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Amazon is one of the biggest players in the e-commerce world – they have the biggest product listing and they're authoritative in Google SERPs. This is the reason why most internet marketers are eager to sign up to their affiliate program. However, with its popularity, it's obvious that the competition level is high. And this led to the following:

A participant of the Semantic Mastery weekly Hump Day Hangouts asked about the best strategies in ranking a product page into Google's search engine.

The exact question was:

What's best technique for ranking specific Amazon Product pages in Google for your clients, for specific keywords??

During the 75th episode of Semantic Mastery's weekly Hump Day Hangouts, a viewer asked about the best ways to recover from Google's search engine penalties.

The exact question was:

Hey Bradley I have a tough SEO question for you. My website used to have good page 1 positions. Last year Google gave it a thin content/no value manual penalty. Google has rejected 4 reconsideration requests over the past 6 months. Last week it got a 2nd “spam -thin content” penalty.

6 months ago it did only have 5 pages. Since then I have added 15 pages, a 1000-word About us page with original images, 3 original videos where I interviewed 3 different CEOs, etc. Pages are 800-2500 words. It has no affiliate links. All is original content. Clean anchors, clean links, Not keyword stuffed, not an EMD.

One SEO's advice was to not fight Google, start a new site and redirect this site to the new domain. What direction would you suggest?

1) 301 redirect the site over page by page to a new domain?

2) Only redirect the most important pages?

3) Double redirect (I heard of this don't even know what it is)

4) Is there a way to completely delete the current site and start a new site using the same existing content on the new site?

5) Will the negative black mark it has carry over and contaminate the new site? If I redirected it to another site as a subdomain will it contaminate the other subdomains and root domain?

I have 200+ hours into this site. Kind of stinks. Thanks.?

During episode 75 of Semantic Mastery's weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked about how search engine bots performed in terms of caching, indexing, timing, and ranking keywords.

The exact question was:

I used to think when the cache date changed on a SERP, the search engine had crawled, evaluated and assigned a rank score. I recently noticed a description tag was not updated in the SERPS even after a new cached version was displayed in the SERPS. The new cached version displayed new updates made to the webpage. The description was my old version and wasn't rewritten by the search engine. Can you please cover the bot process, indexing, timing, and rank evaluation. Thanks!?

A viewer from the episode 74th of Semantic Mastery's Hump Day Hangouts asked if it's okay to add citations prior to verifying a Google My Business page.

The exact question was:

Hi. Is it ok to start adding citations before verifying the GMB page? We know Google likes to be first!

The exact question was:

Hey, welcome back Bradley and Adam. Last week, Hernan and Marco had great answers if you are linking from your own property to a citation. 1) My question today is similar but different to last week – how to create a backlink to a citation when the linking property like a Tumblr is NOT owned by your brand.

In the Tumblr what types of text and anchor text would be used? To clarify, this would be a Tumblr not related to my brand at all and it would be used to link to a Yelp or yellow pages. What do you actually write to create that link? “This is where I went for knee surgery these guys are great”? I really have no idea. thanks.

In episode 74 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, a participant asked about the use of the same header images for all city subdomains for Lead Gen pages.

The exact question was:

For lead-gen, do you suggest using the same header images for all city subdomains? I mean like use the same twitter header for all subdomains and just alter the city name?

Click on the video above to watch Episode 74 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: Hey everybody. Welcome Hump Day Hangouts. This is episode 74. Today is the 6th of April. With me we’ve got … Well, we’ve got 3/5ths of the crew today although I think Chris might be joining us later. Hernan is about and about traveling through some far flung places so I don’t think he’s going to be joining us for a couple of weeks. We’ll go down the short line that we have today. Marco, how’s it going man?

Marco: I’m sitting in my bat cave where it’s dank and dark but it’s nice and warm and sunny outside.

Adam: Yeah. Nice. What would the temperature be roughly?

Marco: It’s about 85.

Adam: All right.

Marco: Like forever. It’s always the same thing. Eighty-five during the day and around 70 at night.

Adam: Wow. Nice. Bradley how about you? Are you weathering that snow storm?

Bradley: Well, it’s better now. It snowed yesterday morning briefly and it was cold. It was like 22 degrees this morning. It’s ridiculous. Now it’s 56 so it’s getting balmy.

Adam: Nice. Yeah. It’s time to put on the shorts and go outside.

Bradley: Yeah. It’s kind of odd for this time of year like April and Virginia for it to be this cold though. I don’t know what the hell is going on.

Adam: Good deal. I’d see I’d predicted it. I was feeling psychic powers. There’s Chris. Chris you there?

Marco: Chris’ presence.

Adam: Okay. He may be connecting. Anyways, we’ll get to him in a bit. We got just a couple of announcements.

Bradley: Chris is here.

Adam: Hey, what’s up Chris? How’s it going? To leave me hanging. I’m just kidding.

Bradley: He was just kidding.

Adam: Anyways, we’ll get through the announcements real quick. Obviously IFTTT 2.0. If you joined up, we’re happy to have you. I think we got several people here who recently joined. If not, by all means, please go check it out. IFTTTSEO.com. Also wanted to talk real quick about service base. I mean obviously we mentioned it. It’s where you can order your IFTTT Networks, network management, soon to be press releases and also of course video powerhouse. We’ve been working on video powerhouse. There’s now 3 categories you can choose from. Along with that and some other updates, we’re going to be increasing the price because basically it’s been in kind of an early launch phase for longer than we intended it to be. We were intended to have several networks by kind of the middle of the winter but with all the projects we had going on, it took more time than we thought it would.

We’ve put the service base link in there. It’s free to sign up for an account and check it out. Also the affiliate program is now live in case you haven’t heard. By all means, go check that out if you know our products and you want to promote them. You can make a good amount of money with those. We’re offering now 10% commission on everything and that includes recurring.

Marco: If I can ask you just a quick question for the benefit of whoever is listening in, what the categories are currently in video powerhouse and what the category is to be added are or will be?

Adam: That is a very good question. I’m logging in right now because I don’t want to misspeak unless Bradley know them off the of your head.

Bradley: The first one, the category one which was the original one, it was just general marketing because we had to have … We had to start somewhere which now gave us the broadest ability for people to submit to. It’s just a general marketing … Essentially general category. Category number two is travel, leisure and real estate. Category number three is contracting and home services or contractors and home services. All right. Our goal is to have 100 sites in each category. I think we’re … We’ve got something like 60 sites or something like that in category two and like 50 sites in category three. We’ve got to complete finished building those out but we’re going to still add I think two or three more categories. One of them is going to be health related so like health and wellness. Another one’s going to be like financial banking, that kind of thing. It will be like business and financial essentially.

Then I can’t remember what the last one is off the top of my head. I have to go back and look at my notes.

Adam: Cool. Word on the street or not on the street, rather word in the secret grapevine is that there’s going to be some more integrations coming with Video Powerhouse and some I’ll just say some very well known tools that are known to be very effective in terms of click through rate among other things but we’ll leave it at that for now. That is all I got for now. Anybody else got something?

Bradley: Not me. How about you Marco?

Marco: I can’t say. I’d have to shoot myself.

Adam: Well, don’t do that. Don’t tell us.

Bradley: Automotive. I see Sherry Dot posted: “Put automotive.” Yeah. Maybe. There might be a car category too. We’ll see. I can’t remember what it is off … I don’t think it was that but that might fit in to one of the other categories so we’ll see what we can do.

Adam: As it continues to grow we might add more and more. Who knows.

Bradley: All right. Anything else you want to talk about or can we’re just going to go right into the questions? We’ve got a lot of them.

Adam: Yeah. I guess we can just get into it.

Bradley: All right. Let’s do it then. You take the screen. That’s not the right button. Let’s try this one. Okay. You guys should be seeing my screen now.

Marco: Yup.

Bradley: If you’re not, okay. All right. We got a lot of questions. We can see a lot of them posted from one individual so I’m going to let Marco chat about that briefly before we get too far into them. You want to mention something, Marco? [Inaudible 00:05:33] would come back up.

Marco: The thing is that this is meant for something … For us to answer general SEO questions to give people a free form for this. We want to give as many people a chance to ask questions as possible. If one person monopolizes the entire hang out, we can’t service the greatest amount of people in the short time that we have. What we ask you is, keep your questions one or two or if you put multiple questions like this, we’ll get to the first one then we’ll move on to other people and if we have time, we will come back to additional questions. We can’t just do one person for the entire hour. If that’s the case, then what we suggest is that you use our one-on-one coaching page. Adam, can you get that link please? Because this is more like one-on-one coaching.

Adam: Yeah or join the Mastermind where you’ll have access to the community where you can ask questions pretty much as often as you want.

Marco: Absolutely. It will cost you way less to join the Master Class and the Mastermind than it would to get private coaching although we’re all available for private coaching.

Bradley: Yeah. Just to let you guys know, if you have multiple questions like multiple questions, it’s okay to post multiple questions but what I would suggest that you do is that you post one or two questions and then make sure you attend the live. Then once other people have had the chance to post some questions, then drop another question then wait for a few other people to post and then drop another question. That way you can still get your questions answered but instead of it just being a block of all questions from one person because that’s really not fair to everybody else. That’s all I’m saying. All right. Let’s get into it guys.

To Niche or Not to Niche in IFTTT V2? 

Marl O’Connell says, “Hey guys. First of all, I’d like to congratulate you on V2. It’s one of the best, if not the best, online marketing courses available probably ever and I’ve bought many. Very well done. I will plus one that.” Thanks Mark. That’s really nice to hear. “Well, I have a dilemma. To niche or not to niche? That is the question.”

“I’ve heard you say in a Webinar that when starting out online, you should have targeted niches or industries that interested you. I would love to help video production companies with the online marketing because I love video especially with your training but I feel like I may be limiting myself and have a strong urge to go loads of random networks and just start shoot at the wall and see what sticks. I don’t mind throwing shit at the wall but it’s only me right now. Would this be the best use of my time and energy or should I go beast mode and keep building networks for the one niche and build extra Tumblr releases etcetera all in the same niche. What would Bradley Banner do?” Great question Mark. Okay. Yeah. Guys, if I had to start it all over, I would’ve stuck with one industry or niche. It could be a broad niche that has multiple sub-niches but that’s what I would’ve stuck with. Instead of going wide, I would have gone deep if that make sense.

For example, mainly what I deal with, guys, is home services and contractors. Like that’s for my client base and my lead gen business. Don’t get me wrong, I have clients in other industries but that requires so much more work because … Not so much now because I don’t really take on new clients and new industries but when I had to take on new clients and new industries or when I would take on a new client, it was in an industry that I was unfamiliar with. I would have to learn the industry. I’ve had to do all the keyword research over again. I’d have to find where the pain points were. I would have to understand the jargon. Find out how to talk to those kind of people. You know what I mean? Like as far as the clients that I would be servicing and then also be able to help with the copy for speaking to their market, for the advertisements or the calls to action and stuff like that. It’s an enormous amount of work. That’s why, like I said, I could have scaled it much quicker if I had focused in on one particular industry.

When I say it can be a little bit broader … Let’s put it this way. Even as like working in the home services industry, there’s a lot of sub-niches there. It still requires a lot of work. What I mean by that is like, if I wanted to target electricians or work with electricians, and then work with HVAC guys and then work with tree service guys, landscaping guys, roofers, fencing contractors. All of those like … You still have to go through all that work of doing keyword research and all that kind of stuff. Although they’re similar industries in that they’re in like the home improvement or home repair industries, there’s still a lot of additional work. Personally, if I had to do it all over, I would have stuck with one industry. I would have found one industry that would have a lot of potential for the types of services that I would offer which means typically their high ticket or high priced with high margin, high profit margin industries that also there’s a demand for and then I would have stuck with that.

My golden goose, so to speak, in the lead gen business is the tree service industry. That’s something that I really worked on building up over the last few years is my tree service lead gen business. That is a great industry to be in. I’m just saying if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have just get onto that one industry and just scale really, really deep into that instead of going wide to all these other different types of contractors. That’s what I say guys just because you’re a lot more efficient that way. Once you get to know one particular industry and you get to know it well, it’s so much easier to go pitch your services to other lead gen … Service providers to buy leads from you or to do even client consulting because you’ll know that industry. You already know what their pain points are. You already know how to speak to them. You’ve already been through the pitch multiple times as you start to build that business. You’ll know what kind of objections you’re going to get when you’re doing a pitch or when you’re prospecting.

It just makes it a lot easier to scale if you stick to one particular industry guys. Be a big fish in a small pond instead of a small fish in a big pong. Does that make sense?

Marco: Yeah. One other thing. When you become the go to person in that niche, in whatever that small pond is, when you’re the big dog then you can pretty much set your feet at whatever it is that you feel like target. People will have to pay because they will know you are the person who will deliver the results that they need.

Bradley: [00:12:29] That’s right. Yeah. I totally agree with that. You cannot charge higher prices when you … When you’re a specialist in a particular industry, you can charge higher prices and you’ll be more efficient with it too. It will be actually a less work for you and you’ll make more money. Right? That’s what I recommend Mark. I know you got your gang ho right now and that’s great. To be honest with you, I would stick with one. Find one industry. Make sure that there’s good profit potential there for you. Did it meet the certain criteria? High margin, there’s the demand, that kind of thing and then scale into that one niche. You can pick a couple if you’d like but honestly, I wouldn’t do more than two or three at a time. Okay?

How to Link Citation Pages to Tumblr Sites?

Greg says, “Welcome back Bradley and Adam. Last week Hernan and Marco had great answers if you are linking from your own property to a citation. My question to day is similar to different week. How to create a back link to a citation when the linking property like Tumblr is not owned by your brand?”

“In the Tumblr, what types of text and anchor text to be used? To clarify, this would be a Tumblr not related to my brand at all and it would be used to link to a Yopa Yellow Pages. What would you have to do to create that link? This is where I went for knee surgery. These guys are great. I really have no idea. Thanks.” You can do that. I mean the thing is is if you’re just linking the citations, citations can be … They’re not your money site? You know what I mean? They typically are going to be higher demand authority. They can take more direct keyword anchor text links. Don’t spam them but you could be a bit more aggressive with your anchor text when building links to citations. Just be careful. Like if it’s a do follow link, you just got to make sure that you’re not overly aggressive with your anchor text because your anchor text ratios will pass through a new follow to the final destination, the target URL which would be your money site. Most citations are going to be no follows anyways.

Yeah. You can be a bit more aggressive but still mix it up. Keep your back link, your anchor text ratio diverse. I like to use … You can use brand anchors when linking the citations because that make sense. Right? Actually there was a threat in the Facebook community, the Facebook group, for the new IFTTT SEO Academy group. Somebody asked about using FCS and GSA to boost networks, to boost IFTTT Networks, and what the anchor text were used, like what types of ratios to use, what I usually do is just set up very broad keywords. A mix of very broad keywords, generics and naked URLs. Somebody replied and said, “Well, what about brand anchors? Can you use brand anchors to link to your IFTTT properties?” Yes, if it’s a branded tier 1 network that you’re linking to, that would make sense. Same thing goes with the citation. Because those are properties that are specifically referencing your brand. You can build branded anchor text links to tier 1 properties. Just don’t overdo it.

You want a really diverse mix of links going to those properties as well. That’s why I recommend it. Even for citations, you can use a good mix of branded anchor text links, naked URLs and keyword anchors and phrases like what you have here, long phrases, that tends to work really well because that really speaks to the hummingbird algorithm which is also part of like … Which helps mobile search to these types of like natural language pattern anchor text phrases. They actually help with mobile SEO too. Okay.

Do You Need an Actual Physical Address for a National Brand?

Number two is, “I have products review sites. It is a national brand and not local. Is an actual address needed or recommended to set up a national brand Google My Business page and additional citations.” Okay. Well, remember Greg, there’s two different types of Google My Business pages, right? There’s local and brand pages. There’s a local page then there’s a brand page. If you’re not a local business, then I would probably just stick with the brand page. If you are a local business, then go with a local page.

You can have both by the way. You can have a local page and a brand page. That’s perfectly find to do. Okay? If you’re a national brand, you’re probably going to want to focus your attention on the brand page and not the local page because you don’t want to pigeon hole yourself by focus … What good is ranking in maps which is what your local page is kind of connected to via the back end of Google, if you’re a national brand. What good is it to rank in maps other than for people that are searching for whatever your product is in your local area, if that make sense. I would be focusing my attention on a brand page and not a local page if that were the case. Okay? However, on the flip side of that, if you’re a local business, you can still have a local page and a brand page but I would focus my attention on the local page. Does that make sense? Guys?

Marco: That made perfect sense. You can also be a brand with multiple locations across the nation.

Adam: That’s correct too. Yup.

Is It Okay to Start Adding Citations Before a GMB Page is Verified?

Bradley: Chris Chatman says, “Hi. Is it okay to start adding citations before verifying the Google My Business page? We do know Google likes to be first.” Chris you can but I wouldn’t recommend it because what happens if you never end up getting verified the listing for whatever reason or what happens if you’ve verified the listing and then the listing comes … Which I’ve seen Google do. Google will automatically edit the address after it’s been verified and like the address in your listing will be slightly different. What I mean by that is let me pull up a notepad phone. I’ll show you exactly what I mean. Let me open. Blow this stuff a little bit. Come on. All right. Let’s say it’s 123 Main Street is your main address. Then all of a sudden Google for whatever reason makes it this. If you start building citations to this address, even though this looks the same guys, it’s not.

I mean it is the same but Google, as far as the algorithm is concerned, these are slightly different. What I like to do is wait until the Google My Business listing has been verified and then give it two or three days and then go check it when I’m not logged in to that account. It’s usually not instant if you update. For example, if you verified Google My Business page and then you make a slight edit to the description or to anything like that, sometimes those changes won’t be seen publicly right away. You’ll see them because you’re editing from that account but go check it in other browsers. Often time you wont see those edits immediately. It will take 24 to 72 hours, you know 1 to 3 days, then those changes will take effect. What I recommend doing is wait until it’s verified, give it 3 days or so, and then go check it in a browser, a clean browser, take a look at the listing, make sure everything looks right and then start building citations. Okay?

That way you build citations to exactly how Google has it listed. One other thing you should do guys is whenever you’re setting up your Google My Business listing, your local page, go to the … I don’t have the website off the top of my head, but you want to go validate the address to make sure that it matches the postal like I forget what the valid … The postal address validator thing. You want to make sure it’s a valid street address the way that the post office has it and set your business listing up that way. Okay? Then from that point once you get your Google My Business up and verified, then you just start building all your citations to match that. That’s what I would do.

Would it be Okay to use Same Header Images for all City Subdomains for Lead Gen Campaigns?

“For lead gen, do you suggest using the same header images for all city sub domains?” It doesn’t matter Chris. “I mean like use the same Twitter header for all sub domains and just alter the city name?” Yeah. That’s fine. If it’s the same brand, it doesn’t matter, right? Like Target doesn’t change their brand image because it’s not different from Washington DC to Dallas. It’s not like Target has a Washington DC brand image and then a Dallas brand image is different.

Why would you do it any differently, right? If you have … If it’s the same brand, it doesn’t matter how many locations you’re in, it should be the same type of image. It should be the same branding. Okay? All right.

How Do You Measure the Required Size When Setting Up an IFTTT Network?

This was a question from the Facebook group. Okay. This is kind of like people have asked in the past. I know some of you guys are new so I’m going to try to answer this. When people have asked us many, many, many, many, many times, how many networks is it going to take for me to rank this? I always say the same answer: as many as it takes. Because there is absolutely no way for me to be able to answer that. There’s just too many variables that have to be considered. Like I can never tell you how many networks is going to take to rank anything. Period. It’s always going to be the same answer. That sad to me as I read this question. “How do you guys determine how extensive big the IFTTT Network probably needs to be when you get started?”

“For instance, I have 2 projects, a local pay per lead site for a fairly simple local service niche and a CRM SAS software as a service product that’s in a fairly competitive market. I’m going to a training but having trouble grasping on a strategic level, how to look at this stuff and go okay to start. I should plan on building x.” Okay. If I’m doing blog syndication, I’ve mentioned this throughout the training guys, I hammered this home throughout the training. I do a tier 1 branded network. That’s it. That’s it. If it’s for YouTube syndication network, I start off with a full tier 2 network just to start and then I usually stack multiple … Usually somewhere between 3 to 5 full tier 2 networks on any YouTube channel. That’s typically how I do it but I start start with 1 full 2 tier network on YouTube. For blog syndication, I do 1 tier 1 branded network and I’m done. That’s it. Then I’d spend a lot of time and effort boosting the hell out of that tier 1 branded network. Okay?

My simple answer to you is how big or extensive should a network probably be? If it’s for websites, it should be 1 branded tier 1 network. That’s it. The way that you get more power out of your networks are two fold. There’s 2 things that you need to do. Number 1, start publishing content from your site, your money site, which is going to be syndicating to your tier 1 branded network. Publish high quality content on a consistent and regular basis. Your frequency of publishing is going to be a huge factor in how effective your network is. Right? You can’t just put out shitty, spammy content either. You’ve got to out out descent content. Once these networks are set out for blog syndication guys, you should be focusing on content creation and in frequency of publishing. Publishing often and publishing good content. Once you do that, that’s going to … Over time, it’s going to take some time, the more competitive the niche, the longer the time it’s going to take. The less competitive the niche, the less time it’s going to take. Okay?

You should be focusing on publishing good content, using your blog syndication to build back links, internal links, to the pages on your site that you’re trying to rank for keywords. Start building … Remember, build silo structure on your site. Start adding more and more supporting articles. Remember, each silo, you want to continue going deeper and deeper into that silo. You just keep adding more and more supporting articles that’s descent, high quality content that’s linking up throughout the silo, that’s going to boost the entire overall theme of that silo. Right? That’s going to bring … Help you to start rising in the search engines for those different silo phrases. Remember you want to keep everything themed really, really well so your keyword sets need to be very tight within silos. Okay? That’s number 1. Then number 2, the second most important thing to do is boost your IFTTT Networks and there’s multiple ways you can do that.

We talk about it in the training, you can also buy link building services from us, you can use PBNs, you can use SAPE links, you can go out and buy linked PBN blasts from people, you can build your own PBNs. I don’t care what it is that you do. You just want to boost up your IFTTT Networks, your tier 1 branded network. You don’t want to spam the hell out of it because they’re extensions of your brand. You want to do a layer of somewhat high quality links. You tier 2 links with links to tier 1, right, your tier 2 link should be of somewhat high quality with relevancy, number 1, right, and then from there behind that, your tier 3 links, you can start throwing spam at your tier 2 links. Does that make sense? Tier 3 links to tier 2 right? Your tier 3 links can be more spam type links and that’s just purely for link equity. You don’t have to worry so much about relevancy and all that other stuff at that point. All right? I can’t give you an idea like how many networks should you have, I can tell you I would personally? I’d have 1 tier 1 network for each project. Period. That’s it.

If it’s YouTube, build as many as you want.

Marco: The only thing I would add to that is when you do start link building and link everything else that you’re going to do, don’t do it all at once.

Bradley: That’s right.

Marco: Yeah. Take your time. Go through it because if you effect it positively through something that you do, you want to know what it is that you did that affected it positively. If you affect it negatively, you want to know what was that affected it negatively. You also want to keep track because you want to know when it’s dances. You need to know that you can keep hitting it when it’s dancing. Sometimes you just have to let it rest, give it a chance to settle, see where it goes and then come on with the next round of whatever it is that you’re going to to do.

Bradley: You brought up a good point. Like what I would do is with for blog syndication networks guys, I build a tier 1 branded network. I like to post at least 3 posts from my main blog to populate the tier 1 branded network. Essentially the tier 1 branded network is now populated with seed content. At least 3 posts. I like to do like a minimum of 3. I do like 3 to 5 post from your main money site that’s going to start adding content through the syndication, the automatic syndication tier network properties. Then you can do a tier 1 link blast. Essentially you can start to boost your tier 1 properties immediately, right? You can start to do that immediately and then continue from that point on, just keep working on producing content on a regular schedule. Get on a consistent publishing schedule. The more the competitive niche or the more competitive it is, then the more frequent you should be publishing because that’s going to speed it along but it’s going to take some time guys. Last year at a low competition niche, in the case study that we did for the Master Class, the local case study, I’m not going to reveal that site because not all of you are in the Master Class but some of you are and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I took a brand new site, brand new website, just registered a domain. I created a Google My Business local page, an IFTTT Network. We did several posts. I had a VA that was doing my blog posting which is like how I do all my content marketing. I have VAs do it for me, curate a blog post. We have a specific training course called “Curation Mastery” to teach exactly the types of content that we use. She posted I think it’s either 8 or 12 blog post to the blog. We did 1 blast of citations and I did 1 link building blast, the same link building blast that you guys can buy from Service Space. It’s my people that do those link blast to the IFTTT Network and we rank number 1 for 4 out of the 5 keywords. We’re in the top 3 in the maps pack right now for 4 out of the 5 keywords. That was it. It was a brand new site guys. I did all of that and I think, I don’t know, 6 or 8 weeks, I think it was probably 8 weeks. It just takes a little bit of time. A low competition niche guys, you can pretty much rank with just an IFTTT Network and some citations.

If you’re doing a higher competition stuff, it’s going to take more time. It’s going to take more content, producing of content, more links, everything else, but that’s just the way it is. Okay. All right.

Can You Completely Re-theme an Existing Tumblr Site?

Michael says, “Hello guys. I have a health related website. I’m using Tumblr and other web tools just tier 2 back links. I have some that are well themed but not related to my niche or website. One strong Tumblr was clean but from a rock band. Another is all about books. Can I completely re-theme them to be all about health and use them as tier 2 back links to a guest post? Tier 2 to a citation sort of. Thanks.” Yeah, Michael. Absolutely. Because those are tier 2 links, right? They’re pointing to tier 1 properties. That’s okay to do that. I just would never redo that. I would never re-theme something and point it directly to my money site anymore. I don’t do that anymore at all. Because Google’s looking out to 2 tiers back now. You got to think about your money site, right?

First is looking to tier 1 and all the sites that you build tier 1 whether they’re citations, whether IFTTT properties or whatever, they’re going to be themed in relevant branded. They’re going to be directly themed and relevant to what your money site is, right? Now if you link back … If you go 1 step back and you look at the tier 2 content and the linking sites, and you’ve got themed content there that’s linking to you, like the content on that site is themed, it’s relevant to what it’s linking to which would be your tier 1 properties, then that’s your 2 hops. What’s beyond that, the sites that are linking to tier 2, Google’s not looking at it right now. They may in the future, so just keep that in mind. The more relevancy you can get at every tier, the better you are, the safer you are long term, if that make sense. For right now, it’s just looking at 2 tiers back so you’d be okay. Okay? You can absolutely do that. At that point, you’re just looking at like pushing equity, right, link equity, link use, whatever you want to call it.

How to Unspin Articles Using www.superspunarticle.com?

Nate. Nate says, “I would like to know how to unspin articles with super spin article software to get more articles of course. I know how to spin them. Could someone answer this question please.” Yeah, Nate. I’m going to answer it for you so you stop emailing me.

Marco: I posted the website that I used. I posted the link.

Bradley: Yeah. I want to just walk through a very simple exercise on how to find stuff like this.

Marco: Awesome. Okay.

Bradley: We’re going to over to Google and we’re going to say, “unspinner tool.” We’re going to click on this first link in the Google search results. Hot damn. There’s a tool right there that I can post to spun article in and click convert and it will unspin it for me. Go to Google. Type in your query. Check the results. There’s your result. Go to Google and type in unspinner tool and this one happens to be spinnertools.cmom. Spinnertools.com once again. Spinnertools.com. You can paste a spun article in here, click convert, and it will spit out and unspun version. Then you copy it and paste it. Then you click convert. It will spit out another version. Convert. Another version. I think you guys get the idea now. Okay?

Is Okay to Setup Generic Domain Names in a Branded IFTTT Network?

Greg says, “Hey guys. I have a national site reviewing a product similar to treadmills without disclosing exact site URL is close to this: allinclinetreadmills.com and considering a 301 redirect to a new domain due to it’s current END status and lack of silo structure. I also want to set up an IFTTT network. I want to order the network soon but I am also sure if I will in fact redirect the website or what the site URL will be in the future.”

“Number 1, could I set up the IFTTT Network now with a more generic brand name like indoor workouts? Then if the site URL’s stays as allinclinetreadmills.com, can I then use text and the headers of the brand network and website like indoor workouts by all incline treadmills and use the indoor workouts as the URL on the network properties and keep as the website URL …” I’ve got a headache all of a sudden. “Do the website and network URLs need to match?” No, but I would just hold off. Just make the decision, Greg. Either you’re going to keep that domain or you’re going to go to a new domain. Just make the decision before you order the network. That’s what I would do because otherwise, you’re doing a whole bunch of additional work. If you order the network now, with that pretty much exact match domain that you have now, and then you decide to change it a week down the road or 2 weeks down the road or a month down the road, whatever, now I would personally … I would want to go back through the network and change, update the URL on all the properties personally. That’s what I would want to do.

Why not just go ahead and make the decision now as to what you’re going to do so that it’s set up right the first time, is all I’m saying. Okay? Either stick with that domain and run with it or go with a new domain before you order it. If you’ve already got a network in place guys for those of you because I know the questions going to come up, for those of you that might have a network already and then you decided you want to swap the URL out or in 301 the old URL, that’s fine but I would still probably go through the networks and update the URLs. Personally I would. Even though the redirect will redirect to where it wants to go and you’ll still push the link equity and all that other stuff. I would still want to especially for branded network, go back through and make it nice and pretty, treat it as if it was a money property. I mean it is. A branded network is nothing … It’s a digital asset, right? Treat it as such.

How Long Does a Site Lose Its Rankings after Redirection?

“Number 2, if I redirect the site to a sub domain of a new health site, how long will the site lose its rankings and be disrupted? It is 2 years and ranks page 1 for some good terms so I know it will suffer some disruption.”

Yeah. It will. It will do some dancing. For the most part though, if your new site has type on page like everything’s really good on page with your new site and you’re just redirecting, there will be some dancing. There’s no question. Usually it’s just a matter of a couple of weeks that it will come back. If you’re on pages really good, you’ll usually come back to where you were before. Sometimes if the on page is better, you’ll come back in an even better position. If sometimes if the on page isn’t as good, you’ll come back but you won’t be as strong and it’s going to take some addition work to get you back to where you were. Typically with that sort of a deal, because I’ve done that several times over the last few years where I’ve had … We’ve changed the domain on a particular business. A lot of them are lead gen sites for example going from EMDs to more branded sites and branded domains I mean, it will dance. It takes a few weeks but typically it comes back and because I de-optimized the domain by using a branded domain instead of an EMD, I end up coming back stronger.

It just takes a few weeks of dancing and it’s a little bit painful during those few weeks but it comes back and it’s better. It’s most likely to not get hit later on for being over optimized if that make sense. Okay.

Buddy VIP vs Serp Shaker in Testing Keyword Rank-ability

Rick says, “What is a more effective tool for testing the rankability of keywords? Buddy VIP or SERPShaker? Why or when might you choose 1 over the other?” Rick, both of them required. Buddy VIP is for testing videos. SERPShaker is more testing WordPress sites. That’s your call. Are you going to be doing video SEO or you’re going to be ranking WordPress sites? That’s what’s going to determine. Essentially if I’m looking to do video SEO and I’m looking to poke terms or test terms, I will use either Buddy VIP or Hangout Millionaire to test videos SEO, to see which … Because remember, you could rank a video for a keyword that you upload to your channel that goes through an IFTTT Network or not. It could be 1 of those keywords that just automatically you rank number 1 or on the 1st page of Google with a video for your particular keyword.

Then you say, “Oh wow. This is a really easy keyword.” You go build a WordPress site, put some really good content on it and it takes you 3 months to rank it on page 1. Likewise on the flip side of that, there are sometimes where you can rank a WordPress page very, very easily but a video, it’s a bitch to rank on page 1. It just depends on the keywords. It really depends on what you’re doing. If you’re looking specifically to rank keywords for videos for specific keywords, use Buddy VIP. If you want to test WordPress sites, use SERPShaker or Lead Gadget. One of those. That’s all I can tell you. It just depends. If you’re trying to do both, then use both. Okay? Sorry. I mean that’s essentially what it is. Buddy VIP is for videos. SERPShaker’s for WordPress sites.

How to Use IFTTT Network To Optimize Rank & Rent Sites?

Kenny Howdy. “Kenny here. I really want to get into the ranking rent sites. I’ve never done it before but I feel like I could get a site ranking pretty well. I downloaded a guide recently that went through a process of buying an EMD service plus city. Loading a simple site with good on page then pointing PBN links on it.”

Okay. I don’t recommend using EMD. Seriously, that’s probably an outdated PDF if that’s a case. If you bought a PDF guide about that, it’s probably a little bit order because that used to be the preferred method, but I don’t recommend doing that now guys. You should be branding, using like pseudo brand, fake brand names because otherwise you’re going to be already in a position where you’re … It’s very easy to over optimize when you’ve got an exact match domain. Okay? Go with a branded domain. It’s much, much better for longevity as well. It’s easier not … You won’t trip over optimization filters near as easily when you’re using a branded domain. Other than that, yeah, that’s a great strategy. You can use PBNs to build, to rank those. I see where you say, “I asked in the IFTTT V2 Facebook group if I could just use a IFTTT Network to rank these type of sites and got some good answers from people who have done this. I just wanted your guy’s opinion. Maybe make a quick run through of how you would do it to bring in some money as fast as possible. Thanks.”

Kenny, great question. Just like I told whoever it was that I was answering down here, yes, you can do it with IFTTT Networks instead of PBNs. If it’s a lower competition niche, all you’ll need to do especially ranking rat, I recommend if you’re doing that strategy, that you go get a mailbox, get it the post office. Use the street address option if you want. Get a physical address. Create a Google My Business local page when you’re creating your networks, your IFTTT branded network. Then start populate it. Just like I mentioned earlier, you want to start with at least 3 seed post, going from your money site to your syndication network, your branded network, start building it. Do a citation batch, a batch of citations like 30 to 50 citations, good citations. Okay? There’s a couple different services you could use. Loganix is one of them. It’s got a really good service for like 300 bucks or something like that. You could do it yourself. You can hire other services to do it if you want it. Get some citations built. Populate your IFTTT Network with content. Get on a consistent blog posting schedule. Then if you have additional link building tools, you can use those to boost your IFTTT Network but it’s not necessary. Okay? That make sense? That’s what I would do.

Marco: Yeah. Absolutely. Then not only that, if it’s PBN that he’s building rather than renting or whatever, then the best thing to do for that is drop an IFTTT syndication network around the PBN and then just keeping everything relevant so that the PBN adds relevancy to whatever it is that he’s doing in tier 1 and on money site. It binds everything.

Bradley: Yup. Absolutely. All my PBNs have the IFTTT Networks. You know? That’s 1 way you can make them look more real because you make the PBNs look like their real sites, real blogs, right? You put an IFTTT Network around them. Because don’t all real sites have either an identity behind them or a brand? All real sites have it behind them or they have a real business behind them. PBNs don’t. If you put an IFTTT Network around your PBN sites that are well themed, that are all interlinked the way we show you guys, everything’s connected. You’re not hiding the footprint from your IFTTT Network to your PBN. You’re claiming your footprint. That’s what real people and real businesses do. That’s why our PBNs are stronger, right? That’s a good point Marco because that’s something that you can do. If you’re building your own PBNs, then put an IFTTT Network around each one of them, make them look a lot more real. You add the social aspect too to it as well. All right. Dean’s got multiple questions here. We’re not going to be able to go through all his questions because we’re almost out of time so we’re going to answer like the first one and then we’re going to have to skip above.

If we have time, we’ll come back but I doubt that we will because we’ve only got about 8 minutes left. Dean said, “Just wanted to say I approached 2 of my clients with the IFTTT model and although both never paid that day, they both were totally sold.” Okay. Look like it was an introductory price. I have not myself seen it in action yet so roughly $500 for a full tier 2 network. Thirty pounds I guess that is per month maintenance fee. That’s great. Hey Dean, you got to start somewhere man. That’s really good. Once you get a little bit more comfortable and confident, you should absolutely raise your prices though. I charge $700 for a tier 1 network only when I’m billing local clients. Marco tells me all the time I’m not charging enough. That’s just for a tier 1 network only.

Marco: You’re giving shit away.

Bradley: What’s that?

Marco: You give your networks away.

Bradley: I give my networks away for $700. It cost me. My VAs bill them like under $50.

Marco: I know. I know but just imagine the work that the client would have to put in …

Bradley: Yeah. I’m a cheapskate though man. All right. The next one, “With regards to boosting sites with IFTTT rings, I hear your wisdom of only tier 1 for sites and multi tiers for YouTube. I also here your wisdom on having the auto ring string multiple sources to make mask of sharing only mine if 1 did go the multi tier IFTTT for sites. Okay.

Is it Risky to Share Multiple Content Sources on Tier 2/3 Networks?

My question is if only 1 fully incorporates lower tiers … Is if 1 fully incorporate … Corporates lower tier with a mixture of mine and other’s content for a website booster rather than a YouTube channel safe. Is this safe? We’re saying that even if showing multiple contents were down on tier 2 or 3. Is it still risky?” Yeah. I mean again, I don’t know how many times I’ve hammered this home too but I just don’t do it because there’s too much work, there’s too much maintenance. I do tier 1 rings only for blogs guys. That’s it. If you want to do tier 2 rings, you can. Just make sure you’re adding related content sources at the tier 2 trigger point.

You don’t want to be populating other content on your tier 1 network. You don’t want to do that. That’s your golden frame. That’s your branded properties. Don’t put other people’s content unless it’s curated content which originates from your blog. Right? You don’t want to populate your tier 1 branded site with other people’s content unless it’s curated content that originates from your blog. If that make sense. Tier 2 networks, if you’re going to do it, just make sure that you’re using related content sources at your tier 2 triggers. I don’t even go to tier 3 guys. Even for YouTube networks, you can if you want. I don’t do it and I get plenty of results from my networks. It’s up to you guys. Tier 3, I know people ask about that all about the time. Guys, play around. You have the freedom to go out as far as you want with them. It’s up to you to put the work in if you want to it. Personally, I don’t because there’s a diminishing return at that point. Like I haven’t seen a big difference between having really powerful 2 tier networks and having 3 tier networks except that 3 tier networks require a lot more work to pu together.

That’s why I just don’t do it. Right? I keep trying to hammer home guys that that’s my strategy. You guys are free to do whatever you want, okay? Please experiment. I’m just telling you like I only do the tier 1 networks because it’s very, very effective for blogs and it’s safe. I don’t have to worry about footprint issues. Okay? “Also if 1 was to go down the tier 1s for all new websites, which property would the safe to back link to or is another method of tier 2 needed to boost the tier 1 …” God. Some of these questions. It’s safe to link to any tier 1 property. Okay? That’s what it is. It’s an SEO firewall guys. That’s why we … Again, we use that to buffer our money site so you can link to your tier 1 branded properties. Any one of them. It doesn’t matter which one. Link to all of them. That’s what I do. When I take in a branded network, I pass it over after it’s been built. I pass it over to my link building team. They set up a link building campaign and they build links to all the properties in the network. If there’s 25 properties in the network, all 25 properties get hit with links. Okay? We’ve got to move on because that’s too many questions.

Sorry Dean but we just can’t answer just 1 person’s questions. We’ll get to your questions … There’s always next week man. If you’re inside the Facebook group, post some of your questions in there and we’ll get to them as well as some of the moderators that are in there that are helping out. There’s a lot of experience in that group. Chris says, “Regarding network URLs and logos, I understand why you needed the state abbreviations, VA, on your Gainesville site. What is your best practice when the city name is unique but it is a small city around 40,000 people. I included the state in the sub domain URL but is it needed in the URL on the network properties and in the logo. Cheers.” Well, the logo doesn’t need it. Why would the logo need it? The logo is just an image. It’s just a graphic. That has absolutely zero SEO benefit. There is a branding aspect to it which is important. Personally I wouldn’t put the state abbreviation in a logo that just to me would clutter it up. As far as the …

If you have a unique city name, there’s no need to put a state abbreviation in the URL because it’s a unique city. Now if you’ve got something like Springfield, like there’s got to be at least a dozen if not more Springfield’s in the United States. I would always put Springfield like … There’s a Springfield in Virginia. I would have Springfield VA as my URL or as a modifier to identify that it was Springfield, Virginia. If it was something really unique, then I would just omit that because honestly it’s overkill. You don’t need it. I like to keep URLs as short as possible guys.

Adam: We’re going to have to wrap things up pretty quick. We’re getting … We’re hitting the 10 minute limit here.

Bradley: Yeah. We got about …

Adam: I think we've got 1 last.

Bradley: Maybe 2 more.

Adam: Yeah. One last question and then we got to get ready for Master Class.

Is it Okay to Create Individual IFTTT Network for a Multi-Consultant Beauty Company?

Bradley: Janet says, “I have a friend and potential client that owns a make up business and has over 1,000 consultants.” Wow. “Would it hurt the site or YouTube channel if we build an IFTTT networks for each consultant with the company’s YouTube channel as the trigger? Then when a company puts out a video and it’s syndicated through all of the consultant’s rings …” Janet, I’m plus wanting that. If you build 1,000 IFTTT Networks and connect to 1 YouTube channel, no, it won’t hurt. You’d have the most powerful damn YouTube channel I’ve ever seen in my life. If you do that Janet, please share your results with us. It will take you 3 years to do it but that would be fantastic. I would love to see that. Hope that make sense. I haven’t pitched it through yet but I would love to. Yeah. Could you guys imagine …

Let’s say there’s 2 20 properties in the IFTTT Networks times a 1,000? Twenty thousand syndications in beds, back links, bookmarks and social signals for every one upload.

Adam: That’d be pretty awesome.

Bradley: All right. I’m going to answer Kevin’s and then we’re done.

Adam: All right.

Bradley: Jesse asked if these will be recorded and made available. Jesse, these are the Hump Day Hangouts. They’re always recorded and they’re always available. Just go to youtube.com/sematicmastery. They’re on our YouTube channel.

Adam: Yeah. Jesse, the link’s on the page there in case you need it.

Which is Better? To Send Marketing Email with a Personal Tone or with a Company Tone? 

Bradley: “Hey guys. Congrats on V2. It sounds like you guys totally killed it. I have a question about email marketing. Is it better to send emails to a scrape cold list and a personal tone or a company tone with like an email graphic of my services?” Personal tone always gets better opens, Kevin. Always. “Is it better to embed a buy button and email to my SEO service or a link to a landing page to get the highest conversion?” A link to your landing page. “Any other thoughts you might have in general? As always, thanks.” Yeah. Kevin, always go with personalization instead of brand. You’ll get higher open rates. Do not put a buy button. It won’t get clicked. Go with a link. Email clients a lot of times will actually filter out the image anyways so you want to go with the link and a landing page with a strong call to action. Make it a simple landing page too that only has 1 call to action. Okay. All right. That’s it. We’ve got to do Master Class in a couple of minutes.

We have a special guest coming on Master Class in just a minute. Those of you that are in that, we will see you in about 9 minutes. Those of you that are not, we will see you next day. From Hump Day Hangouts, thanks for everybody being here.

Adam: Thanks guys.

Marco: Bye everyone.

Adam: Have a good one.

During our weekly Hump Day Hangouts episode 74, one participant asked about the ways in measuring the required size of an IFTTT network when ranking a particular site.

The exact question was:

How do you guys determine how extensive/big the IFTTT network probably needs to be when you get started.

For instance I have 2 projects, a local PPL site for a fairly simple local service niche and a CRM SaaS product thats in a fairly competitive market.. I'm going through the training but having trouble grasping on a strategic level how to look at this stuff and go ok to start I should plan on building X?

In the 74th episode of Semantic Mastery's weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked if it is important to use an actual address when optimizing a national brand at Google My Business page.

The exact question was:

I have a products review site – so it is a national brand, not local. Is an actual address needed or recommended to set up a national brand Google My Business page and additional citations? I could get a PO box street address locally for this if needed or recommended. Thanks.?

In episode 74 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one viewer asked about the possibility of changing the existing theme of a Tumblr website to be used in a tier 2 network.

The exact question was:

Hello guys. I have a health related website and want to use some tumblrs and other web 2.0s as tier2 backlinks. I have some that are well themed but not related to my niche or website. One strong tumblr is clean but was from a rock band, another all about books. Can I completely re-theme them to be all about health and use them as a T2 backlink to a guest post? T2 to a citation source? Thanks.?