Bradley: Okay, very good. There you go.
Adam: I've got another one but I'll put … If you want to put that one and two, I did one of the other … There's a couple of different ones we've got.
Bradley: Yeah, because this question comes up often. I'm going to drop some slack, Adam.
Adam: Sounds good.
Bradley: … and grab that. Guys, I beat this horse to death over and over again because it comes up. I know it sounds confusing guys, but remember, my easiest way to explain this, guys, is just remember that IFTTT at the very linear, it's step one, step two. Even though we start stacking networks or creating tiered networks some things like that, it's always cause and effect, it's always step and then step two, if this then that. Everything that we do it can be broken down into a single syndication rings because that's all we do, guys. Everything that we do are just single syndication rings. It's just a matter of how we assemble those syndication rings together, okay? If you think about it that way it really becomes a hell of a lot more clear. It might take a few minutes to wrap your head around that idea but seriously everything is just a single IFTTT ring. It has one trigger point and then 15 or so action points from that one trigger.
Marco: Bradley, can I jump in on this for a second?
Bradley: Go ahead.
Marco: I'm thinking the best thing for people to do just to avoid all this confusion, build one branded network around among each side. Go through the training and I mean step by step, don't skip anything, right? Then do one that's tiered for YouTube syndication or video distribution, right? Once you get those and once you build all of the recipes and once you get it to where you know exactly what triggers what and how everything works, then you can start playing this way, because you know all the work that's involved, how the recipes have to be done, how everything changes whether you're doing money site, whether you're doing YouTube video distribution.
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You can have multiple tiered networks if you're working subdomains, right? It depends on how you're doing it, how you're tying the branded networks around your syndication networks, but you have to do that first one right before you start playing around and move things around but you can get in to a lot of trouble this way.
Bradley: Yeah. I'm looking for this post. Yeah, I agree with what Marco just said. Shit, I was looking to this post that I just saw earlier today in here that I told her to post on the events page and she doesn't have many texts here for the question. Chris G., if you're watching, can you locate that post, man?
Adam: I think if you click on it, it comes up. Try clicking on the picture.
Bradley: There it is. Okay, cool. All right. Let me do this. Let me just move this text into the comment area so that I can see it from this page here. Got it. Okay. I'll get to that one in just a moment.
All right. Robin Junior. “Is your YouTube Silo Academy course still works? Yes, it does. “I just watched one of your recent videos on YouTube and you said to Dan you won't prefer to rank YouTube videos, so this is what arose the question?” I'm assuming that you won't prefer … I'm not really following the question. Does YouTube Silo Academy still work? Yes, it does. It's just a way to create Silo structure within YouTube and that absolutely works. It works well, so yes. I'm not sure what you're saying there, but yes …
Adam: Maybe part of a conversation or something like that, but we may have been talking to about ranking of website over a video or something, but in general, we definitely still rank videos and then siloing and using that type of set up. It definitely works.
Bradley: Yeah. For local lead gen guys, videos are great place to start. If you find that niche is profitable that you're able to monetize your leads because you're generating your leads in a particular niche, then I always highly recommend that you also rank in a local website. Videos are great place to start and some people that's all they want to do is videos and that's cool, that's great. I completely get that because ranking websites is a lot more complicated than ranking videos for the most part. What I do say is anytime that you find a niche that's profitable that you're doing well, you're generating leads, you got somebody purchasing a leads from you so it's generating revenue for your business then I recommend that you always, if you have the desire to is to build a local site as a companion to help with your leads and capture more leads because now you can rank organically in the search results with your video, your website and you can also rank in match with the local map site. That's what I was talking about.
Maps, for me, in the construction industry or the home services industry, maps account for about I would say 80% of all leads generated from my lead gen business. Videos are a good starting point. Oftentimes, I will rank in maps and I'll start with video and then once I find something that's generating leads I'll go to maps, a website and rank it in maps, and then most of my leads come from the maps themselves, so that 3-Packt or what they call the Snack Pack which I think is a stupid name, but on the 3-Pack that's where most of the leads come from. Again, that's in the home services industry or the contract industry. It may be different in other industries but that's why like I said, there's nothing wrong with videos, it's a great starting point. In fact, if you end up doing in maps you can have a maps ranking, a listing map ranked in maps. You can also have a video ranking and also the website ranked in organic plus some of your citations, so like yellow pages, engines list, all those different things you can end up ranking some of those as well. All I'm saying is once you find something that's working that you've got money coming in from you can scale it and that's the way you do it. That's the way I do it anyways.
Okay. The next question from Robbin is, “Hey I watched both the sales video of RYS Academy aka The SEO Time Machine and IFTTT SEO Academy but still a bit confusing. Could you please let me know what the difference between RYS Academy as in IFTTT SEO Academy?” Yeah, there's a big difference. IFTTT SEO Academy is the foundation of what we do for our SEO whether it's YouTube or video SEO or for website SEO. It's something that we do. I think it's absolutely critical to have branded networks as part of like your … just any type of SEO campaign now because of us being in a Web 3.0, the semantic web, whatever you want to call it, and brand and authority is so important.
As Marco had recently done a post on the data, the PBN which is coming at some point, there is what they call Seed sets and all that. There's a lot of stuff that I don't have time to go in all of it except that I can say that IFTTT SEO Academy is rather inexpensive comparatively to RYS Academy, and it is a great foundation or starting point. RYS Academy, however, is a way to build to use Google's own properties to your advantage and to do some pretty cool things with it. We've got some case studies inside RYS Academy that show how we've used Google's own properties to rank and to rank on page one for various keywords. We've also used them to manipulate trust flow, topical trust flow. It works really well for maps, manipulating maps rankings. I was able to take a local site to number on in maps using nothing but RYS Academy methods. There's a lot of things that we'd teach inside of that but it's specifically for setting up SEO campaigns using Google's own properties. It also includes Twitter SEO Academy in that because that's part of the process.
I would suggest if you're just starting out, IFTTT SEO Academy would probably be best if you're just starting out. If you already have some knowledge of SEO and everything else, you're a bit more advanced and you want to give in to something that's quite unique, then RYS Academy is a good way to go.
Anybody want to do another explanation on that so they get it from a different angle?
Marco: If IFTTT SEO Academy is the hammer and Google is the nail, then RYS Academy would be a jack hammer. It's so much more fun to hammer away Google that way.
Bradley:That's a good analogy. All right. Hernan or should I move on?
Hernan: No, go ahead. Go ahead.
Bradley: Okay.
Hernan: I think Marco nailed it in the head.
Adam: Did he hit the nail on the head, Hernan?
Hernan: I think he did.
Bradley: Jackie's question. “Okay, so you responded the following: in my personal opinion, no I wouldn't create two branded networks as that would get confusing.” Let's see. “The dedicated YouTube network I would have unbranded persona, and the Blog network I would have branded. I would say whether to create two Gmails is a judgment call.” She's quoting me apparently. “You could always use the Outlook address to register another set of accounts instead.”
I created my blog/money site with my branded network. It will obviously use the RSS IFTTT recipes. Now, I am getting ready to build a network for my branded YouTube channel. As you indicated, it will use an unbranded persona for the network, so the question is, how do I connect the 2.0s Tier 2 persona network to the branded YouTube Tier 1?”
Okay. Jackie, that's a valid question. The same way that you would for any type of Tier 2 network. The Tier 2 networks are always triggered the same way. They're triggered from the Tier 1 networks, excuse me, RSS feeds, right? As a matter of fact, we have it right here, don't we? Okay, right. Yeah. This might look a little bit confusing because I had a bunch of notes on it, but the Tier 2 networks are always going to be triggered from the RSS feeds from the three blogging accounts on the Tier 1 network.
What I'm saying is, you have a blog or RSS feed, that's going to trigger from your Blogger account from your Tier 1 network whether it's branded or unbranded, it doesn't matter. As long as it's your Blogger account from your Tier 1 network, right? That's going to have an output RSS feed. All of the blog platforms do and some of the other webs do as well like [delicious indigo 00:41:56] for example. You take the Blogger RSS feed and then you just set up using the RSS two recipes, which are in the account workbook template, and you set up the Tier 2 recipes to be triggered via RSS using the Blogger RSS feed, right? For Tier 2B it would be the Tumblr RSS feed that access the trigger. For Tier 2C it would be the WordPress.com, RSS feed is the trigger, right? That's all it is.
Even if you're using YouTube as your main trigger, your money trigger, it's going to trigger using YouTube two recipes, right? YouTube is going to be the trigger and any new video uploaded to YouTube will trigger the syndication to your Tier 1 network, but then your Tier 1 network is going to use the RSS feed recipes to trigger your Tier 2 network. Remember, like I just said earlier in this very hangout, that everything is just a set of single rings. It's just a matter of triggers and actions, right? The only thing you have to differentiate is the triggers and actions, right?
The trigger, if it's a YouTube it's going to be YouTube upload as a trigger is going to syndicate to your network. If it's an RSS or blogs syndication network it'll be a new post added to your blog will update the RSS feed or insert that item in the RSS feed and the RSS feed triggers the syndication. Tier 2 networks are always going to be RSS triggered because they're going to use the RSS feeds from your Tier 1 Blogger accounts or blogging accounts, Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress as the triggers, okay? Always Tier 2 networks, guys. One more time, always Tier 2 networks are triggered by the Tier 1 blog RSS feeds, okay, which are in this case, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress, all right?
Okay. “In the Interlinking? On a specific 2.0, but my YouTube Tier 1 is already interlinked to my branded Tier 1 Blog. There is no more space available. Besides, I am embedding the videos from my branded YouTube Tier 1 Blogger or Tier 1 to my branded Blog Tier 1.” I'm not sure what you mean here. As far as the interlinking, like just select it. For example, if you're looking at your Tier 1 network, you're going to be linking to, if it's Tier 1 network for your website, your main website for blog syndication you're going to be linking to interlinking as many properties as you can within the same network, right, but you're going to be linking the main website URL is going to be your main URL within each profile. For example, if you set up a Google Plus page, you're going to link to your main money site as the website link, right? Then you'll have in the link section you also linked to all the other properties within the network.
The same with your Tier 2 networks, I will usually link to the Blogger property because the Blogger is the trigger, so your Tier 1 Blogger is going to be triggering that network. I always use that Blogger URL as the main money site URL for the Tier 2 networks, right? Okay? You can use one of the Tier 2 network properties. All I'm saying is don't overcomplicate this Jackie. That part of it, the interlinking specifically, what's the more important part of that because remember, your links that are going to be pushing juice back to where you ultimately want it to which would be your branded blog or your Branded YouTube channel, that's going to come through from your syndication itself, right? The actual profile links is not so important as … The most important part of that is just to interlink the properties, to try to link all of them together in as many places as possible because that's what builds that semantic hub, that authority, right?
Remember, we're not hiding footprints here, guys. We're cleaning footprints. As far as the main URL to use across your profiles, don't worry about that so much. The only where it placed and it's really the most important is on your money site, Tier 1 branded property or excuse me, Tier 1 branded network is you want to link back to your main money site is your main profile URL for each one of those. For everything else, don't really worry about it so much, okay? I think that's a bit have an overcomplicated question. In other words, I think you're overcomplicating this one. It's unnecessary to do so. That was a valid question about the first one now, but just remember, on all Tier 2 networks they're always going to be triggered by using RSS feeds from the Tier 1 blogging accounts, okay? Watch this, Jackie. Go through this. Go through it a couple of times if you need to, it'll help you, I promise.
Okay. Hey guys. This is Paul Fussell. Just had these made up, I need a vote … I didn't watch them but it looks like you've got several other people just because we're short on time. It says it's only a few seconds long. You know what, see how much is a few seconds, six seconds isn't too long.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
He must be selling network services. Out of the way, Paul. You can buy them from us and resell them.
Marco: [Naughty boy 00:47:03].
Bradley: I like that one. What do you guys think? Can you all see it?
Hernan: That's good.
Adam: Yeah. I'm thinking that … Hold on, go back. Lock it on your screen.
Bradley: It should be locked on my screen, is it not?
Adam: No, I see Hernan's face.
Bradley: I don't know why. I've got it locked. It's locked on me.
Adam: All right. Let's get to now. Can you replay that one?
Bradley: I like B. This is number two, better. That looks pretty cool.
Adam: I like the graphic.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: All right. If you all can see that on your end but I like that one.
Adam: All right. One more time, the first one.
Bradley: Yeah, I like the second one. This is the contrast.
Adam: Yeah, I actually like the first one.
Marco: You do?
Marco: I like the second more so much I'm going to curate it.
Bradley: Yeah. I'm going to steal it, Paul. I'm going to download it now. I like number two,
Paul, or B myself but Adam says number one so you choose which one you like. I think number two, I like the contrast, it stands out more I think.
Adam: Fair enough. Solid B, because I like it, good interest.
Bradley: Yeah. Good job, man. You're out there apparently you're going to be selling networks, it's a good thing. We encourage that.
Seeding High PA Blogs in a New Network Prior to Connecting in IFTTT
Ed Ryan says, “Hey guys. When using high PA aged blogs in a new network, is it wise to do a seed post the same way we do on our regular blogs and then wait a bit before connecting an IFTTT?” Yes Ed, always, always. That's just something we do to make sure that the sites don't get terminated by autoposting via IFTTT immediately. Even with aged accounts, I still recommend that you find whatever the blog is going to be about that you're going to be feeding content to it like whatever topic it's going to be about, it's fine.
Guys, I just go to [Buzz CMO 00:48:53] just like the training it should … It's all in the training. Just go to [Buzz CMO 00:48:56], find it on a popular article, there's a lot of social activity in your particular industry or niche topic whatever. Strip all the links out of it, repost it, except for perhaps one link back to the content source which is what you should be doing anyways, but strip all the internal links out of the post and post it on that blog and publish it on that like Tumblr account, for example, and then let it sit for a couple of days, three, five days something like that, and that I call it seasoning the sites, okay?
Any other suggestions to do this correctly would be much appreciated. That's it, Ed. Just follow those instructions that are in the training on that and that's it. If you have a Twitter account or something or anything like that that you could actually take the Tumblr URL, for example. I'm assuming you're talking about Tumblr here because usually that's only people, the aged PA, high PA blogs that you buy. Let's just assume it's Tumblr. If it once the post has been published, if you take the Tumblr URL, the post URL, and Twitted out or something like that where you can get a little bit of potentially social activity to it as well, that's going to help. That all help safeguard it from getting terminated as well. That's not something that's required. It's just something that if you're building I think Ed, I think you're building everything out manually, then it's just an extra step that you can do that's going to help it out some. It helped to get an index too.
How to Use Twitter-Based Recipes in IFTTT?
Daniel says, “Hey guys, there have been discussions regarding or suggesting we use our Twitter channel as our main feed and set up a set of IFTTT recipes which posts or tweets out to all our Web 2.0 properties.” I don't know where that discussion came from, Daniel. “Are the Twitter recipes something additional to the standard RSS triggered recipes that we should be using? How exactly should we be using Twitter based recipes in conjunction with the regular approach? Just trying to get an understanding or just trying to understand whether or not there have been any changes along these lines by you guys or if we stick with the same formula.”
Okay. Daniel, stick with the same formula. IFTTT, SEO, the networks are for Blog syndication or YouTube syndication. However, you can also use Twitter to syndicate tweets. Personally, I don't like to syndicate to use my branded network for Twitter syndication network. I build a second or supplementary network for the Twitter account and then have the Twitter tweets with using to embed tweet recipes to post my tweets out to a supplemental network. That's all covered again in the Twitter SEO Academy. That's not something that is part of the IFTTT SEO training and there's a reason for that because it's the supplementary or an additional thing that you can do but it's not required. It will help you in various ways, bring trust flow, increase trust flow and stuff like that. Again, all of these questions that you're asking here are covered inside Twitter SEO Academy.
As far as the IFTTT approach, stick with the training that we have and use your blog or your money, or excuse me, your YouTube channel as your syndication trigger for your branded network. I don't recommend that you use, that you feed your branded network with tweets because in my own opinion, we had this discussion, this exact question came up within the last two weeks in Hump Day Hangouts and we talked about it. Personally, I don't like to have tweets embedded across my branded network. I like to use the supplementary network for that. Okay.
I guess it depends. I think Marco chimed them on this the last time and I think it depends on what kind of tweets. If you're in something that's got a lot of pictures and images and things like that then it would be fine to do that because the image gets embedded as well with the tweet. A lot of stuff that I work in, a lot of the industries that I work in it just doesn't really look right when I … So I set up a secondary network for Twitter syndication specifically that will basically syndicate the branded Tier 1 Twitter account tweets to another network, and it just add some additional juice. All right. Twitter SEO Academy, once again.
Best Practices in Ranking Ecommerce Websites That Have Been Stucked at the Bottom of Page 1
Kenny says, “I do SEO for a large and successful eCommerce website. We've seen some great results with rankings, some of our most targeted keywords, however, seem to be stuck at the bottom of page one, top of page two. I have a branded IFTTT network, we update the site with news two times a week and a podcast once a week.” I'm going to plus one that because content marketing you're doing good. “We do regular outreach, we have some great high authority links. What would you guys do from this point on to move these keywords up from the bottom of page one with the top of page two?”
Good question Kenny. What I would be doing is trying to build additional links, just really clean links. Something that I'm doing a lot of right now that works really, really well is buying, like building on my link networks. Not like typical PBN stuff but like buying 100% relevant expired domains that have to topical relevancy and getting in just for the cause of registration. This would be a good point to drop the glitch at back links, the hub link because that's the tool that we're using. We've done a demonstration on for the MasterMIND as well as the MasterCLASS, and something that's what I've been doing a lot of recently.
On top of everything else that we already teach, I've been building 100% topically relevant link networks to sites that need that additional push, and I'm seeing huge gains with just a handful of additional links. That might be something that you can try if you're in a really competitive space. It might take you more sites to do that but it's really powerful when it works and it's cheap. For example, I've been buying [SIP 00:54:38] links for a long time now, a year and a half and I've been spending hundreds of dollars per month on SAPE links because I usually use a third party provider so I don't have to do all the research myself and they work and that's why I've been using them. However, I spent hundreds of dollars per month on subscription services for that, whereas I can go out and purchase hundreds of dollars per month worth of domains for a yearly registration fee, set them up and now over the course of four, five months I can completely eliminate my SAPE's subscriptions and save hundreds of dollars per month. Because once I set up the networks, they're done, and I get the same results. Also, they'll pass the manual review for the most part if somebody were to look at my back link profile because I'm getting links from instead of hack SAPE links, I'm getting links from 100% topically relevant websites.
That's my personal suggestion. Anybody else want to chime in on that?
Hernan: Yeah. If that's the case, you can always find the route to do it yourself SAPE. It's not advisable if you do not want to dive in to SAPE but it's also cheaper, so that's another option, just in case you want to go for the do-it-yourself route.
Bradley: Yeah. Yeah. For Kenny, again, I would just … If you're doing, because it sounds like you got your content marketing a consistent schedule going that's doing well for you. There's not really a whole lot of improvement you can do there. Sometimes you just need a bit more SEO power and referring domains. The number of referring domains still an important SEO metric. That's something that maybe you can do is just continue to build additional links, getting, for example, guest post, guest posting on places would help. That usually requires a lot of outreach and stuff like that. That's a pain in the ass. It sounds like you're doing some of that already.
I would supplement what you're already doing with building some of your own link networks. Just be careful, make sure you're hiding your any potential footprint. Only buy domains that have 100% topical relevancy that matches whatever your link, your money site that the topic that you're linking to, and you'll see some significant gains from doing that. It doesn't take a whole lot. Again, it depends on how competitive the industry you're in but for a lot of stuff that I do it doesn't take a whole lot to see significant results.
Adam: With that, they can also look inwards too. It just doesn't say I'm here. I'm sure that they've looked at their own site but take another look, is there anything you can optimize on your own site.
Number of IFTTT Rings Needed for Money Site Targetting Multiple Locations
Bradley: Yeah. All right. We got time for one more which is Cesar's and then we're done. “If a client has multiple locations with a page for each location on their new site, would I need to create an IFTTT Tier 1 for each location or would I create an IFTTT to the homepage?” Just the homepage, Cesar. That's would I do. If it's really competitive then you could essentially do a different one for each location but you don't have to. One of the three service sites that I have has got about 10 locations now, all is subdomains and they share one Tier 1 branded network, all 10 locations do. I rank really well for that site and just about every location. Some locations aren't ranking as well as the others but for the most part I'm doing really well. I'm in the 3-Pack for I think 80% of them, 8 out of 10. That's all sharing one IFTTT ring, okay?
Don't overcomplicate it. Again, do the bare minimum required guys to get the results you need. Start off with one IFTTT ring for the entire site. It doesn't matter if you have multiple locations or not. Remember, the key here guys is consistent publishing, updating it often, publish content regularly, okay? Then, and track your results. If you start getting results then you don't need anything else. If you are still stuck after … and don't publish two posts and say it didn't work, okay? You got to get on a consistent posting schedule like what Kenny is doing, where you're publishing regularly. Over time, give it a few weeks, six, eight weeks of consistent publishing, one or two posts per week, track your results. You should see significant improvements. If you do not then possibly you might want to consider doing another ring one for each location, and again, you still going to need to continue to post regularly, okay?
What would be the best, the fastest way to power up the Tier 1 properties? Just build links to them. Just be careful building links to your Tier 1 properties. You don't want to spam those. You want to keep it clean between spam in your Tier 1, so just do a layer of high decent quality links. You could use tools. You could use our link building service that we offer, which by the way we're reconfiguring those once again. We've got the solution for that. We'll talk about that more next week. Press releases, you can do some decent quality PBN runs. You could build your own link networks just like what I was talking about to Kenny here, okay?
Should I wait for or should you wait for the Tier 1 accounts to season before spamming them? No, not really, just don't spam them. Try to treat your Tier 1 properties guys almost as well as you treat your money site because you don't want to burn them. You know what I mean? That's why we recommend that you use something like press releases or Web 2.0s with decent quality, not like real shitty spun text and everything pointing to the Tier 1 sites. Once you've got those Tier 2 links pointing to Tier 1 then you can spam those. Recommend that you try to keep your Tier 1 link, the links to your Tier 1 properties of it clean so that you're not burning them, right? Because Google is essentially looking out two layers deep now, especially your branding properties, guys, just keep them really clean, as clean as you can.
Adam: All right. We'll wrap it up and get over to MasterCLASS.
Bradley: MasterCLASS it is. Guys, thanks for being here. We'll see everybody next week. MasterCLASS, promise we'll see you here just a moment. We have MasterMIND tomorrow too in case anybody didn't know. [Crosstalk 01:00:42]
Adam: Bye-bye guys.
Bradley: Thanks.