Click on the video above to watch Episode 52 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
Announcement
Adam: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts with Semantic Mastery. Of course, it is episode 52. We've made it a year. Luckily, nothing horrible happened in the last week so we were able to make it here today. Today is the 28th of October and of course we've got everybody here for this episode. How's it going, Chris?
Chris: Hello, Adam. How is everybody doing?
Adam: Good, good. Hernan, how are you doing?
Bradley: Hernan is muted.
Adam: Oh, right.
Hernan: Hey, [inaudible 00:00:26] everyone.
Adam: I'm sorry. Marco, what's up?
Marco: Hey, everybody. Happy to be here.
Adam: Bradley, how's it going, man.
Bradley: Excited to be here at 52 weeks in a row, guys. That's unheard of. I'm really proud of us for being able to do that without missing a single week. We'll probably be bragging about this for months to come.
Adam: Every Wednesday you'll get to hear.
Bradley: There's no more Hump Day Hangouts after today. No. We're going to keep it going. We've got one scheduled week off next month but beyond that, as far as I know we're just going to keep on rolling. We enjoy doing this. This is our way of giving back to our students as well. This business has been good to us and we all enjoy that. I know we do.
Thanks for everybody being here for this special episode. I know Adam's got a couple of more announcements and then we'll get right into questions because there's already a ton of them. Go ahead, Adam.
Adam: Yeah, hopefully everybody heard about the contest we had. We sent out the emails over the past few days. We posted in the groups so hopefully you guys got in there and got a chance to sign up. We just drew the winners so going to just go down the list here. We've got a six-month master class worth lots of money. It says on the page but the winner of that is RK. It is discovermypurpose@gmail. You will be getting an email with that. We'll be contacting you shortly.
The second prize was one month of Video Powerhouse. This is our video embed network that we've been talking about that we had a limited release to our MasterMIND members. This isn't even available publicly right now. The lucky winner there is Lawrence Heraldo, lawrenceheraldo@gmail. We'll be contacting you shortly and last but not least [crosstalk 00:02:13]. What's up?
Chris: He's the rare first one.
Hernan: Awesome.
Adam: Last but not least, IFTTT Network. Free, on the house. We're making and building it for you and that's going to go to Tom [inaudible 00:02:28] @yahoo. We'll be contacting you as well via email. Hopefully, you guys all gave us your good emails and you guys can get in on this. The last announcement on prizes though, like we said, we're going to give something away live. At the end of the episode, we're going to choose one winner and they're going to get three months free MasterMIND.
That's going to be chosen by us and it's going to be whoever asks the best question here today and not only that, they have to be here today. You can still ask it. Like we say, first come, first serve so if we don't have time and we don't get to your question, that's tough but hopefully you still … If you give a really good question, we mean it, we're not going to pick the funniest question. We want somebody who's asking some good questions. That's how we're going to do it.
Bradley: Yeah, because if it was the funniest it would be probably [crosstalk 00:03:15] because of their means. That said, probably about 10 minutes prior to us wrapping this up so around 4:50 Eastern Time we'll go ahead and start picking that winner because that will give us a few minutes to verify that you are here by ask … Once we announce your name, you can post on the events page to let us know that you are indeed attending live because otherwise if you don't reply once we pick your name and say it out loud, then we won't know whether you're actually here or not. We want to make sure that it's only for live attendees that had the opportunity to win that.
I'm assuming, Adam, if it's a Semantic Mastery MasterMIND member already that happens to win, we'll just refund them a month, is that correct? How does that work?
Adam: Well, we said it was three months. Yeah, that's fine.
Bradley: Okay. With that said, let's go ahead and get into questions because I know we got a lot. Let's go ahead and do it. Everyone ready?
Hernan: Yeah, I thought we just were getting drunk and partying. We're answering questions, awesome.
Adam: Oh, man. This birthday party sucks.
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: It's a Q&A party.
Adam: Yeah, all right.
Boosting Page Authority for IFTTT 2.0 Blogs
Bradley: All right, this guy says, “Happy 52, my IFTTT 2.0 blogs have very low page authority. What is the easiest way to boost this? Do you include terms of service, privacy pages on these blogs and do you use paid images?” Okay, I do not include terms of service and privacy pages on web 2.0 blogs. Personally, I don't. It's just additional work that I think is completely unnecessary. As far as boosting page authority, there's a lot of stuff that we do. We use PBNs, GSA, FCS Networker.
We recommend that you use something like FCS Networker or Syndwire as a first tier link to your IFTTT networks and then you can use GSA to power those links up so that you're not hitting your tier one IFTTT ring directly with spam. At least not GSA type spam. Pretty much anything that you can build links to those networks with, preferably links that have some juice already, you can increase page authority. That's not the most important metric. It does help but it's not the most important metric.
You want to try to build relevant links to those networks because that's going to increase Topical Trust Flow, which is more important in my opinion than page authority. However, strictly for boosting page authority, again, you can spam it. You can do PBN links. You can use safe links, a number of things. Hernan, you want to add to that.
Hernan: Yeah, in fact we have developed the link building service for IFTTT networks thinking on how to make them more powerful and they have been working great because we've been using a combination of FCS and GSA but it doesn't have to be FCS. You just have to have a layer of contextuals pointing to those IFTTT networks. That is what we have found that works the best and you can achieve that with GSA only. You can achieve that with [inaudible 00:06:24] or any other service there.
Your own web 2.0 networks but the main idea here is that you put a layer of contextuals because we have discovered that they pass more juice that way. As Bradley was saying, so as not to spam them. Even further, if you are talking about a branded network, which should be considered part of your web site as well.
Bradley: That's correct. We actually are testing another web 2.0 posting service right now that we can use instead of just FCS, which is pretty cool. I can't really talk about it other than it posts to a lot of different web 2.0 sites that aren't typically used in most web 2.0 posting apps. It will give us some more variety in our web 2 links, which is going to be kind of cool. We're testing it right now but hopefully within the next maybe two weeks. If it works out as well as we plan on it working out, we'll be using that as an add-on service for the link building packages. We'll keep you guys posted.
Using Paid Images for Privacy/Terms Pages
Daniel says … Oh, do I use paid images. No, not for web 2.0 blogs. For money sites, yeah, oftentimes I will. I'll purchase images from stock photo places because I'm worried about it causing issues. If I'm using somebody else's image, I'll try to attribute to where the image source came from but even then you have to be careful because sometimes citing the source of the image is not enough and you can still get into trouble for that but for web 2.0 sites, no, absolutely not. I don't do that.
If you're using paid images on your money site and you're syndicating your blog post, you're going to have licenses for those images anyway. You're actually just syndicating the image that you have a license for.
Marco: Don't use Getty Images no matter what unless you pay for them.
Bradley: Yeah, because they will hunt you down and find you.
Adam: Beat you up and take your lunch money.
Branded or Persona Network for YouTube Optimization
Bradley: Yeah, basically. Daniel says, “Hey guys, I have a two tier IFTTT network purchase from you guys, which is triggered by a YouTube channel. My plan is to add an additional two to four, two tier IFTTT networks to it. My question is, does the tier one network of any additional IFTTT networks added to the original also need to be branded like tier one and the original IFTTT network was or can all the additional tier ones just be persona based.”
Great question, Daniel. They can all be persona based. For YouTube channels, you don't need to have any branded networks to be honest with you. I'd still recommend that your primary network, your tier one primary network is branded anyways because you're going to want to build a brand around your channel and eventually for an associated web site as well, which is what I would recommend because there's a lot of benefit to … For SEO to have an associated web site plus your really developing your own property and not just YouTube's at that point.
I recommend your primary IFTTT network be branded anyways but beyond that, for YouTube channels especially, it's easy guys because you don't need to worry about footprint issues. You can stack persona network after persona network after persona network on top of that YouTube channel for just more embeds, back links, bookmarks, social signals, that sort of thing and they can all be persona based. I would still theme them though so that they would be themed around the topic of your channel but other than that they can just be persona based.
Setting Up YouTube Trigger in IFTTT Networks
Basically, he just needed to know how the tier one should be set up for YouTube trigger networks when using multiple tier two IFTTT networks. Many thanks. It's very easy, for every full two tier network that you purchase, you're going to have everything syndicated from one central point. You're going to have one main trigger for every full two tier network. It's all it is and you can connect the same YouTube channel to multiple tier one networks. Each one of the tier two networks are going to be triggered by its corresponding tier one network.
All you have to do is set up that same trigger, activate the same YouTube channel in other words, inside of IFTTT for each one of those tier one networks. Let's say that you have four full two tier networks, which should give you a total of eight rings or excuse me, that would be three, six … Wait, four would be what, 16 rings. I'm sorry, excuse me, it would be 16 rings because it would be four tier one rings and then there would be 12 tier two rings. Then all you would do is activate the YouTube channel inside of IFTTT for the four tier one rings. You would use the same channel and you can do that. There's no problem with that.
It's not a one to one ratio. In other words, you don't need to have a specific IFTTT … It's not that you can only have one YouTube channel per IFTTT account. It's true you can only activate one channel in an IFTTT account but you can activate that same channel in multiple IFTTT accounts if that makes sense. Hopefully, that explains or clarifies that, Daniel. I didn't mean for that to sound confusing for those of you that possibly that's a little bit over your head. Don't worry about it. It's just a way to stack the networks. Do we have an image that we can grab? Let's see.
Adam: Yeah, it should be on the support-
Bradley: Let's go to the networks page. We've got images there. I want to explain this to make sure that it's … For those of you that are visiting maybe. Oops, that's not what I wanted. Well, I can't blow this image up but for those of you that want to see the image on your own, go to networks.iftttseo.com and you'll see the image right here. In the tiered network here, you'll see the YouTube is the center point. When you're stacking networks, guys, you would want to use the same trigger point for each one of your tier one networks.
If you have four of them, then all four of them are going to be triggered by the same YouTube channel. It just means you have to log in to the IFTTT account for each full two tier network, which is just the tier one is all you need to do. Log in to that account, make sure you're logged in to that YouTube channel or that Google account and then activate that YouTube channel as the channel inside of IFTTT. You can do that across all four for example if you had four full networks, which would give you a total of 16 rings. Which comes out to be about 352 properties. Pretty damn powerful. That's what we do.
We got a lot of our stuff built out like that because you're figuring there's about 22 properties per ring so there's 88 properties roughly per full two tier networks. You multiply that time four, that's a lot. There's 350-some properties.
Chris: We are using that same pattern for Video Powerhouse as well. Since all of our domains are going to IFTTT networks, you get only the embed on the PBN network but also on the web site, sorry, on the video embed web site but also you get all of those social signals and back links.
Bradley: That's correct. For example, on the video embed network, this center point is our PBN site and what we're doing is syndicating a video or publishing a post on the PBN site that then gets syndicated to all these sites automatically. You're getting the tier one embed on a PBN site that has good metrics and then you get the second tier of roughly 22 back links embed social signals or bookmarks from that point. It's basically tiered and very powerful.
We've got, I don't know 120 sites or so in that network right now. We're planning on building it out to be about … That's tier one, guys. Let's just say 20 tier two per PBN site. We're planning on building it out to be a total of 600 tier one sites so that's going to be 12,000 tier two. It's going to take us a few months to get to that point but we're working on it. It's going to be very, very powerful. All right, we're going to keep moving. Thanks, Chris.
Site Structuring for Local Theme and Rankings
Kevin says, “I'm using the Joe Troyer local theme for my site and it has structured data built in to the theme but after adding my own [inaudible 00:14:49], I now see organization data, local business data, web site data, my custom JSON financial service business data and the Google markup tester. Is it okay or is there an organization, local business, web site structure data being found in my markup or should it only being found in my custom financial service data? I created the financial myself but not sure how the other categories got there. If they should be showing or if by them showing it is affecting my rankings?”
Okay, Kevin. I would recommend that you don't have a bunch of the same type of local business schema with different categories. I would recommend that you boil it down or consolidate it down into one. Whatever is going to be the most appropriate. For example, let me … This is a public Google schema.org local business site list. I don't recommend that you have your own. I recommend that you use one that's already been … Here I'll grab this URL for you to share, Adam, on the events page with everyone. Guys, bookmark that link because if you're adding structured data to your sites, this is something that you should have.
What I would recommend is for financial services, let's see what they've got for financial consultant here is financial service. Okay, so they do have a category for that. Well then, you should be all right as long as you're using this format. I wouldn't make up your own. I'd use stuff that's already been approved by schema.org and added to their database. In this case, it would be schema.org. The business type, local business type would be financial service. Again, if you've got multiple types of schema markup on your page, your site, I would recommend removing some of them.
I know what you're talking about with the Joe Troyer local site. It's from Launchpad or whatever it's called because I purchased that too. I can't remember if you can remove that widget or not. That it's hard coded into that theme. To be honest with you, I've only built a couple of sites with it. I prefer to use my own JSON-LD markup in the header because you can get more specific with it. With Joe Troyer's theme at least as it were the last time I built a site using it which was about maybe three months ago now, you weren't able to edit that code. You weren't able to get more specific and I don't like that. I like having a little bit more control over it.
If you're using that theme and you were unable to remove that widget, which shows in the footer. I believe it's in the footer or the site, in the footer widget area. If it's not there, it's in the side bar. I can't remember. It's been a few months like I said since I built a site on that. If you can remove that and just add your own in the header, then I would recommend that. If you can't then I would either reach out to Joe Troyer's support and find out if there's a way. Where in theme files that is so that you can actually cut that out of the PHP file, in the theme files, so that you can add your own script or use another theme, to be honest with you.
Chris: Have in mind, guys, that you can get penalized for over using markups.
Bradley: Yeah, structured data spam.
Chris: Yeah, structured data spam. I've seen that on I think a couple of Facebook groups that people were marking up the exact same info over and over again on the same pages and their [inaudible 00:18:13] started to drop because of that. Kevin, be super sure that you are only using the markup once on every page and try not to send conflicting information to Google spiders or to using several markup categories.
Bradley: Again, like I said, if you can't remove just the widget and have it pulled up and have that removed from the actual … When you go to validate the code in the structured data testing tool or fetch URL and invalidate, or however you do it, if you can remove the widget it should pull that out. If you can't do that, and it's hard coded into the theme files, then you can probably reach out to the support and find out where that is and ask them just to point you where it is and you can remove that on your own. You have to modify the theme file but you should be able to just cut that out on your own and then save the file.
Spun Contents in IFTTT Networks
I'd make a backup of it first though and then you can add your own JSON-LD markup in the header. That's what I prefer to do. Again, I've only built two sites using that so far and that was a few months ago. I can't remember exactly what I did there. I am seeing rumors that spun content no longer works and that Google was able to recognize spun content. Have you guys heard anything about it? Yeah, for two years now. Yeah, spun content no longer works. It works for back link building as long as you know where to use it. I never, ever, ever use spun content on a money site and never, ever, ever use spun content for tier one links.
Just don't do it. We haven't been for years now and we don't plan on starting it any time soon or ever for that matter. Using spun content from tier three links and beyond, there's reasons that we do that and that's because those types of links are being used a feeder links just to push juice into … Further in towards our money site, towards ground zero but I don't recommend that you use spun content any closer than tier three and even then you got to be somewhat careful about it.
Chris: It's not only about Google. Spun content doesn't convert. It doesn't convert your visitors into clicks, into customers, into synapse so you need to use your content to feed Google of course but also to feed your visitor with good quality values. That's the main point besides Google why wouldn't you use spun content on anything that could [inaudible 00:20:43] a visitor and could get a click or could make a conversion.
Bradley: Again, the main thing to remember is just don't use spun content on your own sites, on our money sites and don't use it for tier one links. I like Syndwire. I use Syndwire. I have it. I've got 1500 accounts in there that I use but I use it for videos. Videos is different. You can use it for video embeds, back links, whatever. There is still a much higher abuse threshold for YouTube but I don't use Syndwire to link directly to a money site because it will spin the content and I don't like to use spun content to point to my money site.
Using spun content to point to your tier one links is okay but I just don't ever … I can't recommend that you ever use spun content for tier one links, point it directly to your money site or on your money site itself. Just don't do it.
DA and PA as a Ranking Signal
Another one from Kevin. My site is currently a DA of six, a PA of one for all my pages but I've been trying some domain authority stacking stuff and DA boosting slipstreaming, safe links through two time 301, building links, et cetera but I'm not seeing a whole lot of movement after I did my first PBN link. I guess what I'm asking is after [inaudible 00:21:59] updates PA and DA, Google sees … What should be in my entire DA and PA for my site? Well, my page has dramatically increased in ranking as right now they are stuck on page three with DA six, PA one.
Kevin, you're putting way too much weight into the domain authority and page authority as being a direct ranking signal. There is a benefit to having domain authority higher but it is not … You can have a domain authority of 60 and you can still be stuck on page three to seven. You can't just assume that if you boost your DA of your site that you're going to jump to page one or even jump to page two for that matter.
There's a lot of other things that you should be focusing on. That is a tactic that you can have to your overall strategy but I do not recommend that you place all of your effort on to boosting DA and PA in hopes that it's going to help you rank because you will be sorely disappointed.
Marco: Do we have a link to our Trust Flow webinar?
Adam: Yeah, we do.
Marco: He might want to take a look at that.
Bradley: I think it's trustflow.semanticmastery.com I think.
Adam: [Inaudible 00:23:10].
Bradley: Check that. Yeah, I would recommend that you focus more on on page stuff on your own site number one and number two, start focusing more on trust flow than on DA and PA. You can still do that as part of your overall ranking strategy. Again, that's a tactic not a strategy. It's something that you can add to your tool box or as part of what you do but I do not put that much emphasis on that. A couple of years ago, that was very important but it's not as near as important now because it's too easy to manipulate. That's why.
Trust Flow and Citation Flow
Let's see, [inaudible 00:23:53]. Regarding to what Kevin [inaudible 00:23:55] asked earlier about after Moz updates, PA and DA and Google sees what should be a much higher DA and PA for my site, I wanted to ask if you guys are aware if PA and DA and also trust flow and citation flow are metrics that Google officially looks at. Is there an official post reply from any Googler that they actually do take into account these metrics.
I don't think Google ever will publicly state that even if they do. I've never seen it and I don't suspect that they ever would because that would open up the floodgates for people to intentionally go out and manipulate that. There has been many, many tests across hundreds and even thousands of sites where trust flow in my opinion is probably the most important metric as far as … I'll let Marco chime in on this as well and Hernan too but it basically will show the authority and the trustworthiness of links.
That's a metric that Majestic developed but it is really close to what the page rank algorithm was and it's updated daily. It gives us more of an idea of what Google is actually seeing internally because page rank is still alive, guys and Google uses that as a determining factor for how they rank you. They just don't share it with us. We have to use alternative or third party metrics and I think trust flow is probably the closest to it.
Again, Google will never publicly state that. At least I don't think they will. My assumption is that they won't ever publicly state that because it would give too many people the opportunity or the green light to go ahead and learn how to manipulate that stuff and they don't want us doing that.
Marco: I would just tell him to again, to go watch that Trust Flow webinar because we get into Trust Flow, Topical Trust Flow and how they mimic page rank and trust rank. How they mimic those algorithms. That's what we're looking for. We're looking to get as close to what Google is seeing as possible because they won't tell us. The metrics that we use are what we think from all of our … What we know from all of our testing that more closely relate and mimic what Google is seeing and what Google is employing as a metric to rank web sites.
Chris: Adam just posted the link on the top of the events page but it's backed up with data. When you sign up to the webinar, you will see that Marco has been doing a lot of research about patents of Google. It's really backed up with data and not only the test results that we were having but the data of the patents that Google is acquiring. It's really interesting.
Bradley: The problem with PA and DA, guys, is that they … It's a metric of mass, in other words, it can be spammed and it can accrue based on strictly quantity not quality. It's not a measure of quality. It's a measure of quantity. That's what PA and DA is. You can spam something to death and boost your DA, your domain authority or a page authority for a specific page. Remember, page rank was not a domain wide metric, it was a page metric. You can have a domain with a page rank of five but you could have a brand new blog post or a brand new page on your site would have a page rank of NA, non available, not applicable because it was brand new. It didn't have time to accrue page rank.
Now, with internal linking, proper internal linking and also back linking, you can increase the page rank of that page or that post but it would still start off as zero. With domain authority and page authority, domain authority is a site wide metric, a domain wide metric whether it's a page, a post or a subdomain it doesn't matter. As long as it's attached to that root domain. If the root domain authority is say 42, then every single page or post or subdomain that's attached to that domain is going to have a domain authority of 42. It's universal. It's domain wide, site wide metric.
The page authority would be the same. It's very similar to page rank and how it accrues in that it is a page level specific metric. However, both of those can be completely manipulated through quantity alone. There is no measure of quality there. Juice is juice when you're looking at domain authority and page authority metrics. It doesn't matter whether it's clean juice or dirty juice. It's just juice but where trust flow comes in is trust flow is a measure of quality and authority and that's where citation flow is more like a … These are Majestic metrics, guys but citation flow is a measure of quantity and trust flow is a measure of quality.
When you're looking for a metric to manipulate or signals to manipulate, you should be looking at trust signals because that takes into account not quantity but quality and topical relevance, that is the real key, which now Majestic, if you have a paid account will show you topical trust flow metrics, which is incredibly important. Hopefully, that was educational.
Combining Different Tools for YouTube Video Optimization
Scott says, “Hi, Bradley. Do you find your methods to make video more successful when combining IFTTT recipes in conjunction with Syndwire or can you just use one without the other with equal success?” For videos, yeah, you can rank with just Syndwire alone. You can also rank with just IFTTT. I use a combination of both because I like to use my IFTTT networks because it's a 100% automated and then from there if I need to boost the videos I will do a second embed blast using Syndwire or I'll use Syndwire to build links to my IFTTT networks.
I don't do that much anymore because all of our networks just go over to my link building team and they just build links to the networks. I use Syndwire now just for supplemental stuff. For example … That's just because IFTTT guys is our thing. You know what I mean? We use it but if I have a video that starts to slip and I need a little bit of a boost and I'll do a Syndwire blast with it, that sort of thing. Both tools are good. I like IFTTT because I can set up the networks and they're themed and then they work on autopilot.
Syndwire, there's an expense to Syndwire. You have to either purchase the software, which I don't even know if they have a lifetime anymore but I know there's a monthly cost with it now and then you have to add all the accounts. I recommend that if you're using Syndwire that you still set up themed accounts. You add them as campaigns with themed campaigns and that's all I recommend you use it but you can do it with either or guys. I'm not going to say one is better than the other. I prefer our method without a doubt.
Also, do most of your video views come from keyword search or from content discovery or recommended videos that come after initial videos. The reason I ask is because I have heard 80% of traffic comes from recommended videos, out of 10 keywords. That's one question. To be honest with you, we get a lot of … It depends on what you're trying to promote. I know what you're talking about. What he means guys is are the views … If you go look at your YouTube analytics, it's part of YouTube channel. You go look at your analytics. You can see where the views are coming from. Your traffic sources.
Are they coming from keyword search or are they coming from referral traffic, which would be like coming from Facebook or Twitter or external embeds, which could be just anywhere the video is embedded or is it coming from related videos, which show up on the right side bar. There's also the ones that show up after the video is done playing, right in the actual video viewer. It depends. I've seen a lot of traffic for certain terms come from related videos but then I also haven't.
For example, our Semantic Mastery channel gets a lot of views every month. If we look at it, I think about 20% of our traffic comes from recommended videos but that's not 80% that's 20%. That's still a lot because we get a lot of traffic to that channel but it's not near as much as 80%. I think it depends, Scott, on the actual niche in the keywords. Some are going to be more conducive to referral traffic like entertainment stuff. A lot of people like that kind of stuff because people are in that mood looking for entertainment and stuff but for niche stuff I would have to test and look at it on a niche by niche basis basically.
I know what you mean. It's good to try to show up in those recommended videos. There's ways to do that, guys with tags, by the way. There's ways to get … Also using playlists. Did you know that if you create playlists and grab some of those videos, the recommended videos in the right side bar that get a lot of traffic for particular keywords and you add your video in the playlist with those, sandwiched between a couple of them and you also mimic the tags from those videos, you can get your videos to show up in that recommended area. That's a cool little trick that you can use to capitalize on some of that referral traffic from the recommended videos section.
Number three, out of ten keywords you're trying to rank for how many show up the top? It's completely variable, Scott. There's no way for me to tell you that. It depends on the keyword. It depends on the competition level. There's too many variables so I can't answer that, sorry. I know Google search doesn't allow for video slots for many keywords it seems so you won't appear there. It depends. Some searches are not the type of searches that will display videos, others will. Any type of keyword with video, any type of how to keyword is going to show videos most of the time.
There are certain categories of search phrases, guys and certain categories aren't going to show videos or are a lot less likely to show videos but then there are certain categories that are more likely to show videos and then there's always the fluke. There's always the algorithmic anomaly as I call it where you can force a video even in a non-video type search but there's just too many variables there. If I'm trying to rank 10 videos, how many of them show up the top? I'd love to be able to tell you guys I get 7 out of 10 of them to rank but that wouldn't be true. There's too many variables there.
That has to be done on a case by case basis. To be honest with you, Scott, the way I do it is I test it. We just test everything. That's the only thing you can do is SEO. There are certain things that you can learn that will help you but everything requires testing because every single keyword that you're trying to rank for is going to have different … There's going to be different signals that make it rank, if that makes sense. There are some commonalities but you have to pretty much test everything and find out what's working for the particular term you're trying to optimize for.
Traffic Estimates for Local SEO
Caesar says, “I'm working on a deal with local biz. I'm having trouble figuring out how to set a realistic expectation for traffic. I don’t want to over promise and under deliver but I don't want to aim too low and perhaps lose the deal either.” The business is in a large city but inside of a small suburb. I told him that the best thing is to set up multiple sites on subdomains for each of the smaller suburbs and then go after the big city term. Another keyword planner is not an organic SEO tool but my fear is that the suburbs using the geo-modifier get next to no search as well. The big city using the geo-modifier gets over 300 per month according to the keyword planner.
When I was going over this with the business owner I told him that if we ranked the site for the smaller suburbs, if people in those suburbs are searching without the geo-modifier that his site would show up because Google shows what is nearest to the searcher. If all they do is type in the service or if they’re searching from their phone, that sounds good but is it correct, yes, and basically pull that out of you know where but now that's true, Caesar.
Look, the Google keyword planner might not show search volume for service plus suburb keyword, if that makes sense, but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t searching for it. It just means that people aren’t paying for paper click ads for it or if they are, it’s not enough for them to track the search volume. Here’s my theory on this, guys, or my methodology on this. I’ve tested this across dozens of lead gen sites. A portion of my business is in the lead gen arena. What I like to do is take a county for example and I'll just use Fairfax County Virginia because that’s one that I do a lot of work in.
Let's say there's roughly 23 cities, towns and suburbs within that county and for a specific search term, let's say tree service for example, Fairfax. We could use that as an example. Gets roughly 140 searches per month is what it shows in the Google Keyword Planner and those numbers could be different. Now, it’s been months since I've looked. I’m just using these as examples. If I optimized for 23 of the suburbs, which have little to no competition comparatively to that general Fairfax term, I might only get 5 or 10 searches per month per area but if you multiply that times all 23 areas, cumulatively, it ends up being more traffic than just trying to optimize for the one term.
That’s part one of that. Part two of that is, in doing so, in optimizing for those multiple areas, I can link to the overall broader term, which would be in this case a bigger city and use that as part of the SEO plan for ranking the bigger city. I'll initially get some traffic and some phone calls coming in, which is the most important thing is to start generating leads for that business owner using the suburbs because they’re easy to rank. There’s less competition. It's not going to be a floodgate of traffic but it's going to be some call volume coming in or leads coming in to their business while you work on optimizing for the big city.
The problem is optimizing for the bit city is going to take you time and now the clock is ticking. Now you've got the business owner who is becoming impatient, trust me, it happens all the time while you're trying to rank for the more difficult term. Instead, why not start generating phone calls from some of the less traffic areas and while you're working on ranking the more general term or the mosr competitive term. That makes sense.
Chris: Also, he is mentioning that he is using the subdomain technique, which will make ranking the bigger term much more easier.
Bradley: That’s correct because like we talked about with domain authority earlier, that's going to build. It's a cumulative effect. Again, guys, I always recommend when a business owner says to me that they want to rank in this one particular city, I say, “Well, that's fine. We can work on that.” However, it's going to take me 3 to 6 months to get you ranked in this area. Do you want me to just focus all my attention on ranking in this one area and it’s going to take me 3 to 6 months to generate significant results for you or would you rather and my suggest is and my recommendation to you is, that we target some of the satellite areas, these adjacent areas, the suburbs, the towns, municipalities, whatever you want to call them and start generating some leads for your business within the next 30 to 45 days while I work on optimizing and ranking you for the more general term or the broader term, the more competitive areas, the bigger city, whatever.
By the way, it's your job as the marketing professional to educate them on why that method is a better method. You got to get in the point and I know Caesar said this is only his second. I think he said somewhere this was his … My second client. I’m a bit nervous when it comes to setting expectations. You can’t over promise and under deliver. Instead you should under promise and over deliver but it's also … Caesar, I know it's difficult but you got to get to a point where you take the stance of you're the professional and it’s your job to educate them and make recommendations that are in their best interest.
Don’t let the client tell you what … You can let them tell you what they want but then you need to make sure that you tell them why that’s either a good idea or not so good of an idea. If it's not such a good idea, what would be the alternatives that you suggest because you’re the professional here. Oftentimes I know that clients will do that. They'll say, well look, this is what I want to rank for blah, blah, blah and it's up to you to show them why that’s not the best approach.
As far as, should I go this route or should I go after the big city term right out of the gate? No, I would go after the suburbs first without a doubt. You could set up the big city term right out of the gate but I would start working on the suburbs immediately and use that to funnel back into the bigger city. Also, last part of that is make sure you’re using a keyword suggest tool and look because guys your keyword suggest tools are going to … The power suggest, that's a good cue guys. That is where you're going to find out whether there is traffic or not.
Google keyword planner shows any search volume or not, I don't give a shit. I could care less whether it shows traffic volume or not because if it shows a search plus the city name or suburb name in Google suggest for your keyword, there is traffic there period, end of story. If you're using a Google suggest keywords tool, then you should be able to find keywords that actually produce traffic whether they show the keyword planner or not. It doesn't matter.
IFTTT Network Links Packages
All right, I can’t believe how time is flying. Let's go with Sue [inaudible 00:42:08]. I have been looking at your [inaudible 00:42:09] packages. I have an affiliate web site with no traffic. I purchased an unbranded IFTTT tier one network for me to try to fix this problem. Should I start using your back links packages and if so, do I start with 3500? How often would I do this. I honestly Sue, there's not really enough information for me to ell you Am I going to tell you. I'm I going to tell you that yes, you should build links to your IFTTT networks, yes. I'm going to tell you that. It's part of what we do. Step one is build a network. Step two is build links to the network. Step two publish content to your [inaudible 42:41] on a regular inconsistent basis. Step three is build links to your network.
Chris: I was about to say that, how often should I do this. Well, I would suggest you test the results first by having good results, powering my IFTTT networks once every 45 days or something like that because he will experiment link loss. Some of the links that get failed. They do not survive and what not. It happens. It's just tools. They are tools building links. Sometimes building one package a month or even each 45 days or at the 45-day mark will allow you to keep your IFTTT networks in good shape.
Again, Sue, test it because you will need to start syndicating out content. Sometimes depending on competition, you do not need to [inaudible 00:43:45] your IFTTT network. We have proven that for some local niches you just need the IFTTT network in place and start publishing content and you get a brand.
Bradley: That's true and that's why, Sue, I said the most important thing would be to have a consistent posting schedule to keep your networks powered and themed and that's important, guys. Fresh content is very important today in ranking and that's part of what makes all of it work. Just having an IFTTT network is not good enough, guys. The publishing of content consistently to those networks that are going to help you to rank. That would be … Again, step one build a network. Step two, publish content consistently. Step three, build links to the network. Yeah, I recommend that you certainly purchase it. Sue, it's not going to hurt anything but just make sure that you're posting content regular. That would be my recommendation first and target long tails with your post.
Again, use a suggest tool. Use Power Suggest. I got it open right here. I use these tools the moment I get in front of my computer all day long because I use it so much. Absolutely love this tool, Power Suggest Pro, can't recommend it enough. Probably the best keyword tool I've ever used.
Adam: Yeah, it's good.
Remixing YouTube Live Videos for Multiple Keywords
Bradley: Very good. Thanks, Jay. Appreciate it. Bryan says, “Congrats. Always enjoyed the valued info every week. Would there be a way to remix YouTube live video multiple times for multiple keywords? Basically, I would like 10 videos for each keyword remix possibly.” Yes, Bryan there is. There's a way you can do it with the YouTube editor by the way. I'm going to show this to you guys real quick. Let me just go into video manager and I'll show you what I mean. If you were to take like well say … We'll take this one. All right, so go to youtube.com/editor. Have the URL of the video that you want to remix as per your term, paste it in, click search, it will come up. You're going to drag it down here to your video and then oh, you know what, you could do it that way. You can also do it from the editor screen and I'll show that to you in a minute.
You see how those buttons right here that says auto fix brightness and contrast, all that kind of stuff, you can change stuff here and then when you change something by just contrast plus or minus, brightness you can change that, you can use filters for example, anything like then you click create video and it will create a new version of that video with a new URL. It won't affect the original, it will just create a new one from the exact same URL.
However, I want to give a word of caution, before you start doing that is you don’t want to … I would recommend that you're only doing that sort of thing with a spam channel … A test channel or a spam channel because you don’t want to clutter up a good channel with duplicate videos where all that's been changed are the color, settings or something like that because it’s going to be the same video. Yes, you can do that and your channel will allow it but it’s not really what YouTube would say … It's in a gray area. I don't know if it's really against their terms of service but if somebody were to report your channel for duplicate videos, which happens, and it seems to be happening more often now, then you'll end up losing the channel over it.
If you're going to be doing something like remixing videos on a money channel like something that you invested a lot of time and energy in I would recommend that you make the video file significantly different somehow. Whether it’s changing the background music or adding … Opening slides or closing slides that are different on each video, something like that but you can use the YouTube better. Also, I almost missed this. If we go take a look at edit screen on that video, and then we go over to enhancements, click on enhancements, you can do the same thing in here.
See how it says auto fix stabilize. There’s fill light. You can change the fill lights settings, the saturation, contrast or color temperature. Any one of those settings you change them and click save as new video and it won’t affect the original. It would just save as a brand new video. Once you save this new video then you go into info and [inaudible 00:48:11]. It will take some time to render it but then you can go in and actually edit the settings of the new video to edit the title and the description and the tags and everything else. Hopefully, that answers that. Adam, that's your girl, right?
Adam: Yeah. Thank you very much. That’s my lovely fiancée who made that awesome … She's been remixing our stuff. She might become our new sound editor.
Hernan: That's pretty cool. Thanks for that.
Bradley: Jay did one too. I saw that one earlier. We're almost out of time. Adam, you want to … Let me answer this question and you want to pick the winner for the-
Hernan: Yeah, me and Hernan are working in the background.
Assigning Cities in Domains
Bradley: Hello guys, happy 52nd. I had a client ask me do you know what the most current algorithm updates from Google have to say about having a city name of a business in the actual domain name? Does this affect search results? If so, how much is it according to the latest algorithm? Do you guys know the answer to these things? Marina, I always recommend that the root domain be a branded name. That you don’t put the city in the actual root domain. If you’re going to be using the city, use it in the pages or the silo structures so the hierarchy of the URL either using a category or pages.
Whatever it may be you could put the city name and the actual page or post URL somewhere in the URL string. I don't recommend it being part of the domain name itself or another method which we use in Semantic Mastery mostly as we have the branded domain name, which would be usually the company's name dot com or whatever, something like that and then we use subdomains with the city as the subdomain. I don’t recommend that you guys add … You guys got to think long term. Is there going to be an initial boost for having the city name in the domain name for a local business?
Yeah, probably but over the long term it’s kind of spammy looking number one and I suspect that it's going to be … Exact match domains, they still work but there are so many negatives for using them because it makes tripping over optimization thresholds … The over optimization threshold is a lot less. It makes tripping that penalty a lot easier. We always recommend that you go with branded names and you can optimize the pages with the city names in them and that way you're eliminating the potential for over optimizing starting with the domain name, if that makes sense.
Again, I don't recommend guys that you put that in the domain. I recommend that you optimize at the page level with the city name or use a subdomain with the city name but the root domain itself should be a branded name. I highly recommend that you guys do that.
IFTTT Recipes for YouTube
Scott says, “Would the recipe for IFTTT, is this needed per video or per channel?” If it’s per video, that would be a ton of work to set up per video. Scott, it's per channel, man. You set it up one time and then every time you upload a video or live stream a video to your channel, it automatically syndicates across all the properties. It's a one-time set up. If it were per video, we wouldn't even be here right now, guys because it would have never worked as a viable product, a viable method. All right, Adam, do you have one picked?
Adam: I am waiting for a confirmation from Hernan right now.
Hernan: Yeah, there are a ton of good questions. We are having trouble making up our minds.
Adam: One more question, one more question.
IFTTT Rings in Different Subdomains
Bradley: Adrian says, “Hi, guys. Happy 52nd. I am building web sites around a specific niche and I have a question. I have the main domain dot com and I have four subdomains and all are around a similar niche to the main domain. I’m using SERP Shaker so I have set up the silo as subdomains, countries, i.e. England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. I didn’t have counties and cities as the categories in post. Regarding IFTTT, would you put a ring around each subdomain or just use one ring as all subdomains are similar niche? Would this make one ring more powerful? Thanks, guys. Keep the good work.
Okay, Adrian, first of all, it depends. Really, it depends. If it's all around the same niche, you could. However, I do not recommend that you have an IFTTT network being fed by a site that you're generating pages with Serp Shaker. I love Serp Shaker. I use that plug-in. I also use Lead Gadget, which is just like an industrial version of it. I love those. I use them all the time. In fact, our master class case study, which we're starting in about seven minutes from now I'm going to be going over that extensively today but I do not recommend that you're posting to an IFTTT network with those types of pages or posts because they will get your account shut down. Your web 2 accounts will be terminated. Don't do it.
What I recommend is if you're going to be building sites out that way, build them out first. Create all the Shaker pages or posts and then put a network on it and then post to those sites like you normally would with a regular traditional style blog post or [inaudible 00:53:20] blog post, which is what we recommend so that you're only feeding your networks with original content, original blog posts. That said, if all four of your subdomains are around a similar niche, yeah, you could have one branded network. What I like to do initially when I start off with a project that is along those same lines, Adrian is I like to have one branded network and then once I start gaining some traction with the site, which all four subdomains could post to the same network, you just have to set up additional recipes for all that using the subdomains or assess feed for each one of them.
Once you start gaining some traction, if you gain traction with those sites, then you can get more specific by generating a branded with geographic modifier network. In other words, if it was like Plumbing England, Plumbing Ireland. I know that's very broad but I'm just saying, if you had a plumbing site, and you were targeting plumbing, let's say it was Joe’s Plumbing was the main brand then you could have Joe's Plumbing in England, Joe's Plumbing Ireland, Joe's Plumbing Scotland, Joe's Plumbing Wales. Then you could have separate networks for each which is going to give you more power over the long run but it is definitely a lot more set up, a lot more cost.
I recommend starting off with just one and once you start generating revenue, then you can start building out the additional networks and separating them out based on location, if that makes sense.
Adam: All right, we got a winner selected. Jacob [inaudible 00:54:49], I hope I'm saying your name right. Hopefully, you're here because if you're here I need you to comment. We would love to have you try out the MasterMIND for three months. We liked your questions about … You were asking about PBNs and methodology for figuring out domains and some other things. Comment or we’re going to move on to second pick. I'd hate to bypass you so we’ll give you a little bit. While we’re waiting for you to comment I want to say we obviously had a ton of questions today which is awesome.
Bradley: Is this his question that won right here?
Adam: I’m not looking at your screen.
Bradley: Jacob [inaudible 00:55:19]. I can see … Which question is it … Oh, wow. Screw that Wayne wins.
Adam: What I wanted to say was, everyone else who didn't … We didn't get to the questions today, me and Hernan are going to go through the rest of the questions and get what we can on the podcast tomorrow. I'm going to drop the link to the podcast so you guys can check that out.
Bradley: Yeah, guys because there's so many questions here and Hernan and Adam are doing the podcast for us now and these will be great for them to catch up on these questions for those of you that did ask questions. Please check that out. By the way, when you go visit our podcast or listen to it, make sure you subscribe to it and also leave us a review please.
Hernan: Yeah.
Adam: Real quick, I saw two questions I want to answer. Well, three things. Jacob, yay, you're here, all right. This is so cool, man. You won. You're getting [crosstalk 00:56:13] so congratulations. Then we had a couple of people who haven't been here before. Cam, I just wanted to say that yes, we do use this for … The things we teach apply beyond clients. We do affiliate offers, lead gen, things like that.
Craig, I suggest you check out the podcast. Just drop the link in there. I know you're a newbie to the group. I think I talked to you via email but yeah, check it out. Subscribe to the list and start coming to Hump Day Hangouts or watch the replays and I think that will help you out a lot.
Bradley: Okay, guys. Can you point me to Jacob's question. I want to answer that before we get off since his question won, I think it's only fair-
Hernan: That's the one, Bradley. The one you have on your screen right now.
Bradley: This one?
Hernan: Yeah.
Bradley: That's it?
Hernan: That's the one, yeah.
Building PBNs and Metholodogy
Bradley: I'm trying to decide if I'm biting off more than I can … By the way, congratulations, Jacob. When building PBNs for the purpose of getting that one homepage link per PBN domain, is there any set methodology to figuring out how many domains you may need in order to write for a set nice? Is there a point in time where you give up on a niche? Clearly, I won't rank for car insurance as it's too competitive but I still have some moderately competitive terms that I'm trying to go after.
Okay, we're going to answer this somewhat quickly but Jacob, honestly, I don't build PBNs to get that one homepage link per site. I build PBNs and then I theme them properly that they're broad enough to where they can cover multiple sub niches so that I can get more mileage out of the PBN. Then I set the PBN site up to where they look like real live web sites and not just blogs because guys you could smell a PBN site or spot a PBN site from a mile away. Anybody that looks at a PBN site, 99% of the time can tell it's a PBN site with just a glance and so that's a no-no. I don't use it.
If you've got sites like that, you should be using them as tier two links only. Not direct tier money site. That said, if you're going to be using PBN links, set them up as real valid sites with a static homepage on a know that the juice is probably going to be mostly on the homepage, I get that. We set up the 404 redirect plugins, I get all that. What I recommend you to do is you silo out your PBN sites and have your categories or top level pages however you decide to silo it out as part of your navigation menu plus put contextual links within that static homepage to those top level pages or category pages, depends on how you set it up, and then you use posts within your PBNs to link to your money sites because then you can link multiple times from the same PBN to your money site as well as link to other sites that are in a similar niche.
My point is, if you were buying PBN domains and buying hosting and paying to get them set up or setting them up yourself, you're investing a lot of time, energy and money to get that one link per PBN. To me, that is a complete waste of time. It's inefficient with both money and time. I recommend that you build out PBNs if you’re going to be using those as a part of your strategy to get a lot more mileage out of them and what I recommend is you always use curated content for your post, for your content that you’re using for posts in link building, is use curated content.
Again Jacob, as the winner, you’re going to be inside the MasterMIND for free for three months. You'll get access to our Curation Mastery Course where we teach exactly how to do that properly. You're going to get a lot more bank for your buck, more mileage. You'll get to be able to use those PBNs for more. They'll usually pass a manual review if they get manual reviewed by a Googler. There's a lot of benefit to that.
Is there a point where you give up on a niche? Yeah, I would but the problem is if you're going after too broad of a term, I wouldn't give up on a niche. What I would do is drill down into longer tail stuff that you can rank for and over time you got to keep working at it but over time those long tails content on that money site that you’re trying to rank for the broader term will help the broader term to rank but it’s going to take consistency and time. Anybody want to add to that before we wrap it up?
Hernan: No, I truly agree with you Bradley. Go for the long tails, start generating revenue and then you use that revenue to reinvest back on your million dollar keyword.
Bradley: I got to love Wayne's [inaudible 01:00:48]. All right, guys. Well hey everybody, thanks for being here. This was a great 52nd one year anniversary episode. We so appreciate you guys for joining us every week for the last year. Looking forward to the next year, the next 52 weeks. Again, thanks for everybody being here. Thanks, guys.
Adam: Thanks, everyone.
Bradley: Master class starts two minutes, guys. We’ll see you in a few.
Adam: Bye, everybody.