#they end up at some fancy people thing sometime and chris is going !!!! my dude how are you

[incomprehensible-ants]

do you ever think about that poor traumatised kid that accdently fucking Killed christopher when he was a child in cricket and then chris never even came back to school???? His parents get called to testify his death or whatever and chris wakes up but you can bet the murderer kid never sees him again. Does he think its just a Really Shit cover up of the fact he’s literally a murderer????

#said kid when he finds out like 6 years later that actually chris is the next fucking chrestomanci #this was a plot twist! #no but imagine if the school fucking forgot to tell him that he wasnt actually a murderer technically #kid sees chris alive a few years later and has been haunted by his actions and is just there going WHAT THE FUCK #christopher chant #that little shit i stg he probably immediatly forgot to contact the person even tho theyw ere friends for like. at least a few years #they end up at some fancy people thing sometime and chris is going !!!! my dude how are you #and the other guy is going u. u r dead i know it for a fact im literally ur murderer #chrestomanci

[atlafan]

My Everything - Part Three

A Take it Slow Sequel

What happens with Harry and Y/N after he proposes? How will the two navigate the engaged life while also continuing to juggle their jobs, friends, and families? Let’s find out.

Warnings: Fluff and Smut.

a/n: not proofread fam, I didn’t have the strength.

Masterpost

“Oh!” You pause the TV.

“Y/N! It’s the middle of the second season finale are you fuckin’ kidding?!”

“I forgot to tell you something earlier.” You giggle.

“Alright, what is it?”

“Our new intern goes to my college, my undergrad, and he’s part of the film club, the one I helped create when I was a student, and he asked me to come to a meeting next Thursday. Would you wanna come with me? The meeting itself is at like 8PM, but I thought we could go beforehand, I could give you a little tour…”

“He asked you to come to a meeting?”

“Yeah! He wants me to like explain what I do now, and how being the film club helped me in a professional sense. He’s even going to email the director of alumni relations to see if they’ll do an article on me for the alumni magazine, but I doubt they will.”

“Why not? You’re incredibly successful, and didn’t you say an alum helped you get the job? I bet once you tell them that they’d feature you. You could talk about how important the alumni network is.”

“Harry!” You squeal and tackle him down, kissing him all over his face. He starts laughing underneath you.

“What? What?” He could barely breathe from your sudden affection.

“You’re so cute when you’re being supportive.” You nuzzle into his neck and he rubs your back.

“Well then I must be cute all the time then, huh?”

“Mhm.”

//

You forgot how beautiful your campus could be in the fall. Even though it was in the city, it had some beautiful parks and pathways. After work you had changed into a pair of jeans and a blouse. You didn’t want to look too fancy. You showed Harry different buildings where you had class, and the dorm you lived in freshman year. You both decide to go eat at a pub you used to love.

“Harry, it’s okay, have a beer if you want.”

“But I feel bad…”

“I really don’t mind. I’m fine with the seltzer water.” You smile reassuringly and he order the beer.

Once you’re done with everything you walk him around some more. You show him where you lived sophomore year, and then start walking towards the building where the film club meeting is. You see a group of people walking towards you and you gasp.

“No fucking way.” You groan and hide slightly behind Harry.

“What?”

“Nothing, we just need to walk very fast by-“

“Y/N?” A man says.

“Shit.” You say under your breath. “Um, Chris?”

“What are you doing here?!” He goes to hug you but you clutch at Harry.

“I was invited to a film club meeting…what are you doing here? I thought you graduated…”

“I did! I’m an RD.” He smiles and looks at Harry.

“Sorry, uh, this is my fiancé, Harry.”

“Hey, mate.” They shake hands.

“Wow! Congratulations. Well I won’t keep you. We should catch up sometime.”

“Sure.” You give him a fake smile and keep walking. “Gag me.”

“Who was that?”

“A guy I hooked up with like once, and he wouldn’t leave me alone. It took me going to California for him to stop asking me to come over. It was so annoying. Like take a hint dude.”

“Why didn’t you wanna hook up with him again?” Harry asks with a laugh.

“Oh, like you would always hit it twice.”

“Good point.” He smirks. “Suppose I don’t blame him, I mean, I’ve seen what that ass looks like when it’s bouncing up and down on my cock, I’d probably want you to come over again too.”

“Harry!” You smack him in the arm, making him laugh. “One beer at dinner and you’ve gone all goofy.”

“I’m just teasin’.” He throws his arm around your shoulders as you continue your walk to the building.

“Here it is, let me just text Zach that we’re here.” You both wait a few minutes, and Zach comes out to open the door.

“Hi, Y/N! Thanks again for coming, everyone is really excited. You must be Harry.” He smiles and shakes Harry’s hand. You both walk into the building. “Y/N talks about you all the time, it’s so cool that you have your own photography studio. I bet you could show some of these guys a thing or two.”

Harry liked Zach so far, he seemed polite and genuine.

“All the time, huh?” He nudges you.

“Not all the time, only when it’s relevant.”

Zach leads you into the room you knew very well. It was a computer lab you used to hold your film club meetings in. There was a screen, projector, white boards, all things you and your friends needed to have productive meetings.

“Hey, everyone!” About fifteen or so students turn to look at you and Harry. “This is Y/F/N Y/L/N and her fiancé Harry, Y/N graduated in 2017 and she’s one of my supervisors at my internship. She is one of the founding members of this club!” They all clap for you, and you’re a little surprised. “Come on in, tell them about yourself, what you do.”

You step further into the room so you can see everyone clearly.

“Thanks Zach, um, hi everyone!” You say brightly. “I’m feeling really nostalgic right now since I used to have my meetings in here too. We worked on so many cool projects, and my sophomore year we even made a short film that I stared in.” Harry’s eyebrows raise. He didn’t know you were in front of the camera as well as behind it.

“That’s why you look so familiar! At the beginning of every school year we watch a ton of past projects. You played the girl that went missing right?” A students says.

“Yeah, that was me.” You laugh.

“And you made that one about the purple pencil, that cracks me up.” Another says.

“Yes…that one was like a film challenge that the president at the time had us do. It was a lot of fun. Being in this club really took me out of my comfort zone. I never would’ve learned how to properly use a camera for filming or even taking pictures if it weren’t for film club. I have a job in marketing now where I get to edit video and sound clips, and I even supervise part of our social media department now. I really enjoy what I do.”

“Y/N was able to do well in her interview because another alum was already working there, and gave her some tips.” Zach explains.

“That’s right. It’s really important to know who your alums are, that’s why LinkedIn is so crucial.”

“Could you pull yours up?” A student asks.

“Sure! If that’s something everyone wants to see…”

They all agree and Zach logs onto the computer that’s connected to the projector. Harry takes pictures of you while you’re going over your LinkedIn.

“I think the best advice I could give is just don’t be afraid to try things. If you want to get better at something you need to practice. I went from using Windows Movie Maker, to iMovie, and now I use Adobe Premiere. It’s okay if things take time, and if there is something you want to do and you’re not sure how, don’t be afraid to Google it. I remember I had no idea how to do like a slow zoom, and I just looked it up and it was super easy to get the hang of. Create the content you’d want to watch, and have fun with it.” You smile.

A few students ask you some questions, and you end up giving out some of your business cards, good thing you brought them. Some students wanted to be able to reach out to you for resume help.

“Thanks again for coming. I’m gonna put another bug in the director’s ear. I think this is something that should be in the magazine. Oh! Do you plan to come to Homecoming Weekend?” Zach asks.

“Um.” You blink. “God, I haven’t gone to Homecoming since I was a student myself.” You snort.

“It’s alumni weekend too, you should come. I’ll be working at the alumni table, then I could introduce you.”

“When is it?”

“First weekend of October.” You look up at Harry. He looks at the calendar on his phone.

“Think I’m free…” He says.

“We could certainly try to swing by…that’s like next weekend…I have some friends that might wanna come too.”

“I can send you an email with the registration link and with all the activities for the weekend. It’s a lot of fun, as I’m sure you remember.”

“Yeah, I sort of participated in different activities…” You blush.

“Well either way.” He shrugs.

“I’ll let you know at work if we’ll be able to go. This was a lot of fun though, I’ll come back any time.”

You say goodbye to everyone, and walk out hand in hand with Harry.

“You’re really good at explaining things.” He says to you.

“What do you mean?”

“Like…you never got frustrated, or annoyed. Some of their questions were stupid, I easily would’ve gotten aggravated.”

“They don’t know what they don’t know.”

“All I’m saying is, like, ten years from now I could see you bein’ a professor or somethin’. You’ll have your MEd, you could teach an online class as a TL and see how you like and then go from there. You love learning, Y/N, why not get paid to do it?”

“I think I could see that for myself, but yeah, ten years from now. I’m curious to see how I could keep moving up at work. It would be weird to leave there. I mean, I know people don’t stay at the same place for thirty years anymore…but it would be sad to go. Plus I would miss Niall way too much.”

“Yeah, but he could easily find another job if he wanted. You shouldn’t stay somewhere just because your friends are there.”

“Says the person that persuaded the two friends he made at work to follow him to his studio.” You nudge him playfully.

“Alright you got me there, but seriously, don’t use him as an excuse.”

“I know, you’re right. Let me actually get the Med first, and then I’ll start thinking about things I wanna do years from now, okay?”

“Sounds good to me.”

You both get into your car and head home.

“So I know we like just got engaged, but I was thinking while the weather is still nice it might not be a bad idea to start lookin’ at some potential spots we’d wanna get married at…” You could tell he was slightly nervous to bring it up.

“I think that’s a good idea. I think you and I need to sit down and consider a budget before we hop in the car and start looking. We need to do some research online.”

“That money you wouldn’t let me pay you I was thinking could go towards the wedding.”

“Harry.” You sigh. “Shouldn’t that money go back towards the business? Or couldn’t it be saved for a holiday bonus for Mariah and Isaac.”

“I have money set aside for that already.” He says matter of factly. “You won’t let me pay you, and that’s money you’ve earned. So we should use it towards something.”

“Fine.”

“At least we’ll save money on a photographer. Mariah’s really talented.”

“I know! She’s great at capturing the moment. Did you want her to be the one to take the photos?”

“Considering how Lou’s probably going to be my best man, she’s the only other person I would trust.”

“That’s so cute you both are gonna be each other’s best men.” You giggle. “I sort of had an idea for Niall.”

“I’d really rather him be in my wedding party, he’s been my friend longer, and-“

“Actually, I don’t want him in either of our wedding parties.” You pull into the parking garage and you both get out.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s the whole reason we’re together right?”

“Yeah.”

“So…why not let him be the one to make it official?” Harry stops short when you get into the lobby of your building.

“You want him to officiate the wedding?”

“Yeah…it just feels right.” You shrug. You both get into the elevator. “What do you think?”

“I think I need to make sure I’m filming when we tell him because he’s gonna cry.” Harry smiles. “It’s a great idea, Y/N.”

“We should pick up a little gift for him, or like take him to dinner.”

“Ohhh, I like that.” He kisses your cheek as you both enter your apartment.

Buster greets the two of you, he was doing much better. You both sit down on the sofa and flip the TV on.

“Who were you thinkin’ for your wedding party then?”

“Well, it’s going to be really hard to pick a maid of honor…it always supposed to be Kate. I was her, you know? But obviously that’s not happening. I don’t know how I’d be able to choose between Sarah and Rachel.” You sigh. “I’m equally close with them…I’ll have to talk to them about it and see what they think, honestly. I don’t want anyone’s feelings getting hurt.” Harry nods. “Then my sisters would be in the party too, El of course.” You think a bit more. “That might actually be it. I have other girlfriends, but I don’t need a ton of bridesmaids. What about you?”

“Louis, obviously, Mitch…him and Sarah said congrats by the way I completely forgot to tell you. I was thinking of maybe askin’ Isaac…I’d like my sister to be in my party too.”

“Aw, that would be so cute! Oh, and I bet by the time we actually do get married Michael will be able to walk all on his own, he could be like the flower boy or something.”

“That would be really cute. Didn’t you say you wanted it to be kind of Jewish too? Like you wanted someone there to bless us?”

“My cantor from my old temple, yeah…but we don’t have to if that’s too formal.”

“No, I think it would be nice to add in there. I just don’t wanna wear the little hat if that’s okay.”

“Don’t worry.” You laugh. “You don’t have to wear the little hat.” You burst out laughing.

“What?” Harry laughs.

“I was just picturing Gemma walking one of my sisters down the aisle.” You wipe tears from your eyes. “We’ll really have to figure all this out soon.”

“That would be pretty funny.” He puts his arm around you and pulls you close. “It’s nice talkin’ about this without it bein’ hypotheticals, like, this is really happening.” He kisses your forehead.

“I know, I’m really excited, babe.” You give him a quick peck. “We just need to get through Erica’s wedding and Lou and El’s.”

“I know, a lot is gonna happen all at once.” He sighs. “Lou’s is before your sister’s though, June if I’m remembering from the save the date correctly.”

“Yeah, and Erica’s is in July, I could kill her.”

“Why?” He chuckles.

“Because it’s going to be the dead of summer, we’re going to look sweaty and gross. And of course she’s getting married at some farm, so it’s gonna be all humid and blah.” You groan. “Whatever makes her happy I suppose. I’m just glad Mike finally asked her, took him long enough.”

“Everyone does everything in their own time, baby. Weren’t they really young when they first got together?”

“Yeah she was a senior in high school, and he was out of school for a couple of years…it was a pretty cute way they met. She was working at a RiteAid at this outlet mall, and he was working at Game Stop, and I guess he would go to RiteAid like every day for a snack on his lunch break, and he would say hi to everyone but her, so one day she gave him shit for it and they started talking. Turns out his aunt was our neighbor and we had like played with him when we were kids and didn’t even know. And his older sister was best friends with Bridget when they were in high school.”

“Wow, small world.”

“Right?”

“That is a pretty cute story, but I like ours better.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Yeah, I mean, how romantic is it that a mutual friend set us up, and we had this really great dinner date?”

“It’s pretty romantic, doll.” You yawn. “Yikes, I’m tired. I’m glad tomorrow’s Friday.”

“Me too, let’s head to bed.” He stretches as he stands and follows you to the bedroom.

//

It felt so good to sleep in Saturday morning. You stretch as you sit up, and start to get out of bed, but Harry yanks you down to him, making you squeal.

“Why do you always insist on gettin’ right up?” He mumbles as he wraps himself around you to spoon you.

“I don’t want Buster to shit himself.” You giggle.

“He knows to go on the piddle pad if we don’t get right up.” He pushes his morning wood against your ass.

“Jesus.” You groan. “You don’t wanna cuddle, you just wanna having a morning fuck.” His arm slips up under your shirt so he can caress one of your breasts.

“I want both.” He says into your ear. His hand slides down to between your legs and he smirks. “Seems like you do too.” He starts to rub circles on your clit while he grinds against you. You back up against him to really feel how hard he is.

Heavy petting was rare between you two. Usually you would just end up diving into the sex, but this first thing in the morning was like heaven. The way he would really ease you into it. His fingers slowly start to slip inside, and you find yourself turning onto your stomach. Harry gets full on top of you, his chest flush with your back. You your ass up slightly so he can continue to finger and rub you. He gets his fingers in and then drags them out and up to your clit. You moan out in your pillow. He continues to grind against your ass, getting right between your cheeks. He had his boxers on so you weren’t worried about anything slipping into the wrong hole.

“You’re so wet.” He groans. “Want me to fuck you, baby?”

“Yes.”

He leans up, only for a moment, to get his boxers off. He gets back on you the way he was, nice and close, and slides in.

“Ah, fuck.” You moan out.

Harry keeps his fingers on your clit while he rocks in and out of you. His other hand slides up to the back of your head, and he gets a light grip on your hair. He knows not to pull too hard.

“Feels good, angel?”

“So good, Harry.”

He continues to rock in and out of you, and once you come from him rubbing on your clit, he pulls out to flip you over. He yanks your shirt off so you’re fully exposed to him. He slides back in and wraps his lips around one of your nipples. One of your hands is tugging on his hair while the other is digging into his back.

“Really give it me, babe, come on.”

“Want it hard, Y/N?”

“Hard and fast.”

Harry grins and sits up, grabbing both of your legs to put over his shoulders. He stretches his neck and cracks his knuckles, making you laugh. He loved when you two would laugh when you were intimate. It didn’t always need to be so serious. He pulls out nearly all the way and slams back into you. You gasp at the feeling, but you love it. He does this over and over, picking up the pace each time, making the bed start to shake. He was hitting the right spot over and over. You fist at the blankets with your head slamming far into your pillow. You grit your teeth as you feel your orgasm approaching. He could tell you were close from the way you were clenching around him. He almost wanted to pull out and make you beg him for it, but he also loved seeing how far gone you were and didn’t want to tease you. He knew he was hitting just the right spot, just a few more thrusts…

“Holy shit!” You scream as everything in your vision goes white. Tears well up in your eyes as he fucks you through the orgasm that was making you feel like you were going to collapse from within. “Oh my god, Harry! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Your praise was enough to make him lose it, and his come spurts inside you, filling you to the brim. He looks down at you to see your chest still heaving. He pulls out of you slowly and you whimper from the loss of contact. He leans down and gives you a kiss on the forehead.

“Good game.” He shakes your hand.

“Oh, shut up.” You swat at him and laugh.

You both shower quick, and go out to feed Buster. He did, in fact, need to use the piddle pad. After he eats Harry takes him out for a proper walk while you get some breakfast for the two of you going. Just some simple oatmeal.

“So, do you wanna go over a budget today? We could set up at the dining room table, and you could get a spreadsheet goin’ on your laptop.”

“Yeah, we can definitely do that.” You smile.

You and Harry sit down at the dining table, while Buster rests his head in your lap as he sits at your feet.

“Does he do that a lot?”

“Hm?” You look down at Buster. “Yeah, he likes to sit under my desk like that with me at work.” You grin at Harry. “He’s just like his daddy.” You pinch his cheek and he swats your hand away.

“Shut up.” He nudges your shoulder. “Want me to replace him right now, cause I will.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

You pull up excel and name a bunch of rows with what you’ll need money for. Venue, food, drinks, photographer/videographer, DJ, hotel rooms, bachelorette/bachelor party, bridal shower, dress, etc.

“My friend Adam, the guy we got Buster from, is actually a really good DJ…”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, he always used to put playlists together for our parties and stuff. I’m pretty sure he has a DJ business on the side. I could ask him what his rates are.”

“That would be great. So…I don’t want this to be crazy expensive…like it seems silly to drop what could someday be a down payment on a house on a party for one night.”

“I agree. I don’t want it to get out of hand. I feel like the venue will be the most expensive. Let’s try to figure out where we want it so we can compare prices. Some hotels have the food and drinks included and some don’t.”

“I think…like in my wildest dreams, I’d love for it to be at a hotel on the Cape, like have the beach behind us…the ceremony outside, and then the reception would be indoors, but maybe there’s this outside patio area or something?”

“Ohh, I can really picture that. We both love the beach, let’s look and see.”

“I feel like that’s gonna be expensive.”

“We won’t know unless we look.” He grabs your laptop and opens Google. “Maybe we could find an inn or somethin’.”

“True, that would be cute actually.”

The two of you see the different options out there and find two you really like. You book a couple of tours on their websites so you can physically see the spaces.

“Oh, I wanted to ask, are we doin’ like a traditional cake or did you want cupcakes? I’ve seen a lot of people save money on just doin’ cupcakes, and then havin’ a small cake just made for the couple.”

“I think that’s a great idea. Then we could have a variety of cupcakes so everyone could find something they like. There’s a bakery I really like that back home that did my Bat Mitzvah cake, I’d like to go there to maybe do a tasting?”

“Sure.” He smiles. “I’ll let you set that up, and you can just tell me when.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe we could do like a lemon cake since we both like that.”

“Mm, my mouth is already watering. I’ll definitely set that up soon. I guess there’s not much else we can really do until we set a date, and then we can work backwards.”

“Guess you’re right.” He rubs his eyes and rests his chin in his palm. “What were you thinking for a bachelor and bachelorette?”

“God, I have no idea. I’m the sure the girls will think of something.”

“Did you wanna do a combined thing, or be completely separate. S’not like it’ll be the night before the wedding, like it could be a month or so ahead.”

“To be honest, I’d like to have a weekend with just the girls…”

“Alright.”

“Is that okay? I mean, I had a lot of fun for my birthday, but-“

“No, I really don’t mind. I just didn’t know if you wanted a combined trip, but we can have separate things.” He shrugs.

“What do you think you wanna do?”

“I was thinin’ maybe like a trip to Mohegan Sun with the guys. We went years ago, and it was a lot of fun.”

“Oo, do a little gambling, that would be fun.” You sigh. “I’m not gonna be able to drink during any of this.” You groan.

“You’ll still have fun, baby.”

“I know, but I’m gonna have to tell my friends why I’m not drinking…”

“You can just say you’re on a medication that doesn’t allow you to consume alcohol, you don’t have to specify any more than that if you don’t want to. Do you really think they’ll judge you?”

“It’s not the judgement…it’s the look on their faces I know they’ll give me. The medication has helped me a lot, I think.”

“I’m really proud of you for taking it so consistently.”

“I just take it with my birth control…it’s easy to remember.”

“Babe.” He saves the file you were working on and closes your laptop. He turns so his body is facing yours. “Can you take a second and just think about how far you’ve come? In the year that I’ve know you, you’ve made so many great steps. I can remember times you getting so frustrated because you never thought you’d be in a place where we’d be able to just go at it. I mean, think of how we had sex just this morning. You weren’t in a place this time last year to be able to do that, and now you are. I know it’s not just about sex, there’s a lot of mental progress you’ve made too, but I feel like physically, I just feel so close with you, I feel like every time we do it we get closer.” Your eyes were glossy while you listened to him.

You felt overwhelmed by his kind words. He was right about everything. You had made a ton of progress, and you didn’t reflect on it as much as you should. You stand up and he pushes his seat you. You sit down on him and wrap your arms around his shoulders, and nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck. He holds you close and rubs your back. Buster yips at the two of you, clearly upset that his head was no longer comfortably resting in your lap. You both look down at him.

“He really is just like me, huh?”

#my everything #take it slow #take it slow sequel #harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles x reader #harry styles y/n #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles fluff fic #harry styles smut fic #enjoy!

[repulsivepangolin7]

Fic: 31 days of whump (2/31)

A/N: Oh, what the heck, I might as well rapid-fire the first two or three.

Word count: 3 764

He knew a good portion of his character flaws. One was dyslexia, although he didn’t really consider it a flaw anymore. Another was what someone, sometime, had argued had to be ADHD, or at least ADD. He didn’t really care about that, he knew his attention span wasn’t the world greatest, but it was alright.

Some would call it a character flaw to be as tied up to his job as he was.

And there was a bunch more.

Eating like a medium sized industrial vacuum cleaner…

Maybe a bit more quick-tempered than one should be…

Right then and there, chasing a suspect, only one of those flaws he could come up with from the top of his head came back to bite him in the ass. -Or rather, the ankle.

He heard tires squeal against the hot asphalt. And quick reflexes was the only thing that saved him from being hit head on by the Mercedes-Benz star, but it wasn’t quite enough for him to avoid being hit by the car all together.

The first couple of seconds after he landed, he was in a sort of numb state where pain didn’t register yet. It was almost like a land of denial, as long as it didn’t hurt yet it couldn’t be that bad.

At the same time, he wasn’t sure if he could force himself to look towards his ankles.

The car that hit him didn’t stop, the next car didn’t either. But then again, it wasn’t even sure that the second car had seen what happened.

And then his right ankle started letting him know something was seriously wrong.

Tan came running up to him, and Luca managed to convince him to bolt after the suspect.

Next came Hondo.

SWATSWATSWAT

“Are you hurt?” Hondo asked as he kneeled down next to Luca, who was in the process of propping himself up on one elbow.

Luca blinked a few times and chanced a glance towards his legs.

“Luca, are you hurt?”

“My leg’s broken.” Luca answered with a 1000 yard stare.

“You think your leg is broken?” Hondo asked, “Which one?”

“No. My leg IS broken.” Luca swallowed.

Hondo frowned, “Which one?”

“Right one.”

“Lower leg? Upper leg?”

Luca swallowed hard, “My ankle’s toast. My lower leg in general feels wrong.”

Then random cars which had been further away, and had a better view of the whole accident started slowing down and stopping.

Hondo called in the accident, and Luca’s suspected injury. Agreeing that they needed an ambulance to come pick him up.

“Hey, I barely saw what happened…” A guy who had parked his truck came up to them, “Are you alright?”

“He likely broke his right leg.” Hondo answered for Luca, “Dispatch said the ambulance was ten minutes out.”

The guy nodded, “Anything I can do?”

Luca shook his head.

“No, nothing I can think of…” Hondo shrugged.

“We’re good here.” Luca ground out, “You can move on, no need in being parked on the side of the road and making LA traffic worse.”

The guy chuckled a bit, “Okay, alright. I wish you a speedy recovery.”

“Thanks.” Luca nodded, he was uncharacteristically pale by now.

The guy left.

Hondo looked back down at Luca, “How are you feeling?”

The blond shook his head.

“Still not a mind reader…” Hondo reminded him.

“My leg’s pounding.” Luca grimaced, “And I feel like I’m either going to pass out, or puke.”

“Well, please don’t do either…” Hondo smirked, hoping that he’d pull a short laugh from Luca. A short laugh from Luca would make it feel like everything was going to be alright.

“Man, it hurts.” Luca admitted through gritted teeth.

“I know…” Hondo nodded and placed a comforting hand on Luca’s shoulder, “Do you want me to start untying your boot? So that we can take a look at your ankle?”

Luca shook his head, “Nah. I think the ambulance people has more experience in that. Let them do it.”

Hondo nodded, “Okay, that’s alright.”

SWATSWATSWAT

After work they all went to visit Luca at the hospital.

He was basically just laying, waiting for swelling of his ankle and leg to go down enough for the surgeons to piece it back together.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Deacon asked as soon as he had stepped into the room.

“Been better.” Luca admitted, “But they give me enough painkillers to make laying here semi-comfortable…”

Deacon offered up a brief smile.

“So, what’s the damage report?” Street bumped in, nodding towards Luca’s leg, which was covered in a temporary cast and rested on a mountain of pillows.

“Definitely broke it.” Luca shook his head, “Don’t really remember the fancy explanation for it, but I broke my leg six inches above the ankle, straight across both the bones… And my ankle is in multiple pieces. No better way to put it.”

Street nodded slowly as he tried to imagine the fractures in his mind. “So you’ll be laid up for a while?”

Luca shrugged, “I don’t really know what’s going to happen. Except that I need surgery to give all that a chance to heal…”

“That sucks, man…”

Luca bobbed his head in a nod, “Sure does.”

“On the plus side, Tuana might come visit you…” Street teased.

“Tuana?” Tan asked, as Luca blushed bright red.

“Kelly’s mom…” Street answered with a shit eating grin.

“What?” Deacon’s eyebrows shot up, “Are you dating her?”

“No…” Luca shook his head, “N-”

“Not officially.” Street chuckled, “I’m really tired of the way the two of you are doing your best futile attempt at keeping it hidden.”

Luca shook his head, “Well, it’s not, -official-, yet.”

“Well, maybe you two can finally get a move on, now that you’re off duty.” Street shrugged, causing most of the other S.W.A.T members to laugh.

“Dude, stop it.”

“Never.” Street answered smugly, “Not unless you come over here and stop me.”

“You’re punching a man while he’s laying down.” Luca said as he gestured to his cast clad leg.

“Only unfair fight is the one you lose…” Tan chuckled, “Isn’t that what you said to the recruits last year?”

“Yeah. I also told them to not kill each other, because they weren’t in the streets.” Luca pointed out.

Right then there was a knock at the door, before it opened up and Kelly and her mother entered.

“Hey team!” Kelly beamed, she saw most of the team first, before she came far enough inside the room to see Luca, “Hey Luca. Mom said you got hurt.”

Her eyes went wide when she saw the cast on his leg.

“I did…” Luca nodded, “But I’m going to be alright. It’s just going to take some time.”

“Wow, hey…” Tuana nodded at the guys and Chris, “I should have known all of you’d be here…”

Hondo smirked, “Actually, we were just about to leave… But our boy here could use the company…”

Tuana blushed a bit, but recovered quickly. Then she looked over at Luca, “Hey there… How are you doing?”

Luca shrugged a little, “Gonna be a rough couple of months… But I’ll be okay.”

“You didn’t really answer my question, now did you?”

Luca chuckled, “Well, no. My leg hurts, and I have to have it elevated and completely still…”

Tuana smirked a little, “Can you actually lay, or sit, still?”

The whole team chuckled.

“She really called you out there…” Chris grinned.

“Well, my girl texted me that she would have dinner ready when I came home. So I gotta leave now.” Hondo said, looking at the other team members in a hope that they would take the hint.

“Yeah, and we have that thing at… At…” Chris rolled her hand in the air, like she was searching for the correct word.

“Oh, yeah…” Street nodded when he caught on, “Yeah, you, me and Tan are meeting Derek and his girl…”

“Exactly.” Chris nodded.

Deacon smirked, “Well, I’ve got about an hour before I have to pick up the two youngest from kindergarten… That gives me a chance to grab a coffee and sit down in peace and quiet for a spell.”

The team members who weren’t confined to a hospital bed up and left, switching between goodbye hugs and fist-bumps on their way out the door.

SWATSWATSWAT

“Well, the team acted weird…?” Tuana shrugged after the team left.

Luca chuckled, “Yeah, you should’ve heard them before you guys came.”

“Oh yeah?”

Luca nodded, then he tried to shift a little in his bed, ending up with grimacing and groaning, fighting not to let out every four letter word he could think of.

After half a minute he pulled the pillow from below his head and placed it over his own face, finally allowing himself to whisper a silent ‘fuck’ into it, before removing it and placing it back under his head.

“-Are you alright?” Tuana asked, “Do you need anything?”

Luca shook his head, letting his right hand dart up to wipe away the remnants of smeared tears.

“I’m alright.” he choked out, “I just need my leg to stop aching so much.”

“You’re acting weird…” Kelly said with worry in her eyes.

“I’m sorry Kelly-girl…” Luca sighed, “It’s just that my leg hurts really bad. And I don’t want to… I don’t want to say bad words in front of you…”

“Like, Hell? Or, Damn?” Kelly asked, “Some kids at my old school cussed really much. Some kids at my new school says some bad words every now and then… It’s not like I haven’t heard it before?”

Luca chuckled, “Well, I’m trying to be a good role model here…”

Kelly chuckled, “Alright. Okay.”

Tuana chuckled, then she looked at Kelly, “Kelly, maybe you could go down to the lobby and buy yourself some snacks? Since we didn’t go home to eat before we got here…”

Kelly’s face lit up at that, as Tuana pulled out a few dollars to give to her. “And bring me back a coke.”

Kelly nodded before she headed out the door.

SWATSWATSWAT

“So, how are you really doing?” Tuana asked after the door closed.

“I’m a little freaked out…” Luca admitted, “But I know that’s mostly just because this hurts like a motherfucker right now.”

Tuana nodded.

“Wanna hear something funny?”

“What?”

“Street kinda mentioned that we had been seeing each other a bit more recently…” Luca admitted, “To the rest of the team… That’s why they acted weird…”

She smirked, “I kinda guessed it had to be something along those lines…”

“Yeah…” Luca nodded, “He’s getting impatient…”

“Well, he’s not completely alone…” Tuana winked, then stood up and stepped over to Luca’s bed, placing a hand on top of his.

“Maybe we should… Y’know…” Luca’s tongue darted out to wet his lower lip, “Maybe we should…”

“Make it official?”

Luca nodded.

“Maybe we should…” Tuana smirked and leaned down to place a kiss on Luca’s lips.

Luca met the kiss eagerly, running a hand through her dark hair.

“You had me worried.” She said as she pulled away a little, “I heard it on the news before I got your call.”

“I’m sorry…” Luca said, rubbing a calloused hand against her upper arm, “Someone left my phone on the other side of the room, with my clothes… And I didn’t exactly know where it was…”

“Not like that…” Tuana shook her head, “You were in great pain, of course your first thought wasn’t to call your secret girlfriend. And besides, I bet the doctors and nurses kept you occupied for a while…”

Luca nodded at that.

“I meant, I know I don’t want to lose you…” she admitted, “Actually, I’ve known that ever since you helped Kelly get into her new school…”

Luca’s lips curved at one side.

“But, I also want to be able to be proud of you in public.” She winked, “Not… Not real public, but… Amongst our friends…”

“Darling, it would make me so incredibly happy to just… -To just tell my friends that I’m with this amazing woman and mother…” Luca gave her arm a squeeze, “And to be Kelly’s… Kelly’s… Step-dad?”

Tuana chuckled, then nodded.

“About that…” Luca looked down at his lap for a bit, “I never asked, ‘cause it wasn’t my place earlier…”

She nodded slowly.

“But…” he looked back up, “Is Kelly’s dad still in the picture?”

She shook her head, “No, he’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“Relax.” Tuana rolled her eyes, “He’s never been in the picture… He left as soon as he heard I was knocked up. He died before Kelly was born.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Must’ve been rough on you…”

“It has made me cautious with men…” she chuckled, “You must’ve noticed.”

Luca couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, “And here I thought I was the one playing it safe…”

“We need to talk about your definition of ‘playing it safe’…” Tuana chuckled and jerked her head in the direction of his busted leg, “You’re more of a crash-test-dummy…”

Luca blushed a bit, “I deserved that one…”

She let her hand come down at his hairline, and brushed his hair back a few times before she leaned down to kiss him once again.

They got lost in it.

Lost in it, and they didn’t even notice Kelly opening the door and returning to the room.

Not before she let her presence be known with an audible squeal.

Luca and Tuana both froze, then Tuana stood back up.

“So you two ARE together!” Kelly grinned, “I knew it!”

Luca and Tuana both still had the deer in headlights look for a few seconds more before they simultaneously broke out laughing.

“How long have you been together?” Kelly wanted to know.

Luca shrugged, “A while.”

“Since my birthday…” Tuana clarified.

“That’s…” Kelly started counting on her fingers, “That’s four months!”

Tuana nodded.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“-We wanted to know that it would work out between us first…” Tuana answered, “We were planning on telling you soon.”

Luca nodded, “I hope you’re not angry…”

“Why would I be angry?” Kelly frowned at the thought, “I’ve been wishing for this for almost a year!”

Tuana and Luca both visibly relaxed a bit more at that.

“Does the team know?”

“Not really…” Luca answered, “Street might have started to spread rumors, but they haven’t been confirmed yet. I was planning on telling them after we had told you.”

Kelly grinned.

“Well, now you know…” Tuana chuckled.

Kelly nodded. “So, are you going to move in together?”

The two grownups looked at each other for a moment, neither really knowing the answer.

“That’s something we haven’t talked about yet…” Luca said, scratching the side of his head.

Tuana nodded towards Luca, “Yeah, we should probably talk about that soon…”

“-Amongst other things…” Luca nodded back.

“Am I going to have siblings?”

Both Luca and Tuana froze once again.

“That’s also something we haven’t talked about yet…” Tuana answered.

Luca nodded.

“But is there a chance of it?” Kelly asked. Hope was audible in her voice.

Luca shrugged, “We haven’t talked about it yet. So we don’t know what to answer…”

“Can you talk to each other about that a little quick?” Kellie prompted in a voice only a girl in her pre-teens could manage, before realizing how she sounded and added “Please?”

“I think that’s something we have to talk about alone…” Luca thought out loud, and gave Tuana a questioning look.

Tuana nodded.

“If I went outside, could you talk about it now?” Kelly asked, still very excited about the idea.

The two grownups looked at each other, scanning each other’s expressions for what the other one thought.

Half a minute later Tuana nodded, “Sure.”

Kelly grinned, “I have my phone on me. Call me when you have an answer!”

Tuana nodded, and Kelly headed out the door again.

SWATSWATSWAT

“So…” Tuana started, pulling a chair over next to Luca’s bed, “Guess we have to talk…”

Luca nodded, “Yeah…”

“Do you want kids?” Tuana asked, tilting her head.

Luca trapped his lower lip in thought for a moment, then he looked over at Tuana. “Well, yeah… But as long as I get to be a father figure for Kelly, that’s enough. I mean, if you don’t want more kids…”

Tuana’s face softened, “But if I’m up for more kids?”

“Then yes. Definitely yes.” He winked.

“How many kids would you like?” Tuana followed up.

“I don’t know, never really thought about that…” Luca rubbed his neck, “Always figured I’d have to start with one anyway…”

Tuana laughed, “Think about it… Do you have a maximum limit?”

Luca thought, then chuckled, “Well, I guess it’s probably an idea to slow down if we’d have to drive two cars to go anywhere as a family.”

Tuana chuckled as well, “You’re probably right about that.”

“That being said, I can’t really come up with a number right now.” Luca shrugged, “What’s your number”`

“Well, growing up I always wanted a big family.” She answered, “But I guess two to four kids would do…”

“So, four’s your max?”

“I wouldn’t say that…” Tuana shrugged, “I guess my actual max is when I start feeling that I’m losing more grip than is okay.”

He chuckled, “That’s a nice max limit. Mind if I adopt it?”

She chuckled, “No, go ahead.”

“Then that’s my max as well, whether that means two or ten…”

“So, at least one sibling then.”

“As sure as we’re able to, yeah.” Luca nodded, “I mean, you’re obviously able to… You’ve got a real life proof of that walking around… I can’t exactly point to a definitive proof like that.”

Tuana shrugged, “Just because I have one kid, doesn’t mean it’s going to be just as easy to have a second one. Not this many years later at least.”

Luca nodded, “Well, at least we can have some fun trying.”

Tuana chuckled, “Yeah, after your leg is better.”

He nodded, “Yeah, there’s not going to be any ‘trying’ for AT LEAST a month. Maybe longer.”

She nodded, “I think you’re right about that…”

He nodded.

They both fell silent for a little while, then Luca cleared his voice, “About that other question…”

“What other question?”

“If we were going to move in together…”

Tuana nodded.

“What are we going to answer to that?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know…”

“I mean, there’s three possibilities I see.” He shrugged, and started counting them off on his fingers, “First one, I move in with you guys. Second, you guys move in with me… We might have to figure out something to do about Street then… Or the third option, we continue living in separate houses, but I sleep over at your place every now and then, and vice versa…”

Tuana nodded, “All three are valid options.”

Luca nodded.

“Just because we chose one for now, doesn’t mean that it has to stay that way…” she mentioned.

“That’s true.” he nodded.

“How about we go for option number three for now, and then we just roll with it? See what happens?”

Luca nodded.

“But of course, if you want option one or two…” she shrugged, “I mean, we could keep the other house and rent it out…”

Luca shrugged, “Whatever is fine by me. Sticking to status quo and just seeing where that leads us sounds good.”

She nodded, adding a reassuring smile.

He smiled.

“But maybe you’d like to stay with us for a little while now?” she asked, “I mean, Kelly and I are probably at home more often than Street, right?”

He nodded, then tried to shift ever so slightly. His right hand darted down towards his leg, and it took everything he had to not start sobbing. “Dammit.”

“Do you want me to go ask the doctor if you can get anything stronger?”

He shook his head, wiping at his eyes as salty tears rolled from them.

“Luca, you’re in pain…”

Once he was able to speak again, he looked at her, “Well, I can’t really have opioids.”

She tilted her head, “Have you had a problem in the past?”

He shook his head, knowing what she was thinking. “Not like that… I just have a really low tolerance for that stuff, it often makes me sick… And I don’t want to add ‘nausea’ or ‘throwing up’ to my list of troubles right now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry… I thought… That was dumb of me…”

“Don’t think about it… It was a bad choice of words on my part.” he chuckled.

“So, do you want to stay with us for a while when you’re discharged from this place?”

He nodded, “Could I borrow the guestroom? I’m pretty sure it’ll probably hurt too much to accidentally get bumped into… -And you move around a lot when you sleep…”

“Of course…” she nodded, then she glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall, “Maybe we should call Kelly now?”

He nodded, “We probably should, but I’d like to sneak a kiss from you first…”

She smiled, stood up and stepped over to make that happen.

SWATSWATSWAT

“Now? What did you decide?” Kelly asked, almost bouncing where she stood.

“What do you want to know the answer to first?” Tuana asked.

“Everything.” Kelly grinned, “But I guess it makes sense to start with if we’re all going to live together first.”

“We decided that we don’t know the final answer yet.” Luca shrugged, “But I’m going to stay with you guys for a while now that my leg is injured.”

Tuana nodded, “After that we’ll have to wait and see. We might decide to live like Theo’s parents. They don’t live together all of the time, but it seems like all three of them like the arrangement.”

Kelly nodded, “Theo’s parents fight less than most of the other parents, so that’s cool!”

Luca really liked Kelly’s way of reasoning.

“And babies?” she then quickly switched over to the next question on her list, “Am I going to be a big sister?”

Luca and Tuana laughed.

“Well…” Tuana started, “If everything works out well, then you are going to be one.”

Kelly’s grin grew wide, “Really?”

“Yeah.” Tuana nodded, “But we can’t make any promises before you actually have a brother or sister, you know that? Sometimes it can be really hard to get pregnant.”

Kelly nodded, her head going up and down at a comical speed. “But you want kids together?”

They both nodded.

“But if it doesn’t work out for us, you are enough.” Luca pointed out, “Remember that.”

Kelly smiled, “Thanks.”

#Swat fanfiction #whump #roll swat #Hondo #hondo harrelson #Luca #dominic luca #dominique luca #Street #Jim Street #chris alonso #Chris #David Kay #Deacon #Tan #Victor Tan #fanfiction #swat #s.w.a.t

[cnc-hoebayb]

The boys as supportive hype men bfs

For when you’re lookin extra fine and they just wanna hype the shit outchu

.

Zabdiel

-“dimelooo mamiii”

-literally that ^ but with different inflections on dif syllables everytime depending on mood/situation lol

-not a very big social media man, but will post a quick story of you like “🥴❤️” dressed in something reeeeaal nice then delete it later (bc he want u for his eyes only duH!)

-but in public tho !!

-wow

-that’s his game, he’d be huggin all up on you like no ones watching

-Defintely would get caught by the paparazzi for some “provocative touching/staring” with each other

-Buys you everything

-flowers in that little shop on the corner? Done. Ice cream on the street that looks way too good? Chocolate vanilla swirl it is.

-Would probably go all out and buy you a new fancy piece of jewelry too

-its his own lil ritual to get u a new pair of earrings that match with the particular outfits he loves to see you in uwu

-he honestly seems like he’d want to hype you up all day but then spend the rest of the night with you in private

-hype you up in his own personal way ayooo

-details? I think a lil bit

-whisper dirty praises in your ear about how good you look

-goes in between rough and tender touches over his favorite parts of your body

-dead eye contact the whole time so it’s super intimate

-k that’s all u get u thirsty hoes

Erick

-does that thing to random strangers like “that’s my gf” and points at u

-for literally anything

-like when you’re ordering food for you both at a fast food place and he’s watching you lookin snackish tell them you’d like two number 5’s

-he leans over to the old lady next to him like “that girl- mi novia 😉”

-he’s also very vocal

-just likes you or him (or both) to be the center of attention

-“SHES WALKING IN AND SHES SO HOT GUYS WATCH UR FUCKING SELVES”

-kinda embarrassing but at the same time so sweet and way flattering so u don’t front bout it

-doesn’t really show you off on social media, but more in public or to his family

-Just wants to show his favorite ppl his fav person and how amazing you are

-compliments you all day

-really bad pick up lines mostly

-but they’re so bad that they’re actually really cute and funny

-pretends that youre a stranger at a store and hits on you like you’ve never met before

-“Erick please not here,” you’d beg while in line at the busy concession stand of the movie theater

-“im jus asking if u as sweet as those cookie dough bites u got right there mami mmhmmm”

Joel

-literally the cutest of them all

-not super extra, but very lovey and sweet

-you’d walk in the room all dolled up and he’d be super star struck like “oh my god dude you’re so beautiful”

-for literally any outfit too tho

-You can walk in with his sweatpants and necklace on and he’d lose it just as hard

-stares at you all day

-buys you flowers just for the heck of it

-sweet gentle touches and kisses all day too

-when he talks about you in public it’s all super down to earth and him saying how gorgeous you are doing anything

-takes you out to show you off

-somewhere where he knows a lot of press and people in general will be

-makes it super obvious you’re there together

-“don’t worry HONEY, I’ll grab the door for you BABE” and looks other homies dead in the eyes for dominance purposes

-he really would take you anywhere to show you off tbh. The dog park, museum, grocery store, you name it

-he fills his camera roll with candid pics of you through the day

-when you guys get really rowdy at the end of the night bc you’re tired, he records you the whole time dancing n singing and being a crackhead

-but its wholesome content of you guys being happy in love and having so much fun :,)

-he posts it all and everyone is like “couple goals wowo” and it makes your heart melt bc you’re with someone who makes you confident and happy and he’s everything

Richard

-literally not one second where his hand would be off of you

-ESPECIALLY in public

-hand in your back pocket, on your waist, in your hand

-also the type of guy that would be super extra and do things like hold the door for you dramatically, carry you over potholes or puddles in the street like “no te preocupes amor, i gotchu”

-a master at subtly tho

-and subtle teasing

-would mention how fine you look at the beggining of the day with a low whisper in your ear and a hot neck kiss

-then totally drop it for tension purposes

-would ignore u in person for a bit or maybe he just doesn’t see you much that day

-then would post a fire pic of you like “sheeesh🥵”

-comments under all your recent pics suddenly with thirsty shit

-all the fans are freaking out like “GET UR MAN”

-but he’s still avoiding you personally bc he knows it gets you all riled up

-so you watch him post and hype you all day until he gets home finally and wants to touch you and love you

-and you’re like “NO! No touching bc u can’t play these games Camacho”

-He smiles at you and puts on his nasally play voice while swooping in to lift you off your feet, tickling your sides and kissing you all over

-“mira que sexy ohmygaaad”

-ok but also

-he’d take his time with you when it got down to business, letting you know everything going through his mind when he kisses you, every time he removes another piece of clothing, telling you how perfect you are

-slow passionate intense nights that feel like they could last forever

Christopher

-constant screaming

-“oye mamiiiii”

-his million stories on insta are all of you with dif filters, emojis, and captions

-he’s singing or yelling in the background every one, but honestly no one can tell at this point

-besos every other second

-you’re just *taking a bite of pizza* and Chris would drop everything like “fucK pls kiss me now”

-a lot of seductive glances from a distance

-intimidates everybody in the room tbh

-will be that guy talking to anyone being like “doesn’t my baby look ultra fine today- well i mean she always fine, but today it just hits different”

-probably very sweet like Joel but in his own sappy Chris way

-will sing to you every love song that comes on in the car or while you’re standing around

-dances with you in public just to spin you around, kiss you, and tell you how good you look

-you’re always afraid to look like that one annoying pda couple but the way y’all make it look is actually rly sweet and sincere

-also does that thing and records you being a crackhead at night, but he’s actin just as wild so all the videos are so hard to follow

-they’re all of you guys SCREAMING and CACKLING SOO HARD and no one can form out anything anyone is saying bc you’re both just being idiots

-he records you dancing like a dummy in the dark corner of your room and he’s just there like “AYY AY DALE MAMI AY”

-for some reason i just see him at the end of the night wanting a long, deep makeout sesh more than anything

-bc sometimes kissing can be just as intimate and passionate when you’re with the right person, and Chris is exactly that guy

-he’d be kinda vocal and mumble every time your lips disconnect abt how much he loves you and how crazy you make him by being so god damn beautiful all the time

#need me a zabdi or a chris ngl #someone who can handle me bc im a lot #and i oop #esp during crackhead hours #tag which boy u need the most rn lol #cnco #cnco headcanon #zabdiel de jesus #erick brian colon #joel pimentel #richard camacho #christopher velez

[humboldtfog]

Years of depression has prepared me very well for the current state of affairs which is weird but whatever here’s a list of my faves on netflix, if I’m missing something let me know cause now’s the time, right?

I'm kinda embarrassed by how long this list is but also kinda like fuck that, there have been very long periods of time where it was either sit and watch shows all day or lie down and stare at the wall in silence all day so I chose the former and it adds up and there's nothing wrong with that.

Glow (Badass ladies learn to wrestle, great 80s aesthetics and grrrrl power.)

Our Planet (Netflix version of Planet Earth, beautiful, cute, terrifying that we aren’t doing more to save us all.)

Bojack Horseman (Hilarious and “deep” critique of LA and celebrity culture for people who don’t care about LA or celebrity culture. Also very funny visual jokes about how if animals were also kinda humans, and lots of great jokes about cliches and tropes, puns, and weirdly rhyming and alliteration? I don’t know how to explain it just watch it.)

Father Brown (BBC, based on mystery novels about a priest who always meddles in police business and solves murders in his small English countryside town.)

Pose (The Ball scene in NY in the 80s, poc queer and trans writers and actors bringing their people’s stories to life. So much joy, so much beauty, but also NYC in the 80s so you will cry.)

Paris is Burning (Documentary made during the Ball scene Pose is based on.)

Sex Education (Such empowering representations of all walks of gender and sexuality, and actually very educational, like I would straight up show this in schools because everyone would be very entertained and would learn a lot more than they teach in a lot of schools.)

What Happened Miss Simone (Documentary about Nina Simone’s life, music and the activism the establishment/ government worked to suppress and used to blacklist her.)

Night on Earth (Low light camera technology has gotten hella good and they’re starting to learn stuff about animals’ behaviors at night that they’ve never been able to study before.)

Call the Midwife (Follows stories from the midwives that worked in the East End of London after the war, based on memoirs. Interesting look at the kind of life of poverty people led before there were many large hospitals or birth control, right as the British were implementing their universal healthcare program.)

The Great British Baking Show (Everyone’s so nice and everything looks so good!)

Atypical (Dramady about a high schooler with autism and his family, very funny and great representations of autism and how to be a good dude.)

Parks and Recreation (Just very funny and everyone knows it. Amazing ensemble cast, and they still keeps in touch through a group chat awww doesn’t that say something!)

Kim’s Convenience (Canadian comedy about family of first and second gen Korean immigrants that’s just a really solid funny modern day sitcom.)

Queer Eye (I feel like if everyone in this world could get a life makeover from these guys we just wouldn’t be here right now.)

Obvious Child (Jenny Slate accidentally gets pregnant and gets an abortion. It’s funny and it’s realistic, we’re not all Juno.)

Maria Bamford: the Special Special Special (Rad lady comedian not afraid to talk about her mental health and lack thereof and very vocal about the stigma surrounding mental health problems and I very much relate to. My favorite standup probably ever. I could make a list just for standup so message me if you’d like more suggestions.)

Monty Python (Flying Circus, movies, doc, ect. “The Beatles of comedy” is the cliche but it's true.)

Easy (Very unconventional non-narrative structure and editing, following random people in Chicago in a very real life feeling way. Different story each episode, but sometimes characters show up briefly in each other’s lives or return for a second episode.)

Everything Sucks! (High school nerds and lesbians and theater geeks in the 90s! I’m so sad this only got one season I rewatched it recently and it’s just so solid.)

She’s Gotta Have It (Revival of Spike Lee’s first movie, black girl magic, art world, gentrified New York, lots of sex.)

The Office (Classic, holds up very well, totally solid throughout, worth a rewatch. Also if you're a fan Jenna Ficher and Angela Davis are doing a rewatch podcast jsyk.)

Billy on the Street (Mindless game show for laughs, amazing gay comedian runs around New York yelling questions at them. I watch this with my dad and he can’t help but snort even when it’s “inappropriate” or “juvenile” so you know it’s good.)

Good Girls (Some lower middle class family ladies that are all about to be broke decide to rob the grocery store one of them works at, but they accidentally cross a gang that stored their cash there, so they gotta pay it back, and of course can’t help but get deeper and deeper into it. Very suspenseful like your heart rate will go up and stay up. )

Arrested Development (It’s just funny, as you've probably heard, but I'm telling you it just really is.)

The Laundromat (Tells the stories of a few of the people involved in the panama papers in different ways, explains in an entertaining way how money laundering works in a way that made it mostly make sense even to me. The rich get richer, and Meryl Streep is here to tell them to fuck off and pay their taxes.)

Russian Doll (She keeps dying and coming back to the same moment over and over and can’t figure out how to stop the cycle or why so kinda sci fi, very suspenseful, big cliff hanger ending, or rather no ending, and just found out season two filming is delayed because virus which is very annoying!!)

Dear White People (Show picking up where the movie left off, after a frat hosts a black face party and the ivy league college is forced to deal with racism.)

Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings (Stories based on Dolly songs. Very Hallmark channel, you will cry.)

Episodes (Show about two British writers making a version of their BBC show for American tv. Kind of meta, very funny, Matt LaBlanc plays himself and it's great.)

Dumplin’ (Fat girl grows up with a beauty pageant winning mom and enters one herself with the help of her late aunt’s Dolly Parton drag queen friends.)

Lunatics (Chris Lilley is the best character actor ever, all his shows are just him playing different parts and you seriously forget it’s all one actor, even when he’s playing teenage girls.)

Jane the Virgin (Prime time soap opera about a girl who is engaged and waiting until marrige and is accidentally inseminated with the only sperm sample of a man who’s had cancer so decides to keep the baby, very heavy on the soap opera cliches in a meta way but also that’s what it is. So good at first but after the first three or so seasons it gets too much tbh though.)

Zumbo’s Just Desserts (Australian Bake show but with just sweet stuff and pressure to be avant garde.)

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Jerry Sienfeld goes out with funny people to coffee and lunch in fancy cars and they have funny conversations.)

One Day at a Time (Very very cheesy laugh track sitcom, like the kind of thing my grandma would watch, but it makes me so happy it’s doing a great job eplaining really woke concepts like queer pronouns and ptsd and addiction and white privilege to people like my grandma!)

Orange is the New Black (Good stories about very diverse characters, I’d say by starting it off about a upper middle class white girl it tricks privileged white people into watching and then encountering the more realistic stories of women who go to prison and how the system treats prisoners. Ending of season two is super solid and you can stop it there, season three is a really great critique of the privatization of prisons. I admit it goes on and on to the point that it’s stressful and after watching it spread out over years I can’t remember/ keep up with all the different story lines, though they’re all good stories to tell.)

Space Jam (Just saw while scrolling for more ideas this was added! One of the greatest sports movies of all time obviously.)

Bonus amazon prime shows, I try to avoid Amazon in general but these are just too good if you know a prime member who you can't convince not to give their money to amazon so they might as well give you their login (like yer dad).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (A 1950s New York upper class Jewish house wife gets dumped and starts doing stand up, so funny, great actors, and they seriously transform NY back into another era.)

Good Omens (Mini series based off Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s satirical novel about the biblical apocalypse, very funny, very smart, very British, does the book pretty solid justice.)

There are other decent things that aren’t included, I’d say these are solid recs for a general list of genres all over the map without letting it get to a ridiculously unhelpful length. I feel like I’d be good at the “if you like this then you’ll also like…” so let me know if some of these are your favorites too and want personal recs for what to watch next based on a brain instead of an algorithm.

If you want to have a remote date and watch things together on video chat or one of those watch party sites or just tell me what to watch next here’s some stuff on my list I’ve been curious about or not sure about or don’t want to watch alone or have been putting off, and now’s the time right?: Strangers Things, I Am Not Okay With This, Black Panther, The Betty White doc, John Mulaney Snack Lunch Bunch, Dead to Me, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, A Wrinkle in Time, The Little Prince, Maniac, Wet Hot American Summer reboots, and a bunch of different standup specials from comedians I like.

#netflix #list #best #favorites #self #coronavirus #covid19 #2020

[filmsthirteen]

Finding Myself through Cameron Crowe Films

  *Minor Spoilers*

    There are a handful of directors, writers, artists, and singers who have influenced my life. Yet there is only a handful of them who consistently released art that contributed to the person I have moulded into, (despite only being 19 and thinking this is the final version of myself). But one filmmaker in particular, resonates as having created films that were pressed play constantly as a teenager. That filmmaker is the man, the myth, the legend, Cameron Crowe. If it were up to me, he’d be Sir Cameron Crowe. An artist who had managed to shape multiple generations and accurately reflect on generations that once existed. From the early eighties, Crowe has contributed to the films that teens flocked to the theatre to see when they were released, and many years later, those teens would show their kids those films. Thus, I was thankfully brought up by brilliant films such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything, Singles, and Almost Famous. All those films manage to capture adolescence and young adulthood, through numerous characters, eras, and most importantly, through the use of music. Now that I’m in my final year of being a teenager, and entering the next phase of my life, I thought it was time to thank Cameron Crowe for guiding me through these seemingly treacherous years. 

    I was raised on eighties films. I always had the blessing of having parents who were really into films, and so I was constantly shown film after film. Many of them were teen films of the eighties. So, of course, there were many late nights of watching Pretty in Pink, Heathers, and Risky Business. Though Crowe's films obviously ended up in the mix, the first time I remember sitting down to watch one of his films ended up being around thirteen. My Dad got me one of those three pack special DVDs from Walmart, with Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Both of them I was absolutely obsessed with and made me long to be a teenager. Despite John Hughes being the legend he is, the third film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, was the one that stuck with me through all four years of high school. I watched the film on my own the night before my first day of high school. I was starting that year off fresh; all my friends were going to the public school, while my parents shipped me off to the Catholic school the next town over, where I’d have to wear khaki cardboard material like pants, and polyester shirts in either green, white or blue. I worried my entire summer about the first day of high school; walking down halls I didn’t know, sitting beside people I never had the pleasure of knowing since kindergarten. On Stacy's (Jennifer Jason Leigh) first day of high school, American Girl by Tom Petty plays. Immediately I grabbed my iPod touch, added it to my iTunes, and played it on repeat on my hour and a half long bus ride, and into the doors of the school. Minus doing it with an older dude, getting pregnant, and brushing up my blowjob skills with a carrot in front of the cafeteria, I wished I was like Stacy. Having a cool job in the mall, somehow being gorgeous all the time (even during exam season?) and having a really sweet guy like Mark take you on a date to a really fancy German restaurant, seemed like an experience I deserved. But Cameron wrote about things in this film so painfully realistic to the high school experience, even thirty years later. I knew girls who went out with weird guys way too old for them, having plans for the future destroyed, and of course, having a teacher who thinks that everyone is on dope (which they're totally right about). It doesn't exaggerate the experience of a teenager, making the film so close to the truth as a film can get. Perhaps its due to Crowe actually spending the year as an undercover student, and honestly, all teen films should've been fact-checked like this one. 

     Less than seven years later, Crowe came out with Say Anything. Though my Mom loves this movie, and used to watch it whenever it would come on TV, it was the 2010 film Easy A that actually got me to watch the movie. I made it a point to go back and watch all those films that Emma Stone’s character lists off when discussing if chivalry is dead. Thus I ended up watching Can’t Buy Me Love, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and of course, Say Anything. I wanted my life to be like an 80s movie directed by John Hughes, but I got it so much better, I got a life unintentionally directed by Cameron Crowe. And because of that, I fell in love with wanting to be that smart girl like Diane Court. I look back now on how much studying I did in high school, and how it paid off to where I am now. It’s important for filmmakers to add these characters, ones were they say that girls can be pretty and smart, not settling for the cliched pick and choose scenario. So I worked hard, writing endless essays, studying late at night for a math test, and juggled clubs and activities. But still, I wished to also have that and be wanted by someone. Like Lloyd Dobler, who wants Diane so much, its all he thinks about. But listen, for once I can say the character of Lloyd isn't some creepy dude, who has an obsession and is purely motivated by this girls essence. Again, there are way too many films with the lead guy being solely provoked by a woman's body. But when he gets her, he holds on, noting that her feelings are reciprocated. She could go off to Oxford, and he’d be right there. Perhaps love at this age is rare, but when you know, well you know. And that's a huge difference that my generation can see. Though many of us have grown up with divorced parents, constant cheating, and unreciprocated feelings, at such a young age, we shouldn't keep that from the actual emotions that we are meant to feel for another human. Maybe we are supposed to give it all, and as I watch this film, I’m not wondering what if Lloyd didn't go about the relationship as he did, I wonder how Lloyd and Diane are. Because like I said, he wants her so bad that he stands outside of her house after a fight, holding that boombox up high, blasting the best love song of all time, In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. I can’t even tell you the amount of times I’ve had that song on an endless repeat, but I can promise that I most likely broke the record the summer of ‘18. I longed to be sought after like Diane (cause who honestly doesn't want to be so enormously desired by someone you love?). By the end of the August heat, I laid awake at night, waiting for that song to be played outside of my window (actually would've freaked me out but still, the thoughts nice). But that song ended up being played during the fall, plenty of times in the cold winter days, and in the early spring, all the while so content with listening to it at this very moment. Sometimes boys and girls, it's good to just say anything (add wink emoji here). 

     Despite still being totally obsessed with all things of 80s culture, it's time to bring up that phase that wasn't ever a phase, but the depths of my soul. The tenth grade brought about my “grunge phase.” I got my nose pierced, splurged on Doc Martens, stocked my closet with various coloured flannel shirts and band tees. I wanted people to know that I listened to Nirvana, Guns n Roses, and Pearl Jam, despite it being on my shirt that I’d wear under my uniform sweater. My eyeliner was thick black, and my tweets were usually lyrics from some band part of the Seattle Sound. My Dad was in his teens when the Seattle sound came about, and thus as a kid, I spent many car rides hearing Alice in Chains ‘Dirt’ album, Pearl Jam’s the ‘Ten’ album, and Nirvana’s ‘Unplugged’ album on the radio. For me, I was the real shit when it came to this era of my life. And that became the perfect opportunity for my dad to introduce me to Crowe’s ‘92 film Singles. A group of young adults who all live in (a now extremely famous) the same apartment complex, during the height of the Seattle sound. Surprise surprise, they reside in Seattle. Honestly, there could've been no better film for my dad to turn on. With cameos from my bae Eddie Vedder and the late Chris Cornell, the film brings so much to the group of young adults who chose to immerse themselves in real boy bands, compared to whatever the other ones who sang with earpieces paired with synchronized dances did. No offence. Dealing with the idea of relationships, whether we are to settle or have fun in our 20s, Singles is supposed to be about Gen Xer’s, yet, I can see how many millennials still have this issue. There are plenty of girls I know who have used their ex’s t-shirts to clean their toilets, and though we aren't making dating VHS’s, they are perfecting their tinder profiles, hoping that actual human connection exists on the other end. The biggest point in the film that got me, (despite being sixteen trying to imagine myself in four years time), was the whole fear of what if you commit and what if you don’t? There are many ways you can mess up potential, and still, it lies within not calling after a date, or in our case, texting after hanging out. Sometimes we just need people to say and do the right things without having to tell them what is the right thing to do or say. And if it all works out, we’ll end up like Steve and Linda who move out the single bedroom apartment, and into never having to be labelled again as a single. 

     Eight years came about the semi autobiographical story of Crowe himself, Almost Famous. The film with the best soundtrack of all time, due to it having a budget of 3.5 million, compared to most films with budgets of about 1.5 million. Honestly, that's the best use of money in all of human history. And thanks to Zooey Deschanel’s duffel bag, we get to hear Simon and Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin, The Beach Boys, and everyone's favourite, Elton John. You cannot tell me you did not get goosebumps hearing Tiny Dancer being sung in unison by Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit, Jason Leigh, and well I could go on forever about the well-casted film. Before watching the film, I remember that Fool in the Rain was my favourite Zeppelin song. But after watching it for the first time, I had probably had listened to Led Zeppelin’s song Tangerine a hundred times. If a film has such tangible (see what I did there) scenes, and a song contains such a powerful presence, then that is mastering filmmaking in my opinion. Thus, this film was watched during all sorts of moments in my adolescence. The time I wanted to work as a journalist for Rolling Stone, when I was in need of a change, and when I was absolutely alone and only a Cameron Crowe film understood me. And each time I was damn near tempted to be a roadie for a somewhat known band, who hopefully was opening for Black Sabbath. Actually, it was very much this film that got me more obsessed with concerts than I was before. I’d buy tickets as soon as they’d go on sale, mostly to smaller bands, that way I’d have a chance of being up close, and even meeting the band. Like William, I’d wait by the stage doors for the band. Dragging my friends to the concert at least twelve hours before the show would start, just so I could meet bands like Peach Pit, Pale Waves, Colouring, and well other indie bands that I’m sure slim to no adults know. Believe me, I’d wait a week for Black Sabbath if I could. But beyond that, I think that every young person deserves the life, encapsulated in this film; of just going out there and being absolutely free. You know, before life kicks in. And that's really what this film, amongst nearly all of Crowe's films, demonstrate. Get out there kid, put on those headphones, blast some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and just live before you die. Being obsessed with listening to classic rock, I devoured the only season of Paul Feig’s Freaks and Geeks, and had Almost Famous’s soundtrack on repeat. I owned a long green army jacket, and also a faux sheepskin sherpa coat. I was both Lindsey Weir and Penny Lane. I was walking down the two hallways of my high school, and the one street of my small towns downtown, earbuds in, Fleetwood Mac blasting. And through the many characters of these films, they reminded me that I’m here for the art. For the music from the Bookends album, the score of a Tim Burton film, and the tracks of a Tarantino picture. Like Kathy and Paul who went off to see America, Lindsey who goes off to a Grateful Dead concert with her best friend, and Penny Lane who is off to her dream destination of Morocco, I myself am off to see and hear the world. 

      It's odd to look back on these films that meant so much to who I was and who I’ve become. I’m in my last year of being a teenager, and I’m almost done university’ yet I still feel so attached to these characters I feel that I someway embodied. But that's not because I based my life off these characters Crowe created, it's really because Crowe based these characters off of people that exist in life. In those years of watching any teen film out there, Crowes (and of course Hughes) inspired me to look around constantly, taking notes on the friends I had spent lunches on Thursdays, discussing films with, just in case I’d make a film reminiscent about them. In my seemingly ordinary life, Crowe told me to go out and grab those who write seemingly precognition notes in your yearbook. Most importantly, Crowe told me to just let the music guide me through life. And for that, I got my life to be directed by Cameron Crowe. 

INT. Credits being to roll, as ELTON JOHN’S TINY DANCER plays. 

FADE OUT 

#cameron crowe #director #film #filmreview #filmopinion #say anything #70s #80s #90s #2000s #genx #millenial #tagged #taggedmine #comingofage #almost famous #singles #seattle #eddie vedder #grunge #pearl jam #alice in chains #nivana #simon and garfunkel #led zeppelin #tarantino #paulfeig #freaks and geeks #tim burto #penny lane

[pixelgrotto]

The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, finale

Approximately one year ago I began the somewhat mad quest to shove as much Resident Evil into my brain as quickly as possible. I blazed through thirteen games, a handful of spin-offs, and as much supplementary material I could get my hands on. I chronicled my thoughts each step of the way via posts here, on Twitter and in a massive ResetERA thread where a lot of good people gave me advice on how to proceed with the series. Not all of the stuff I experienced was great (those Paul W.S. Anderson movies come to mind), and sometimes this massive undertaking felt like work, but now that I’ve come to the end, I can say that it was worth it, because it’s quite the feeling to bring yourself from having zero knowledge of something to morphing into a Wiki-reading fiend in just a year. At this time in 2018, I had only the barest notion of what this series was about and who characters like Jill Valentine or Leon Kennedy were. Now, I could probably write a pretty heated Twitter thread about how Jill needs to be brought back to the forefront of the series not just with a remake of Resident Evil 3, but with an entirely new game, because she’s been sidelined for years despite being the central figure in promotional material like the fancy artwork that I’ve posted above! Ahem. 

My initial desire to become more familiar with Resident Evil has been part of a larger push in recent years to consume more horror media, mostly because as I get older I find myself increasingly attracted to eerie stories that I was too much of a weenie to dive into when I was younger. Some of it probably has to do with the fact that as an adult I now find stuff like health concerns, existential dread and paying taxes to be more horrifying than things that go bump in the night, but part of it is also because that even as a scaredy cat kid, I was always kinda intrigued by macabre stuff like Resident Evil, even if I couldn’t bring myself to play through the games. 

Now that I’ve plowed through the franchise, I wish I could go back and whisper to my younger self that aside from the first game, RE7 and perhaps bits and pieces of both versions of RE2...Resident Evil isn’t all that frightening. The series does have its jump scares and gore, but it quickly crosses genres into the realm of action, and even in its more tense entries, Resident Evil stays dripping with a fine dollop of cheese, either through B-movie dialogue or moments when the main characters wink at the camera and suddenly take a zombie to suplex city. Action, comedy and horror are unusual but frequent bedfellows, I’ve learned, and with RE embodying all three of these genres, translating them to the realm of electronic entertainment via a format emphasizing survival, it’s only appropriate that this is the franchise that has come to serve as the face of spooky thrills in the video game world.

Resident Evil’s also in a very good place at this moment in time. RE2Make has gotten well-deserved praise from just about everyone who’s played it, and after a moment where it looked like Capcom was going to tilt the mattress and upset the delicately placed bedfellows - emphasizing action and over-the-top comedy more than horror - now it appears that the devs have gotten their heads straight and maintained the balance once more. There’s still room for improvement and careful experimentation though. As the series forges ahead into the 2020s, I hope that Capcom doesn’t get drunk off of RE2Make’s success, milking its formula to exhaustion. I want at least another mainline game to utilize the first-person perspective of Resident Evil 7, which worked better than I ever would’ve imagined, and I’d also like to see the Revelations sub-series, which was supposed to focus on stories that took place in between the main games, continue - in spirit if not in name. (A Revelations 3 or similar spin-off with fixed camera angles - perhaps in a mid-tier budget point ‘n click style a la Detention - would be something that I’d love, though Capcom probably will never go in that direction.) Finally, I’d like Resident Evil to remember that it had fabulous female representation in its earlier entries. The later titles have mostly had male protagonists front and center, which directly reinforces the trope that it’s okay for survival horror games to star the “must be protected” ladies, but anything action-orientated should star dudes so that male players can have their power fantasy trip. This can easily be fixed by doing what I said in the first paragraph - bring the queen Jill Valentine back. 

Finally, because these sorts of franchise reflections are never complete without a good ol’ fashioned list... Here’s how I’d rank the mainline games, complete with a snappy sentence or two for each.

Resident Evil REmake - Because if I had to recommend just ONE game for someone to get a decent idea of this series’ mechanics and themes, it would be this one.

Resident Evil 4 - It’s survival action instead of survival horror, but when the gameplay’s this good, can you really complain?

Resident Evil 2 - Over 20 years old and still a thrilling experience. The epitome of the fixed camera angle games.

Resident Evil 7 - I was afraid that the change to a first-person perspective would alienate me, but I beat this game in two days and couldn’t put it down.

Resident Evil RE2make - Almost as good as the original, and a great sign of the franchise’s future. 

Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Worth playing for the return of Barry Burton and the moving story alone, which is basically about fathers and daughters, loss and acceptance.

Resident Evil 1 - The OG that started it all. A little clunky to play in this day and age, but the magic’s still there. 

Resident Evil 6 - The equivalent of an overstuffed exploding cake, RE6 is excessive as hell and sometimes infuriating...but one thing you could never call it is boring.

Resident Evil 5 - A solid series entry about Chris Redfield punching boulders in Africa, this one’s excellent if you play it co-op. Solo, a little less excellent.

Resident Evil Zero - RE probably didn’t need this prequel showing what Rebecca Chambers was doing on the night before she got stuck in Spencer Mansion, but good chemistry between the main characters makes it worth experiencing.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - A lot of folks love this one, but IMO it feels less noteworthy than RE2 and RE1, probably because it was originally designed as a spin-off. I rank it low but am eager to see how a RE3make could boost it. 

Resident Evil Revelations - Jill Valentine’s in a wetsuit that clings to her booty this whole game and she hangs out with a partner who looks like Russell Crowe. Aside from that, Revelations is fine but kinda forgettable.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica - The only RE that truly annoyed me with backtracking and some cheap bosses, Code Veronica is technically still an okay game. But Steve Burnside is a garbage character. 

Thus, we bring the horrific, 2018-2019 Pixel Grotto Resident Evil playthrough to a gentle finish. *Cue relaxing save room theme here.* It’s been fun, ladies and gents. I need to rest up a bit and try some other games that aren’t survival horror for a while. But I like the idea of doing more series playthroughs in the future...

And I think Silent Hill might be a good choice for the next one. 

The header artwork is a textless version of the radical Biohazard 20th Anniversary poster that Capcom put out in 2016. 

#pixel grotto #now playing #video games #resident evil #biohazard

[80srockher]

Yuri on Ice Re-Watch and Live Commentary, Episode 12: Final Skate: Gotta Super-Super-Supercharge It!!! Grand Prix Final Free Skate

It.  Is.  FINISHED.

You know that feeling when a fan-nish project is projected to take only a few weeks, during the Summer, mind you, but ends up spanning, oh, about three months?  I do, now.

**Begin rant** 

Me, too, Vitya!  End what, Yuri??

I mean, it's more than a little crazy that he thought this is something Victor would be relieved to here.  It's as if they have been existing on different planes of reality.

Listen. Victor has shed tears a grand total of two times in 12 episodes and both incidents involved Yuri.  Yet Yuri still doesn't think he’s important enough to merit more of his Victor’s time away from skating.  Just.  YURI. AUGH!!!

The actor's decision to read this line as if Yuri's revelation has not stabbed Victor in the heart is masterful.  There's only so much pretending the man is capable of.

This is hella relatable as someone who also doesn't want to be touched when I'm upset by THE VERY PERSON WHO UPSET ME.  Give him a minute to process this, Yuri.

This is just a horrible, horrible cap.  Vitya is thoroughly in kicked-puppy-mode.

Um, did you ignore absolutely everything else that occurred afterwards?  Including when he straight-up said to your face that he wishes you'd never retire?

Don't fire him, Yuri!

Yuri was really out there listenin' to friends instead of Victor.  How many times did Victor ignore the others' entreaties to return to competition to remain his coach?  Don't join that Greek chorus. Yuri.      

I beg to differ.  He's always concerned about your well-being, which is why you gave him an expensive-ass symbol of devotion and put it on his ring finger.  Good God, boy.

This inspiration thing goes both ways, Yuri.  LISTEN TO VICTOR.  He is telling you what HE wants In This Moment.  Not what YOU think is best for HIM.    

Like hell! You two hash this out right now!

**End rant**

Look, a skater who was popular back when I used to watch.  LOL.  Stephane L-l-l-l-lambiel!

So, sports reporter Marooka remarks about how Yuri hasn't been seen practicing in public since the day after the short program, which has worried his fans (see, Yuri, you have FANS.)  You mean to tell me Yuri and Victor have been at odds with each other for two whole days now?!?!

Cartoon!Lambiel picks up on Yuri and Victor's uncharacteristically low energy.

You don't say, Stephane.

Also: Victor knows Stephane, personally.  What a celeb.

At least flag guy has re-energized himself since JJ's short program.

"Don't eff it up."

"Don't eff it up."

"Don't eff it up."

He eff'd it up.

Wow, shades of Yuri from episode one.

Deep, bro.

Aww! The parents in this show are the best cheerleaders.  If only there was time during the season to meet all of them.  I'd def like to see Phichit's parents.

So, JJ's dad is reminiscing on some of his son's past coaches.  Celestino, then played by Peg Bundy, was one of them.

Also…. I'm really curious as to what JJ needed to say yes to.

Damn you, Mickey Lannister Crispino!  Hands off!

Seung Gil! What an awesome cameo.  

I don't know much about scoring in figure skating but this seems a mite high for a program that was mostly jumps.

Yay! No other comment needed.

Phichit's ice-show dreams are as adorable as he is.  Christophe with a hamster cap is utterly, utterly charming.  I would fork over cold, hard blood plasma donation cash to see this in person.

It shouldn't be like this between them; especially not when Yuri plans to end his competitive career, here.

And really, why is Yuri so upset with Victor?  I suspect Yuri's selfishness runs deeper than either of them realize. IMO, he's afraid Victor might come to resent him if he retires from skating to coach him, then regrets it.

But honestly, Yuri should know Victor better than that by now.

Despite everything, Victor is still trying to be the coach Yuri needs.

But… Yuri doesn't want Victor to play coach right now.

So tickle his fancy, Victor.

Um…

Victor has an interesting sense of humor.

Also, he did win the one against the teenagers at the local comp.  Though I have no idea if a qualifier is considered part of the Senior circuit.

Yeah, katsudon's not the only way to celebrate, Yuri.  Victor wants to really give you something worth winning for.

This is just an R&B song waiting to happen.

Hmm… whatever could you mean, Yuri?

I really love how they've cut Yuri's long program with clips of Victor from Yuri's memory.  It's a visual culmination of a journey.

Ahh, that's what he meant about making up his mind about his goal.  And that's why he wanted Victor to stop playing at being coach.  Because he wasn't going to listen to him, anyway.  You know, the usual.

Yuri's internal dialogue during his routine reveals his desire to stay in figure skating with Victor forever and his fear of killing Victor's career if he remains Yuri's coach.  Victor… have you not shared with the man how competition was already slowly killing you? Might wanna do that sometime in the very, very near future.

Yuri… just loves Victor.  He can't always articulate how much, but he can show it.  His program is one big tribute to Victor and Yuri's desire to prove everyone how much Victor means to him as a coach and an inspiration.

And Victor gets the message loud and clear.

Mari+Minako are, yet again, Me.

Something I should've wondered by now is how half-blind Yuri can tell where Victor is standing.

The monkey-on-his-back that is Anxiety.

Seriously, you performed to the absolute best of your ability, Yuri.  Relax.  Relate. Release.  

Wowsa, dude.

Sooooo, Victor has just congratulated Yuri on his record-breaking performance and implies that he might come back to competition in the same breath he confesses his pride in both his pupils.  The possibility of Victor's return delights Yuri to no-end but gives me pause.  A lot of pause.

Victor. My dude.  Are you just trying not to ruin the mood?  Because quite honestly, one of the very valuable lessons you should've learned on this journey is that a little selfishness can be a good thing.  I know you want to make a grand gesture after Yuri's grand gesture but YOU CAN'T BOTH KEEP MAKING GRAND GESTURES.  You'll hurt yourselves trying to show the world your love.  

Moving on... Chris is on the ice, having serious thoughts about how Yuri, who was rumored to retire after the GPF, beat his personal best.  He laments that it won't be as easy for him to win gold as he first thought.

Then he witnesses the happy couple doing their thing.

And gets distracted.  

This is in regards to Victor.  Chris is rethinking his initial calculation of GPF - Victor = gold for him.

Aww, Chris is Phichit's buddy.  Why am I not surprised?

This scene is after Chris decides to change an earlier jump composition to the second half of his program.  Can't say he's not a fighter.

Dawww, Minako.

Really? That's it?!  By my estimation, that program was better than JJ's.  What am I missing?

Boo, this is the last time I'll see my babe, Leo.

But I concur.  Go, Otabek! I'm fond of his music choices, skating, and his costumes.  

So, Victor finds Yakov to tell him he wants to return to competition.  I mean, it couldn’t have waited until after Yurio’s skate, V?

Once upon a time, news of Victor's return may have pleased Yurio.  Now, his first concern is Yuri.  

And Victor is Not.  Happy. About this.  He’s about to cry here, tbqh.

Annnnd he requires immediate comfort.  This is sad. More than sad, when I consider Victor is letting Yuri call the shots, here.  Competing again should be Victor's own decision, as well.

Yeah, that's good advice to pass along, Victor.

I've been debating as to whether or not I should parse out the intricacies of Victor's isolation.  Honestly, I think the writers did a well-enough job of it.  I suppose I still wonder, as many others have, about his family.

I'll go out on a limb and assume he has or had people in his life that taught him to love like he does and to treat other people kindly.  One doesn't learn those sorts of things in a vacuum.  However, I headcanon Victor as having been scouted and, once recruited, moved closer to a training facility, a la these athletes.

So, isolated?  Yes. Friend-less and family-less?  I doubt it, or at least it wasn't always that way.

Meanwhile, Yuri's looking for his man.  Perhaps to tell him that he's already changed his mind about retiring?  In that case, please, look harder Yuri!

Just needed to slide in this cap of Mila getting sprung by Otabek's skating.  Good taste, Mila.

I don't know who JJ has in his pocket on the judging panel, but Otabek just completed a perfect program AND he was ahead of JJ after the short program.  Logic would dictate he'd be ahead of JJ now. But, do as you will, YOI.

This is in regards to Yuri.  In flashbacks during Yurio's routine, we discover that he was actually impressed with Yuri's prior GPF free skate, despite the errors.  It was only after he found Yuri crying in the bathroom stall that he lost respect for him.  Must be Yurio's special brand of encouragement: "Stop crying, get better, or get out of the game!"  Yeah. That must be it.

Anyway, now Yurio has changed his tune and doesn't want Yuri to retire, at all. Cute.

Lilia is so proud of her angry, pseudo- son.

 Yurio completes his most difficult program ever with only one fall.  During his skate, it's revealed that part of his motivation was to become a new goal for Yuri to surpass.  That's nice and all, but not at the expense of your own health, Yurio.

I don't think Yuri would want that for him, either.

Yurio defeats Yuri by a sliver of a margin.  I will admit to initially being surprised by the result before considering (and re-considering, after this re-watch) a few things:

Yurio won because it's entirely possible he may not win again for at least a little while.

His lack of stamina is well-documented, he's in the Senior circuit with grown men who can, and have, beat him already, and he's yet to hit a growth spurt. If the series continues into a second season, then I foresee the writers exploring these very realistic scenarios for Yurio.

This is partially why I don't predict Yurio achieving what Victor has, at least not right away.  There's not enough drama in that narrative to fill up an entire season, IMO.

Or, at the very least, they'll use Yurio to address the conflict over becoming as isolated as Victor has during his struggle to maintain dominance in the sport.

Yurio won because the name of the show is 'Yuri on Ice’.

Also, if the writers decide to have Yuri eventually retire (because he is of that age), then they don't even have to change the show’s title.  How convenient.

Last, and what I think is obviously implied in this episode: Yurio won so that Yuri would change his mind about retiring.

However… Yuri had already changed his mind.  And his biggest motivator in that decision was still Victor, so… kinda wish they hadn't made Yurio go out and suffer like that for no good reason. Honestly, there's little chance of him repeating this performance.

Anyway….

Awww! Yay!

So, Victor's in a teasing mood after Yuri presents him with his well-earned silver medal. Victor insists that he only wants to kiss gold.  So, what do you have that would be a suitable substitute, Yuri?

Eff that medal Yuri just unceremoniously dropped to the ground in preference to hopping in Victor's lap.  Coach me for another year, Victor!

What a lovely step forward for our boy, Yuri.  He didn't win gold but, all joking aside, Victor doesn't care.  Yuri’s next gold medal will be a token to Victor, instead of unnecessary proof that he was worth Victor’s time, all along.

Besides, I think he’s already given Victor the only golden item he truly wants.

But, I mean, only if you WANT to, Victor.  Are you afraid Yuri will change his mind if you change yours?  I hope that's not the case.

 Apparently, this is the only payment Victor will accept for coaching Yuri. Ok, so you're going to compete and hopefully earn some sponsorship money to pay your own bills all while coaching someone else for free?  Do we need to have a 'Victor on Ice,' a show about Victor re-learning the value of doing one thing at a time?

Roll credits!

How sweet!

The serendipity that is cartoon-world.  "I want to coach a skater from another country while also competing for my own country and you can't stop me because I'm animated!"

or

"I want to do a pair skate with my coach for my exhibition.  Know why?  Because the writers say I can!!  Ha!"

Anyway, this is romantic AF.

Cut to this adorbs face...

Running towards this one, here.

And yeah. WE'D BETTER.  Because their story isn’t over!

 The End!

If you managed to get through my all streams of consciousness, full of bad screencaps and even worse grammar, then I humbly and sincerely thank you!  I enjoyed doing it and hope you enjoyed reading it.  

#Yuri on ice #Yuri!!! on Ice #YOI #yoi rewatch #yuri katsuki #Yuri Plisetsky #victor nikiforov #jj leroy #isabella yang #otabek altin #christophe giacometti #phichit chulanont #celestino cialdini #yakov feltsman #emil nekola #michele crispino #sarah crispino #mila babicheva #mari katsuki #minako okukawa #hiroko katsuki #toshiya katsuki #yuko nishigori #takeshi nishigori #spoilers #makkachin #axl #lutz #loop #and all the rest

[kaleidoscopeheartache]

SEVEN DEADLY SINS

Sin 1: Lust

1. Who was the last person you checked out? Did they check you out too?

Does bumble count? I’m scrolling through this guy name Brad’s profile right now because we matched. Lol.

2. Who was the last person you desired, but they didn’t feel the same?

Like literally? The last person I wanted was my Brad, like 20 seconds ago.

3. Ever cheated on a significant other? If so, have you learned from it?

Yep. It fucking blows. Don’t do it.

4. Do you watch porn?

Sometimes. I tune out pretty quickly though. Or I skip to the parts where it’s not like violent or weird.

5. Do you masturbate?

Yep.

6. Best physical features on your preferred sex?

Backs. Good facial hair. Eyes. Collarbones.

7. Who are some celebrities that you think are totally hot?

Chris Evans. Michael B. Jordan. Liam Hemsworth. Idk plenty. I don’t think about them that much because they’re so out of reach lol.

8. Did you ever lust after a best friend’s significant other? How did it turn out?

Not a BEST friend’s, but a friend’s. I ended up dating someone else. They broke up eventually but I stopped paying attention.

9. When was the last time you had sex?

A little over a week ago? Before this stint though it had been literally years.

10. Ever pursued someone, even though they were taken?

No. I just liked them from afar.

Sin 2: Gluttony

1. When did you last eat at a restaurant? What restaurant was it?

Like sitting down? Chili’s, a few days ago with Shannon.

2. When did you last have fast food? Where did you get it?

Chick-fil-a. In my car today. Classic nugs and a sweet tea. I ate too fast.

3. What was the biggest meal you had all day?

See #2.

4. Do you have too many clothes? How often do you go shopping?

Jesus Christ yes. I use shopping as an emotional crutch for other holes in my life. I need to purge so much shit.

5. What’s something you have a LOT of?

Clothes. Shoes. Nail polish. Pens and markers. Books. Regrets 😂

6. Do you eat a lot?

I eat in like weird intervals. I won’t eat all day and then forget that I’m hungry and then I’ll overeat junk at night. It’s bad.

7. What was the last thing you splurged (spent a lot of money) on?

I was about to buy running shoes but they didn’t have the ones I wanted in my size. I probably would’ve gotten a different pair if Anna didn’t convince me not to.

8. What do you spend most of your money on (besides bills and anything necessary like that)?

Clothes I guess. Maybe restaurants?

9. Last time you ate candy? What was it?

I guess whenever I had some of the chocolate from my stocking.

10. Last thing you ate too much of?

Muddy buddies this morning probably. No reason for that.

Sin 3: Greed

1. Do you share things? How often?

Share what like things? Or thoughts? Idk I’m fairly generous with people I like.

2. Someone asks you for a piece of your cookie. You break it in half, but the pieces aren’t equal. Who gets the bigger piece?

I let them pick.

3. When you see change on the ground, do you pick it up?

Depends on where it is.

4. How often do you lend money to people?

I don’t get asked often. Venmo makes things pretty convenient these days.

5. Do you loooove money?

I told my mother I was a slave to capitalism this morning so I’d venture yes.

6. If someone offers to pay for you, do you decline or readily accept?

If it’s a date and he seems to have his shit together, then I’m fine. I don’t like getting paid for all the time though. Not a date, I���ll question and probably fight it.

7. Which of your friends is the wealthiest?

Anny. Easily. Bitch gets to fly on this fancy airline to Australia all the time.

8. Would you take a high-paying job that you didn’t really like just for the money and benefits?

Depends on how high paying. If like double my current salary, then yeah. At least for a little so I can pay down some of my debt 😂

9. Ever stole from anyone? What about stole from a store? What happened?

Sometimes I “forget” to scan things at the Target self checkout. Nothing’s ever happened.

10. Do you ever have enough money?

Like in comparison to so much of America, yes absolutely. I do have student debt and regular debt, and I’m living paycheck to paycheck. But I live well. So.

Sin 4: Sloth

1. Last thing you procrastinated on?

Velocity QA.

2. When you’re at a strip mall and the next store you want to go to is at the other side, do you drive over there instead of take a short walk?

I usually just walk.

3. What’s a typical day off of school and/or work like for you?

Sleep in, probably work out at some point if I’m purposely taking off, watch YouTube, probably play Dead by Daylight. Maybe walk Teddy. Hopefully nothing else.

4. What’s one talent you have that you don’t really work on, even though you have the ability to be good at it?

Uhhh I mean I’m a good singer but I don’t do anything with it anymore.

5. How many hours of television do you watch a day?

Like actual tv very little. I put on YT most of the time these days when I get home until I go to bed.

6. What about the amount of time you spend on the internet a day?

I’m almost always on my phone just poking around the web. All day.

7. How many hours of sleep do you get a day? Do you sleep in late?

I don’t typically sleep in that much, though some of these weekends I’ve really taken advantage. I’m usually in bed around midnight and get up around 7:30ish if I’m not working out in the morning.

8. Do you drive to places that are less than three blocks away?

Nah my neighborhood is quite walkable.

9. When was the last time you exercised?

Today. Bout to get up in 7 hours to run 7 miles lolol.

10. Ever copied and pasted your homework from a website on the internet?

Probably though I definitely tried to make it look at least a little more like mine.

Sin 5: Wrath

1. If you could kill one person and get away with it, would you do it?

Like how would I have to kill them though? Like if I could somehow poison Donald Trump from afar I totally would.

2. Is there anyone you honestly and truly can say that you hate?

Yeah dude have you seen some of the assholes in DC lately?

3. Is there anyone you want revenge on, whether you want to get them back big-time or just play a little prank on them for hurting your feelings?

Yep. I would love for my old friends to feel ashamed and embarrassed about being total dicks to me. They deserve a comeuppance.

4. Are you fighting with any friends right now? Why?

Fighting? No.

5. Last time you were really angry? What happened?

James and I stopped talking yesterday but that’s only partially because I was angry. Partially it was him being a coward so 🤷🏽‍♀️

6. When you’re angry, what do you do to calm yourself down?

I text people for feedback. I vent. I sometimes raise my voice.

7. “Hate is just the fear of loving someone.” true or false?

Psh. Love and hate are both passionate emotions but I don’t think they’re that similar. Love involves respect.

8. What’s the best revenge you ever got on someone?

I haven’t actually gotten revenge, unless you count I Told You Sos, in which case I’ve had plenty. I have good instincts.

9. Was there any hard feelings after your last break-up? On whose end was it on?

Actual last relationship was Austin. He technically broke up with me, but then we had a non-commital thing for months afterwards because we were a good match in bed. There were hard feelings because he was a selfish asshole in the end.

10. Ever been cheated on? How did that make you feel?

Not that I know of? Though late-stage Austin definitely felt like it when he was hooking up with other people and we were still sometimes together. Shitty feeling. It’s really just bad optics, the person is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Just come clean that you don’t want them anymore.

Sin 6: Envy

1. Is there anyone you’re jealous of? Name a person and tell us why.

I am an extremely envious person. Currently I’m most jealous of Toni, because she’s engaged to my Brad. I am neither engaged nor with him.

2. List three physical features some other people have that you’re envious of (no need to get specific and name people; you can just say something like “brown eyes” or “having perfect eyebrows”).

A symmetrical smile. A flat stomach. Thinner legs.

3. List three personality features that other people have that you’re envious of.

Care-free. Charismatic. Subtle.

4. Are you a jealous significant other?

Yes.

5. Could you date someone who was really jealous?

Some jealousy is healthy but it’s obvious when it’s too much.

6. What celebrity’s looks do you envy the most?

Eh? Idk maybe Janelle Monaé? She’s like a robot she’s so pretty.

7. Do you think anyone is envious of you? In your opinion, what characteristics (physical and mental) do you possess that you think someone might be envious of?

Probably. Everyone thinks the grass is greener. I have really long eyelashes. I am very passionate and confident in my abilities.

8. What are a few things you wish you were good at?

Being upfront about what I need from people. Drawing. Letting things go.

9. Did you ever date someone, break up, and then see them dating someone very attractive a few days later? Were you jealous of that person?

Yep. It’s called high school.

10. When looking at a love interest’s exes, do you often find yourself jealous of their good-looking exes?

Sure. If they dated someone totally hot and now they’re with me I get confused. I’m quirky and cute, not hot. What are you tryna pull homie

Sin 7: Pride

1. What’s something you brag about a lot (be honest–we all brag sometimes)?

I work a lot. I have a very cute dog.

2. What physical features do you take the most pride in?

Eyelashes!

3. Are you satisfied with what you have?

Mmmmmostly.

4. Be honest… when someone is telling you something, do you often change the subject so it’s about you and your accomplishments instead?

Lol no I’m not a fucking narcissist.

5. Do you like talking about your achievements?

Eh not really. I like when people acknowledge them but I don’t like bringing them up myself.

6. Do your parents tend to brag about how well you came out?

Idk. They’re not really the bragging type. I’m doing pretty well.

7. Do you strive to be better than others? Do you think competing with others is healthy?

Yes. I’m very competitive. I think it’s a good thing, it pushes you to be a better you. Mostly. Just don’t go overboard.

8. What do you do better than most people?

Project manage. Sing.

9. Do you believe in taking pride in things you can’t control (ex. being proud of your heritage, being proud of your skin color, being proud of your natural artistic ability)?

Yeah for sure. There’s so much culture to celebrate it’d be a waste not to lift it up.

10. Who are you competing with right now (it could be anything–classmates for a grade, co-workers for a position, other girl for a guy, etc.)?

I am apparently competing with this chick Kiffen for a chance at dating James. Though I don’t think she knows that. I don’t even remember if that’s her name that’s just what’s in my head.

#idk I felt like doing a survey and being really real #survey

[ecotone99]

[HR] Somewhere in the South Pacific

The humid air of the South Pacific is causing me to sweat through my clothes on this warm summer night and our boat lies still on the strangely calm water. In any other circumstance this would be an ideal situation. But as I sit writing this letter, my two best friends lay motionless on the floor. Chris on his stomach on the deck of the boat in a pool of his own blood. His blood has stopped gushing out now, but it doesn’t matter anymore I suppose, he’s dead and so will I be soon.

The moon shines a pale light on Mike’s lifeless eyes as they stare back at me from the bottom of the stairs, as if the knife sticking out of his stomach isn’t enough of a reminder of what I’ve done. This shitty candle is the only thing I’ve got to see what I’m writing. We’re too far out for anyone to find us, I haven’t seen another boat since we left the harbor. I’m not sure I’d want anyone to find me like this anyway. It’s not like they’d believe me about what happened. Two dead bodies, blood everywhere and me sat here it’s obvious what it looks like. Whoever does eventually find me will put this down to cabin fever, I can already picture the headline.

“Deranged lunatic goes crazy on boat and kills his friends” That’s why I’m writing this down, in the hopes that someone finds it and people know the truth.

Here comes the fucking shaking and screeching again, rocking the boat. It’s almost nonstop now. Whatever that thing is it must know that I don’t have a lot of time left and wants to make my last hours as miserable as possible. I should start from the beginning…

We had always wanted to sail out into the middle of the ocean, just us and no one else where we could chill for a few days. We wanted to hang out, play cards, drink beer, swim in the ocean, that kind of thing. Chris’ grandfather had recently passed away and left him a hefty amount of money which was what finally gave us the inspiration to say, ‘fuck it’ and go on this trip in the first place. We’d arranged to hire a small yacht in Peru from a harbor in Lima, we had enough food and water for a few days plus we had a few crates of beer to take with us too. The plan was to sail out as far as we could go with the fuel that we had, leaving enough to get us back.

The morning of the trip I saw a book on Mike’s nightstand. It read “Animals of the South Pacific” and I wanted to roll my eyes, but I couldn’t help but find a smile making its way across my face. He had a childlike sense of wonder about him for some things and I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. I flipped through the pages looking at the different entries. Penguins, killer whales, manta rays and then I found that he had marked the page with the giant squid on it and this made me uneasy. I had heard about how big those things can get and suddenly my mind started racing.

“What if one drags the boat into the water?” “If there are squid that big God knows what else there could be out there” I caught myself asking before I shut the book. I was being stupid. I laughed at the thought that I was worried about a fucking sea monster. Everything would be fine.

Mike and I stood at the front of the boat while Chris sailed it from up above. Around the back of it was a small ladder which led to what I assume was a gas pedal and a steering wheel. Underneath that was a lounge type area with a kitchen and a table and chairs. Three separate single were behind the kitchen

The water looked beautiful. It was the kind of blue you saw in a cartoon that you didn’t think possible in real life but here it was, clear as day. The sun beat down on my head and I was wondering if there was even any point to these crappy sunglasses that I bought the day before. We were about an hour off the coast at this point and Mike and I stood at opposite ends of the boat, peering into the water trying to get a look at anything we could see. We were going fast, and I could still make out different types of fish, but I didn’t recognize them. When I spied a turtle, I called Mike over to come and look. Mike put his hand in the water but before long Chris called out

“Mike! Don’t put your hand in the water man” Mike’s hand recoiled liked it was boiling. Chris could be bossy sometimes, but he had sailed boats like these before, so we weren’t gonna argue with him on this trip. We were still watching the turtle swim away when that feeling that something was off slowly crept its way back into my head.

I felt like something was watching me. You know that feeling of paranoia you sometimes get for no real reason. I whirled around, not expecting to see anything in particular, but something. Nothing. Just the other side of the boat and the ocean. That familiar cool blue that I had reveled in looking at earlier today took on a sinister unknown quality now. I was starting to get a queasy feeling in my stomach, so I decided to get a beer to try and clear my head. I felt the boat slowly come to a stop so I went back upstairs to see what was going on.

“Alex!” Chris called down to me from upstairs as I was making my way back to where I was. He had his arms outstretched in a sort of victory pose.

“What do you think man?” I looked up at him and he turned around and put his hands on his hips, regarding the view. I took a look myself. Nothing but water as far as I could see.

“Awesome!” I called back. By now the feeling of unease was gone again. Mike was running to get his swim shorts on

“No running!” Chris yelled. But I could see in the way that he was hurrying down the stairs and the stupid grin on his face that he was about to do the same. After I had finished my beer, I joined them in the ocean.

We swam in the water for quite a while. There was one snorkel between us so we took it in turns trying to see what we could find. A turtle here and there, a whale breached the surface about a hundred yards from the boat, it was amazing. We sometimes saw schools of fish off in the distance, but they never came close to us. On my last turn with the snorkel something compelled me to look straight down.

We were too far out to see the ocean floor, so I was only greeted by blue. I stared into the abyss for a while, not moving, barely thinking. I was in a trance. The sun was breaking through the surface, and light danced around me in beams as the water moved. I don’t know how long I’d been staring into the vast unknown when I saw it. A giant mass, miles beneath me moved at a rapid pace. It was huge. A lot Bigger than the boat and infinitely bigger than me. It was so far down I could only make out it’s oval like shape as it glided through the water effortlessly. It would have been little more than a shadow and I would have written it off if not for its size. I felt an icy hand seize my shoulder and I thrashed to get away from it. I fought to pull the snorkel from my face but when I readjusted myself, I only saw Chris next to me in the water.

“Dude what the fuck was that?” He asked me.

“You saw it to?” I said, answering his question with another.

“What? I’m talking about you flailing around like that. You almost hit me.” He looked at me nervously, but a smile was returning to his face. I stopped for a second, not wanting to seem crazy I answered.

“Sorry man, I must have got a little distracted”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s my turn with the snorkel anyway” He held out his hand, so I gave it to him. Mike gave me a worried look but before long it was his turn with the snorkel again, then I was the last thing on his mind. I looked down again but there was no sign of what I had just witnessed so I thought I must have imagined it. I got back on the boat and caught some insults from Chris and Mike, but they joined me soon after.

It was the early evening and after we had dried off and had some dinner Chris and I played cards inside while Mike sat with a chair on the deck, trying to get a tan I assumed.

“4?” I asked

“Go fish. 8?” He asked as I picked up a card from the pile.

“Go fish. 5?” Back to me.

We quickly realized go fish is a terrible game to play with only 2 people. The smell from the burgers we had earlier lingered inside the boat in a way that warmed me. We were all a few beers in by this point and the day felt like a lazy Sunday afternoon. The sun was on its way down for the day and the sky around it had turned a strangely calming orange. I did quite fancy watching it go down with Mike. When we were outside earlier the wind was slow and warm as it brushed my legs and I wanted to feel that again.

Before I could suggest it the boat suddenly started to rumble. We were rocking from side to side, our beer bottles fell and spilled all over before I grabbed them. I shot Chris a worried look to find him giving me the same one back. We both stood up to go outside and see what was going on when, as quickly as it had come, the shaking slowed and by the time we got to Mike it had subsided completely.

“What the fuck?” I heard Chris mutter under his breath. Mike was stood up, his beer knocked over spilling as it rolled across the deck. The chair he had brought with him lay on its side. Mike stood completely still, back to us, staring at the enormous sun as it slowly sank beneath the horizon. His unbuttoned shirt flapped lightly in the wind like a flag at half-mast.

“Mike?” Chris called out. No answer.

“MIKE!” Chris tried again but again Mike did not waver.

Chris walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Mike turned around quickly like a startled animal.

“Are you okay man?” Chris asked him. I could hear the concern in his voice. I was worried about him too but all I could do was stop and stare. Chris was always the one to take control in these situations. Mike hadn’t answered when Chris spoke again.

“What the hell just happened?” Chris looked back at me more worry in his face now.

“Alex grab him some water” I left to go to the kitchen with Chris following me as we heard Mike let out a murmur. It was barely a whisper, yet we heard him still.

“I saw her” Mike said. We stopped and turned to look back at him. My blood ran cold when I heard that, and I could feel my heart getting faster until it was beating out of my chest.

“Saw who? Who’s her?” Chris asked him. Mike was turned around to face us now, his eyes never averting, like he was looking at nothing.

“She spoke to me. Came up from the water and spoke to me.” He was louder now. Still quiet but louder than he was. Chris led Mike by the hand to his room and Mike followed still letting out the odd sentence about ‘her’.

“I know what she wants me to do” I heard him say as he descended the stairs. I could only stare in disbelief.

“Alright, I’ve put him to bed” I heard Chris say and I snapped my head around to see him coming back outside. I must have lost track of time out there because the sun was gone by now and the sky was getting darker. My mind was racing.

“What the hell was he talking about?” I asked him.

“I have no idea. He didn’t say anything else after I took him in” Chris answered.

“Look man… I… I’m getting a little freaked out about this. Maybe we should head back early in the morning.” I suggested. Chris seemed to think on it for a second.

“Why don’t we see how he is in the morning? If he’s still acting weird then we’ll go back, if he’s OK, we’ll stay for the whole trip. I made him drink some water and he fell asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. He was probably just tired.” I begrudgingly agreed. I didn’t want to cut the trip short either, we had been looking forward to this for a long time.

“I’m gonna call it a night man.” Chris said

“Yeah… Yeah me too.” It had been a long day and I was extremely tired. Before I went inside, I took one last look out at the sea, when the wind started to get stronger. That thing I had seen in the water was at the front of my mind again. Had it come up to the surface? Is that what Mike saw out here? I tried to quell the thought. There was no point getting paranoid now, even if Chris wanted to, we couldn’t leave until morning. I hoped that we’d have to take Mike back and we could get away from here. I headed to my room and got in bed. Sleep came easy that night.

The next day I woke up before the others and waited anxiously in the kitchen for the others to get up. My stomach felt like a bottomless pit.

“Morning Alex” I heard Mike say, casually strolling into the kitchen. He started to make himself a cup of coffee like nothing had even happened. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“Hey man. What was all that about last night?” I asked him.

“What do you mean? He answered, turning around to face me, eyebrows moving into a confused expression. I looked at him from my chair for a second.

“The shaking on the boat? You staring off into nothing? Your crazy rambling?” My questions came one after the other not giving him time to respond.

“Woah slow down. What are you talking about? I don’t remember any of this.” He looked perplexed now, like I was playing a joke on him or something.

“Really? You don’t remember anything?” I asked once more.

“No? I figured we just got wasted and went to bed. I’m gonna sit outside, you coming?”

“Uh yeah… I’ll be out in a minute” He went outside without saying another word. I pondered on the thought that maybe Mike was wasted, he always was the worst drinker out of all of us. But he didn’t seem drunk when we found him out there. He wasn’t himself. When I told Chris, he didn’t seem worried. He agreed that Mike had one too many beers and gone a little weird. Chris being so calm about the situation eased my mind.

The rest of that day went by without incident. We ate, played cards, played some dumb drinking games, sat out on the deck just doing nothing. I had forgotten about what I saw in the water yesterday and even went swimming with the guys. We didn’t see any wildlife that day. The later it became the less I worried about Mike. He was joking, laughing with us. Back to normal. I went to bed that night slightly drunk and feeling the best I had in a while.

I awoke in the night to hear shouting coming from the deck. I quickly got dressed and hurried out to find Chris shouting at Mike, and he looked pretty pissed off.

“What the hell’s going on out here?” I asked, irritated at being woken up by their shouting. Mike did nothing but stare at the floor, why was he holding a wrench? I asked myself. Chris turned around to answer me. His face was only illuminated by the deck light and the moon, but I could still see the anger in his eyes.

“This moron used up the rest of our fuel, so we’re fucked! And even if we did have any, I’ve got no fucking idea where we are!” He was pacing now, running his hands through his hair. When he stopped, he was between me and Mike again. He pondered for a second, then looked at me.

“I need to get the flare gun” He decided. But before he’d even took a step the wrench Mike was holding had collided with the side of his head. I heard a sickening crunch as Chris fell at our feet, twitching. I didn’t have time to react before Mike swung down on his head again. Chris lay still after a few more hits. What remained of Chris’ head did not resemble a head at all. It had been turned into a pile of blood, bone, brain and hair. I felt like I was going to vomit.

“That should do it” Mike muttered to himself. I was paralyzed by fear. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run but to where? My brain screamed at me to do something, but my legs stayed planted. My eyes never left Chris’ body. Hot tears stung my eyes and ran down my face as Mike slowly got closer to me. He leaned in close and whispered right in my ear.

“This is exactly where she wants us to be. Now we wait. We’re not going anywhere.” He paused for what felt like an hour when he finally continued.

“Count yourself lucky she wants us both.” He stepped over Chris and went back inside. When I knew he was gone I got to my knees and fell on Chris’s body crying. I wept over him for hours. After a while I heard Mike going to up to where the steering wheel was. Blood still dripped from the wrench in his right hand. He had the flare gun in his left. He studied it for a moment, before tossing it into the water, expression never changing. He glanced down at me and held my gaze for a second, before turning to look the other way.

I sat on my bed not knowing what to do. I couldn’t get the image of Chris twitching and the following hits out of my mind. I had scrubbed at my hands in the bathroom for God knows how long but I had to get the blood off them. Tears fell from my face and into the sink to be washed away with the blood. I got changed out of my clothes and hid them away. I knew Mike was still outside, waiting for whatever had compelled him to do all of this.

The thought of killing him flashed in my mind and for a moment I was disgusted with myself. But then I considered it again. The hopelessness of my situation began to dawn on me. There wasn’t much food or water, there was little chance of anyone finding us out here. Hell, I didn’t even know what here was. Chris might have been able to find out, but he was gone, and Mike had gone crazy. If it was just me, then I could ration the food and water long enough for someone to find me out here. I was going to have to kill Mike and fast, before he started eating the only food left on the boat.

I quietly as I could I crept into the kitchen. The deck of cards sat on the table and I was reminded of how good and simple things had been a couple of days prior. I just wanted to sit down and cry, but I knew I didn’t have time for that. Wiping away another tear I grabbed the sharpest knife I could find from the kitchen draw. I kicked over a chair making as much noise as I could to try and lure him down. I heard him hurrying around to the top of the stairs, so I hid to the right of the bottom step. He slowed when he got to the stairs. My heart was racing, it’s a wonder he couldn’t hear it. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, but I tried to stay as quiet as I could, slowing my breaths and staying perfectly still.

I heard his bare feet touch the floor and he slowly descended, step by step. One by one I counted. When I saw his toes poking out from the bottom step, I waited for him to move for the floor. As soon as he did, I moved quickly as I could. I put my hand on his shoulder, turning to face him. I thrust the knife into his stomach as hard as my arms would allow. His eyes were wide now as he looked at me. I pulled the knife out and I drove it back in again. I left it in this time. I could feel him getting weaker in my arms and the blood leaking through my clothes. He looked me dead in the eyes and tried to get some words out. He could only cough blood on to my face, then it flowed out and dripped down his chin.

I lay him down on the stairs, closed my eyes and took a step back. I didn’t stop recoiling until I hit the back wall and then I sank to the floor. When I opened my eyes, Mike lay lifeless on the stairs. Everything was drenched in a red that made me vomit on the floor. The blood still poured from Mike and it was quickly spreading to the rest of the floor. His lifeless eyes had drifted towards the table. I must have passed out then.

When I woke up the boat was shaking again. The same shaking as when Chris and I found Mike in a trance outside. I did not know how long I had been unconscious for, but it was night by this point. The shaking started to get more violent and I heard what sounded like a cry of pain or sadness. Like it was for Mike. That terrible shriek rang through the boat getting louder and louder until it was deafening. I curled up into the fetal position covering my ears and scrunching up my face to cover my eyes. It went on for an eternity before it let up.

I stayed cowering for a good few minutes after it stopped. When I opened my eyes and stood up the boat was in disarray. The table and chairs were strewn about and the empty beer bottles from the previous days had scattered on the floor. Mike’s body somehow remained in the same position as before but that was the least of my concern at this point. I stepped over him, up the stairs and out on to the deck. Chris’ blood had dried by now, I noticed. I frantically looked around for what had caused the shaking and the noise, but I was only greeted by the reflection of the moon as it rocked lazily in the water. I stood for a while hoping the thing might come back and I can get a look at it. This was the ‘her’ that had driven Mike insane there was no doubt in my mind of that. After about an hour of waiting I conceded and went back inside.

That was 6 days ago. I haven’t had the heart to move Chris or Mike’s bodies so there they remain in the position they died in. Food and water ran out 3 days ago and it is taking all my strength to finish this letter. Power has been out for 4 days so I’m writing by candlelight. That God-awful screeching has only gotten more frequent but each time I go out there I cannot see her. I suppose I’m used to it now given how long it’s been going on. It’s constant at this point.

Wait. It stopped. I just heard a splashing of water outside. Maybe the starvation and dehydration are making me hallucinate or maybe, the thing that drove my friend to madness is finally ready for me to see her. Maybe it’ll do the same to me. I’m going to die anyway I might as well have a look. I’ll drag myself up those stairs just to get a glimpse of her. If anyone find this letter, know that she lurks in the deepest reaches of our ocean, preying on the unfortunate, the lost, the vulnerable. I wonder what she looks like. I guess I’m about to find out.

submitted by /u/SKRRRR_123 [link] [comments] via Blogger http://bit.ly/2F0Gte4

#Blogger #Story

[dorothydelgadillo]

3 Lessons to Learn from the Slack Rebranding Controversy

“Dude, I ‘Slacked’ that to you earlier.”

Sound familiar? Unless you are still woefully morning the loss of AIM, you’re likely using Slack at work.

Having launched in 2013, Slack is a collaboration hub for work. Allowing people to work together more efficiently by keeping conversations, files, and to-do lists in a single app that operates across desktop and mobile.

We use it here at IMPACT, and quite frankly, our remote culture depends on it.

At the end of January, Slack introduced a major change. Gasp!

They decided to redesign their logo, and users around the globe were less than satisfied with the results.

I mean really, who actually likes change?

But, in most cases, the reactions went beyond not liking a little change.

There were the comparisons:

Clippy how you have changed. #slacklogo #slackbot #clippy pic.twitter.com/ra5vCQ5OOr

— Nate Schloesser (@nateschloesser) January 17, 2019

We all love ducks! 🐣🐥🦆 #slacklogo #slack pic.twitter.com/IhVlkyTg9a

— Dan (@Betraydan) January 17, 2019

wow, love the new slack logo pic.twitter.com/s0pf0AHsju

— Chris Warriner (@King_Darian) March 1, 2019

And then, the really bad comparisons:

... pic.twitter.com/cQAOH37RE7

— Christian Dakota (@codydohertyy) January 16, 2019

Yeah...that’s a little rough. But, as it goes with logo design, once you see it, you often can’t unsee it.

Finally, there were the unoriginal accusations:

Let’s play that fun new game: “Is it the new Slack logo or a random medical group?”#branding #slack #logo #design pic.twitter.com/a4RldEJRO1

— Christopher Grande (@chrisgrande) January 16, 2019

@SlackHQ #slacklogo Updated Again 🎉 But now it looks quite familiar 🙃 😄https://t.co/4SipOqCcLA pic.twitter.com/9GDXr8UBu5

— MiniCreo (@MiniCreo_Apps) March 1, 2019

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Personally I love Slack’s fresh, unique, never-been-seen-before logo update… pic.twitter.com/tpFc9PuPGk

— Ryan (@thisisryanon) January 17, 2019

But, to their defense, Slack isn’t the only brand to ever find themselves at the wrong end of the Twittersphere.

Airbnb went through a similar social situation in 2014.

I can't get over @Airbnb's logo looking like a clinic for women's health. pic.twitter.com/fAFbrQ0dYx

— Simone Giertz (@SimoneGiertz) September 21, 2016

As did Uber in 2016.

Aww, Uber killed off its iconic butthole logo. RIP in peace little butt https://t.co/qFkFjWwRQD pic.twitter.com/LBdqacSCwR

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) September 12, 2018

While some of these examples are pretty funny (come on, your 15-year-old self knows they are), others raise serious social and emotional concerns.

It proves the point that everyone can always relate a logo to something.

With that said, there are some key takeaways with Slack’s rebrand that we should all take into consideration next time we find ourselves in the same seat.

1. Have a Reason for the Redesign

This might seem obvious, but trust me when I say it’s not. Sometimes we see clients who are just bored of looking at their logo, and they want someone with creative inclinations to work their magic.

That’s never, ever a good idea.

Slack actually didn't do that. They had practical reasons behind their decision to redesign. In other words, they got this part very, very right.

Excessive Restrictions

Slack knew that their existing logo, though liked, was simply not doing the job they wanted it to.

Their first logo was created before the company launched. It was distinct, fun, and the octothorpe (a fancy name for pound sign or  “hashtag”) mirrored the character users saw when creating a channel.

But, they quickly found that they made it too complicated.

The logo was 11 different colors (holy crap! Can you imagine trying to embroider that, or do any kind of offset printing?!?).  Plus, if it was placed on any color other than white, it looked horrid, failing to contrast.

The logo also had a very specific 18º rotation.

Talk about a brand standards nightmare. I honestly don’t understand how they dealt with it for so many years.

To compensate for these difficulties, Slack developed multiple versions of the logo that worked for very different purposes.

But, this meant that every single version of their app button was different, and, each one was different from the actual foundational logo. What? Kind of defeats the point of having a logo in the first place.

With any type of brand cohesion out the window subsequent designs for the brand suffered. There wasn’t a single, recognizable style that represented Slack.

A redesign seemed like the only solution.

Having recognized and understood the visual mistakes their brand was making, Slack commissioned help from the team at Pentagram, who helped bring their new visual identity to life.

Now, I’m not saying if I endorse the new visual identity, but given the parameters listed above, Pentagram delivered.

Pentagram describes the process in a case study on their website:

“Derived from the original logo and built on a grid, the new octothorpe is comprised of two basic geometric shapes––a speech bubble and lozenge––that can be extracted and used as graphic elements. The speech bubble evokes communication and connectivity, and will form the basis of a system of customized icons, illustrations and motifs with rounded corners that echo the shapes of the logo. The new octothorpe can scale up or down to optimize legibility at various sizes.”

Visual problem = solved. That makes any designer’s heart happy.

The Brand & Company Is Evolving

Every brand goes through evolutions, sometimes those happen naturally as culture and core values progress with the changing environment. Sometimes, these evolutions happen at a specific crossroads.

For Slack, it’s the latter.

Slack is planning a direct IPO in 2019.

Visually, it’s time to stop messing around with 11 troublesome colors on an 18º rotation. It was time to get serious and step up to the plate with a recognizable logomark that can be taken seriously by investors.

When your company goes public, it enters a new tier. Your name becomes known even outside of your users and your logo has to age well.

Did Slack’s hashtag really have a 10-year shelf-life? Or maybe even longer?

Does the new mark have the potential for a 50-year heritage?

While that question has yet to be answered, it is clear that some sort of change was needed.

2. Consider Your Audience

Now, here’s where things start to get a little fuzzy. Slack’s redesign also teaches us a lot about considering your audience during a rebrand.

Yes, the new logo solves a lot of problems Slack was having with their visual identity and, it certainly helps mature the brand in the eyes of investors, but what about its users and prospects?

Here’s where they missed the mark.

Desktop & Mobile Experience

The response from Slack users was HUGE.

All of a sudden, on February 26, they had new icons across their desktops and mobile devices and it was hard to find.

We went from a very bright, argyle patterned app to one that primarily used aubergine with some small colored icons.

I used to have a desktop app that was clearly legible and distinct in my Mac’s dock. After the redesign, it became one that barely stands out unless I have a notification bubble sitting on top.

Even worse, just a few short weeks after the unveiling of the rebrand, Slack decided to switch up its look on mobile, making it difficult to differentiate from apps like Google Photos and iPhoto.

As an avid Slack mobile app user, it’s incredibly frustrating that a once distinctive app is getting lost in my “messengers” folder along with the likes of Google Hangouts and Facebook Messenger.

As it currently stands, these extremely familiar app colors are almost lost on the aubergine background. It blends into the background of my dock, barely noticeable between my Creative Cloud apps. If it weren’t for the notification bubble, I might not even notice it was there.

The jury is out on whether these changes went through user testing groups, but they absolutely should have. At the very least, the implementation of the desktop app design could have better highlighted the new logo.

Unexpected Connotations

So, some of the tweets above were pretty harsh. 

In fact, a number of people were downright offended by the imagery, suggesting that the white space of the new logo resembled a swastika.

Were they wrong? Absolutely not.

Colors and symbols have different meanings in different cultures and contexts and even if you personally do not see it that way, it does not stop others from doing it.

Again, I can’t confirm that Slack didn’t do their due diligence when it came to testing the new logo, but outcomes like this show the importance of doing so.

As a brand, you need to take into account how your symbolism can be perceived by everyone in your audience.  

  As a Designer & Brand, What Can You Do?

It’s 2019.

As a graphic designer placed in charge of visually representing a brand, you have to consider how every angle of your design is representing that brand, and what this imagery could mean in terms of backlash.

Misinformation and harassment are front and center. Gone are the days of keeping your opinions to yourself, tucked away in forums, or on a small personal website.

Slack’s logo launch endured all of it. The good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

Again, part of the strategy for any public facing brand needs to be considering how the imagery associated with that brand (as unintentional as it may be) could be misinterpreted.  No matter how good your intentions, things today can be twisted into something hideous or hateful.

As a designer can you prepare for and control how each individual interprets your work?

Of course not, but you can take some steps to try and prevent it.

Think about submitting your imagery to test panels to essentially rip it apart.

If you want to know what the Twitterverse is going to do with a potentially unsavory mark, test it. At the very least, you can prepare your teams for the potential backlash and plan on how to address these types of opinions.

This test-first mentality can help you stand strong as Slack did, as opposed to a situation like Gap, where they pulled their rebrand in the first week.

3. Pay Attention to Competition & Differentiation

One of the key components of any redesign is the ability to bring originality to a brand.

A logo should be clean, replicable, identifiable, and like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.

At least, that’s the dream.

Unfortunately, reality is a bit more complicated. Hear me out.

One of the biggest areas of backlash Slack endured was their inability to be totally original.

The new logo was compared to medical groups, other tech startups, and some of the most familiar apps on our phones (Google Photos, iPhoto, etc.).

Differentiation is important, but, from a design perspective, the lack of it may have been very intentional.

People are largely attracted to what is familiar. That’s why UX on different websites, for instance, can start to look and feel eerily similar.

But, that’s actually a really good thing.

Users know exactly how to use a familiar site. It lowers friction and makes navigating easier.

Logo design trends in a similar direction.

For example, ever since Apple decided to ditch skeuomorphism for flat design around 2013, the majority of logo and app designs have followed.

In 2019, there is hardly a logo out there that hasn’t been strategically decluttered, simplified, and flattened. Consequently, everyone ends up looking the same, but still different.

I usually sort my app icons by color because it's easier to look at and remember but this is just getting confusing. 🙈🙈 pic.twitter.com/vQatzi9xJA

— Noukka 🐨 (@noukkasigne) February 27, 2019

Is Slack’s logo overly inventive and groundbreaking? You can certainly make the argument that it isn’t and perhaps there should have been more effort to help it be more distinct.

However, it is likely they’ve made the decision to be on trend with their industry.

This conscious decision to blend in might be a good look in terms of a risky investment (and their IPO status), but to users, it’s just as comfortable as the rest of their home screen.

Thinking About A Rebrand?

Do it for the right reasons.

You don’t want to take on a project like this simply because you’re tired of your logo. Make sure you have concrete reasoning for a redesign.

Make sure you are partnering with an agency that understands these reasons and owns them as if they were their own reasons for the project.

That agency should not only be well-versed in design, but aware of the competition and the community that surrounds your brand.

If they have the ability to expect certain backlash or be compared to certain brands, you can own the situation and respond with unflawed reasoning to be able to uphold your decision.

Keep these questions in mind when interviewing an agency for a rebrand:

Why do you want to work with my brand? This company is going to give your brand the biggest makeover it’s ever seen. Do you trust them with scissors and your Rapunzel-length hair? Make them prove it to you.

Can you walk me through your process? Logo design is a highly collaborative process embedded with brand messaging strategy and subjective emotions. Make sure your agency of choice understand how heavily each weighs on the desired outcome and test them on how they get there.

How will you contend for my brand against my competitors? Make sure your agency of choice recognizes your competition’s tactics and understands how to apply them to your goals.

Who will be on my team? For the same reasons as question two, make sure the team pitching you is the same team that will be delivering. You’ll need to be able to trust this team with your brand. Be sure you're comfortable from the start.

What does branding mean to you? This one is tricky. There is no “right” answer here, but instead, one that feels right to you. Hint: There is a wrong answer - a logo.

So, Do You Actually Like the New Slack Logo?

That’s a tough question that’s going to come with a tough answer.

I respect the new Slack logo. As I mentioned above, it solves a very specific set of problems for the brand. In my mind, that’s a really successful redesign.

From a totally subjective, “do I like it” emotional standpoint. Eh, it could have pushed a little further. There was an opportunity to set the trend as opposed to following it. It doesn’t exceed expectations for me -- but it certainly won’t stop me from slackin’.

All images (excluding tweets) via Slack.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/lessons-new-slack-logo-rebranding-controversy

[brendajhensonblog]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199

Click on the video above to watch Episode 199 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. This is Episode 199. It is the 29th of August, 2018. We are here with the full crew as we inch closer to Episode 200, so we’re going to say hello to everyone real quick, and then we’re going to make some good announcements today. We got some cool limited time stuff coming up as well as some things we want to share with you all before we dive into the questions. So real quick, Chris. How are you doing today?

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here. How are you doing?

Adam: Can’t complain. I’m trying out this fancy, new screen in the background. That’s not a green screen. I bought one of those. It’s like a folding shoji screen thing so you guys don’t have to look at my office futon and white boards, and so I did it for you guys, not for me. Hernan, how are you doing?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up? I’m traveling, so connection is not the best, but I’m excited to be here. Yeah. I’m excited for POFU Live. Right now, I’m writing a message on the event, so I’m going to just drop the link over there. If you guys want to join, that’s going to be epic.

Adam: Nice. Yeah, so if you’re watching live, you can check it out, if not, we’ll include that in the show notes, and tickets are selling, so if you’re thinking about going or you want to know more, now is a very good time to go check that out. We are capping it at 25 max. I think we’re halfway there and so grab you a ticket while you can. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: Working on POFU, man. You guys saw it. You guys saw it. You know what I’m working on. It never stops. It never stops. Manipulation never stops. Those of you who are not manipulating, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Adam: Oops, sorry. I was muted. I was like, “Man, strong start to Hump Day Hangouts today, but for real.” That’s also the theme of … That’s why we’re calling it POFU Live. Right? That’s our live event and talking about ourselves, as well as the people who are attending how we can help each other get to that point where you get to choose what you want to do, either with your time, your projects, your clients. Bradley, how are you doing, man?

Bradley: Great, man. Happy to be here. Got a lot of exciting stuff cooking up right now. Gearing up for POFU Live. I got a couple of things that I’m actually developing specifically for that, and some stuff that I’ve been developing. I started talking about in the Mastermind a couple of weeks ago, and actually did the newsletter entry for the newsletter that gets mailed out in a week or so specifically addressing that, and then we had the Mastermind webinar last, or excuse me, Thursday, and I went into a little bit more detail, and I’ve just been like neck deep in this new process that I’m developing. It’s just absolutely crushing it for sniping Maps pack rankings, like within 24 hours. It’s crazy. I’m three for three in the last month, and I actually just ordered another verified GMB profile now to see if I can be four for four.

If that’s the case, which, again, I’m working on a process right now to be able to scale this. Client work is great, but if you can develop your own assets, that’s even better, and so that’s something I’m working on inside of the Mastermind, and really excited about it, and looking forward to sharing that at POFU Live.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Well, if you’re just watching this, and this is the first time watching or maybe you’ve just been to a few, first of all, thanks for checking us out on the Hump Day Hangouts. We’re here every Wednesday and if you haven’t grabbed it, yet, the battle plan is the best place to start. We get asked a lot. “Hey, I’m new to Semantic Mastery. I just started watching you guys’ videos or I came across this or that. What should I do first?” The battle plan is the place to start. There will be a link below where you can check that out. If you’re ready to kick things up a notch, we do have the Mastermind and, again, the link is there for you to take a look at that. I’m not going to go into the details here, but it’s the place to be if you’re into local digital marketing and you want to take things up a few notches.

Now, one thing we did want to talk about briefly today. This is actually a service of ours that I’ve used because we haven’t actually offered this outside of testing and getting the process set up, and this is keyword research that Marco spearheaded in getting this set up. Marco, do you want to talk about this real quick and let people know what we’re going to be sharing?

Marco: Yeah, sure. How this started out is, of course, it was in RYS Academy because we needed to give people an opportunity to have keyword research. You have to know your market. You have to know your niche. You have to know what you’re getting into. We started doing it Semantic Mastery style. We would do Google Trends, as Bradley recommends, and then we would do AdWords, of course, the keyword tool, and then we would do Power Suggest Pro. We would just come up with thousands of keywords to target. We could have left it at that because that’s fabulous, but then we said, “That’s not enough. If we’re going to offer something that’s keyword research, it needs to be more comprehensive.” So we added Ubersuggest, which that wasn’t enough, so we went into Answer the Public, and that wasn’t enough.

We started using the methods taught in Jeffrey Smith’s SEO Bootcamp and, by the way, Jeffery Smith is the best. If you guys don’t have SEO Bootcamp, you’re missing out. Ultimate SEO Bootcamp it is like the ultimate when it comes to going into and exploring your competition, your niche, but the keyword research is still a little bit short. It’s fabulous, but it doesn’t include everything that we’ve talked about. Not only that, we incorporated some of the stuff that’s taught in Network Empires. What is it? Ultimate Keyword Research Tool, and I said, “We could have left it at that.” Right? But we actually go and we classify the keywords, and then we set them up in silos.

Then all you have to do is go in and start plugging in the keywords, and using them, and developing content. The only thing that we will not do is content, of course, because nobody knows the niche better than the person that’s working in it. Right? We don’t know every niche, but we can research every niche, and dig up the keywords, and I’m looking at a tab. We ended up, I don’t know, like 10 tabs at the class. Well, we call it the classification tab, and I scrolled down thousands and thousands of keywords. It’s just ridiculous the amount of keywords that you get. I haven’t seen anything that’s as comprehensive, and all encompassing, as our keyword research, so that’s what you get when you order keyword research from us. Right? We either do things, we go all the way. We kill it or we just don’t do it. We don’t do shit half-assed, man.

Adam: I’ve just got to say this real quick. This is something we’re going to start offering through MGYB. That’s you, which is a store where you can … We’re going to talk about a little bit more briefly because we got a few things we want to share with everyone, but this is something. Like I said, we haven’t offered before. I meant it. I’ve used it. We’re using it for an internal site we’re putting together, as well as some other projects, and we wanted to start offering it. We’re going to just offer this to three people. It’s going to be $97, and Marco, roughly, what’s the turnaround time so we can give people kind of a time range, do you think?

Marco: It’ll be anywhere from three to five days.

Adam: Okay. So done by next week. I would say safely done by next week sometime.

Marco: Yeah.

Adam: This is going to be killer for a bunch of applications, so this is definitely a deal. Obviously, we’re offering it for 97 bucks right now to three people, so I’m going to put that on the page, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and then, eventually, it’ll be in the store available for purchase.

Marco: That’s about half price of what it’s actually going to cost.

Adam: Around there? All right, and then the other awesome thing we wanted to share with everybody was for the GMB verifications. So we’re offering 25 bucks off of these and I’ve got a coupon code I’m going to post, and I’ve used the keyword research. I haven’t used the GMB verifications. Marco or Bradley, do you guys want to tell them anything about this?

Bradley: Yeah. It’s funny, but I just ordered my first one today, believe it or not, because I was testing the sniping method that I’ve been developing just using P.O. boxes, like I always have and it’s just because old habits die hard, but I actually just placed my first order for GMB Verified today in part because it prevents me or now I don’t have to spend the time to go drive to a P.O. or, excuse me, a post office and fill out the paperwork, pick up the keys, and then drive back a week later after I’ve requested the verification card to pick it up, which sometimes, probably about 30 or 40% of the time, the card isn’t there when I drive back the second time, so I got to drive back a third time, and that uses a lot of time, and that’s okay.

I mean, it’s not so bad when it’s somewhat local, but when you got an hour drive in one direction to go pick something up and it’s not there, that’s shitty. Not only that, but what’s your time worth, right? So we have to verify GMB services now where you can buy them, basically, and we’ll create it, and verify it for you. It’s guaranteed for 60 days. Marco and I were talking a couple of days ago about this new method that I’ve been developing and he was like, “Dude, just use ours.” I was like, “Yeah. I guess I could.” I ordered my first one today. I’m really anxious to see how soon it comes back.

Marco: It’ll take two to five days to come back. It depends on just how difficult the niche is to get verified. If it’s easy, sometimes it’s overnight. I mean, we do have the express service at an additional cost. You get it back in 24 hours. I’ve ordered them. I mean, I have. I don’t know. I don’t keep track, but I know that it’s over 10, and they’re all sticking. They’re all working really well. We’re actually doing some super secret squirrel stuff to them that we’re not ready to share right now until all of the data comes back, until we have proof of concept, of course, and until we can replicate. That’s why all of this POFU, this ultimate POFU that I’ve been talking about, I can’t really say, “Guys, it’s working really well.”

We’ve already tested it. It’s in beta testing and it’s just going to get developed out from there. Once we have all the data and we can show you just how much money you can make, I said it before. Right? With RYS Academy, RYS Academy Reloaded we said we were going to turn the SEO world on its ear. We said it would Google My Business Pro. No rankings. No SEO, but you get leads. Now, let me do it again. We’re going to turn the SEO world on its fucking ear, and what I love about this and what keeps me going, guys, because I’m 55. I just turned 55, so every day that I get up it’s like, “Why are you doing this? Why do you keep doing?” It’s just I have, I don’t know, a magnificent obsession with getting over on Google.

That’s mine. That’s my thing. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do and I get up every morning with that mindset. “Today, I’m going to do something more to get over on Google,” and then every day I work on that and more, and more. Of course, that often equates into money. Oftentimes, it equates into nothing. It goes in the crapper, but that’s what testing is all about. Why am I still doing it at my age after 15 years? Because I love this shit. This is what keeps me going, man. I live for this, man. I live for getting over.

Adam: Awesome. I can’t top that, so all I’m going to say is go check out this stuff. If you want the GMB verification, that’s an awesome service, and then the keyword stuff is going to get rolling, and if you got any projects coming up or anything you’re even thinking about, I highly suggest it. It’s awesome. It is so complete and you get that, and then you just start putting stuff together. You can lay out a site like that once you get this stuff back, and all sorts of good stuff with it. I love it. I think it’s a big time saver, but enough of that. Do you guys got anything else or are we ready to jump into questions?

Bradley: I think I’m ready. Are you guys ready?

Hernan: Let’s do it.

Adam: All right.

Chris: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. Now, I got to tease this just a little bit more, guys, because I’m telling you. You got to come join the Mastermind. Guys, I just want to point out something. Again, this Maps Sniping Method that I’m kind of working out, now, and developing a process for scaling it. I kind of disclosed on a very high level our conceptual overview of what it is that I’m planning on building to our Mastermind members last week and, like I said, I mentioned it three for three in the last month for getting into three pack with brand-new verified GMB listings in under 24 hours. Well, one of them took about three days, so three for three in under three days, and I’ve just again, like I said, I’m attempting a fourth and I just picked up a fifth with using our verification service today that I’m going to be testing. I just want to point this one out.

This is just a screenshot from my phone earlier today because I set up a call center for my tree service leads, and that’s what I’ve been testing this method out with for this Maps Pack Sniping, and this is one that I sniped on Thursday, so essentially I registered a P.O. box which, again, I’m not even going to do that anymore because we have a verification service now where I can buy them and it saves me all that time from having to go drive and pick up the keys, and then drive back and pick up the verification card, and all that kind of stuff. It’s way better. It’s going to save me a ton of time. Costs a little bit of money out of pocket, but my time is worth more than that. Right?

This is one that I had rented a P.O. box for and, yet, on Thursday the day of the Mastermind webinar last week, I verified it and by the time we had the Mastermind webinar, which is at 3:00 p.m., it was already ranking. I verified it that morning. It was already ranking. Well, we got a call came through today already because everything goes through my call center, at least for the tree service leads it does. This is the lead email that came in today from that one, which is in Orange County, Virginia. It just goes to show you guys. I was able to rank a Maps listing in under 24 hours and, literally, just a couple of hours from the time that it was verified to the time that it made it into the three pack, and within four days, I guess, yeah. Four or five days it’s already generating calls, now. Right?

These are money-making calls. I get 10% of any closed contracts from this particular contractor. So think about that, guys. I mean, that’s just incredible. It cost me a few bucks and a little bit of time, and there you go. I’m already making money. One of the other ones that I had just set up was the first one that I had attempted this on. It’s in a very small area, so it’s not a whole lot of traffic or anything as far as website traffic clicks and calls, but I’ve already made money on that one because, again, that particular contractor he pays me 10% of any closed jobs, and he let me know because I told him I got him another area, and he let me know that we had already closed our first job, and I got paid off of that. I’m already profitable on that one. Just think about that, guys.

If you’re not in the Mastermind, you probably right now would be a really good time. If you’re doing local or lead gen, or a combination or a hybrid of both, I highly recommend you come check it out in the Mastermind because there’s a lot of really good stuff going on in there. Okay? Enough pitching anyways. Sorry, guys.

Do You Know An Alternative Plugin To Video Traffic X That Auto Creates Video Based On A Page Or Post Content?

Christoper, I answered your question a little bit further up. I don’t know if it’s going to be the exact same thing that you’re looking for, but there is a really good video program that creates content rather easily. I’ve used it. I used it like two years ago, and it might have even been three years ago, now, when it was first launched. It’s called Content Samurai.

It’s by the same makers of … What was that? You have to be an old school SEO to know what I’m talking about. It was Keyword Samurai.

Adam: I thought it was Keyword Samurai. Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I thought it was Keyword Samurai, too, or something like that. That was an old tool. When I first got started in SEO, that was the go-to tool for figuring out competitive metrics, and all that. The same developers behind that developed Content Samurai, which is their video platform. Again, it might have even been three years ago when it was first launched. I got in and played with it for a bit, and they have continued to develop it, and develop it. I know several of our Mastermind members. That’s their preferred video tool, and so that’s the reason why I posted that. Again, I don’t know that it’s going to do exactly what you’re asking, but I would check that one out because just like what you’ve mentioned here about video traffic X, that was a WordPress plugin and, obviously, the developer went out of business.

That’s what happens, guys, with a lot of these JVZoo offers. A lot of them are they’re fly-by-night product developers that don’t … They don’t withstand the test of time. Right? There’s not a whole lot of product developers out there that five years down the road are still in business, especially WordPress plugin developers. Unless they’re an established developer, it’s likely that the support is going to … Like, eventually, they’re going to stop supporting it because the company just goes out of business. Right? Again, that’s why I recommend something like Content Samurai that has a strong development platform behind it and they’ve been around for years, and they continue to develop the tools, so I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Adam: Yeah, real quick, too. I just went over to check it out and it’s got a seven-day free trial, so no loss there. Go check it out.

Bradley: There you go. Last thing guys, just think about it, man. I know how tempting it is, guys. I used to be a JVZoo and what they were called Warriors Special Offers, WSOs, back in the day, but I used to be a junkie. I used to always buy all the new WordPress plugins, and all the new tools because they were all push button like you’re going to get rich overnight, and all that kind of stuff. I’m a sucker for good marketing. That’s why I’m in the marketing industry. I would read a sales page, and I always had my credit card in hand by the time I got to the bottom of the sales page. I would buy all these damn tools and, first of all, that’s one way to quickly destroy your business because, well, first of all, you’re spending money. You’re spending revenue. Instead of generating revenue, you’re spending revenue.

Also, you end up spending a lot of time playing with a bunch of these stupid, shitty tools that aren’t going to move your business forward at all. Honestly, you don’t need most of the stuff. I guarantee probably everybody watching this webinar or listening to this webinar right now has enough tools in their toolbox that they can build a business. They don’t need anymore shiny objects. Right? You should be looking for ways to improve or streamline processes. You should be looking for things that might help make your job a little bit easier, such as automation, stuff for automating, and things like that, but you don’t need to go out and buy a shit-ton of tools, guys. Trust me. It will only slow your business down or prevent growth.

If you are going to buy tools, and that’s what I was getting at; sorry. I lost my train of thought for a moment, but if you are going to buy tools, try to buy tools from established developers. Even though they might be a bit more expensive, there’s a reason. Because what happens if you go out and buy one of these shitty JVZoo or Warrior Form or whatever offers that are $27 and you spend a lot of time implementing that into your business, depending processes for it? You become familiar with the tool, and now you rely on that tool to perform some specific function in your business, and now that tool goes out of business or it’s not supported. Right? Like they stop supporting it or stop development.

What happens then? Now you’ve got to go back. Go search for another tool. Buy it. Go through the learning curve. Implement it into your business. Develop processes. You have to reorganize all your shit because of a crappy tool that you bought. Right? Instead of just spending a little bit more money and getting something from an established developer, and the only reason why I’m saying this is because it’s very similar, guys, to hosting. Right? Everybody wants to go out and get … What is it? HostGator or, God forbid HostGator or GoDaddy or any of these really crappy budget hosts because it’s cheap, and they think they’re saving money. They’re being smart, but then your sites don’t rank, and they go down all the time.

There’s all kinds of issues with that. Right? You’re better off spending money on good hosting. The same thing goes with tools and training. Don’t buy shitty training, either. You guys have any comments on that before I move on?

Adam: No. I think that’s 100% what you need to say and I feel the same way. I would only follow up and say that, like you’re saying, “Don’t do it.” Because everyone does it. It’s just you got to, over time, wean yourself off of that and realize, “Oh, hey. This monthly recurring fee I’m paying means that they’re probably going to support it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good product. You still got to find a good product, but looking at it from the point of view of, “I want a developer who’s invested and making money because I want them to continue making sure that the product works and works well.”

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: Take it from people who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on shiny, new objects, and on crappy training. You don’t need to go through all that. Just find something that works and stick to it, and then just keep getting up every day, and doing it, and just creates a process that you can repeat, and you’re going to make money.

Did You Ever Hear About Legal Problems When Using The Address Of Virtual Box & Or Local Person You Know To Receive The GMB Letter?

Bradley: That’s it. Okay. This is Dustin just because she signed it. “Hey, Semantic boars.” Maybe that’s supposed to be boys. “Got a business-related question. Did you ever hear about legal problems when using the address, a virtual box, or a local person you know to receive the GMB letter? I was wondering because aren’t you registering the location for a real business?” Well, no. I mean, if you were to … All right. I’m not an attorney, guys, so I would highly recommend that you consult an attorney if you’re concerned about any of this, but the way I look at it is you’re not. When you register a business in Google, it’s not like registering a company with the state corporation commission or anything. It’s not like registering a company with the IRS, right? It’s not an official agency.

It’s Google. Right? It’s a search engine, so you can register anything you want there. Now, there are times. I’ve had this happen. I had to have one of my clients, actually. The case study for the local GMB Pro Course. It’s a taxi service. We had to contact Google to have an existing, verified listing deleted or taken down because the business owner didn’t have access to it. We created the new listing, which was also at a new address, a new physical location. We created a new Google My Business listing, and then contacted Google Support or Google My Business Support to tell them what the situation was, that there was an ex-employee that had created and verified the old or the existing GMB profile, and they didn’t work for the company anymore, and we didn’t have access to it.

Also, the company had moved to a different physical location. The same city, but different location so we needed to update all that. The reason I’m saying all this is because in order for them to, because it was a verified listing that we were asking to have removed and update to a new one, they required corporate documents, so we had to literally submit corporate documents to Google to show that the business indeed exists, and that it’s a valid business. It had an LLC. What do they call it? Articles of Organization or an operating agreement. They also needed to see the updated physical address. So, in other words, they had to see corporate documents with the new updated mailing address. Right?

So just consider that. It’s not a legal issue to register a business in Google. Google might require legal documentation, and if that’s the case, then you won’t be able to do it unless you have that legal documentation, but when registering your company or business with local agency, state agencies, or federal agencies then yes. You’re going to have to have a real, valid business. If you’re doing lead gen, guys, here’s one of the ways to get around that if you need to.

If you’re doing lead gen and you’re establishing “fake businesses” or pseudo businesses, is another term for it, generic brands, if you’re setting up lead-gen properties where you’re creating a pseudo brand, then what you can do is if you have a legal entity, a corporate entity, so if you’re an LLC or incorporated, whether it’s an S corp, a C corp, or whatever, then you can actually register that pseudo entity as a DBA or doing business as. So that, essentially, it’s your corporation. For example, my corporation is Big Bamboo Marketing, LLC. So I have DBAs for several of my lead-gen properties because that way even if Google asked for corporate documents for a lead-gen property, I can produce the doing business as certificate from the county.

It costs me, I think, 13 bucks or $14 to register a DBA. That’s all. You just go down to your local courthouse and ask for a DBA form. Wherever your business is registered, you go to that courthouse wherever your product … Like my agency it’s registered in Culpeper, so I go to the Culpeper County Courthouse. I tell them, “Hey, I need a” … or clerk of the circuit court or whatever, and I tell them that I need a DBA form. I fill it out with the lead-gen pseudo business or pseudo brand that I’m saying is a business, so that now is Big Bamboo Marketing doing business as, and so that way if Google ever requires me to verify that corporate document, all I have to do is submit the DBA and in my operating agreement for my LLC. Does that make sense?

So it’s not an issue. So that’s what I would recommend that you guys do. You don’t have to do that all the time, guys. For example, I’ve got a ton of lead-gen properties out there I don’t have DBAs for. I’m not going to lie, but if in case there was a time where I needed one, like Google required it, then I could always go down and get a DBA, and then submit it. Any comments guys or should I move on?

Adam: Good to go.

Does The Local PR Pro Course Includes A Demo On Getting 3 Pack Map Rankings In Surrounding Cities/Towns Using The Press Release Methods Without Getting A New Verified GMB Listing?

Bradley: Okay. That was a great question, by the way, Dustin; a really good question. Okay, support question from Ed Ryan. “I purchased GMB Pro the day it came out, and I love it.” Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. He says, “In Local PR Pro does Bradley show us specifically how to get three pack map rankings in surrounding cities/towns using the press release method without getting a new verified GMB listing for the business for the surrounding town?” Not specifically, but I talk a lot. We’ve talked about that many times in the Mastermind. I don’t think it’s specifically a local PR Pro, but there’s a couple of things that you could do that I can reveal here. If you wanted to try to rank in the adjacent areas, it’s not always going to be possible, guys, but there are things that you can do to kind of help facilitate that.

It requires on page. It requires having, basically, categories or silo structures or geo posts for the areas that you’re trying to get ranked in. I would also recommend that within your GMB profile, since you’re doing GMB Pro, that you start using the GMB posts just the way that we teach in the training with images, with meta tag or geo tags for the areas that you’re trying to rank in, all that kind of stuff. Try to use those keywords in those posts. Right? Then for using press releases, specifically, then you could target those locations that you want to rank in in your press releases as part of the title is incredibly important for press releases, so target the locations that you want to rank in, as long as they’re adjacent, and the title.

Make sure that you’re linking to the content that is also optimized for that location, whether it’s on your website or on your GMB profile or wherever it may be. So those are some of the things that you can do. Now, again, if you want some more in-depth training on that Ed, you got to come back to the Mastermind. Specifically in Local PR Pro I don’t talk about that because Local PR Pro the way that I’ve found. I’m talking about getting three pack rankings using press releases for the city that the business is located in. Obviously, because of the GMB Pro stuff that we’re doing, personally, I’d prefer to just get more GMB listings now than trying to rank one listing in multiple locations.

It’s so easy now, guys. Whether you’re doing P.O. boxes, which is what I’ve always done or now, which is even better using our verified GMB service. You don’t even need to leave your damn house. You can just order it online. It gets done and now you can set up as many GMB profiles as you want, and just literally target an entire region if you want. I think that’s easier. It takes less work than trying to rank one GMB for a wide service area or geographic area, if that makes sense. Guys, I like easy and the thing about it is if you develop a process, Ed, or excuse me. Yeah, Ed. If you develop a process for buying, and that’s what I’m doing, guys. I’m developing a process for scaling this method, so that I can outsource 90 to 95% of it.

It will require very little effort from me once the process is developed, and when I say it’s going to be automated, it’s going to be automated to me because I’m going to have virtual assistants doing most of the work. Does that make sense? That’s why I said it would be better, less work for you, to develop a process for building out additional GMBs even for one specific business so that you can expand their service area, and what they’re generating leads from. Develop out a process for that and that way you can outsource. Even if you don’t outsource it, it’s repeatable. If you develop like a checklist and a flowchart on what to do, then it becomes almost second nature.

You can do it like it becomes routine and it’ll become a lot easier than trying to rank one listing for a really wide geographic area or at least in my opinion it is.

Marco: One last thing. Ed, go to the Facebook group and just say you’d like a webinar on how to extend the business center, and we can get into that.

Bradley: Yep. Yeah, especially if you’re in the GMB Pro Course, because I know that question has come up a couple of times, and I think Marc. Yeah, Marco when you did the Unlimited Local Images and Videos Webinar, you touched on that briefly.

Marco: Yeah. We talked it, but we can expand on it because it’s not that difficult.

What Is The Best Combination Of Serp Space Link Packages That Provide The Best Juice At Specific Price Ranges?

Bradley: Yeah. So there you go, guys. We’ll do a follow-up webinar on GMB Pro for that. What’s up, Kevin? I haven’t seen you here in a while, man. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen Kevin post a question. He’s been around for a long time. “Hey, guys. How has everyone been? It’s been a while. Life gets in the way. You know.” Yes. I do. It’s good to have you back, buddy. He says, “Wanted to ask about service space tiered link building for local clients. I’m thinking of adding in on month three of a campaign. Service space tiered link building to as many as possible of the clients tier ones; links they’ve accumulated over the years. I see about four options for Web 2.0 contextual, and four more options for non-contextuals, plus this can be all done for four tiers. That is a lot of different combinations and price points.”

“What would be the best combination or lack of combination to provide the most use at the cheapest price, a middle price, and a higher price, but not as high as the just max everything out?” Okay. I’m not the spam guy anymore, guys. I actually rarely even use it anymore.

Marco: Shame on you.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, I don’t. It’s just I don’t use a lot of spam links anymore because I don’t need to. We’re able to get results now using RYS, Local GMB Pro, Local PR Pro, and syndication networks. It seems silly to do that. Now, there are certainly times when spam can help and I can certainly power up drive stacks, and press releases, and syndication networks, all of that, with spam, but I’ve been getting results recently without doing it, so I’m not really the big spam guy anymore that I used to be. I would recommend that you … I can give you a little bit of advice here, but what I would recommend, Kevin, is to repost this question in the SEO Tutorials and Case Studies Semantic Mastery Facebook Group, which is the free group, and then tag. You could tag me on it if you want, and I’ll tag Daddio, which is our link-building guy.

He’s been with me for, shit, at least five years, and he’s our manager. The guy’s a ninja. He’s got a full staff that all they do is build links, and so he can answer that question and direct you to specifically what you need. Now, the slight advice that I’ll give you and, again, I don’t even know if it’s accurate. I would still repost this question in that group and get his advice because his advice is going to be a hell of a lot more current than mine, but what I would say is I always go with contextual links. Anything non-contextual is like kitchen sink spam, and that’s the kind of stuff that I would keep way, way far away from my money site, like four or five hops away if I’m going to use it at all.

I would stick with Web 2.0 contextual links for at least three tiers before I would do GSA kitchen sink spam or anything like that. Again, that’s just because that’s kind of evolved, too, because it used to be that we would just do to tier one links. We would do contextual links, so your tier two links would be contextual Web 2.0s, and then we would push spam behind that. Your tier three links would just be kitchen sink spam, but that’s changed because Google is looking further, and Marco can comment on this, but this is about distance graph and all that stuff. So it’s really important, at least in my opinion, to keep kitchen sink spam further and further away, and so I believe Daddio’s recommendation, now, is for tier two and tier three that you use contextual Web 2.0. Marco, you want to comment on that a little bit?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, Daddio has all the answers for you. The guy’s been at it for years. He knows exactly what to do, and how to do it. He can give you the best recommendation.

Bradley: Yep.

Marco: One thing that I would tell you. Since Google is looking out further and further, make sure you put a drive stack in there so that all of your link building goes through the drive stack, and it’ll come out the other end just pristine, no matter what it is. Even if a set of links turns bad for whatever reason, it won’t hurt.

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: That’s how good drive stacks are at cleaning up spam.

Are You Still Using RSS Feed Directory Submission And Other RSS Tactics?

Bradley: That’s good advice. Thank you. Second question, now. “One more question if that’s okay. Are you still using RSS feed directory submissions and other RSS tactics that have been mentioned before? Tactics seem to come and go so quick. It’s hard to know if something that was done eight-plus month ago is still valid and worth the time and money to implement today.” Yeah. Actually, believe it or not, I still think RSS feeds are one of the most underutilized things in SEO. There is a lot of things you can do with RSS feeds that are really powerful. I mean, obviously, syndication networks they’re RSS feed driven the way that we’ve always set up the triggers that way, but there is still a lot of other things that you can do.

Now, I don’t spend a shit-ton of time on that stuff anymore, but if you’re in a competitive niche where every little push helps or you need every little push, then absolutely RSS stuff is still valid. The easiest way to do it, guys, is just collect your money side RSS feed or your Web 2.0 feeds or all of them. If you want, you can combine them together with the feed splicer, and then submit that one super feed to just go to Fiverr and search for RSS feed submits, and you can get a Fiverr gig that will do the work for you that will submit to 70 directories and aggregators for you, and they’ll send you tips. A lot of times they’ll send you back a report, and it’ll cost you five or 10 bucks, or something like that.

So what? It’s easy. It’ll only take you a few seconds, and let them do the work for you. Okay? Yeah. It still works, guys. There is no doubt. It’s funny because I think RSS stuff it’s an old technology, and so a lot of people don’t think that it’s still valuable, but it certainly is. There is no doubt it is. Okay. Good question. Good to have you back, Kevin. All right. Let’s see.

Is It Enough To Only Build Money Channel Or Brand Ring To Stick The Videos On SERPs?

It says, “Hi. First, thanks for answering my question. This SEO shit keeps me never run out of question.” Isn’t that the truth? “The more you get into it the more questions come.” That’s correct. “About IFTTT networks, is building only one ring that is the money channel brand ring reason for sticking the videos on SIR?”

Well, it can be. I mean, there is a lot of variables there. Typically for video stuff, though, guys I don’t even start syndication networks for videos for YouTube channels unless I’m going to use at least one full two-tier ring. Right? So you’re going to have a branded ring or a tier-one ring. It doesn’t have to be branded, but I recommend that you do. A branded tier-one ring, and then you have three tier-two rings, which is the full two-tier networks. If I’m going to start a new channel and a syndication network broadcast. I call it a broadcast network for videos, but a broadcast network for a new YouTube channel or a new project. I always start with at least one full two-tier network.

That’s just I guess because I have the resources to do that, guys. If you have the resources, I recommend you do that as well. Typically, I end up with usually anywhere between two to five full two-tier networks stacked on one YouTube channel if I’m serious about that particular project or campaign, so it depends. If you can get results, and the only reason I say that, guys, is because I don’t do so much of it anymore, but for a period, for many years there, actually, I did a lot of video broadcasting work for local video production companies, and so I developed out several themed syndication networks that I had themed YouTube channels. One was for Virginia businesses.

One was specifically for contractors. I had one for health and wellness stuff, and they’re just big syndication networks that I created for YouTube. The idea is with blog syndication I always recommend, and I’ve been recommending this for years, to just stick with a branded syndication network and don’t go multi tiers because it can create issues, and it kind of creates a little bit of a maintenance nightmare. Right? It’s a pain in the ass to maintain, but for videos there is no footprint issues. It’s still to this day, guys, there is no footprint issues with broad. As long as you’re using the applets the way that we teach or you buy the syndication networks from us with the applets already built, then they’re going to work fine.

I’ve never had any issues with YouTube videos getting slapped or sand boxed, or anything going through syndication networks, but blog content can if you’re doing multi tiers, so just to bring it back to what you’re asking. I would recommend. You can try. Certainly try it with just one, but if you’re not getting the results that you want, then start stacking tier two networks on to the tier one network, or you can also stack additional tier one networks, persona-based networks. That’s perfectly fine as well. That was a good question, though.

How Do You Determine If A Social Website Is Good To Have In A Network Ring Or Not?

“How do you determine if a social website is good to have in a network ring or not? There are over 200 popular social webs.” They’re all good. If you can get a branded profile on the network or on any one of those social sites, just do it because you’re increasing. You’re validating your entity more every time you add another branded profile, especially if you can interlink. Even if all you can do is link to one other property that’s branded, that’s good enough. Guys, that’s why in Syndication Academy we do the update webinars, and we add. Not every month, but almost every month, we add at least one new property. Again, it’s not every month, but almost every month we add at least one new property, whether it can be syndicated to or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we can syndicate to or not. It still acts as a citation.

If it’s a real business, it acts as an entity validator. Guys, the more places you can get your brand out on the Web, the more authority you’ll accrue. Let’s see. “I would have thought Stumble Upon would be a good social website to include, but you seem to neglect it.” No. We’ve done Stumble Upon, but didn’t Stumble Upon go out of business, recently or something?

Marco: No. They moved to something called Mix.com-

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: … but you could still use Mix.com. I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the same way. You can curate content from around the Web.

Bradley: Yep. Okay, cool. What’s up, Nigel? He’s always active. He says, “You are appreciated for the value you bring. G Hypnosis was awesome. Thanks to you guys and Eric.” Yeah. That was a great webinar. Did we ever get a replay available, yet? Adam, if Adam is still on. Hello?

Adam: Sorry.

Bradley: Yeah. Adam must be-

Adam: Technical issues hitting the mute button. I’m still working on that, but we’ll have some info shortly, I believe.

Bradley: Okay, good. All right. Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll get the replay out here in a minute or soon, guys, because that was a great webinar. There was obviously an offer at the end of that webinar for … It was funny because the webinar was for a particular method and a information product, but the first hour of the webinar was not about the product at all. It was about how to prospect and sell to clients. It was fabulous. It was really, really good. Eric has really created a great business. I respect him highly anyways because I’ve known him since the start of my career, so I already respected the guy, but he’s built a really good business and he’s developed his own sales process that it works, and it’s funny, but we were talking.

My salesman that’s working for my agency and I have been trial and error developing sales processes for months now, and we haven’t been very successful, but what we’ve found with Roberto because he’s the one primarily doing it. He’s the one talking to the contractors and everything. What he’s found over the last several months is essentially he’s kind of, through trial and error, come to the same conclusion that Eric uses for his sales process that he revealed on this webinar in this first hour of the webinar. It was funny because I was like, “Damn it! I wish I could have had this webinar with you, Eric, like four months ago, five months ago. It could have saved us four or five months of trial and error, and I probably closed a lot of these contractors that have now gone cold because we screwed up the sales process.”

Any Decent Spammy Fiverr Traffic For Testing?

At least it was good validation to know that we have, even though it took us a bunch of trial and error to figure it out. At least it was good validation to know that we’re on the right track. Thanks for mentioning that, Nigel. It was good to bring that up. Okay. Coming up on four years of goodness, yes. We are. He says, “Any decent spammy Fiverr traffic for testing or is that a myth that it works with RYS, although likely not recommended at first option?” Well, I mean, I’ve used the fiber traffic gigs for getting press releases to stick. I haven’t really tested them with drive stacks or anything. Have you, Marco?

Marco: No.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: No. I haven’t.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can log into Fire real quick and just give you one lady that I ordered a whole lot of them she … Well, who knows if it’s a lady. The profile picture was a lady, but that one I think that gig got taken down or something. I’m not sure. Just give me one second. I think that’s one of them. Yeah. See? That one’s no longer available. All right. This one is. I’ve used this guy, too. You guys can see. This is it’s niche targeted. 2,000 daily visitors for 15 days for five bucks. This one right here I’ll just grab the URL. Whoops! And drop it on the page for you, Nigel. Again, I haven’t tried any of these with drive stacks. I have used these types of gigs for getting press releases to stick longer in the search.

For example, if you get a press release, guys, to rank on page one. You guys probably know that a lot of times press releases they rank really well for a short period of time, and then they start to slip in the search. I’ve used these types of gigs to be able to drive traffic to them to get them to stick in the search longer, and it absolutely works. I don’t know about drive stack stuff, but I can’t imagine it would probably hurt, especially since it’s drive stack stuff. Good question, though. Damn, guys. You’ve posted a whole shit-ton of questions all of a sudden because there wasn’t much before.

Are You Using Rotator Link For Landing Pages?

Anyone using Rotator Link for landing pages and, if so, any recommendations? You mean for split testing landing pages? There’s a rotator inside click funnels, and that’s all I use for landing pages. If anybody has any recommendations for doing split testing landing pages or link rotators and stuff like that, plugins or anything like that, let Nigel know, please. Just post on the page here.

What Strategies Are You Using With Alignable And LinkedIn To Get Leads Business?

“What strategies are you using with Alignable and LinkedIn to get business leads?” Well, I started playing with Alignable, and every now and then I’ll take an hour, an hour and a half and go in and become really active for an hour, but it’s not something I do consistently. It’s one of those things I’ve always had intentions to do consistently, but I never do it consistently.

Every now and then, like I said, I’ll go in and spend an hour in there and I’ll be like, “Wow! There’s a lot of opportunity here, and all that,” and I’ll get all excited, and then three weeks goes by before I do it again. I’m not really doing a lot of in there. I think there’s opportunity, but I haven’t had enough time to. I haven’t spent enough time in there to really figure out a process for getting repeatable results. LinkedIn we spent a lot of time. Well, Roberto, my salesman, spent a lot of time in LinkedIn trying to develop a process for tree service contractors. We realize now that was probably a really, really shitty industry to try to approach in LinkedIn just because there’s not a lot of contractors in LinkedIn, tree service contractors, and when they are, again, it’s not really a platform made for that type of a contractor.

We’re actually doing started prospecting just in the last two weeks again for general contractors and remodeling contractors, so we’re going to take what he started to develop for tree service contractors on LinkedIn and apply that to that industry, and see if we can get better results. I believe we will because, again, I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, but those type of contractors seem to be a bit more digitally savvy or a bit more sophisticated. There is more of them on LinkedIn and they seem to be a bit more engaged on LinkedIn. In the coming weeks, Nigel, especially I don’t know if you’re still in the Mastermind or not, but in the coming weeks as we have more data from that or more results, or experience, good, bad, or ugly, I’ll be sharing that about the LinkedIn stuff.

Do You Have Any Creative SEO Strategies For A Business That Sells Psychiatric Services To Skillled Nursing Care Facilities?

Jordan, okay. “A new client coming onboard that sells psychiatric services to skilled nursing care facilities, and then expanding. Obviously, the search volume is incredibly low and there aren’t that many decision makers. Less than a thousand, but each enlistment is worth about 70,000 per year to them.” Wow. “Doing everything digital for them: site, social, SEO, content, marketing conferences, collateral, et cetera. Any creative SEO strategies for this type of highly niched B2B client?” That’s a tough one, Jordan.

Adam: Actually, yeah. This is cool. Jordan, I’ll have to send you … I listened to a podcast recently and I can’t remember the guy’s name. Sorry. I’ll have to look it up, but basically the guy did this, and he did it in one region. I can’t remember. It wasn’t where you’re at, but talking about this, and going into the specifics of obviously you’re generally not, and I’m sure you already understand this, but you’re not marketing to consumer. You’re marketing. This is like a family member would be looking for this, so words like mom, dad, and all the associated words like that, and then going into it, and potentially can you offer other than I’m looking at what you’re saying? Can you do any sort of remarketing?

There is a lot of stuff you can do because it’s worth so much to them which, obviously, you just listed but, also, you could maybe open their eyes and maybe, again, you’ve already done this. Once they reach a certain amount of let’s say like it takes 75% booking or rooms filled for them to be profitable that you become highly profitable to them once you bring them past that point, so that maybe you can get more funds in order to expand some of these activities. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

What’s The Best Way To Handle WordPress Security Issues?

Bradley: That’s great. Thanks, Adam. If you can tag him on it and find it, that’d be great. All right, cool. What’s up, Dan? KD, there we go. “Hey, guys. What’s the best way to handle WordPress security issues and not mess up SEO? I have a client ranked on page one. It is now under heavy brute force attack. I cranked up the settings on iTheme security.” Now, guys. Personally, there is a couple of things I would recommend. Number one, get a really good host. Liquid Web is fantastic for this kind of stuff, guys. They have their own firewall and all this other stuff. They’re really, really good at security over at Liquid Web. Guys, we talk about this. I just mentioned hosting earlier on this webinar. My two go-to resources, Liquid Web is hands down my favorite. I also have been recently using WPX hosting for a lot of one-off WordPress sites.

For testing purposes or for lead gen sites and stuff, I’ve been using WPX, which seems to be good. Their support is really, really good, too, but there are some drawbacks to that where I think Liquid Web is even better, but Liquid Web has some really, really good security features; however, I see that you mentioned down here about security. I’ve got two of my clients on security, actually, and they have the security firewall, and they have the malware removal programs, and all that stuff, and I got two of my … One of my clients is a pest control company. Actually, it’s a tick and mosquito control company. So it’d be like outdoor pest control, and they have been hacked like at least eight times in the last five years since they’ve been working with me.

Even after we put their site on Sucuri, they still have been hacked a couple of times, but Sucuri always goes in. All you got to do is submit a request to Sucuri and they’ll go in, and find the problem. Unhack the site. Restore the site and they’ll take care of everything for you. All you have to do is submit a ticket. Again, it’s worth it. I think it’s like 300 bucks a year or something like that but, in my opinion, it’s totally worth it or get a really good host like Liquid Web and let them do it. As far as changing the DNS, would that affect rankings? No, not at all. That shouldn’t affect rankings at all. In fact, actually, changing DNS from a shitty host through something like Sucuri will likely improve the site.

Marco: Yes. What I would like to say is, depending on her needs, we have a really neat way where we trap these rouge bots that do these attacks, and if you want to talk about that, I mean, it’s not cheap, just so you know, but you can always find me in Facebook, Katie, and we can talk, and then we could set up and then all of these rogue bots you can just eliminate. You can trap them and eliminate them, and it’s over and done with.

Bradley: Yep. Bob Lowe, I love that comment. “Master manipulation makes your palms hairy.” That’s funny, Bob. All right. We’re almost done, guys. I got to wrap up in just a couple of minutes, anyways. I get to take my daughter to dinner tonight. Let’s see. R. Banking says, “If using a set number of credits and maps powerhouse, is it better to use all of them on the embed or split them up between embeds and secondary posts?” That’s a good question. I prefer doing a split between embeds and secondary posts just because I was mentioning.

I was talking about YouTube networks earlier, syndication networks, and I mentioned that I like to use two-tier networks for YouTube syndication; however, you can stack multiple tier-one rings onto a channel to where they’re all being triggered directly from the channel instead of being secondary triggers from a blog in your first-tiered network. The reason why I like the second two-tiered networks is because I’ve found that the effect lasts longer through two-tiered networks. In other words, if I were to take a channel and stack 10 tier-one networks on the channel, the video is likely going to rank really quickly, but it typically will start, and I haven’t tested this, now, in probably two years, but about two to three years ago I did a lot of testing on this, guys.

I found that multiple tier-one networks the video would rank really quickly, but it would start to slip in the rankings a lot sooner, whereas, if I used multiple tier-two networks or multi-tiered networks, then it might not rank as quickly, but it would indeed rank eventually, and it would end up sticking a lot longer. I’ve always applied that same methodology to video Powerhouse and Maps Powerhouse to where I prefer doing like the tiers and secondary embeds and or back links as well instead of just doing all tier-one stuff. So that’s going to be my answer, but I haven’t tested specifically to see if one is going to perform better than the others. Does anybody here have any insight on that?

Marco: No. I do the same exact thing simply because it adds relevance at the other tiers coming back to your tier one.

Bradley: There you go. Bob Lowe, he said he ordered his Verified GMB and can’t wait to get it back. “I’m ready with the website content and PR.” Boom! There you go, Bob. Perfect. That’s perfect. Thank you. “Bradley, will this process improve the position and the pack if you’re already there?” No. Well, Dan. If you’re talking about the GMB Sniping, the Map Sniping that I’ve been talking about, no because that’s talking about finding locations that you can register a GMB or verify a GMB, and get into the three pack within … So far, like I said, I’ve been able. I’m three for three in under 72 hours. The method I’m talking about is getting into a three pack with a brand-new listing.

If it’s an existing listing, then I would recommend local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro. Those are the two things that I’m using specifically now. Local PR Pro for getting into the three pack. Local GMB Pro for generating leads regardless of three pack. Does that make sense? The two combined are absolutely brutal, guys. There is no way that you can’t get results with those two, and you add a drive stack on top of it. Forget about it. Right? Market Samurai, there you go, Walt. Thank you. Thank you, Walt. Yeah, Market Samurai. That was the keyword research tool that was like the go-to. It was industry standard for several years. You guys remember that? Like, the pink and the green lines, and all that, and the chart. It would create like a spreadsheet and it would show in-bound back links, and keyword rank. It was crazy.

I used to use that thing like daily. That’s awesome. Thanks, Walt. We’re almost done, guys. Let’s see. He’s doing Pinterest stuff, too. Is that what he’s doing? That’s Pinterest stats, right?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: That’s good. I posted my stats on there. I just want people to see what you could do. I mean, the type of traffic that you can actually generate with this thing, which is ridiculous. I know Dan is doing really well, but this one, the one that I posted, is in the millions, now.

Bradley: Clint. “GoDaddy bought Sucuri.” No shit? Yeah. “Plan on that sucking soon.” Okay. Well, I’m glad I know that now because I won’t recommend it going forward, Clint. Thank you. I appreciate that because yeah, guys. GoDaddy hosting sucks, by the way, so if they bought Sucuri, it’s probably going to suck, too. Clint is right. No doubt. Scott says, “Still wrestling with a client attempting to get them onboard with GMB verification. He already has a verified listing for the suburb, and has no traction in the much larger city. He is afraid he will lose the verified listing he already has with Google. Without giving away your processes, would he have a new Google listing for the larger city or will his current GMB be impacted in any way?”

Okay, Scott. What I’m going to tell you is look. I can’t reveal too much, guys. Actually, let me just say this. What I would do in that case if you have a client is already a client, and you’re trying to talk them into getting a second GMB for another area that they want to generate leads from because, again, it’s more difficult to get one listing to rank in multiple areas, a wide geographic region. It’s harder to do that, in my opinion, than it is to just create a new damn listing for the areas that you want. What I would recommend is if he’s already a client and you’re already making money, just go register the GMB yourself. Get it. Do it yourself, right? Build it with a generic brand, a pseudo brand, and then once the damn thing is ranked, then show them. “Look what I did.”

Because look. You can monetize that property, whether it’s for that client or another client. It doesn’t matter. My point is: Why not build that asset? If he’s already a client and you know he wants the leads in that area, but he’s scared, just go create a GMB listing with a pseudo brand. It’s in the same category, all that shit. Get it set up. Get it ranked, and then approach him with it and say, “Look. I’ve already got this asset. It’s already ranked in the area that you want these leads from.” Now, you can sign him up for like an increase on a monthly retainer or you can just sell him the damn leads. In any way, you own that asset, now. You can rebrand it for him or he can turn it down and you can say, “That’s fine. I’ll sell the leads to another person in the same industry in the same area.” Does that make sense?

My point is don’t try to pull the client’s teeth. If he’s giving you resistance, just go register it yourself. Rank the damn thing. Now, you’ve got another asset in your portfolio that you can use to entice him to increase his services with you, his commitment with you. If he doesn’t, who cares. You’ve got an asset now that you can monetize with another company. Let’s see. Local host publish fee FTP to server. I don’t know what that means, Mike. I’m sorry. “Will premium domain solve the link equity described in a previous discussion instead of using Alley like Marco mentioned? What do you mean by premium domain, Mike?” I don’t follow that one, either. I don’t know what you mean by that Mike. I apologize, but we’re out of time anyways, so if you want to post this question again in the SEO tutorials group, maybe we can comment in on that.

Hey, Clint still has Market Samurai installed. I didn’t even know if they still … Apparently, they do. I think that’s what he was saying earlier. I didn’t know that that tool was still being supported and all that. I haven’t seen it in years. “Thanks for the GMB, very helpful. All set up.” Yep. There you go. Scott remember. You can buy it now, and you don’t even have to leave your damn house. Scott you’re in the Mastermind. Follow the training that I talked about in the newsletter as well. You’ll get that in about a week, as well as the last two Mastermind webinars I’ve touched on. It’s just is very specifically how to research the areas to find the best opportunity. Right? All right. Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate every for sticking around.

Adam: Awesome.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Adam: Bye, everybody.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: See y'all next week.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199

Click on the video above to watch Episode 199 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. This is Episode 199. It is the 29th of August, 2018. We are here with the full crew as we inch closer to Episode 200, so we’re going to say hello to everyone real quick, and then we’re going to make some good announcements today. We got some cool limited time stuff coming up as well as some things we want to share with you all before we dive into the questions. So real quick, Chris. How are you doing today?

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here. How are you doing?

Adam: Can’t complain. I’m trying out this fancy, new screen in the background. That’s not a green screen. I bought one of those. It’s like a folding shoji screen thing so you guys don’t have to look at my office futon and white boards, and so I did it for you guys, not for me. Hernan, how are you doing?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up? I’m traveling, so connection is not the best, but I’m excited to be here. Yeah. I’m excited for POFU Live. Right now, I’m writing a message on the event, so I’m going to just drop the link over there. If you guys want to join, that’s going to be epic.

Adam: Nice. Yeah, so if you’re watching live, you can check it out, if not, we’ll include that in the show notes, and tickets are selling, so if you’re thinking about going or you want to know more, now is a very good time to go check that out. We are capping it at 25 max. I think we’re halfway there and so grab you a ticket while you can. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: Working on POFU, man. You guys saw it. You guys saw it. You know what I’m working on. It never stops. It never stops. Manipulation never stops. Those of you who are not manipulating, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Adam: Oops, sorry. I was muted. I was like, “Man, strong start to Hump Day Hangouts today, but for real.” That’s also the theme of … That’s why we’re calling it POFU Live. Right? That’s our live event and talking about ourselves, as well as the people who are attending how we can help each other get to that point where you get to choose what you want to do, either with your time, your projects, your clients. Bradley, how are you doing, man?

Bradley: Great, man. Happy to be here. Got a lot of exciting stuff cooking up right now. Gearing up for POFU Live. I got a couple of things that I’m actually developing specifically for that, and some stuff that I’ve been developing. I started talking about in the Mastermind a couple of weeks ago, and actually did the newsletter entry for the newsletter that gets mailed out in a week or so specifically addressing that, and then we had the Mastermind webinar last, or excuse me, Thursday, and I went into a little bit more detail, and I’ve just been like neck deep in this new process that I’m developing. It’s just absolutely crushing it for sniping Maps pack rankings, like within 24 hours. It’s crazy. I’m three for three in the last month, and I actually just ordered another verified GMB profile now to see if I can be four for four.

If that’s the case, which, again, I’m working on a process right now to be able to scale this. Client work is great, but if you can develop your own assets, that’s even better, and so that’s something I’m working on inside of the Mastermind, and really excited about it, and looking forward to sharing that at POFU Live.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Well, if you’re just watching this, and this is the first time watching or maybe you’ve just been to a few, first of all, thanks for checking us out on the Hump Day Hangouts. We’re here every Wednesday and if you haven’t grabbed it, yet, the battle plan is the best place to start. We get asked a lot. “Hey, I’m new to Semantic Mastery. I just started watching you guys’ videos or I came across this or that. What should I do first?” The battle plan is the place to start. There will be a link below where you can check that out. If you’re ready to kick things up a notch, we do have the Mastermind and, again, the link is there for you to take a look at that. I’m not going to go into the details here, but it’s the place to be if you’re into local digital marketing and you want to take things up a few notches.

Now, one thing we did want to talk about briefly today. This is actually a service of ours that I’ve used because we haven’t actually offered this outside of testing and getting the process set up, and this is keyword research that Marco spearheaded in getting this set up. Marco, do you want to talk about this real quick and let people know what we’re going to be sharing?

Marco: Yeah, sure. How this started out is, of course, it was in RYS Academy because we needed to give people an opportunity to have keyword research. You have to know your market. You have to know your niche. You have to know what you’re getting into. We started doing it Semantic Mastery style. We would do Google Trends, as Bradley recommends, and then we would do AdWords, of course, the keyword tool, and then we would do Power Suggest Pro. We would just come up with thousands of keywords to target. We could have left it at that because that’s fabulous, but then we said, “That’s not enough. If we’re going to offer something that’s keyword research, it needs to be more comprehensive.” So we added Ubersuggest, which that wasn’t enough, so we went into Answer the Public, and that wasn’t enough.

We started using the methods taught in Jeffrey Smith’s SEO Bootcamp and, by the way, Jeffery Smith is the best. If you guys don’t have SEO Bootcamp, you’re missing out. Ultimate SEO Bootcamp it is like the ultimate when it comes to going into and exploring your competition, your niche, but the keyword research is still a little bit short. It’s fabulous, but it doesn’t include everything that we’ve talked about. Not only that, we incorporated some of the stuff that’s taught in Network Empires. What is it? Ultimate Keyword Research Tool, and I said, “We could have left it at that.” Right? But we actually go and we classify the keywords, and then we set them up in silos.

Then all you have to do is go in and start plugging in the keywords, and using them, and developing content. The only thing that we will not do is content, of course, because nobody knows the niche better than the person that’s working in it. Right? We don’t know every niche, but we can research every niche, and dig up the keywords, and I’m looking at a tab. We ended up, I don’t know, like 10 tabs at the class. Well, we call it the classification tab, and I scrolled down thousands and thousands of keywords. It’s just ridiculous the amount of keywords that you get. I haven’t seen anything that’s as comprehensive, and all encompassing, as our keyword research, so that’s what you get when you order keyword research from us. Right? We either do things, we go all the way. We kill it or we just don’t do it. We don’t do shit half-assed, man.

Adam: I’ve just got to say this real quick. This is something we’re going to start offering through MGYB. That’s you, which is a store where you can … We’re going to talk about a little bit more briefly because we got a few things we want to share with everyone, but this is something. Like I said, we haven’t offered before. I meant it. I’ve used it. We’re using it for an internal site we’re putting together, as well as some other projects, and we wanted to start offering it. We’re going to just offer this to three people. It’s going to be $97, and Marco, roughly, what’s the turnaround time so we can give people kind of a time range, do you think?

Marco: It’ll be anywhere from three to five days.

Adam: Okay. So done by next week. I would say safely done by next week sometime.

Marco: Yeah.

Adam: This is going to be killer for a bunch of applications, so this is definitely a deal. Obviously, we’re offering it for 97 bucks right now to three people, so I’m going to put that on the page, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and then, eventually, it’ll be in the store available for purchase.

Marco: That’s about half price of what it’s actually going to cost.

Adam: Around there? All right, and then the other awesome thing we wanted to share with everybody was for the GMB verifications. So we’re offering 25 bucks off of these and I’ve got a coupon code I’m going to post, and I’ve used the keyword research. I haven’t used the GMB verifications. Marco or Bradley, do you guys want to tell them anything about this?

Bradley: Yeah. It’s funny, but I just ordered my first one today, believe it or not, because I was testing the sniping method that I’ve been developing just using P.O. boxes, like I always have and it’s just because old habits die hard, but I actually just placed my first order for GMB Verified today in part because it prevents me or now I don’t have to spend the time to go drive to a P.O. or, excuse me, a post office and fill out the paperwork, pick up the keys, and then drive back a week later after I’ve requested the verification card to pick it up, which sometimes, probably about 30 or 40% of the time, the card isn’t there when I drive back the second time, so I got to drive back a third time, and that uses a lot of time, and that’s okay.

I mean, it’s not so bad when it’s somewhat local, but when you got an hour drive in one direction to go pick something up and it’s not there, that’s shitty. Not only that, but what’s your time worth, right? So we have to verify GMB services now where you can buy them, basically, and we’ll create it, and verify it for you. It’s guaranteed for 60 days. Marco and I were talking a couple of days ago about this new method that I’ve been developing and he was like, “Dude, just use ours.” I was like, “Yeah. I guess I could.” I ordered my first one today. I’m really anxious to see how soon it comes back.

Marco: It’ll take two to five days to come back. It depends on just how difficult the niche is to get verified. If it’s easy, sometimes it’s overnight. I mean, we do have the express service at an additional cost. You get it back in 24 hours. I’ve ordered them. I mean, I have. I don’t know. I don’t keep track, but I know that it’s over 10, and they’re all sticking. They’re all working really well. We’re actually doing some super secret squirrel stuff to them that we’re not ready to share right now until all of the data comes back, until we have proof of concept, of course, and until we can replicate. That’s why all of this POFU, this ultimate POFU that I’ve been talking about, I can’t really say, “Guys, it’s working really well.”

We’ve already tested it. It’s in beta testing and it’s just going to get developed out from there. Once we have all the data and we can show you just how much money you can make, I said it before. Right? With RYS Academy, RYS Academy Reloaded we said we were going to turn the SEO world on its ear. We said it would Google My Business Pro. No rankings. No SEO, but you get leads. Now, let me do it again. We’re going to turn the SEO world on its fucking ear, and what I love about this and what keeps me going, guys, because I’m 55. I just turned 55, so every day that I get up it’s like, “Why are you doing this? Why do you keep doing?” It’s just I have, I don’t know, a magnificent obsession with getting over on Google.

That’s mine. That’s my thing. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do and I get up every morning with that mindset. “Today, I’m going to do something more to get over on Google,” and then every day I work on that and more, and more. Of course, that often equates into money. Oftentimes, it equates into nothing. It goes in the crapper, but that’s what testing is all about. Why am I still doing it at my age after 15 years? Because I love this shit. This is what keeps me going, man. I live for this, man. I live for getting over.

Adam: Awesome. I can’t top that, so all I’m going to say is go check out this stuff. If you want the GMB verification, that’s an awesome service, and then the keyword stuff is going to get rolling, and if you got any projects coming up or anything you’re even thinking about, I highly suggest it. It’s awesome. It is so complete and you get that, and then you just start putting stuff together. You can lay out a site like that once you get this stuff back, and all sorts of good stuff with it. I love it. I think it’s a big time saver, but enough of that. Do you guys got anything else or are we ready to jump into questions?

Bradley: I think I’m ready. Are you guys ready?

Hernan: Let’s do it.

Adam: All right.

Chris: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. Now, I got to tease this just a little bit more, guys, because I’m telling you. You got to come join the Mastermind. Guys, I just want to point out something. Again, this Maps Sniping Method that I’m kind of working out, now, and developing a process for scaling it. I kind of disclosed on a very high level our conceptual overview of what it is that I’m planning on building to our Mastermind members last week and, like I said, I mentioned it three for three in the last month for getting into three pack with brand-new verified GMB listings in under 24 hours. Well, one of them took about three days, so three for three in under three days, and I’ve just again, like I said, I’m attempting a fourth and I just picked up a fifth with using our verification service today that I’m going to be testing. I just want to point this one out.

This is just a screenshot from my phone earlier today because I set up a call center for my tree service leads, and that’s what I’ve been testing this method out with for this Maps Pack Sniping, and this is one that I sniped on Thursday, so essentially I registered a P.O. box which, again, I’m not even going to do that anymore because we have a verification service now where I can buy them and it saves me all that time from having to go drive and pick up the keys, and then drive back and pick up the verification card, and all that kind of stuff. It’s way better. It’s going to save me a ton of time. Costs a little bit of money out of pocket, but my time is worth more than that. Right?

This is one that I had rented a P.O. box for and, yet, on Thursday the day of the Mastermind webinar last week, I verified it and by the time we had the Mastermind webinar, which is at 3:00 p.m., it was already ranking. I verified it that morning. It was already ranking. Well, we got a call came through today already because everything goes through my call center, at least for the tree service leads it does. This is the lead email that came in today from that one, which is in Orange County, Virginia. It just goes to show you guys. I was able to rank a Maps listing in under 24 hours and, literally, just a couple of hours from the time that it was verified to the time that it made it into the three pack, and within four days, I guess, yeah. Four or five days it’s already generating calls, now. Right?

These are money-making calls. I get 10% of any closed contracts from this particular contractor. So think about that, guys. I mean, that’s just incredible. It cost me a few bucks and a little bit of time, and there you go. I’m already making money. One of the other ones that I had just set up was the first one that I had attempted this on. It’s in a very small area, so it’s not a whole lot of traffic or anything as far as website traffic clicks and calls, but I’ve already made money on that one because, again, that particular contractor he pays me 10% of any closed jobs, and he let me know because I told him I got him another area, and he let me know that we had already closed our first job, and I got paid off of that. I’m already profitable on that one. Just think about that, guys.

If you’re not in the Mastermind, you probably right now would be a really good time. If you’re doing local or lead gen, or a combination or a hybrid of both, I highly recommend you come check it out in the Mastermind because there’s a lot of really good stuff going on in there. Okay? Enough pitching anyways. Sorry, guys.

Do You Know An Alternative Plugin To Video Traffic X That Auto Creates Video Based On A Page Or Post Content?

Christoper, I answered your question a little bit further up. I don’t know if it’s going to be the exact same thing that you’re looking for, but there is a really good video program that creates content rather easily. I’ve used it. I used it like two years ago, and it might have even been three years ago, now, when it was first launched. It’s called Content Samurai.

It’s by the same makers of … What was that? You have to be an old school SEO to know what I’m talking about. It was Keyword Samurai.

Adam: I thought it was Keyword Samurai. Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I thought it was Keyword Samurai, too, or something like that. That was an old tool. When I first got started in SEO, that was the go-to tool for figuring out competitive metrics, and all that. The same developers behind that developed Content Samurai, which is their video platform. Again, it might have even been three years ago when it was first launched. I got in and played with it for a bit, and they have continued to develop it, and develop it. I know several of our Mastermind members. That’s their preferred video tool, and so that’s the reason why I posted that. Again, I don’t know that it’s going to do exactly what you’re asking, but I would check that one out because just like what you’ve mentioned here about video traffic X, that was a WordPress plugin and, obviously, the developer went out of business.

That’s what happens, guys, with a lot of these JVZoo offers. A lot of them are they’re fly-by-night product developers that don’t … They don’t withstand the test of time. Right? There’s not a whole lot of product developers out there that five years down the road are still in business, especially WordPress plugin developers. Unless they’re an established developer, it’s likely that the support is going to … Like, eventually, they’re going to stop supporting it because the company just goes out of business. Right? Again, that’s why I recommend something like Content Samurai that has a strong development platform behind it and they’ve been around for years, and they continue to develop the tools, so I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Adam: Yeah, real quick, too. I just went over to check it out and it’s got a seven-day free trial, so no loss there. Go check it out.

Bradley: There you go. Last thing guys, just think about it, man. I know how tempting it is, guys. I used to be a JVZoo and what they were called Warriors Special Offers, WSOs, back in the day, but I used to be a junkie. I used to always buy all the new WordPress plugins, and all the new tools because they were all push button like you’re going to get rich overnight, and all that kind of stuff. I’m a sucker for good marketing. That’s why I’m in the marketing industry. I would read a sales page, and I always had my credit card in hand by the time I got to the bottom of the sales page. I would buy all these damn tools and, first of all, that’s one way to quickly destroy your business because, well, first of all, you’re spending money. You’re spending revenue. Instead of generating revenue, you’re spending revenue.

Also, you end up spending a lot of time playing with a bunch of these stupid, shitty tools that aren’t going to move your business forward at all. Honestly, you don’t need most of the stuff. I guarantee probably everybody watching this webinar or listening to this webinar right now has enough tools in their toolbox that they can build a business. They don’t need anymore shiny objects. Right? You should be looking for ways to improve or streamline processes. You should be looking for things that might help make your job a little bit easier, such as automation, stuff for automating, and things like that, but you don’t need to go out and buy a shit-ton of tools, guys. Trust me. It will only slow your business down or prevent growth.

If you are going to buy tools, and that’s what I was getting at; sorry. I lost my train of thought for a moment, but if you are going to buy tools, try to buy tools from established developers. Even though they might be a bit more expensive, there’s a reason. Because what happens if you go out and buy one of these shitty JVZoo or Warrior Form or whatever offers that are $27 and you spend a lot of time implementing that into your business, depending processes for it? You become familiar with the tool, and now you rely on that tool to perform some specific function in your business, and now that tool goes out of business or it’s not supported. Right? Like they stop supporting it or stop development.

What happens then? Now you’ve got to go back. Go search for another tool. Buy it. Go through the learning curve. Implement it into your business. Develop processes. You have to reorganize all your shit because of a crappy tool that you bought. Right? Instead of just spending a little bit more money and getting something from an established developer, and the only reason why I’m saying this is because it’s very similar, guys, to hosting. Right? Everybody wants to go out and get … What is it? HostGator or, God forbid HostGator or GoDaddy or any of these really crappy budget hosts because it’s cheap, and they think they’re saving money. They’re being smart, but then your sites don’t rank, and they go down all the time.

There’s all kinds of issues with that. Right? You’re better off spending money on good hosting. The same thing goes with tools and training. Don’t buy shitty training, either. You guys have any comments on that before I move on?

Adam: No. I think that’s 100% what you need to say and I feel the same way. I would only follow up and say that, like you’re saying, “Don’t do it.” Because everyone does it. It’s just you got to, over time, wean yourself off of that and realize, “Oh, hey. This monthly recurring fee I’m paying means that they’re probably going to support it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good product. You still got to find a good product, but looking at it from the point of view of, “I want a developer who’s invested and making money because I want them to continue making sure that the product works and works well.”

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: Take it from people who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on shiny, new objects, and on crappy training. You don’t need to go through all that. Just find something that works and stick to it, and then just keep getting up every day, and doing it, and just creates a process that you can repeat, and you’re going to make money.

Did You Ever Hear About Legal Problems When Using The Address Of Virtual Box & Or Local Person You Know To Receive The GMB Letter?

Bradley: That’s it. Okay. This is Dustin just because she signed it. “Hey, Semantic boars.” Maybe that’s supposed to be boys. “Got a business-related question. Did you ever hear about legal problems when using the address, a virtual box, or a local person you know to receive the GMB letter? I was wondering because aren’t you registering the location for a real business?” Well, no. I mean, if you were to … All right. I’m not an attorney, guys, so I would highly recommend that you consult an attorney if you’re concerned about any of this, but the way I look at it is you’re not. When you register a business in Google, it’s not like registering a company with the state corporation commission or anything. It’s not like registering a company with the IRS, right? It’s not an official agency.

It’s Google. Right? It’s a search engine, so you can register anything you want there. Now, there are times. I’ve had this happen. I had to have one of my clients, actually. The case study for the local GMB Pro Course. It’s a taxi service. We had to contact Google to have an existing, verified listing deleted or taken down because the business owner didn’t have access to it. We created the new listing, which was also at a new address, a new physical location. We created a new Google My Business listing, and then contacted Google Support or Google My Business Support to tell them what the situation was, that there was an ex-employee that had created and verified the old or the existing GMB profile, and they didn’t work for the company anymore, and we didn’t have access to it.

Also, the company had moved to a different physical location. The same city, but different location so we needed to update all that. The reason I’m saying all this is because in order for them to, because it was a verified listing that we were asking to have removed and update to a new one, they required corporate documents, so we had to literally submit corporate documents to Google to show that the business indeed exists, and that it’s a valid business. It had an LLC. What do they call it? Articles of Organization or an operating agreement. They also needed to see the updated physical address. So, in other words, they had to see corporate documents with the new updated mailing address. Right?

So just consider that. It’s not a legal issue to register a business in Google. Google might require legal documentation, and if that’s the case, then you won’t be able to do it unless you have that legal documentation, but when registering your company or business with local agency, state agencies, or federal agencies then yes. You’re going to have to have a real, valid business. If you’re doing lead gen, guys, here’s one of the ways to get around that if you need to.

If you’re doing lead gen and you’re establishing “fake businesses” or pseudo businesses, is another term for it, generic brands, if you’re setting up lead-gen properties where you’re creating a pseudo brand, then what you can do is if you have a legal entity, a corporate entity, so if you’re an LLC or incorporated, whether it’s an S corp, a C corp, or whatever, then you can actually register that pseudo entity as a DBA or doing business as. So that, essentially, it’s your corporation. For example, my corporation is Big Bamboo Marketing, LLC. So I have DBAs for several of my lead-gen properties because that way even if Google asked for corporate documents for a lead-gen property, I can produce the doing business as certificate from the county.

It costs me, I think, 13 bucks or $14 to register a DBA. That’s all. You just go down to your local courthouse and ask for a DBA form. Wherever your business is registered, you go to that courthouse wherever your product … Like my agency it’s registered in Culpeper, so I go to the Culpeper County Courthouse. I tell them, “Hey, I need a” … or clerk of the circuit court or whatever, and I tell them that I need a DBA form. I fill it out with the lead-gen pseudo business or pseudo brand that I’m saying is a business, so that now is Big Bamboo Marketing doing business as, and so that way if Google ever requires me to verify that corporate document, all I have to do is submit the DBA and in my operating agreement for my LLC. Does that make sense?

So it’s not an issue. So that’s what I would recommend that you guys do. You don’t have to do that all the time, guys. For example, I’ve got a ton of lead-gen properties out there I don’t have DBAs for. I’m not going to lie, but if in case there was a time where I needed one, like Google required it, then I could always go down and get a DBA, and then submit it. Any comments guys or should I move on?

Adam: Good to go.

Does The Local PR Pro Course Includes A Demo On Getting 3 Pack Map Rankings In Surrounding Cities/Towns Using The Press Release Methods Without Getting A New Verified GMB Listing?

Bradley: Okay. That was a great question, by the way, Dustin; a really good question. Okay, support question from Ed Ryan. “I purchased GMB Pro the day it came out, and I love it.” Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. He says, “In Local PR Pro does Bradley show us specifically how to get three pack map rankings in surrounding cities/towns using the press release method without getting a new verified GMB listing for the business for the surrounding town?” Not specifically, but I talk a lot. We’ve talked about that many times in the Mastermind. I don’t think it’s specifically a local PR Pro, but there’s a couple of things that you could do that I can reveal here. If you wanted to try to rank in the adjacent areas, it’s not always going to be possible, guys, but there are things that you can do to kind of help facilitate that.

It requires on page. It requires having, basically, categories or silo structures or geo posts for the areas that you’re trying to get ranked in. I would also recommend that within your GMB profile, since you’re doing GMB Pro, that you start using the GMB posts just the way that we teach in the training with images, with meta tag or geo tags for the areas that you’re trying to rank in, all that kind of stuff. Try to use those keywords in those posts. Right? Then for using press releases, specifically, then you could target those locations that you want to rank in in your press releases as part of the title is incredibly important for press releases, so target the locations that you want to rank in, as long as they’re adjacent, and the title.

Make sure that you’re linking to the content that is also optimized for that location, whether it’s on your website or on your GMB profile or wherever it may be. So those are some of the things that you can do. Now, again, if you want some more in-depth training on that Ed, you got to come back to the Mastermind. Specifically in Local PR Pro I don’t talk about that because Local PR Pro the way that I’ve found. I’m talking about getting three pack rankings using press releases for the city that the business is located in. Obviously, because of the GMB Pro stuff that we’re doing, personally, I’d prefer to just get more GMB listings now than trying to rank one listing in multiple locations.

It’s so easy now, guys. Whether you’re doing P.O. boxes, which is what I’ve always done or now, which is even better using our verified GMB service. You don’t even need to leave your damn house. You can just order it online. It gets done and now you can set up as many GMB profiles as you want, and just literally target an entire region if you want. I think that’s easier. It takes less work than trying to rank one GMB for a wide service area or geographic area, if that makes sense. Guys, I like easy and the thing about it is if you develop a process, Ed, or excuse me. Yeah, Ed. If you develop a process for buying, and that’s what I’m doing, guys. I’m developing a process for scaling this method, so that I can outsource 90 to 95% of it.

It will require very little effort from me once the process is developed, and when I say it’s going to be automated, it’s going to be automated to me because I’m going to have virtual assistants doing most of the work. Does that make sense? That’s why I said it would be better, less work for you, to develop a process for building out additional GMBs even for one specific business so that you can expand their service area, and what they’re generating leads from. Develop out a process for that and that way you can outsource. Even if you don’t outsource it, it’s repeatable. If you develop like a checklist and a flowchart on what to do, then it becomes almost second nature.

You can do it like it becomes routine and it’ll become a lot easier than trying to rank one listing for a really wide geographic area or at least in my opinion it is.

Marco: One last thing. Ed, go to the Facebook group and just say you’d like a webinar on how to extend the business center, and we can get into that.

Bradley: Yep. Yeah, especially if you’re in the GMB Pro Course, because I know that question has come up a couple of times, and I think Marc. Yeah, Marco when you did the Unlimited Local Images and Videos Webinar, you touched on that briefly.

Marco: Yeah. We talked it, but we can expand on it because it’s not that difficult.

What Is The Best Combination Of Serp Space Link Packages That Provide The Best Juice At Specific Price Ranges?

Bradley: Yeah. So there you go, guys. We’ll do a follow-up webinar on GMB Pro for that. What’s up, Kevin? I haven’t seen you here in a while, man. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen Kevin post a question. He’s been around for a long time. “Hey, guys. How has everyone been? It’s been a while. Life gets in the way. You know.” Yes. I do. It’s good to have you back, buddy. He says, “Wanted to ask about service space tiered link building for local clients. I’m thinking of adding in on month three of a campaign. Service space tiered link building to as many as possible of the clients tier ones; links they’ve accumulated over the years. I see about four options for Web 2.0 contextual, and four more options for non-contextuals, plus this can be all done for four tiers. That is a lot of different combinations and price points.”

“What would be the best combination or lack of combination to provide the most use at the cheapest price, a middle price, and a higher price, but not as high as the just max everything out?” Okay. I’m not the spam guy anymore, guys. I actually rarely even use it anymore.

Marco: Shame on you.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, I don’t. It’s just I don’t use a lot of spam links anymore because I don’t need to. We’re able to get results now using RYS, Local GMB Pro, Local PR Pro, and syndication networks. It seems silly to do that. Now, there are certainly times when spam can help and I can certainly power up drive stacks, and press releases, and syndication networks, all of that, with spam, but I’ve been getting results recently without doing it, so I’m not really the big spam guy anymore that I used to be. I would recommend that you … I can give you a little bit of advice here, but what I would recommend, Kevin, is to repost this question in the SEO Tutorials and Case Studies Semantic Mastery Facebook Group, which is the free group, and then tag. You could tag me on it if you want, and I’ll tag Daddio, which is our link-building guy.

He’s been with me for, shit, at least five years, and he’s our manager. The guy’s a ninja. He’s got a full staff that all they do is build links, and so he can answer that question and direct you to specifically what you need. Now, the slight advice that I’ll give you and, again, I don’t even know if it’s accurate. I would still repost this question in that group and get his advice because his advice is going to be a hell of a lot more current than mine, but what I would say is I always go with contextual links. Anything non-contextual is like kitchen sink spam, and that’s the kind of stuff that I would keep way, way far away from my money site, like four or five hops away if I’m going to use it at all.

I would stick with Web 2.0 contextual links for at least three tiers before I would do GSA kitchen sink spam or anything like that. Again, that’s just because that’s kind of evolved, too, because it used to be that we would just do to tier one links. We would do contextual links, so your tier two links would be contextual Web 2.0s, and then we would push spam behind that. Your tier three links would just be kitchen sink spam, but that’s changed because Google is looking further, and Marco can comment on this, but this is about distance graph and all that stuff. So it’s really important, at least in my opinion, to keep kitchen sink spam further and further away, and so I believe Daddio’s recommendation, now, is for tier two and tier three that you use contextual Web 2.0. Marco, you want to comment on that a little bit?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, Daddio has all the answers for you. The guy’s been at it for years. He knows exactly what to do, and how to do it. He can give you the best recommendation.

Bradley: Yep.

Marco: One thing that I would tell you. Since Google is looking out further and further, make sure you put a drive stack in there so that all of your link building goes through the drive stack, and it’ll come out the other end just pristine, no matter what it is. Even if a set of links turns bad for whatever reason, it won’t hurt.

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: That’s how good drive stacks are at cleaning up spam.

Are You Still Using RSS Feed Directory Submission And Other RSS Tactics?

Bradley: That’s good advice. Thank you. Second question, now. “One more question if that’s okay. Are you still using RSS feed directory submissions and other RSS tactics that have been mentioned before? Tactics seem to come and go so quick. It’s hard to know if something that was done eight-plus month ago is still valid and worth the time and money to implement today.” Yeah. Actually, believe it or not, I still think RSS feeds are one of the most underutilized things in SEO. There is a lot of things you can do with RSS feeds that are really powerful. I mean, obviously, syndication networks they’re RSS feed driven the way that we’ve always set up the triggers that way, but there is still a lot of other things that you can do.

Now, I don’t spend a shit-ton of time on that stuff anymore, but if you’re in a competitive niche where every little push helps or you need every little push, then absolutely RSS stuff is still valid. The easiest way to do it, guys, is just collect your money side RSS feed or your Web 2.0 feeds or all of them. If you want, you can combine them together with the feed splicer, and then submit that one super feed to just go to Fiverr and search for RSS feed submits, and you can get a Fiverr gig that will do the work for you that will submit to 70 directories and aggregators for you, and they’ll send you tips. A lot of times they’ll send you back a report, and it’ll cost you five or 10 bucks, or something like that.

So what? It’s easy. It’ll only take you a few seconds, and let them do the work for you. Okay? Yeah. It still works, guys. There is no doubt. It’s funny because I think RSS stuff it’s an old technology, and so a lot of people don’t think that it’s still valuable, but it certainly is. There is no doubt it is. Okay. Good question. Good to have you back, Kevin. All right. Let’s see.

Is It Enough To Only Build Money Channel Or Brand Ring To Stick The Videos On SERPs?

It says, “Hi. First, thanks for answering my question. This SEO shit keeps me never run out of question.” Isn’t that the truth? “The more you get into it the more questions come.” That’s correct. “About IFTTT networks, is building only one ring that is the money channel brand ring reason for sticking the videos on SIR?”

Well, it can be. I mean, there is a lot of variables there. Typically for video stuff, though, guys I don’t even start syndication networks for videos for YouTube channels unless I’m going to use at least one full two-tier ring. Right? So you’re going to have a branded ring or a tier-one ring. It doesn’t have to be branded, but I recommend that you do. A branded tier-one ring, and then you have three tier-two rings, which is the full two-tier networks. If I’m going to start a new channel and a syndication network broadcast. I call it a broadcast network for videos, but a broadcast network for a new YouTube channel or a new project. I always start with at least one full two-tier network.

That’s just I guess because I have the resources to do that, guys. If you have the resources, I recommend you do that as well. Typically, I end up with usually anywhere between two to five full two-tier networks stacked on one YouTube channel if I’m serious about that particular project or campaign, so it depends. If you can get results, and the only reason I say that, guys, is because I don’t do so much of it anymore, but for a period, for many years there, actually, I did a lot of video broadcasting work for local video production companies, and so I developed out several themed syndication networks that I had themed YouTube channels. One was for Virginia businesses.

One was specifically for contractors. I had one for health and wellness stuff, and they’re just big syndication networks that I created for YouTube. The idea is with blog syndication I always recommend, and I’ve been recommending this for years, to just stick with a branded syndication network and don’t go multi tiers because it can create issues, and it kind of creates a little bit of a maintenance nightmare. Right? It’s a pain in the ass to maintain, but for videos there is no footprint issues. It’s still to this day, guys, there is no footprint issues with broad. As long as you’re using the applets the way that we teach or you buy the syndication networks from us with the applets already built, then they’re going to work fine.

I’ve never had any issues with YouTube videos getting slapped or sand boxed, or anything going through syndication networks, but blog content can if you’re doing multi tiers, so just to bring it back to what you’re asking. I would recommend. You can try. Certainly try it with just one, but if you’re not getting the results that you want, then start stacking tier two networks on to the tier one network, or you can also stack additional tier one networks, persona-based networks. That’s perfectly fine as well. That was a good question, though.

How Do You Determine If A Social Website Is Good To Have In A Network Ring Or Not?

“How do you determine if a social website is good to have in a network ring or not? There are over 200 popular social webs.” They’re all good. If you can get a branded profile on the network or on any one of those social sites, just do it because you’re increasing. You’re validating your entity more every time you add another branded profile, especially if you can interlink. Even if all you can do is link to one other property that’s branded, that’s good enough. Guys, that’s why in Syndication Academy we do the update webinars, and we add. Not every month, but almost every month, we add at least one new property. Again, it’s not every month, but almost every month we add at least one new property, whether it can be syndicated to or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we can syndicate to or not. It still acts as a citation.

If it’s a real business, it acts as an entity validator. Guys, the more places you can get your brand out on the Web, the more authority you’ll accrue. Let’s see. “I would have thought Stumble Upon would be a good social website to include, but you seem to neglect it.” No. We’ve done Stumble Upon, but didn’t Stumble Upon go out of business, recently or something?

Marco: No. They moved to something called Mix.com-

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: … but you could still use Mix.com. I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the same way. You can curate content from around the Web.

Bradley: Yep. Okay, cool. What’s up, Nigel? He’s always active. He says, “You are appreciated for the value you bring. G Hypnosis was awesome. Thanks to you guys and Eric.” Yeah. That was a great webinar. Did we ever get a replay available, yet? Adam, if Adam is still on. Hello?

Adam: Sorry.

Bradley: Yeah. Adam must be-

Adam: Technical issues hitting the mute button. I’m still working on that, but we’ll have some info shortly, I believe.

Bradley: Okay, good. All right. Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll get the replay out here in a minute or soon, guys, because that was a great webinar. There was obviously an offer at the end of that webinar for … It was funny because the webinar was for a particular method and a information product, but the first hour of the webinar was not about the product at all. It was about how to prospect and sell to clients. It was fabulous. It was really, really good. Eric has really created a great business. I respect him highly anyways because I’ve known him since the start of my career, so I already respected the guy, but he’s built a really good business and he’s developed his own sales process that it works, and it’s funny, but we were talking.

My salesman that’s working for my agency and I have been trial and error developing sales processes for months now, and we haven’t been very successful, but what we’ve found with Roberto because he’s the one primarily doing it. He’s the one talking to the contractors and everything. What he’s found over the last several months is essentially he’s kind of, through trial and error, come to the same conclusion that Eric uses for his sales process that he revealed on this webinar in this first hour of the webinar. It was funny because I was like, “Damn it! I wish I could have had this webinar with you, Eric, like four months ago, five months ago. It could have saved us four or five months of trial and error, and I probably closed a lot of these contractors that have now gone cold because we screwed up the sales process.”

Any Decent Spammy Fiverr Traffic For Testing?

At least it was good validation to know that we have, even though it took us a bunch of trial and error to figure it out. At least it was good validation to know that we’re on the right track. Thanks for mentioning that, Nigel. It was good to bring that up. Okay. Coming up on four years of goodness, yes. We are. He says, “Any decent spammy Fiverr traffic for testing or is that a myth that it works with RYS, although likely not recommended at first option?” Well, I mean, I’ve used the fiber traffic gigs for getting press releases to stick. I haven’t really tested them with drive stacks or anything. Have you, Marco?

Marco: No.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: No. I haven’t.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can log into Fire real quick and just give you one lady that I ordered a whole lot of them she … Well, who knows if it’s a lady. The profile picture was a lady, but that one I think that gig got taken down or something. I’m not sure. Just give me one second. I think that’s one of them. Yeah. See? That one’s no longer available. All right. This one is. I’ve used this guy, too. You guys can see. This is it’s niche targeted. 2,000 daily visitors for 15 days for five bucks. This one right here I’ll just grab the URL. Whoops! And drop it on the page for you, Nigel. Again, I haven’t tried any of these with drive stacks. I have used these types of gigs for getting press releases to stick longer in the search.

For example, if you get a press release, guys, to rank on page one. You guys probably know that a lot of times press releases they rank really well for a short period of time, and then they start to slip in the search. I’ve used these types of gigs to be able to drive traffic to them to get them to stick in the search longer, and it absolutely works. I don’t know about drive stack stuff, but I can’t imagine it would probably hurt, especially since it’s drive stack stuff. Good question, though. Damn, guys. You’ve posted a whole shit-ton of questions all of a sudden because there wasn’t much before.

Are You Using Rotator Link For Landing Pages?

Anyone using Rotator Link for landing pages and, if so, any recommendations? You mean for split testing landing pages? There’s a rotator inside click funnels, and that’s all I use for landing pages. If anybody has any recommendations for doing split testing landing pages or link rotators and stuff like that, plugins or anything like that, let Nigel know, please. Just post on the page here.

What Strategies Are You Using With Alignable And LinkedIn To Get Leads Business?

“What strategies are you using with Alignable and LinkedIn to get business leads?” Well, I started playing with Alignable, and every now and then I’ll take an hour, an hour and a half and go in and become really active for an hour, but it’s not something I do consistently. It’s one of those things I’ve always had intentions to do consistently, but I never do it consistently.

Every now and then, like I said, I’ll go in and spend an hour in there and I’ll be like, “Wow! There’s a lot of opportunity here, and all that,” and I’ll get all excited, and then three weeks goes by before I do it again. I’m not really doing a lot of in there. I think there’s opportunity, but I haven’t had enough time to. I haven’t spent enough time in there to really figure out a process for getting repeatable results. LinkedIn we spent a lot of time. Well, Roberto, my salesman, spent a lot of time in LinkedIn trying to develop a process for tree service contractors. We realize now that was probably a really, really shitty industry to try to approach in LinkedIn just because there’s not a lot of contractors in LinkedIn, tree service contractors, and when they are, again, it’s not really a platform made for that type of a contractor.

We’re actually doing started prospecting just in the last two weeks again for general contractors and remodeling contractors, so we’re going to take what he started to develop for tree service contractors on LinkedIn and apply that to that industry, and see if we can get better results. I believe we will because, again, I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, but those type of contractors seem to be a bit more digitally savvy or a bit more sophisticated. There is more of them on LinkedIn and they seem to be a bit more engaged on LinkedIn. In the coming weeks, Nigel, especially I don’t know if you’re still in the Mastermind or not, but in the coming weeks as we have more data from that or more results, or experience, good, bad, or ugly, I’ll be sharing that about the LinkedIn stuff.

Do You Have Any Creative SEO Strategies For A Business That Sells Psychiatric Services To Skillled Nursing Care Facilities?

Jordan, okay. “A new client coming onboard that sells psychiatric services to skilled nursing care facilities, and then expanding. Obviously, the search volume is incredibly low and there aren’t that many decision makers. Less than a thousand, but each enlistment is worth about 70,000 per year to them.” Wow. “Doing everything digital for them: site, social, SEO, content, marketing conferences, collateral, et cetera. Any creative SEO strategies for this type of highly niched B2B client?” That’s a tough one, Jordan.

Adam: Actually, yeah. This is cool. Jordan, I’ll have to send you … I listened to a podcast recently and I can’t remember the guy’s name. Sorry. I’ll have to look it up, but basically the guy did this, and he did it in one region. I can’t remember. It wasn’t where you’re at, but talking about this, and going into the specifics of obviously you’re generally not, and I’m sure you already understand this, but you’re not marketing to consumer. You’re marketing. This is like a family member would be looking for this, so words like mom, dad, and all the associated words like that, and then going into it, and potentially can you offer other than I’m looking at what you’re saying? Can you do any sort of remarketing?

There is a lot of stuff you can do because it’s worth so much to them which, obviously, you just listed but, also, you could maybe open their eyes and maybe, again, you’ve already done this. Once they reach a certain amount of let’s say like it takes 75% booking or rooms filled for them to be profitable that you become highly profitable to them once you bring them past that point, so that maybe you can get more funds in order to expand some of these activities. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

What’s The Best Way To Handle WordPress Security Issues?

Bradley: That’s great. Thanks, Adam. If you can tag him on it and find it, that’d be great. All right, cool. What’s up, Dan? KD, there we go. “Hey, guys. What’s the best way to handle WordPress security issues and not mess up SEO? I have a client ranked on page one. It is now under heavy brute force attack. I cranked up the settings on iTheme security.” Now, guys. Personally, there is a couple of things I would recommend. Number one, get a really good host. Liquid Web is fantastic for this kind of stuff, guys. They have their own firewall and all this other stuff. They’re really, really good at security over at Liquid Web. Guys, we talk about this. I just mentioned hosting earlier on this webinar. My two go-to resources, Liquid Web is hands down my favorite. I also have been recently using WPX hosting for a lot of one-off WordPress sites.

For testing purposes or for lead gen sites and stuff, I’ve been using WPX, which seems to be good. Their support is really, really good, too, but there are some drawbacks to that where I think Liquid Web is even better, but Liquid Web has some really, really good security features; however, I see that you mentioned down here about security. I’ve got two of my clients on security, actually, and they have the security firewall, and they have the malware removal programs, and all that stuff, and I got two of my … One of my clients is a pest control company. Actually, it’s a tick and mosquito control company. So it’d be like outdoor pest control, and they have been hacked like at least eight times in the last five years since they’ve been working with me.

Even after we put their site on Sucuri, they still have been hacked a couple of times, but Sucuri always goes in. All you got to do is submit a request to Sucuri and they’ll go in, and find the problem. Unhack the site. Restore the site and they’ll take care of everything for you. All you have to do is submit a ticket. Again, it’s worth it. I think it’s like 300 bucks a year or something like that but, in my opinion, it’s totally worth it or get a really good host like Liquid Web and let them do it. As far as changing the DNS, would that affect rankings? No, not at all. That shouldn’t affect rankings at all. In fact, actually, changing DNS from a shitty host through something like Sucuri will likely improve the site.

Marco: Yes. What I would like to say is, depending on her needs, we have a really neat way where we trap these rouge bots that do these attacks, and if you want to talk about that, I mean, it’s not cheap, just so you know, but you can always find me in Facebook, Katie, and we can talk, and then we could set up and then all of these rogue bots you can just eliminate. You can trap them and eliminate them, and it’s over and done with.

Bradley: Yep. Bob Lowe, I love that comment. “Master manipulation makes your palms hairy.” That’s funny, Bob. All right. We’re almost done, guys. I got to wrap up in just a couple of minutes, anyways. I get to take my daughter to dinner tonight. Let’s see. R. Banking says, “If using a set number of credits and maps powerhouse, is it better to use all of them on the embed or split them up between embeds and secondary posts?” That’s a good question. I prefer doing a split between embeds and secondary posts just because I was mentioning.

I was talking about YouTube networks earlier, syndication networks, and I mentioned that I like to use two-tier networks for YouTube syndication; however, you can stack multiple tier-one rings onto a channel to where they’re all being triggered directly from the channel instead of being secondary triggers from a blog in your first-tiered network. The reason why I like the second two-tiered networks is because I’ve found that the effect lasts longer through two-tiered networks. In other words, if I were to take a channel and stack 10 tier-one networks on the channel, the video is likely going to rank really quickly, but it typically will start, and I haven’t tested this, now, in probably two years, but about two to three years ago I did a lot of testing on this, guys.

I found that multiple tier-one networks the video would rank really quickly, but it would start to slip in the rankings a lot sooner, whereas, if I used multiple tier-two networks or multi-tiered networks, then it might not rank as quickly, but it would indeed rank eventually, and it would end up sticking a lot longer. I’ve always applied that same methodology to video Powerhouse and Maps Powerhouse to where I prefer doing like the tiers and secondary embeds and or back links as well instead of just doing all tier-one stuff. So that’s going to be my answer, but I haven’t tested specifically to see if one is going to perform better than the others. Does anybody here have any insight on that?

Marco: No. I do the same exact thing simply because it adds relevance at the other tiers coming back to your tier one.

Bradley: There you go. Bob Lowe, he said he ordered his Verified GMB and can’t wait to get it back. “I’m ready with the website content and PR.” Boom! There you go, Bob. Perfect. That’s perfect. Thank you. “Bradley, will this process improve the position and the pack if you’re already there?” No. Well, Dan. If you’re talking about the GMB Sniping, the Map Sniping that I’ve been talking about, no because that’s talking about finding locations that you can register a GMB or verify a GMB, and get into the three pack within … So far, like I said, I’ve been able. I’m three for three in under 72 hours. The method I’m talking about is getting into a three pack with a brand-new listing.

If it’s an existing listing, then I would recommend local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro. Those are the two things that I’m using specifically now. Local PR Pro for getting into the three pack. Local GMB Pro for generating leads regardless of three pack. Does that make sense? The two combined are absolutely brutal, guys. There is no way that you can’t get results with those two, and you add a drive stack on top of it. Forget about it. Right? Market Samurai, there you go, Walt. Thank you. Thank you, Walt. Yeah, Market Samurai. That was the keyword research tool that was like the go-to. It was industry standard for several years. You guys remember that? Like, the pink and the green lines, and all that, and the chart. It would create like a spreadsheet and it would show in-bound back links, and keyword rank. It was crazy.

I used to use that thing like daily. That’s awesome. Thanks, Walt. We’re almost done, guys. Let’s see. He’s doing Pinterest stuff, too. Is that what he’s doing? That’s Pinterest stats, right?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: That’s good. I posted my stats on there. I just want people to see what you could do. I mean, the type of traffic that you can actually generate with this thing, which is ridiculous. I know Dan is doing really well, but this one, the one that I posted, is in the millions, now.

Bradley: Clint. “GoDaddy bought Sucuri.” No shit? Yeah. “Plan on that sucking soon.” Okay. Well, I’m glad I know that now because I won’t recommend it going forward, Clint. Thank you. I appreciate that because yeah, guys. GoDaddy hosting sucks, by the way, so if they bought Sucuri, it’s probably going to suck, too. Clint is right. No doubt. Scott says, “Still wrestling with a client attempting to get them onboard with GMB verification. He already has a verified listing for the suburb, and has no traction in the much larger city. He is afraid he will lose the verified listing he already has with Google. Without giving away your processes, would he have a new Google listing for the larger city or will his current GMB be impacted in any way?”

Okay, Scott. What I’m going to tell you is look. I can’t reveal too much, guys. Actually, let me just say this. What I would do in that case if you have a client is already a client, and you’re trying to talk them into getting a second GMB for another area that they want to generate leads from because, again, it’s more difficult to get one listing to rank in multiple areas, a wide geographic region. It’s harder to do that, in my opinion, than it is to just create a new damn listing for the areas that you want. What I would recommend is if he’s already a client and you’re already making money, just go register the GMB yourself. Get it. Do it yourself, right? Build it with a generic brand, a pseudo brand, and then once the damn thing is ranked, then show them. “Look what I did.”

Because look. You can monetize that property, whether it’s for that client or another client. It doesn’t matter. My point is: Why not build that asset? If he’s already a client and you know he wants the leads in that area, but he’s scared, just go create a GMB listing with a pseudo brand. It’s in the same category, all that shit. Get it set up. Get it ranked, and then approach him with it and say, “Look. I’ve already got this asset. It’s already ranked in the area that you want these leads from.” Now, you can sign him up for like an increase on a monthly retainer or you can just sell him the damn leads. In any way, you own that asset, now. You can rebrand it for him or he can turn it down and you can say, “That’s fine. I’ll sell the leads to another person in the same industry in the same area.” Does that make sense?

My point is don’t try to pull the client’s teeth. If he’s giving you resistance, just go register it yourself. Rank the damn thing. Now, you’ve got another asset in your portfolio that you can use to entice him to increase his services with you, his commitment with you. If he doesn’t, who cares. You’ve got an asset now that you can monetize with another company. Let’s see. Local host publish fee FTP to server. I don’t know what that means, Mike. I’m sorry. “Will premium domain solve the link equity described in a previous discussion instead of using Alley like Marco mentioned? What do you mean by premium domain, Mike?” I don’t follow that one, either. I don’t know what you mean by that Mike. I apologize, but we’re out of time anyways, so if you want to post this question again in the SEO tutorials group, maybe we can comment in on that.

Hey, Clint still has Market Samurai installed. I didn’t even know if they still … Apparently, they do. I think that’s what he was saying earlier. I didn’t know that that tool was still being supported and all that. I haven’t seen it in years. “Thanks for the GMB, very helpful. All set up.” Yep. There you go. Scott remember. You can buy it now, and you don’t even have to leave your damn house. Scott you’re in the Mastermind. Follow the training that I talked about in the newsletter as well. You’ll get that in about a week, as well as the last two Mastermind webinars I’ve touched on. It’s just is very specifically how to research the areas to find the best opportunity. Right? All right. Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate every for sticking around.

Adam: Awesome.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Adam: Bye, everybody.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: See y'all next week.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199

Click on the video above to watch Episode 199 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. This is Episode 199. It is the 29th of August, 2018. We are here with the full crew as we inch closer to Episode 200, so we’re going to say hello to everyone real quick, and then we’re going to make some good announcements today. We got some cool limited time stuff coming up as well as some things we want to share with you all before we dive into the questions. So real quick, Chris. How are you doing today?

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here. How are you doing?

Adam: Can’t complain. I’m trying out this fancy, new screen in the background. That’s not a green screen. I bought one of those. It’s like a folding shoji screen thing so you guys don’t have to look at my office futon and white boards, and so I did it for you guys, not for me. Hernan, how are you doing?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up? I’m traveling, so connection is not the best, but I’m excited to be here. Yeah. I’m excited for POFU Live. Right now, I’m writing a message on the event, so I’m going to just drop the link over there. If you guys want to join, that’s going to be epic.

Adam: Nice. Yeah, so if you’re watching live, you can check it out, if not, we’ll include that in the show notes, and tickets are selling, so if you’re thinking about going or you want to know more, now is a very good time to go check that out. We are capping it at 25 max. I think we’re halfway there and so grab you a ticket while you can. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: Working on POFU, man. You guys saw it. You guys saw it. You know what I’m working on. It never stops. It never stops. Manipulation never stops. Those of you who are not manipulating, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Adam: Oops, sorry. I was muted. I was like, “Man, strong start to Hump Day Hangouts today, but for real.” That’s also the theme of … That’s why we’re calling it POFU Live. Right? That’s our live event and talking about ourselves, as well as the people who are attending how we can help each other get to that point where you get to choose what you want to do, either with your time, your projects, your clients. Bradley, how are you doing, man?

Bradley: Great, man. Happy to be here. Got a lot of exciting stuff cooking up right now. Gearing up for POFU Live. I got a couple of things that I’m actually developing specifically for that, and some stuff that I’ve been developing. I started talking about in the Mastermind a couple of weeks ago, and actually did the newsletter entry for the newsletter that gets mailed out in a week or so specifically addressing that, and then we had the Mastermind webinar last, or excuse me, Thursday, and I went into a little bit more detail, and I’ve just been like neck deep in this new process that I’m developing. It’s just absolutely crushing it for sniping Maps pack rankings, like within 24 hours. It’s crazy. I’m three for three in the last month, and I actually just ordered another verified GMB profile now to see if I can be four for four.

If that’s the case, which, again, I’m working on a process right now to be able to scale this. Client work is great, but if you can develop your own assets, that’s even better, and so that’s something I’m working on inside of the Mastermind, and really excited about it, and looking forward to sharing that at POFU Live.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Well, if you’re just watching this, and this is the first time watching or maybe you’ve just been to a few, first of all, thanks for checking us out on the Hump Day Hangouts. We’re here every Wednesday and if you haven’t grabbed it, yet, the battle plan is the best place to start. We get asked a lot. “Hey, I’m new to Semantic Mastery. I just started watching you guys’ videos or I came across this or that. What should I do first?” The battle plan is the place to start. There will be a link below where you can check that out. If you’re ready to kick things up a notch, we do have the Mastermind and, again, the link is there for you to take a look at that. I’m not going to go into the details here, but it’s the place to be if you’re into local digital marketing and you want to take things up a few notches.

Now, one thing we did want to talk about briefly today. This is actually a service of ours that I’ve used because we haven’t actually offered this outside of testing and getting the process set up, and this is keyword research that Marco spearheaded in getting this set up. Marco, do you want to talk about this real quick and let people know what we’re going to be sharing?

Marco: Yeah, sure. How this started out is, of course, it was in RYS Academy because we needed to give people an opportunity to have keyword research. You have to know your market. You have to know your niche. You have to know what you’re getting into. We started doing it Semantic Mastery style. We would do Google Trends, as Bradley recommends, and then we would do AdWords, of course, the keyword tool, and then we would do Power Suggest Pro. We would just come up with thousands of keywords to target. We could have left it at that because that’s fabulous, but then we said, “That’s not enough. If we’re going to offer something that’s keyword research, it needs to be more comprehensive.” So we added Ubersuggest, which that wasn’t enough, so we went into Answer the Public, and that wasn’t enough.

We started using the methods taught in Jeffrey Smith’s SEO Bootcamp and, by the way, Jeffery Smith is the best. If you guys don’t have SEO Bootcamp, you’re missing out. Ultimate SEO Bootcamp it is like the ultimate when it comes to going into and exploring your competition, your niche, but the keyword research is still a little bit short. It’s fabulous, but it doesn’t include everything that we’ve talked about. Not only that, we incorporated some of the stuff that’s taught in Network Empires. What is it? Ultimate Keyword Research Tool, and I said, “We could have left it at that.” Right? But we actually go and we classify the keywords, and then we set them up in silos.

Then all you have to do is go in and start plugging in the keywords, and using them, and developing content. The only thing that we will not do is content, of course, because nobody knows the niche better than the person that’s working in it. Right? We don’t know every niche, but we can research every niche, and dig up the keywords, and I’m looking at a tab. We ended up, I don’t know, like 10 tabs at the class. Well, we call it the classification tab, and I scrolled down thousands and thousands of keywords. It’s just ridiculous the amount of keywords that you get. I haven’t seen anything that’s as comprehensive, and all encompassing, as our keyword research, so that’s what you get when you order keyword research from us. Right? We either do things, we go all the way. We kill it or we just don’t do it. We don’t do shit half-assed, man.

Adam: I’ve just got to say this real quick. This is something we’re going to start offering through MGYB. That’s you, which is a store where you can … We’re going to talk about a little bit more briefly because we got a few things we want to share with everyone, but this is something. Like I said, we haven’t offered before. I meant it. I’ve used it. We’re using it for an internal site we’re putting together, as well as some other projects, and we wanted to start offering it. We’re going to just offer this to three people. It’s going to be $97, and Marco, roughly, what’s the turnaround time so we can give people kind of a time range, do you think?

Marco: It’ll be anywhere from three to five days.

Adam: Okay. So done by next week. I would say safely done by next week sometime.

Marco: Yeah.

Adam: This is going to be killer for a bunch of applications, so this is definitely a deal. Obviously, we’re offering it for 97 bucks right now to three people, so I’m going to put that on the page, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and then, eventually, it’ll be in the store available for purchase.

Marco: That’s about half price of what it’s actually going to cost.

Adam: Around there? All right, and then the other awesome thing we wanted to share with everybody was for the GMB verifications. So we’re offering 25 bucks off of these and I’ve got a coupon code I’m going to post, and I’ve used the keyword research. I haven’t used the GMB verifications. Marco or Bradley, do you guys want to tell them anything about this?

Bradley: Yeah. It’s funny, but I just ordered my first one today, believe it or not, because I was testing the sniping method that I’ve been developing just using P.O. boxes, like I always have and it’s just because old habits die hard, but I actually just placed my first order for GMB Verified today in part because it prevents me or now I don’t have to spend the time to go drive to a P.O. or, excuse me, a post office and fill out the paperwork, pick up the keys, and then drive back a week later after I’ve requested the verification card to pick it up, which sometimes, probably about 30 or 40% of the time, the card isn’t there when I drive back the second time, so I got to drive back a third time, and that uses a lot of time, and that’s okay.

I mean, it’s not so bad when it’s somewhat local, but when you got an hour drive in one direction to go pick something up and it’s not there, that’s shitty. Not only that, but what’s your time worth, right? So we have to verify GMB services now where you can buy them, basically, and we’ll create it, and verify it for you. It’s guaranteed for 60 days. Marco and I were talking a couple of days ago about this new method that I’ve been developing and he was like, “Dude, just use ours.” I was like, “Yeah. I guess I could.” I ordered my first one today. I’m really anxious to see how soon it comes back.

Marco: It’ll take two to five days to come back. It depends on just how difficult the niche is to get verified. If it’s easy, sometimes it’s overnight. I mean, we do have the express service at an additional cost. You get it back in 24 hours. I’ve ordered them. I mean, I have. I don’t know. I don’t keep track, but I know that it’s over 10, and they’re all sticking. They’re all working really well. We’re actually doing some super secret squirrel stuff to them that we’re not ready to share right now until all of the data comes back, until we have proof of concept, of course, and until we can replicate. That’s why all of this POFU, this ultimate POFU that I’ve been talking about, I can’t really say, “Guys, it’s working really well.”

We’ve already tested it. It’s in beta testing and it’s just going to get developed out from there. Once we have all the data and we can show you just how much money you can make, I said it before. Right? With RYS Academy, RYS Academy Reloaded we said we were going to turn the SEO world on its ear. We said it would Google My Business Pro. No rankings. No SEO, but you get leads. Now, let me do it again. We’re going to turn the SEO world on its fucking ear, and what I love about this and what keeps me going, guys, because I’m 55. I just turned 55, so every day that I get up it’s like, “Why are you doing this? Why do you keep doing?” It’s just I have, I don’t know, a magnificent obsession with getting over on Google.

That’s mine. That’s my thing. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do and I get up every morning with that mindset. “Today, I’m going to do something more to get over on Google,” and then every day I work on that and more, and more. Of course, that often equates into money. Oftentimes, it equates into nothing. It goes in the crapper, but that’s what testing is all about. Why am I still doing it at my age after 15 years? Because I love this shit. This is what keeps me going, man. I live for this, man. I live for getting over.

Adam: Awesome. I can’t top that, so all I’m going to say is go check out this stuff. If you want the GMB verification, that’s an awesome service, and then the keyword stuff is going to get rolling, and if you got any projects coming up or anything you’re even thinking about, I highly suggest it. It’s awesome. It is so complete and you get that, and then you just start putting stuff together. You can lay out a site like that once you get this stuff back, and all sorts of good stuff with it. I love it. I think it’s a big time saver, but enough of that. Do you guys got anything else or are we ready to jump into questions?

Bradley: I think I’m ready. Are you guys ready?

Hernan: Let’s do it.

Adam: All right.

Chris: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. Now, I got to tease this just a little bit more, guys, because I’m telling you. You got to come join the Mastermind. Guys, I just want to point out something. Again, this Maps Sniping Method that I’m kind of working out, now, and developing a process for scaling it. I kind of disclosed on a very high level our conceptual overview of what it is that I’m planning on building to our Mastermind members last week and, like I said, I mentioned it three for three in the last month for getting into three pack with brand-new verified GMB listings in under 24 hours. Well, one of them took about three days, so three for three in under three days, and I’ve just again, like I said, I’m attempting a fourth and I just picked up a fifth with using our verification service today that I’m going to be testing. I just want to point this one out.

This is just a screenshot from my phone earlier today because I set up a call center for my tree service leads, and that’s what I’ve been testing this method out with for this Maps Pack Sniping, and this is one that I sniped on Thursday, so essentially I registered a P.O. box which, again, I’m not even going to do that anymore because we have a verification service now where I can buy them and it saves me all that time from having to go drive and pick up the keys, and then drive back and pick up the verification card, and all that kind of stuff. It’s way better. It’s going to save me a ton of time. Costs a little bit of money out of pocket, but my time is worth more than that. Right?

This is one that I had rented a P.O. box for and, yet, on Thursday the day of the Mastermind webinar last week, I verified it and by the time we had the Mastermind webinar, which is at 3:00 p.m., it was already ranking. I verified it that morning. It was already ranking. Well, we got a call came through today already because everything goes through my call center, at least for the tree service leads it does. This is the lead email that came in today from that one, which is in Orange County, Virginia. It just goes to show you guys. I was able to rank a Maps listing in under 24 hours and, literally, just a couple of hours from the time that it was verified to the time that it made it into the three pack, and within four days, I guess, yeah. Four or five days it’s already generating calls, now. Right?

These are money-making calls. I get 10% of any closed contracts from this particular contractor. So think about that, guys. I mean, that’s just incredible. It cost me a few bucks and a little bit of time, and there you go. I’m already making money. One of the other ones that I had just set up was the first one that I had attempted this on. It’s in a very small area, so it’s not a whole lot of traffic or anything as far as website traffic clicks and calls, but I’ve already made money on that one because, again, that particular contractor he pays me 10% of any closed jobs, and he let me know because I told him I got him another area, and he let me know that we had already closed our first job, and I got paid off of that. I’m already profitable on that one. Just think about that, guys.

If you’re not in the Mastermind, you probably right now would be a really good time. If you’re doing local or lead gen, or a combination or a hybrid of both, I highly recommend you come check it out in the Mastermind because there’s a lot of really good stuff going on in there. Okay? Enough pitching anyways. Sorry, guys.

Do You Know An Alternative Plugin To Video Traffic X That Auto Creates Video Based On A Page Or Post Content?

Christoper, I answered your question a little bit further up. I don’t know if it’s going to be the exact same thing that you’re looking for, but there is a really good video program that creates content rather easily. I’ve used it. I used it like two years ago, and it might have even been three years ago, now, when it was first launched. It’s called Content Samurai.

It’s by the same makers of … What was that? You have to be an old school SEO to know what I’m talking about. It was Keyword Samurai.

Adam: I thought it was Keyword Samurai. Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I thought it was Keyword Samurai, too, or something like that. That was an old tool. When I first got started in SEO, that was the go-to tool for figuring out competitive metrics, and all that. The same developers behind that developed Content Samurai, which is their video platform. Again, it might have even been three years ago when it was first launched. I got in and played with it for a bit, and they have continued to develop it, and develop it. I know several of our Mastermind members. That’s their preferred video tool, and so that’s the reason why I posted that. Again, I don’t know that it’s going to do exactly what you’re asking, but I would check that one out because just like what you’ve mentioned here about video traffic X, that was a WordPress plugin and, obviously, the developer went out of business.

That’s what happens, guys, with a lot of these JVZoo offers. A lot of them are they’re fly-by-night product developers that don’t … They don’t withstand the test of time. Right? There’s not a whole lot of product developers out there that five years down the road are still in business, especially WordPress plugin developers. Unless they’re an established developer, it’s likely that the support is going to … Like, eventually, they’re going to stop supporting it because the company just goes out of business. Right? Again, that’s why I recommend something like Content Samurai that has a strong development platform behind it and they’ve been around for years, and they continue to develop the tools, so I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Adam: Yeah, real quick, too. I just went over to check it out and it’s got a seven-day free trial, so no loss there. Go check it out.

Bradley: There you go. Last thing guys, just think about it, man. I know how tempting it is, guys. I used to be a JVZoo and what they were called Warriors Special Offers, WSOs, back in the day, but I used to be a junkie. I used to always buy all the new WordPress plugins, and all the new tools because they were all push button like you’re going to get rich overnight, and all that kind of stuff. I’m a sucker for good marketing. That’s why I’m in the marketing industry. I would read a sales page, and I always had my credit card in hand by the time I got to the bottom of the sales page. I would buy all these damn tools and, first of all, that’s one way to quickly destroy your business because, well, first of all, you’re spending money. You’re spending revenue. Instead of generating revenue, you’re spending revenue.

Also, you end up spending a lot of time playing with a bunch of these stupid, shitty tools that aren’t going to move your business forward at all. Honestly, you don’t need most of the stuff. I guarantee probably everybody watching this webinar or listening to this webinar right now has enough tools in their toolbox that they can build a business. They don’t need anymore shiny objects. Right? You should be looking for ways to improve or streamline processes. You should be looking for things that might help make your job a little bit easier, such as automation, stuff for automating, and things like that, but you don’t need to go out and buy a shit-ton of tools, guys. Trust me. It will only slow your business down or prevent growth.

If you are going to buy tools, and that’s what I was getting at; sorry. I lost my train of thought for a moment, but if you are going to buy tools, try to buy tools from established developers. Even though they might be a bit more expensive, there’s a reason. Because what happens if you go out and buy one of these shitty JVZoo or Warrior Form or whatever offers that are $27 and you spend a lot of time implementing that into your business, depending processes for it? You become familiar with the tool, and now you rely on that tool to perform some specific function in your business, and now that tool goes out of business or it’s not supported. Right? Like they stop supporting it or stop development.

What happens then? Now you’ve got to go back. Go search for another tool. Buy it. Go through the learning curve. Implement it into your business. Develop processes. You have to reorganize all your shit because of a crappy tool that you bought. Right? Instead of just spending a little bit more money and getting something from an established developer, and the only reason why I’m saying this is because it’s very similar, guys, to hosting. Right? Everybody wants to go out and get … What is it? HostGator or, God forbid HostGator or GoDaddy or any of these really crappy budget hosts because it’s cheap, and they think they’re saving money. They’re being smart, but then your sites don’t rank, and they go down all the time.

There’s all kinds of issues with that. Right? You’re better off spending money on good hosting. The same thing goes with tools and training. Don’t buy shitty training, either. You guys have any comments on that before I move on?

Adam: No. I think that’s 100% what you need to say and I feel the same way. I would only follow up and say that, like you’re saying, “Don’t do it.” Because everyone does it. It’s just you got to, over time, wean yourself off of that and realize, “Oh, hey. This monthly recurring fee I’m paying means that they’re probably going to support it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good product. You still got to find a good product, but looking at it from the point of view of, “I want a developer who’s invested and making money because I want them to continue making sure that the product works and works well.”

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: Take it from people who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on shiny, new objects, and on crappy training. You don’t need to go through all that. Just find something that works and stick to it, and then just keep getting up every day, and doing it, and just creates a process that you can repeat, and you’re going to make money.

Did You Ever Hear About Legal Problems When Using The Address Of Virtual Box & Or Local Person You Know To Receive The GMB Letter?

Bradley: That’s it. Okay. This is Dustin just because she signed it. “Hey, Semantic boars.” Maybe that’s supposed to be boys. “Got a business-related question. Did you ever hear about legal problems when using the address, a virtual box, or a local person you know to receive the GMB letter? I was wondering because aren’t you registering the location for a real business?” Well, no. I mean, if you were to … All right. I’m not an attorney, guys, so I would highly recommend that you consult an attorney if you’re concerned about any of this, but the way I look at it is you’re not. When you register a business in Google, it’s not like registering a company with the state corporation commission or anything. It’s not like registering a company with the IRS, right? It’s not an official agency.

It’s Google. Right? It’s a search engine, so you can register anything you want there. Now, there are times. I’ve had this happen. I had to have one of my clients, actually. The case study for the local GMB Pro Course. It’s a taxi service. We had to contact Google to have an existing, verified listing deleted or taken down because the business owner didn’t have access to it. We created the new listing, which was also at a new address, a new physical location. We created a new Google My Business listing, and then contacted Google Support or Google My Business Support to tell them what the situation was, that there was an ex-employee that had created and verified the old or the existing GMB profile, and they didn’t work for the company anymore, and we didn’t have access to it.

Also, the company had moved to a different physical location. The same city, but different location so we needed to update all that. The reason I’m saying all this is because in order for them to, because it was a verified listing that we were asking to have removed and update to a new one, they required corporate documents, so we had to literally submit corporate documents to Google to show that the business indeed exists, and that it’s a valid business. It had an LLC. What do they call it? Articles of Organization or an operating agreement. They also needed to see the updated physical address. So, in other words, they had to see corporate documents with the new updated mailing address. Right?

So just consider that. It’s not a legal issue to register a business in Google. Google might require legal documentation, and if that’s the case, then you won’t be able to do it unless you have that legal documentation, but when registering your company or business with local agency, state agencies, or federal agencies then yes. You’re going to have to have a real, valid business. If you’re doing lead gen, guys, here’s one of the ways to get around that if you need to.

If you’re doing lead gen and you’re establishing “fake businesses” or pseudo businesses, is another term for it, generic brands, if you’re setting up lead-gen properties where you’re creating a pseudo brand, then what you can do is if you have a legal entity, a corporate entity, so if you’re an LLC or incorporated, whether it’s an S corp, a C corp, or whatever, then you can actually register that pseudo entity as a DBA or doing business as. So that, essentially, it’s your corporation. For example, my corporation is Big Bamboo Marketing, LLC. So I have DBAs for several of my lead-gen properties because that way even if Google asked for corporate documents for a lead-gen property, I can produce the doing business as certificate from the county.

It costs me, I think, 13 bucks or $14 to register a DBA. That’s all. You just go down to your local courthouse and ask for a DBA form. Wherever your business is registered, you go to that courthouse wherever your product … Like my agency it’s registered in Culpeper, so I go to the Culpeper County Courthouse. I tell them, “Hey, I need a” … or clerk of the circuit court or whatever, and I tell them that I need a DBA form. I fill it out with the lead-gen pseudo business or pseudo brand that I’m saying is a business, so that now is Big Bamboo Marketing doing business as, and so that way if Google ever requires me to verify that corporate document, all I have to do is submit the DBA and in my operating agreement for my LLC. Does that make sense?

So it’s not an issue. So that’s what I would recommend that you guys do. You don’t have to do that all the time, guys. For example, I’ve got a ton of lead-gen properties out there I don’t have DBAs for. I’m not going to lie, but if in case there was a time where I needed one, like Google required it, then I could always go down and get a DBA, and then submit it. Any comments guys or should I move on?

Adam: Good to go.

Does The Local PR Pro Course Includes A Demo On Getting 3 Pack Map Rankings In Surrounding Cities/Towns Using The Press Release Methods Without Getting A New Verified GMB Listing?

Bradley: Okay. That was a great question, by the way, Dustin; a really good question. Okay, support question from Ed Ryan. “I purchased GMB Pro the day it came out, and I love it.” Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. He says, “In Local PR Pro does Bradley show us specifically how to get three pack map rankings in surrounding cities/towns using the press release method without getting a new verified GMB listing for the business for the surrounding town?” Not specifically, but I talk a lot. We’ve talked about that many times in the Mastermind. I don’t think it’s specifically a local PR Pro, but there’s a couple of things that you could do that I can reveal here. If you wanted to try to rank in the adjacent areas, it’s not always going to be possible, guys, but there are things that you can do to kind of help facilitate that.

It requires on page. It requires having, basically, categories or silo structures or geo posts for the areas that you’re trying to get ranked in. I would also recommend that within your GMB profile, since you’re doing GMB Pro, that you start using the GMB posts just the way that we teach in the training with images, with meta tag or geo tags for the areas that you’re trying to rank in, all that kind of stuff. Try to use those keywords in those posts. Right? Then for using press releases, specifically, then you could target those locations that you want to rank in in your press releases as part of the title is incredibly important for press releases, so target the locations that you want to rank in, as long as they’re adjacent, and the title.

Make sure that you’re linking to the content that is also optimized for that location, whether it’s on your website or on your GMB profile or wherever it may be. So those are some of the things that you can do. Now, again, if you want some more in-depth training on that Ed, you got to come back to the Mastermind. Specifically in Local PR Pro I don’t talk about that because Local PR Pro the way that I’ve found. I’m talking about getting three pack rankings using press releases for the city that the business is located in. Obviously, because of the GMB Pro stuff that we’re doing, personally, I’d prefer to just get more GMB listings now than trying to rank one listing in multiple locations.

It’s so easy now, guys. Whether you’re doing P.O. boxes, which is what I’ve always done or now, which is even better using our verified GMB service. You don’t even need to leave your damn house. You can just order it online. It gets done and now you can set up as many GMB profiles as you want, and just literally target an entire region if you want. I think that’s easier. It takes less work than trying to rank one GMB for a wide service area or geographic area, if that makes sense. Guys, I like easy and the thing about it is if you develop a process, Ed, or excuse me. Yeah, Ed. If you develop a process for buying, and that’s what I’m doing, guys. I’m developing a process for scaling this method, so that I can outsource 90 to 95% of it.

It will require very little effort from me once the process is developed, and when I say it’s going to be automated, it’s going to be automated to me because I’m going to have virtual assistants doing most of the work. Does that make sense? That’s why I said it would be better, less work for you, to develop a process for building out additional GMBs even for one specific business so that you can expand their service area, and what they’re generating leads from. Develop out a process for that and that way you can outsource. Even if you don’t outsource it, it’s repeatable. If you develop like a checklist and a flowchart on what to do, then it becomes almost second nature.

You can do it like it becomes routine and it’ll become a lot easier than trying to rank one listing for a really wide geographic area or at least in my opinion it is.

Marco: One last thing. Ed, go to the Facebook group and just say you’d like a webinar on how to extend the business center, and we can get into that.

Bradley: Yep. Yeah, especially if you’re in the GMB Pro Course, because I know that question has come up a couple of times, and I think Marc. Yeah, Marco when you did the Unlimited Local Images and Videos Webinar, you touched on that briefly.

Marco: Yeah. We talked it, but we can expand on it because it’s not that difficult.

What Is The Best Combination Of Serp Space Link Packages That Provide The Best Juice At Specific Price Ranges?

Bradley: Yeah. So there you go, guys. We’ll do a follow-up webinar on GMB Pro for that. What’s up, Kevin? I haven’t seen you here in a while, man. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen Kevin post a question. He’s been around for a long time. “Hey, guys. How has everyone been? It’s been a while. Life gets in the way. You know.” Yes. I do. It’s good to have you back, buddy. He says, “Wanted to ask about service space tiered link building for local clients. I’m thinking of adding in on month three of a campaign. Service space tiered link building to as many as possible of the clients tier ones; links they’ve accumulated over the years. I see about four options for Web 2.0 contextual, and four more options for non-contextuals, plus this can be all done for four tiers. That is a lot of different combinations and price points.”

“What would be the best combination or lack of combination to provide the most use at the cheapest price, a middle price, and a higher price, but not as high as the just max everything out?” Okay. I’m not the spam guy anymore, guys. I actually rarely even use it anymore.

Marco: Shame on you.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, I don’t. It’s just I don’t use a lot of spam links anymore because I don’t need to. We’re able to get results now using RYS, Local GMB Pro, Local PR Pro, and syndication networks. It seems silly to do that. Now, there are certainly times when spam can help and I can certainly power up drive stacks, and press releases, and syndication networks, all of that, with spam, but I’ve been getting results recently without doing it, so I’m not really the big spam guy anymore that I used to be. I would recommend that you … I can give you a little bit of advice here, but what I would recommend, Kevin, is to repost this question in the SEO Tutorials and Case Studies Semantic Mastery Facebook Group, which is the free group, and then tag. You could tag me on it if you want, and I’ll tag Daddio, which is our link-building guy.

He’s been with me for, shit, at least five years, and he’s our manager. The guy’s a ninja. He’s got a full staff that all they do is build links, and so he can answer that question and direct you to specifically what you need. Now, the slight advice that I’ll give you and, again, I don’t even know if it’s accurate. I would still repost this question in that group and get his advice because his advice is going to be a hell of a lot more current than mine, but what I would say is I always go with contextual links. Anything non-contextual is like kitchen sink spam, and that’s the kind of stuff that I would keep way, way far away from my money site, like four or five hops away if I’m going to use it at all.

I would stick with Web 2.0 contextual links for at least three tiers before I would do GSA kitchen sink spam or anything like that. Again, that’s just because that’s kind of evolved, too, because it used to be that we would just do to tier one links. We would do contextual links, so your tier two links would be contextual Web 2.0s, and then we would push spam behind that. Your tier three links would just be kitchen sink spam, but that’s changed because Google is looking further, and Marco can comment on this, but this is about distance graph and all that stuff. So it’s really important, at least in my opinion, to keep kitchen sink spam further and further away, and so I believe Daddio’s recommendation, now, is for tier two and tier three that you use contextual Web 2.0. Marco, you want to comment on that a little bit?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, Daddio has all the answers for you. The guy’s been at it for years. He knows exactly what to do, and how to do it. He can give you the best recommendation.

Bradley: Yep.

Marco: One thing that I would tell you. Since Google is looking out further and further, make sure you put a drive stack in there so that all of your link building goes through the drive stack, and it’ll come out the other end just pristine, no matter what it is. Even if a set of links turns bad for whatever reason, it won’t hurt.

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: That’s how good drive stacks are at cleaning up spam.

Are You Still Using RSS Feed Directory Submission And Other RSS Tactics?

Bradley: That’s good advice. Thank you. Second question, now. “One more question if that’s okay. Are you still using RSS feed directory submissions and other RSS tactics that have been mentioned before? Tactics seem to come and go so quick. It’s hard to know if something that was done eight-plus month ago is still valid and worth the time and money to implement today.” Yeah. Actually, believe it or not, I still think RSS feeds are one of the most underutilized things in SEO. There is a lot of things you can do with RSS feeds that are really powerful. I mean, obviously, syndication networks they’re RSS feed driven the way that we’ve always set up the triggers that way, but there is still a lot of other things that you can do.

Now, I don’t spend a shit-ton of time on that stuff anymore, but if you’re in a competitive niche where every little push helps or you need every little push, then absolutely RSS stuff is still valid. The easiest way to do it, guys, is just collect your money side RSS feed or your Web 2.0 feeds or all of them. If you want, you can combine them together with the feed splicer, and then submit that one super feed to just go to Fiverr and search for RSS feed submits, and you can get a Fiverr gig that will do the work for you that will submit to 70 directories and aggregators for you, and they’ll send you tips. A lot of times they’ll send you back a report, and it’ll cost you five or 10 bucks, or something like that.

So what? It’s easy. It’ll only take you a few seconds, and let them do the work for you. Okay? Yeah. It still works, guys. There is no doubt. It’s funny because I think RSS stuff it’s an old technology, and so a lot of people don’t think that it’s still valuable, but it certainly is. There is no doubt it is. Okay. Good question. Good to have you back, Kevin. All right. Let’s see.

Is It Enough To Only Build Money Channel Or Brand Ring To Stick The Videos On SERPs?

It says, “Hi. First, thanks for answering my question. This SEO shit keeps me never run out of question.” Isn’t that the truth? “The more you get into it the more questions come.” That’s correct. “About IFTTT networks, is building only one ring that is the money channel brand ring reason for sticking the videos on SIR?”

Well, it can be. I mean, there is a lot of variables there. Typically for video stuff, though, guys I don’t even start syndication networks for videos for YouTube channels unless I’m going to use at least one full two-tier ring. Right? So you’re going to have a branded ring or a tier-one ring. It doesn’t have to be branded, but I recommend that you do. A branded tier-one ring, and then you have three tier-two rings, which is the full two-tier networks. If I’m going to start a new channel and a syndication network broadcast. I call it a broadcast network for videos, but a broadcast network for a new YouTube channel or a new project. I always start with at least one full two-tier network.

That’s just I guess because I have the resources to do that, guys. If you have the resources, I recommend you do that as well. Typically, I end up with usually anywhere between two to five full two-tier networks stacked on one YouTube channel if I’m serious about that particular project or campaign, so it depends. If you can get results, and the only reason I say that, guys, is because I don’t do so much of it anymore, but for a period, for many years there, actually, I did a lot of video broadcasting work for local video production companies, and so I developed out several themed syndication networks that I had themed YouTube channels. One was for Virginia businesses.

One was specifically for contractors. I had one for health and wellness stuff, and they’re just big syndication networks that I created for YouTube. The idea is with blog syndication I always recommend, and I’ve been recommending this for years, to just stick with a branded syndication network and don’t go multi tiers because it can create issues, and it kind of creates a little bit of a maintenance nightmare. Right? It’s a pain in the ass to maintain, but for videos there is no footprint issues. It’s still to this day, guys, there is no footprint issues with broad. As long as you’re using the applets the way that we teach or you buy the syndication networks from us with the applets already built, then they’re going to work fine.

I’ve never had any issues with YouTube videos getting slapped or sand boxed, or anything going through syndication networks, but blog content can if you’re doing multi tiers, so just to bring it back to what you’re asking. I would recommend. You can try. Certainly try it with just one, but if you’re not getting the results that you want, then start stacking tier two networks on to the tier one network, or you can also stack additional tier one networks, persona-based networks. That’s perfectly fine as well. That was a good question, though.

How Do You Determine If A Social Website Is Good To Have In A Network Ring Or Not?

“How do you determine if a social website is good to have in a network ring or not? There are over 200 popular social webs.” They’re all good. If you can get a branded profile on the network or on any one of those social sites, just do it because you’re increasing. You’re validating your entity more every time you add another branded profile, especially if you can interlink. Even if all you can do is link to one other property that’s branded, that’s good enough. Guys, that’s why in Syndication Academy we do the update webinars, and we add. Not every month, but almost every month, we add at least one new property. Again, it’s not every month, but almost every month we add at least one new property, whether it can be syndicated to or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we can syndicate to or not. It still acts as a citation.

If it’s a real business, it acts as an entity validator. Guys, the more places you can get your brand out on the Web, the more authority you’ll accrue. Let’s see. “I would have thought Stumble Upon would be a good social website to include, but you seem to neglect it.” No. We’ve done Stumble Upon, but didn’t Stumble Upon go out of business, recently or something?

Marco: No. They moved to something called Mix.com-

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: … but you could still use Mix.com. I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the same way. You can curate content from around the Web.

Bradley: Yep. Okay, cool. What’s up, Nigel? He’s always active. He says, “You are appreciated for the value you bring. G Hypnosis was awesome. Thanks to you guys and Eric.” Yeah. That was a great webinar. Did we ever get a replay available, yet? Adam, if Adam is still on. Hello?

Adam: Sorry.

Bradley: Yeah. Adam must be-

Adam: Technical issues hitting the mute button. I’m still working on that, but we’ll have some info shortly, I believe.

Bradley: Okay, good. All right. Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll get the replay out here in a minute or soon, guys, because that was a great webinar. There was obviously an offer at the end of that webinar for … It was funny because the webinar was for a particular method and a information product, but the first hour of the webinar was not about the product at all. It was about how to prospect and sell to clients. It was fabulous. It was really, really good. Eric has really created a great business. I respect him highly anyways because I’ve known him since the start of my career, so I already respected the guy, but he’s built a really good business and he’s developed his own sales process that it works, and it’s funny, but we were talking.

My salesman that’s working for my agency and I have been trial and error developing sales processes for months now, and we haven’t been very successful, but what we’ve found with Roberto because he’s the one primarily doing it. He’s the one talking to the contractors and everything. What he’s found over the last several months is essentially he’s kind of, through trial and error, come to the same conclusion that Eric uses for his sales process that he revealed on this webinar in this first hour of the webinar. It was funny because I was like, “Damn it! I wish I could have had this webinar with you, Eric, like four months ago, five months ago. It could have saved us four or five months of trial and error, and I probably closed a lot of these contractors that have now gone cold because we screwed up the sales process.”

Any Decent Spammy Fiverr Traffic For Testing?

At least it was good validation to know that we have, even though it took us a bunch of trial and error to figure it out. At least it was good validation to know that we’re on the right track. Thanks for mentioning that, Nigel. It was good to bring that up. Okay. Coming up on four years of goodness, yes. We are. He says, “Any decent spammy Fiverr traffic for testing or is that a myth that it works with RYS, although likely not recommended at first option?” Well, I mean, I’ve used the fiber traffic gigs for getting press releases to stick. I haven’t really tested them with drive stacks or anything. Have you, Marco?

Marco: No.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: No. I haven’t.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can log into Fire real quick and just give you one lady that I ordered a whole lot of them she … Well, who knows if it’s a lady. The profile picture was a lady, but that one I think that gig got taken down or something. I’m not sure. Just give me one second. I think that’s one of them. Yeah. See? That one’s no longer available. All right. This one is. I’ve used this guy, too. You guys can see. This is it’s niche targeted. 2,000 daily visitors for 15 days for five bucks. This one right here I’ll just grab the URL. Whoops! And drop it on the page for you, Nigel. Again, I haven’t tried any of these with drive stacks. I have used these types of gigs for getting press releases to stick longer in the search.

For example, if you get a press release, guys, to rank on page one. You guys probably know that a lot of times press releases they rank really well for a short period of time, and then they start to slip in the search. I’ve used these types of gigs to be able to drive traffic to them to get them to stick in the search longer, and it absolutely works. I don’t know about drive stack stuff, but I can’t imagine it would probably hurt, especially since it’s drive stack stuff. Good question, though. Damn, guys. You’ve posted a whole shit-ton of questions all of a sudden because there wasn’t much before.

Are You Using Rotator Link For Landing Pages?

Anyone using Rotator Link for landing pages and, if so, any recommendations? You mean for split testing landing pages? There’s a rotator inside click funnels, and that’s all I use for landing pages. If anybody has any recommendations for doing split testing landing pages or link rotators and stuff like that, plugins or anything like that, let Nigel know, please. Just post on the page here.

What Strategies Are You Using With Alignable And LinkedIn To Get Leads Business?

“What strategies are you using with Alignable and LinkedIn to get business leads?” Well, I started playing with Alignable, and every now and then I’ll take an hour, an hour and a half and go in and become really active for an hour, but it’s not something I do consistently. It’s one of those things I’ve always had intentions to do consistently, but I never do it consistently.

Every now and then, like I said, I’ll go in and spend an hour in there and I’ll be like, “Wow! There’s a lot of opportunity here, and all that,” and I’ll get all excited, and then three weeks goes by before I do it again. I’m not really doing a lot of in there. I think there’s opportunity, but I haven’t had enough time to. I haven’t spent enough time in there to really figure out a process for getting repeatable results. LinkedIn we spent a lot of time. Well, Roberto, my salesman, spent a lot of time in LinkedIn trying to develop a process for tree service contractors. We realize now that was probably a really, really shitty industry to try to approach in LinkedIn just because there’s not a lot of contractors in LinkedIn, tree service contractors, and when they are, again, it’s not really a platform made for that type of a contractor.

We’re actually doing started prospecting just in the last two weeks again for general contractors and remodeling contractors, so we’re going to take what he started to develop for tree service contractors on LinkedIn and apply that to that industry, and see if we can get better results. I believe we will because, again, I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, but those type of contractors seem to be a bit more digitally savvy or a bit more sophisticated. There is more of them on LinkedIn and they seem to be a bit more engaged on LinkedIn. In the coming weeks, Nigel, especially I don’t know if you’re still in the Mastermind or not, but in the coming weeks as we have more data from that or more results, or experience, good, bad, or ugly, I’ll be sharing that about the LinkedIn stuff.

Do You Have Any Creative SEO Strategies For A Business That Sells Psychiatric Services To Skillled Nursing Care Facilities?

Jordan, okay. “A new client coming onboard that sells psychiatric services to skilled nursing care facilities, and then expanding. Obviously, the search volume is incredibly low and there aren’t that many decision makers. Less than a thousand, but each enlistment is worth about 70,000 per year to them.” Wow. “Doing everything digital for them: site, social, SEO, content, marketing conferences, collateral, et cetera. Any creative SEO strategies for this type of highly niched B2B client?” That’s a tough one, Jordan.

Adam: Actually, yeah. This is cool. Jordan, I’ll have to send you … I listened to a podcast recently and I can’t remember the guy’s name. Sorry. I’ll have to look it up, but basically the guy did this, and he did it in one region. I can’t remember. It wasn’t where you’re at, but talking about this, and going into the specifics of obviously you’re generally not, and I’m sure you already understand this, but you’re not marketing to consumer. You’re marketing. This is like a family member would be looking for this, so words like mom, dad, and all the associated words like that, and then going into it, and potentially can you offer other than I’m looking at what you’re saying? Can you do any sort of remarketing?

There is a lot of stuff you can do because it’s worth so much to them which, obviously, you just listed but, also, you could maybe open their eyes and maybe, again, you’ve already done this. Once they reach a certain amount of let’s say like it takes 75% booking or rooms filled for them to be profitable that you become highly profitable to them once you bring them past that point, so that maybe you can get more funds in order to expand some of these activities. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

What’s The Best Way To Handle WordPress Security Issues?

Bradley: That’s great. Thanks, Adam. If you can tag him on it and find it, that’d be great. All right, cool. What’s up, Dan? KD, there we go. “Hey, guys. What’s the best way to handle WordPress security issues and not mess up SEO? I have a client ranked on page one. It is now under heavy brute force attack. I cranked up the settings on iTheme security.” Now, guys. Personally, there is a couple of things I would recommend. Number one, get a really good host. Liquid Web is fantastic for this kind of stuff, guys. They have their own firewall and all this other stuff. They’re really, really good at security over at Liquid Web. Guys, we talk about this. I just mentioned hosting earlier on this webinar. My two go-to resources, Liquid Web is hands down my favorite. I also have been recently using WPX hosting for a lot of one-off WordPress sites.

For testing purposes or for lead gen sites and stuff, I’ve been using WPX, which seems to be good. Their support is really, really good, too, but there are some drawbacks to that where I think Liquid Web is even better, but Liquid Web has some really, really good security features; however, I see that you mentioned down here about security. I’ve got two of my clients on security, actually, and they have the security firewall, and they have the malware removal programs, and all that stuff, and I got two of my … One of my clients is a pest control company. Actually, it’s a tick and mosquito control company. So it’d be like outdoor pest control, and they have been hacked like at least eight times in the last five years since they’ve been working with me.

Even after we put their site on Sucuri, they still have been hacked a couple of times, but Sucuri always goes in. All you got to do is submit a request to Sucuri and they’ll go in, and find the problem. Unhack the site. Restore the site and they’ll take care of everything for you. All you have to do is submit a ticket. Again, it’s worth it. I think it’s like 300 bucks a year or something like that but, in my opinion, it’s totally worth it or get a really good host like Liquid Web and let them do it. As far as changing the DNS, would that affect rankings? No, not at all. That shouldn’t affect rankings at all. In fact, actually, changing DNS from a shitty host through something like Sucuri will likely improve the site.

Marco: Yes. What I would like to say is, depending on her needs, we have a really neat way where we trap these rouge bots that do these attacks, and if you want to talk about that, I mean, it’s not cheap, just so you know, but you can always find me in Facebook, Katie, and we can talk, and then we could set up and then all of these rogue bots you can just eliminate. You can trap them and eliminate them, and it’s over and done with.

Bradley: Yep. Bob Lowe, I love that comment. “Master manipulation makes your palms hairy.” That’s funny, Bob. All right. We’re almost done, guys. I got to wrap up in just a couple of minutes, anyways. I get to take my daughter to dinner tonight. Let’s see. R. Banking says, “If using a set number of credits and maps powerhouse, is it better to use all of them on the embed or split them up between embeds and secondary posts?” That’s a good question. I prefer doing a split between embeds and secondary posts just because I was mentioning.

I was talking about YouTube networks earlier, syndication networks, and I mentioned that I like to use two-tier networks for YouTube syndication; however, you can stack multiple tier-one rings onto a channel to where they’re all being triggered directly from the channel instead of being secondary triggers from a blog in your first-tiered network. The reason why I like the second two-tiered networks is because I’ve found that the effect lasts longer through two-tiered networks. In other words, if I were to take a channel and stack 10 tier-one networks on the channel, the video is likely going to rank really quickly, but it typically will start, and I haven’t tested this, now, in probably two years, but about two to three years ago I did a lot of testing on this, guys.

I found that multiple tier-one networks the video would rank really quickly, but it would start to slip in the rankings a lot sooner, whereas, if I used multiple tier-two networks or multi-tiered networks, then it might not rank as quickly, but it would indeed rank eventually, and it would end up sticking a lot longer. I’ve always applied that same methodology to video Powerhouse and Maps Powerhouse to where I prefer doing like the tiers and secondary embeds and or back links as well instead of just doing all tier-one stuff. So that’s going to be my answer, but I haven’t tested specifically to see if one is going to perform better than the others. Does anybody here have any insight on that?

Marco: No. I do the same exact thing simply because it adds relevance at the other tiers coming back to your tier one.

Bradley: There you go. Bob Lowe, he said he ordered his Verified GMB and can’t wait to get it back. “I’m ready with the website content and PR.” Boom! There you go, Bob. Perfect. That’s perfect. Thank you. “Bradley, will this process improve the position and the pack if you’re already there?” No. Well, Dan. If you’re talking about the GMB Sniping, the Map Sniping that I’ve been talking about, no because that’s talking about finding locations that you can register a GMB or verify a GMB, and get into the three pack within … So far, like I said, I’ve been able. I’m three for three in under 72 hours. The method I’m talking about is getting into a three pack with a brand-new listing.

If it’s an existing listing, then I would recommend local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro. Those are the two things that I’m using specifically now. Local PR Pro for getting into the three pack. Local GMB Pro for generating leads regardless of three pack. Does that make sense? The two combined are absolutely brutal, guys. There is no way that you can’t get results with those two, and you add a drive stack on top of it. Forget about it. Right? Market Samurai, there you go, Walt. Thank you. Thank you, Walt. Yeah, Market Samurai. That was the keyword research tool that was like the go-to. It was industry standard for several years. You guys remember that? Like, the pink and the green lines, and all that, and the chart. It would create like a spreadsheet and it would show in-bound back links, and keyword rank. It was crazy.

I used to use that thing like daily. That’s awesome. Thanks, Walt. We’re almost done, guys. Let’s see. He’s doing Pinterest stuff, too. Is that what he’s doing? That’s Pinterest stats, right?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: That’s good. I posted my stats on there. I just want people to see what you could do. I mean, the type of traffic that you can actually generate with this thing, which is ridiculous. I know Dan is doing really well, but this one, the one that I posted, is in the millions, now.

Bradley: Clint. “GoDaddy bought Sucuri.” No shit? Yeah. “Plan on that sucking soon.” Okay. Well, I’m glad I know that now because I won’t recommend it going forward, Clint. Thank you. I appreciate that because yeah, guys. GoDaddy hosting sucks, by the way, so if they bought Sucuri, it’s probably going to suck, too. Clint is right. No doubt. Scott says, “Still wrestling with a client attempting to get them onboard with GMB verification. He already has a verified listing for the suburb, and has no traction in the much larger city. He is afraid he will lose the verified listing he already has with Google. Without giving away your processes, would he have a new Google listing for the larger city or will his current GMB be impacted in any way?”

Okay, Scott. What I’m going to tell you is look. I can’t reveal too much, guys. Actually, let me just say this. What I would do in that case if you have a client is already a client, and you’re trying to talk them into getting a second GMB for another area that they want to generate leads from because, again, it’s more difficult to get one listing to rank in multiple areas, a wide geographic region. It’s harder to do that, in my opinion, than it is to just create a new damn listing for the areas that you want. What I would recommend is if he’s already a client and you’re already making money, just go register the GMB yourself. Get it. Do it yourself, right? Build it with a generic brand, a pseudo brand, and then once the damn thing is ranked, then show them. “Look what I did.”

Because look. You can monetize that property, whether it’s for that client or another client. It doesn’t matter. My point is: Why not build that asset? If he’s already a client and you know he wants the leads in that area, but he’s scared, just go create a GMB listing with a pseudo brand. It’s in the same category, all that shit. Get it set up. Get it ranked, and then approach him with it and say, “Look. I’ve already got this asset. It’s already ranked in the area that you want these leads from.” Now, you can sign him up for like an increase on a monthly retainer or you can just sell him the damn leads. In any way, you own that asset, now. You can rebrand it for him or he can turn it down and you can say, “That’s fine. I’ll sell the leads to another person in the same industry in the same area.” Does that make sense?

My point is don’t try to pull the client’s teeth. If he’s giving you resistance, just go register it yourself. Rank the damn thing. Now, you’ve got another asset in your portfolio that you can use to entice him to increase his services with you, his commitment with you. If he doesn’t, who cares. You’ve got an asset now that you can monetize with another company. Let’s see. Local host publish fee FTP to server. I don’t know what that means, Mike. I’m sorry. “Will premium domain solve the link equity described in a previous discussion instead of using Alley like Marco mentioned? What do you mean by premium domain, Mike?” I don’t follow that one, either. I don’t know what you mean by that Mike. I apologize, but we’re out of time anyways, so if you want to post this question again in the SEO tutorials group, maybe we can comment in on that.

Hey, Clint still has Market Samurai installed. I didn’t even know if they still … Apparently, they do. I think that’s what he was saying earlier. I didn’t know that that tool was still being supported and all that. I haven’t seen it in years. “Thanks for the GMB, very helpful. All set up.” Yep. There you go. Scott remember. You can buy it now, and you don’t even have to leave your damn house. Scott you’re in the Mastermind. Follow the training that I talked about in the newsletter as well. You’ll get that in about a week, as well as the last two Mastermind webinars I’ve touched on. It’s just is very specifically how to research the areas to find the best opportunity. Right? All right. Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate every for sticking around.

Adam: Awesome.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Adam: Bye, everybody.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: See y'all next week.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199

Click on the video above to watch Episode 199 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. This is Episode 199. It is the 29th of August, 2018. We are here with the full crew as we inch closer to Episode 200, so we’re going to say hello to everyone real quick, and then we’re going to make some good announcements today. We got some cool limited time stuff coming up as well as some things we want to share with you all before we dive into the questions. So real quick, Chris. How are you doing today?

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here. How are you doing?

Adam: Can’t complain. I’m trying out this fancy, new screen in the background. That’s not a green screen. I bought one of those. It’s like a folding shoji screen thing so you guys don’t have to look at my office futon and white boards, and so I did it for you guys, not for me. Hernan, how are you doing?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up? I’m traveling, so connection is not the best, but I’m excited to be here. Yeah. I’m excited for POFU Live. Right now, I’m writing a message on the event, so I’m going to just drop the link over there. If you guys want to join, that’s going to be epic.

Adam: Nice. Yeah, so if you’re watching live, you can check it out, if not, we’ll include that in the show notes, and tickets are selling, so if you’re thinking about going or you want to know more, now is a very good time to go check that out. We are capping it at 25 max. I think we’re halfway there and so grab you a ticket while you can. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: Working on POFU, man. You guys saw it. You guys saw it. You know what I’m working on. It never stops. It never stops. Manipulation never stops. Those of you who are not manipulating, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Adam: Oops, sorry. I was muted. I was like, “Man, strong start to Hump Day Hangouts today, but for real.” That’s also the theme of … That’s why we’re calling it POFU Live. Right? That’s our live event and talking about ourselves, as well as the people who are attending how we can help each other get to that point where you get to choose what you want to do, either with your time, your projects, your clients. Bradley, how are you doing, man?

Bradley: Great, man. Happy to be here. Got a lot of exciting stuff cooking up right now. Gearing up for POFU Live. I got a couple of things that I’m actually developing specifically for that, and some stuff that I’ve been developing. I started talking about in the Mastermind a couple of weeks ago, and actually did the newsletter entry for the newsletter that gets mailed out in a week or so specifically addressing that, and then we had the Mastermind webinar last, or excuse me, Thursday, and I went into a little bit more detail, and I’ve just been like neck deep in this new process that I’m developing. It’s just absolutely crushing it for sniping Maps pack rankings, like within 24 hours. It’s crazy. I’m three for three in the last month, and I actually just ordered another verified GMB profile now to see if I can be four for four.

If that’s the case, which, again, I’m working on a process right now to be able to scale this. Client work is great, but if you can develop your own assets, that’s even better, and so that’s something I’m working on inside of the Mastermind, and really excited about it, and looking forward to sharing that at POFU Live.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Well, if you’re just watching this, and this is the first time watching or maybe you’ve just been to a few, first of all, thanks for checking us out on the Hump Day Hangouts. We’re here every Wednesday and if you haven’t grabbed it, yet, the battle plan is the best place to start. We get asked a lot. “Hey, I’m new to Semantic Mastery. I just started watching you guys’ videos or I came across this or that. What should I do first?” The battle plan is the place to start. There will be a link below where you can check that out. If you’re ready to kick things up a notch, we do have the Mastermind and, again, the link is there for you to take a look at that. I’m not going to go into the details here, but it’s the place to be if you’re into local digital marketing and you want to take things up a few notches.

Now, one thing we did want to talk about briefly today. This is actually a service of ours that I’ve used because we haven’t actually offered this outside of testing and getting the process set up, and this is keyword research that Marco spearheaded in getting this set up. Marco, do you want to talk about this real quick and let people know what we’re going to be sharing?

Marco: Yeah, sure. How this started out is, of course, it was in RYS Academy because we needed to give people an opportunity to have keyword research. You have to know your market. You have to know your niche. You have to know what you’re getting into. We started doing it Semantic Mastery style. We would do Google Trends, as Bradley recommends, and then we would do AdWords, of course, the keyword tool, and then we would do Power Suggest Pro. We would just come up with thousands of keywords to target. We could have left it at that because that’s fabulous, but then we said, “That’s not enough. If we’re going to offer something that’s keyword research, it needs to be more comprehensive.” So we added Ubersuggest, which that wasn’t enough, so we went into Answer the Public, and that wasn’t enough.

We started using the methods taught in Jeffrey Smith’s SEO Bootcamp and, by the way, Jeffery Smith is the best. If you guys don’t have SEO Bootcamp, you’re missing out. Ultimate SEO Bootcamp it is like the ultimate when it comes to going into and exploring your competition, your niche, but the keyword research is still a little bit short. It’s fabulous, but it doesn’t include everything that we’ve talked about. Not only that, we incorporated some of the stuff that’s taught in Network Empires. What is it? Ultimate Keyword Research Tool, and I said, “We could have left it at that.” Right? But we actually go and we classify the keywords, and then we set them up in silos.

Then all you have to do is go in and start plugging in the keywords, and using them, and developing content. The only thing that we will not do is content, of course, because nobody knows the niche better than the person that’s working in it. Right? We don’t know every niche, but we can research every niche, and dig up the keywords, and I’m looking at a tab. We ended up, I don’t know, like 10 tabs at the class. Well, we call it the classification tab, and I scrolled down thousands and thousands of keywords. It’s just ridiculous the amount of keywords that you get. I haven’t seen anything that’s as comprehensive, and all encompassing, as our keyword research, so that’s what you get when you order keyword research from us. Right? We either do things, we go all the way. We kill it or we just don’t do it. We don’t do shit half-assed, man.

Adam: I’ve just got to say this real quick. This is something we’re going to start offering through MGYB. That’s you, which is a store where you can … We’re going to talk about a little bit more briefly because we got a few things we want to share with everyone, but this is something. Like I said, we haven’t offered before. I meant it. I’ve used it. We’re using it for an internal site we’re putting together, as well as some other projects, and we wanted to start offering it. We’re going to just offer this to three people. It’s going to be $97, and Marco, roughly, what’s the turnaround time so we can give people kind of a time range, do you think?

Marco: It’ll be anywhere from three to five days.

Adam: Okay. So done by next week. I would say safely done by next week sometime.

Marco: Yeah.

Adam: This is going to be killer for a bunch of applications, so this is definitely a deal. Obviously, we’re offering it for 97 bucks right now to three people, so I’m going to put that on the page, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and then, eventually, it’ll be in the store available for purchase.

Marco: That’s about half price of what it’s actually going to cost.

Adam: Around there? All right, and then the other awesome thing we wanted to share with everybody was for the GMB verifications. So we’re offering 25 bucks off of these and I’ve got a coupon code I’m going to post, and I’ve used the keyword research. I haven’t used the GMB verifications. Marco or Bradley, do you guys want to tell them anything about this?

Bradley: Yeah. It’s funny, but I just ordered my first one today, believe it or not, because I was testing the sniping method that I’ve been developing just using P.O. boxes, like I always have and it’s just because old habits die hard, but I actually just placed my first order for GMB Verified today in part because it prevents me or now I don’t have to spend the time to go drive to a P.O. or, excuse me, a post office and fill out the paperwork, pick up the keys, and then drive back a week later after I’ve requested the verification card to pick it up, which sometimes, probably about 30 or 40% of the time, the card isn’t there when I drive back the second time, so I got to drive back a third time, and that uses a lot of time, and that’s okay.

I mean, it’s not so bad when it’s somewhat local, but when you got an hour drive in one direction to go pick something up and it’s not there, that’s shitty. Not only that, but what’s your time worth, right? So we have to verify GMB services now where you can buy them, basically, and we’ll create it, and verify it for you. It’s guaranteed for 60 days. Marco and I were talking a couple of days ago about this new method that I’ve been developing and he was like, “Dude, just use ours.” I was like, “Yeah. I guess I could.” I ordered my first one today. I’m really anxious to see how soon it comes back.

Marco: It’ll take two to five days to come back. It depends on just how difficult the niche is to get verified. If it’s easy, sometimes it’s overnight. I mean, we do have the express service at an additional cost. You get it back in 24 hours. I’ve ordered them. I mean, I have. I don’t know. I don’t keep track, but I know that it’s over 10, and they’re all sticking. They’re all working really well. We’re actually doing some super secret squirrel stuff to them that we’re not ready to share right now until all of the data comes back, until we have proof of concept, of course, and until we can replicate. That’s why all of this POFU, this ultimate POFU that I’ve been talking about, I can’t really say, “Guys, it’s working really well.”

We’ve already tested it. It’s in beta testing and it’s just going to get developed out from there. Once we have all the data and we can show you just how much money you can make, I said it before. Right? With RYS Academy, RYS Academy Reloaded we said we were going to turn the SEO world on its ear. We said it would Google My Business Pro. No rankings. No SEO, but you get leads. Now, let me do it again. We’re going to turn the SEO world on its fucking ear, and what I love about this and what keeps me going, guys, because I’m 55. I just turned 55, so every day that I get up it’s like, “Why are you doing this? Why do you keep doing?” It’s just I have, I don’t know, a magnificent obsession with getting over on Google.

That’s mine. That’s my thing. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do and I get up every morning with that mindset. “Today, I’m going to do something more to get over on Google,” and then every day I work on that and more, and more. Of course, that often equates into money. Oftentimes, it equates into nothing. It goes in the crapper, but that’s what testing is all about. Why am I still doing it at my age after 15 years? Because I love this shit. This is what keeps me going, man. I live for this, man. I live for getting over.

Adam: Awesome. I can’t top that, so all I’m going to say is go check out this stuff. If you want the GMB verification, that’s an awesome service, and then the keyword stuff is going to get rolling, and if you got any projects coming up or anything you’re even thinking about, I highly suggest it. It’s awesome. It is so complete and you get that, and then you just start putting stuff together. You can lay out a site like that once you get this stuff back, and all sorts of good stuff with it. I love it. I think it’s a big time saver, but enough of that. Do you guys got anything else or are we ready to jump into questions?

Bradley: I think I’m ready. Are you guys ready?

Hernan: Let’s do it.

Adam: All right.

Chris: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. Now, I got to tease this just a little bit more, guys, because I’m telling you. You got to come join the Mastermind. Guys, I just want to point out something. Again, this Maps Sniping Method that I’m kind of working out, now, and developing a process for scaling it. I kind of disclosed on a very high level our conceptual overview of what it is that I’m planning on building to our Mastermind members last week and, like I said, I mentioned it three for three in the last month for getting into three pack with brand-new verified GMB listings in under 24 hours. Well, one of them took about three days, so three for three in under three days, and I’ve just again, like I said, I’m attempting a fourth and I just picked up a fifth with using our verification service today that I’m going to be testing. I just want to point this one out.

This is just a screenshot from my phone earlier today because I set up a call center for my tree service leads, and that’s what I’ve been testing this method out with for this Maps Pack Sniping, and this is one that I sniped on Thursday, so essentially I registered a P.O. box which, again, I’m not even going to do that anymore because we have a verification service now where I can buy them and it saves me all that time from having to go drive and pick up the keys, and then drive back and pick up the verification card, and all that kind of stuff. It’s way better. It’s going to save me a ton of time. Costs a little bit of money out of pocket, but my time is worth more than that. Right?

This is one that I had rented a P.O. box for and, yet, on Thursday the day of the Mastermind webinar last week, I verified it and by the time we had the Mastermind webinar, which is at 3:00 p.m., it was already ranking. I verified it that morning. It was already ranking. Well, we got a call came through today already because everything goes through my call center, at least for the tree service leads it does. This is the lead email that came in today from that one, which is in Orange County, Virginia. It just goes to show you guys. I was able to rank a Maps listing in under 24 hours and, literally, just a couple of hours from the time that it was verified to the time that it made it into the three pack, and within four days, I guess, yeah. Four or five days it’s already generating calls, now. Right?

These are money-making calls. I get 10% of any closed contracts from this particular contractor. So think about that, guys. I mean, that’s just incredible. It cost me a few bucks and a little bit of time, and there you go. I’m already making money. One of the other ones that I had just set up was the first one that I had attempted this on. It’s in a very small area, so it’s not a whole lot of traffic or anything as far as website traffic clicks and calls, but I’ve already made money on that one because, again, that particular contractor he pays me 10% of any closed jobs, and he let me know because I told him I got him another area, and he let me know that we had already closed our first job, and I got paid off of that. I’m already profitable on that one. Just think about that, guys.

If you’re not in the Mastermind, you probably right now would be a really good time. If you’re doing local or lead gen, or a combination or a hybrid of both, I highly recommend you come check it out in the Mastermind because there’s a lot of really good stuff going on in there. Okay? Enough pitching anyways. Sorry, guys.

Do You Know An Alternative Plugin To Video Traffic X That Auto Creates Video Based On A Page Or Post Content?

Christoper, I answered your question a little bit further up. I don’t know if it’s going to be the exact same thing that you’re looking for, but there is a really good video program that creates content rather easily. I’ve used it. I used it like two years ago, and it might have even been three years ago, now, when it was first launched. It’s called Content Samurai.

It’s by the same makers of … What was that? You have to be an old school SEO to know what I’m talking about. It was Keyword Samurai.

Adam: I thought it was Keyword Samurai. Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I thought it was Keyword Samurai, too, or something like that. That was an old tool. When I first got started in SEO, that was the go-to tool for figuring out competitive metrics, and all that. The same developers behind that developed Content Samurai, which is their video platform. Again, it might have even been three years ago when it was first launched. I got in and played with it for a bit, and they have continued to develop it, and develop it. I know several of our Mastermind members. That’s their preferred video tool, and so that’s the reason why I posted that. Again, I don’t know that it’s going to do exactly what you’re asking, but I would check that one out because just like what you’ve mentioned here about video traffic X, that was a WordPress plugin and, obviously, the developer went out of business.

That’s what happens, guys, with a lot of these JVZoo offers. A lot of them are they’re fly-by-night product developers that don’t … They don’t withstand the test of time. Right? There’s not a whole lot of product developers out there that five years down the road are still in business, especially WordPress plugin developers. Unless they’re an established developer, it’s likely that the support is going to … Like, eventually, they’re going to stop supporting it because the company just goes out of business. Right? Again, that’s why I recommend something like Content Samurai that has a strong development platform behind it and they’ve been around for years, and they continue to develop the tools, so I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Adam: Yeah, real quick, too. I just went over to check it out and it’s got a seven-day free trial, so no loss there. Go check it out.

Bradley: There you go. Last thing guys, just think about it, man. I know how tempting it is, guys. I used to be a JVZoo and what they were called Warriors Special Offers, WSOs, back in the day, but I used to be a junkie. I used to always buy all the new WordPress plugins, and all the new tools because they were all push button like you’re going to get rich overnight, and all that kind of stuff. I’m a sucker for good marketing. That’s why I’m in the marketing industry. I would read a sales page, and I always had my credit card in hand by the time I got to the bottom of the sales page. I would buy all these damn tools and, first of all, that’s one way to quickly destroy your business because, well, first of all, you’re spending money. You’re spending revenue. Instead of generating revenue, you’re spending revenue.

Also, you end up spending a lot of time playing with a bunch of these stupid, shitty tools that aren’t going to move your business forward at all. Honestly, you don’t need most of the stuff. I guarantee probably everybody watching this webinar or listening to this webinar right now has enough tools in their toolbox that they can build a business. They don’t need anymore shiny objects. Right? You should be looking for ways to improve or streamline processes. You should be looking for things that might help make your job a little bit easier, such as automation, stuff for automating, and things like that, but you don’t need to go out and buy a shit-ton of tools, guys. Trust me. It will only slow your business down or prevent growth.

If you are going to buy tools, and that’s what I was getting at; sorry. I lost my train of thought for a moment, but if you are going to buy tools, try to buy tools from established developers. Even though they might be a bit more expensive, there’s a reason. Because what happens if you go out and buy one of these shitty JVZoo or Warrior Form or whatever offers that are $27 and you spend a lot of time implementing that into your business, depending processes for it? You become familiar with the tool, and now you rely on that tool to perform some specific function in your business, and now that tool goes out of business or it’s not supported. Right? Like they stop supporting it or stop development.

What happens then? Now you’ve got to go back. Go search for another tool. Buy it. Go through the learning curve. Implement it into your business. Develop processes. You have to reorganize all your shit because of a crappy tool that you bought. Right? Instead of just spending a little bit more money and getting something from an established developer, and the only reason why I’m saying this is because it’s very similar, guys, to hosting. Right? Everybody wants to go out and get … What is it? HostGator or, God forbid HostGator or GoDaddy or any of these really crappy budget hosts because it’s cheap, and they think they’re saving money. They’re being smart, but then your sites don’t rank, and they go down all the time.

There’s all kinds of issues with that. Right? You’re better off spending money on good hosting. The same thing goes with tools and training. Don’t buy shitty training, either. You guys have any comments on that before I move on?

Adam: No. I think that’s 100% what you need to say and I feel the same way. I would only follow up and say that, like you’re saying, “Don’t do it.” Because everyone does it. It’s just you got to, over time, wean yourself off of that and realize, “Oh, hey. This monthly recurring fee I’m paying means that they’re probably going to support it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good product. You still got to find a good product, but looking at it from the point of view of, “I want a developer who’s invested and making money because I want them to continue making sure that the product works and works well.”

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: Take it from people who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on shiny, new objects, and on crappy training. You don’t need to go through all that. Just find something that works and stick to it, and then just keep getting up every day, and doing it, and just creates a process that you can repeat, and you’re going to make money.

Did You Ever Hear About Legal Problems When Using The Address Of Virtual Box & Or Local Person You Know To Receive The GMB Letter?

Bradley: That’s it. Okay. This is Dustin just because she signed it. “Hey, Semantic boars.” Maybe that’s supposed to be boys. “Got a business-related question. Did you ever hear about legal problems when using the address, a virtual box, or a local person you know to receive the GMB letter? I was wondering because aren’t you registering the location for a real business?” Well, no. I mean, if you were to … All right. I’m not an attorney, guys, so I would highly recommend that you consult an attorney if you’re concerned about any of this, but the way I look at it is you’re not. When you register a business in Google, it’s not like registering a company with the state corporation commission or anything. It’s not like registering a company with the IRS, right? It’s not an official agency.

It’s Google. Right? It’s a search engine, so you can register anything you want there. Now, there are times. I’ve had this happen. I had to have one of my clients, actually. The case study for the local GMB Pro Course. It’s a taxi service. We had to contact Google to have an existing, verified listing deleted or taken down because the business owner didn’t have access to it. We created the new listing, which was also at a new address, a new physical location. We created a new Google My Business listing, and then contacted Google Support or Google My Business Support to tell them what the situation was, that there was an ex-employee that had created and verified the old or the existing GMB profile, and they didn’t work for the company anymore, and we didn’t have access to it.

Also, the company had moved to a different physical location. The same city, but different location so we needed to update all that. The reason I’m saying all this is because in order for them to, because it was a verified listing that we were asking to have removed and update to a new one, they required corporate documents, so we had to literally submit corporate documents to Google to show that the business indeed exists, and that it’s a valid business. It had an LLC. What do they call it? Articles of Organization or an operating agreement. They also needed to see the updated physical address. So, in other words, they had to see corporate documents with the new updated mailing address. Right?

So just consider that. It’s not a legal issue to register a business in Google. Google might require legal documentation, and if that’s the case, then you won’t be able to do it unless you have that legal documentation, but when registering your company or business with local agency, state agencies, or federal agencies then yes. You’re going to have to have a real, valid business. If you’re doing lead gen, guys, here’s one of the ways to get around that if you need to.

If you’re doing lead gen and you’re establishing “fake businesses” or pseudo businesses, is another term for it, generic brands, if you’re setting up lead-gen properties where you’re creating a pseudo brand, then what you can do is if you have a legal entity, a corporate entity, so if you’re an LLC or incorporated, whether it’s an S corp, a C corp, or whatever, then you can actually register that pseudo entity as a DBA or doing business as. So that, essentially, it’s your corporation. For example, my corporation is Big Bamboo Marketing, LLC. So I have DBAs for several of my lead-gen properties because that way even if Google asked for corporate documents for a lead-gen property, I can produce the doing business as certificate from the county.

It costs me, I think, 13 bucks or $14 to register a DBA. That’s all. You just go down to your local courthouse and ask for a DBA form. Wherever your business is registered, you go to that courthouse wherever your product … Like my agency it’s registered in Culpeper, so I go to the Culpeper County Courthouse. I tell them, “Hey, I need a” … or clerk of the circuit court or whatever, and I tell them that I need a DBA form. I fill it out with the lead-gen pseudo business or pseudo brand that I’m saying is a business, so that now is Big Bamboo Marketing doing business as, and so that way if Google ever requires me to verify that corporate document, all I have to do is submit the DBA and in my operating agreement for my LLC. Does that make sense?

So it’s not an issue. So that’s what I would recommend that you guys do. You don’t have to do that all the time, guys. For example, I’ve got a ton of lead-gen properties out there I don’t have DBAs for. I’m not going to lie, but if in case there was a time where I needed one, like Google required it, then I could always go down and get a DBA, and then submit it. Any comments guys or should I move on?

Adam: Good to go.

Does The Local PR Pro Course Includes A Demo On Getting 3 Pack Map Rankings In Surrounding Cities/Towns Using The Press Release Methods Without Getting A New Verified GMB Listing?

Bradley: Okay. That was a great question, by the way, Dustin; a really good question. Okay, support question from Ed Ryan. “I purchased GMB Pro the day it came out, and I love it.” Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. He says, “In Local PR Pro does Bradley show us specifically how to get three pack map rankings in surrounding cities/towns using the press release method without getting a new verified GMB listing for the business for the surrounding town?” Not specifically, but I talk a lot. We’ve talked about that many times in the Mastermind. I don’t think it’s specifically a local PR Pro, but there’s a couple of things that you could do that I can reveal here. If you wanted to try to rank in the adjacent areas, it’s not always going to be possible, guys, but there are things that you can do to kind of help facilitate that.

It requires on page. It requires having, basically, categories or silo structures or geo posts for the areas that you’re trying to get ranked in. I would also recommend that within your GMB profile, since you’re doing GMB Pro, that you start using the GMB posts just the way that we teach in the training with images, with meta tag or geo tags for the areas that you’re trying to rank in, all that kind of stuff. Try to use those keywords in those posts. Right? Then for using press releases, specifically, then you could target those locations that you want to rank in in your press releases as part of the title is incredibly important for press releases, so target the locations that you want to rank in, as long as they’re adjacent, and the title.

Make sure that you’re linking to the content that is also optimized for that location, whether it’s on your website or on your GMB profile or wherever it may be. So those are some of the things that you can do. Now, again, if you want some more in-depth training on that Ed, you got to come back to the Mastermind. Specifically in Local PR Pro I don’t talk about that because Local PR Pro the way that I’ve found. I’m talking about getting three pack rankings using press releases for the city that the business is located in. Obviously, because of the GMB Pro stuff that we’re doing, personally, I’d prefer to just get more GMB listings now than trying to rank one listing in multiple locations.

It’s so easy now, guys. Whether you’re doing P.O. boxes, which is what I’ve always done or now, which is even better using our verified GMB service. You don’t even need to leave your damn house. You can just order it online. It gets done and now you can set up as many GMB profiles as you want, and just literally target an entire region if you want. I think that’s easier. It takes less work than trying to rank one GMB for a wide service area or geographic area, if that makes sense. Guys, I like easy and the thing about it is if you develop a process, Ed, or excuse me. Yeah, Ed. If you develop a process for buying, and that’s what I’m doing, guys. I’m developing a process for scaling this method, so that I can outsource 90 to 95% of it.

It will require very little effort from me once the process is developed, and when I say it’s going to be automated, it’s going to be automated to me because I’m going to have virtual assistants doing most of the work. Does that make sense? That’s why I said it would be better, less work for you, to develop a process for building out additional GMBs even for one specific business so that you can expand their service area, and what they’re generating leads from. Develop out a process for that and that way you can outsource. Even if you don’t outsource it, it’s repeatable. If you develop like a checklist and a flowchart on what to do, then it becomes almost second nature.

You can do it like it becomes routine and it’ll become a lot easier than trying to rank one listing for a really wide geographic area or at least in my opinion it is.

Marco: One last thing. Ed, go to the Facebook group and just say you’d like a webinar on how to extend the business center, and we can get into that.

Bradley: Yep. Yeah, especially if you’re in the GMB Pro Course, because I know that question has come up a couple of times, and I think Marc. Yeah, Marco when you did the Unlimited Local Images and Videos Webinar, you touched on that briefly.

Marco: Yeah. We talked it, but we can expand on it because it’s not that difficult.

What Is The Best Combination Of Serp Space Link Packages That Provide The Best Juice At Specific Price Ranges?

Bradley: Yeah. So there you go, guys. We’ll do a follow-up webinar on GMB Pro for that. What’s up, Kevin? I haven’t seen you here in a while, man. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen Kevin post a question. He’s been around for a long time. “Hey, guys. How has everyone been? It’s been a while. Life gets in the way. You know.” Yes. I do. It’s good to have you back, buddy. He says, “Wanted to ask about service space tiered link building for local clients. I’m thinking of adding in on month three of a campaign. Service space tiered link building to as many as possible of the clients tier ones; links they’ve accumulated over the years. I see about four options for Web 2.0 contextual, and four more options for non-contextuals, plus this can be all done for four tiers. That is a lot of different combinations and price points.”

“What would be the best combination or lack of combination to provide the most use at the cheapest price, a middle price, and a higher price, but not as high as the just max everything out?” Okay. I’m not the spam guy anymore, guys. I actually rarely even use it anymore.

Marco: Shame on you.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, I don’t. It’s just I don’t use a lot of spam links anymore because I don’t need to. We’re able to get results now using RYS, Local GMB Pro, Local PR Pro, and syndication networks. It seems silly to do that. Now, there are certainly times when spam can help and I can certainly power up drive stacks, and press releases, and syndication networks, all of that, with spam, but I’ve been getting results recently without doing it, so I’m not really the big spam guy anymore that I used to be. I would recommend that you … I can give you a little bit of advice here, but what I would recommend, Kevin, is to repost this question in the SEO Tutorials and Case Studies Semantic Mastery Facebook Group, which is the free group, and then tag. You could tag me on it if you want, and I’ll tag Daddio, which is our link-building guy.

He’s been with me for, shit, at least five years, and he’s our manager. The guy’s a ninja. He’s got a full staff that all they do is build links, and so he can answer that question and direct you to specifically what you need. Now, the slight advice that I’ll give you and, again, I don’t even know if it’s accurate. I would still repost this question in that group and get his advice because his advice is going to be a hell of a lot more current than mine, but what I would say is I always go with contextual links. Anything non-contextual is like kitchen sink spam, and that’s the kind of stuff that I would keep way, way far away from my money site, like four or five hops away if I’m going to use it at all.

I would stick with Web 2.0 contextual links for at least three tiers before I would do GSA kitchen sink spam or anything like that. Again, that’s just because that’s kind of evolved, too, because it used to be that we would just do to tier one links. We would do contextual links, so your tier two links would be contextual Web 2.0s, and then we would push spam behind that. Your tier three links would just be kitchen sink spam, but that’s changed because Google is looking further, and Marco can comment on this, but this is about distance graph and all that stuff. So it’s really important, at least in my opinion, to keep kitchen sink spam further and further away, and so I believe Daddio’s recommendation, now, is for tier two and tier three that you use contextual Web 2.0. Marco, you want to comment on that a little bit?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, Daddio has all the answers for you. The guy’s been at it for years. He knows exactly what to do, and how to do it. He can give you the best recommendation.

Bradley: Yep.

Marco: One thing that I would tell you. Since Google is looking out further and further, make sure you put a drive stack in there so that all of your link building goes through the drive stack, and it’ll come out the other end just pristine, no matter what it is. Even if a set of links turns bad for whatever reason, it won’t hurt.

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: That’s how good drive stacks are at cleaning up spam.

Are You Still Using RSS Feed Directory Submission And Other RSS Tactics?

Bradley: That’s good advice. Thank you. Second question, now. “One more question if that’s okay. Are you still using RSS feed directory submissions and other RSS tactics that have been mentioned before? Tactics seem to come and go so quick. It’s hard to know if something that was done eight-plus month ago is still valid and worth the time and money to implement today.” Yeah. Actually, believe it or not, I still think RSS feeds are one of the most underutilized things in SEO. There is a lot of things you can do with RSS feeds that are really powerful. I mean, obviously, syndication networks they’re RSS feed driven the way that we’ve always set up the triggers that way, but there is still a lot of other things that you can do.

Now, I don’t spend a shit-ton of time on that stuff anymore, but if you’re in a competitive niche where every little push helps or you need every little push, then absolutely RSS stuff is still valid. The easiest way to do it, guys, is just collect your money side RSS feed or your Web 2.0 feeds or all of them. If you want, you can combine them together with the feed splicer, and then submit that one super feed to just go to Fiverr and search for RSS feed submits, and you can get a Fiverr gig that will do the work for you that will submit to 70 directories and aggregators for you, and they’ll send you tips. A lot of times they’ll send you back a report, and it’ll cost you five or 10 bucks, or something like that.

So what? It’s easy. It’ll only take you a few seconds, and let them do the work for you. Okay? Yeah. It still works, guys. There is no doubt. It’s funny because I think RSS stuff it’s an old technology, and so a lot of people don’t think that it’s still valuable, but it certainly is. There is no doubt it is. Okay. Good question. Good to have you back, Kevin. All right. Let’s see.

Is It Enough To Only Build Money Channel Or Brand Ring To Stick The Videos On SERPs?

It says, “Hi. First, thanks for answering my question. This SEO shit keeps me never run out of question.” Isn’t that the truth? “The more you get into it the more questions come.” That’s correct. “About IFTTT networks, is building only one ring that is the money channel brand ring reason for sticking the videos on SIR?”

Well, it can be. I mean, there is a lot of variables there. Typically for video stuff, though, guys I don’t even start syndication networks for videos for YouTube channels unless I’m going to use at least one full two-tier ring. Right? So you’re going to have a branded ring or a tier-one ring. It doesn’t have to be branded, but I recommend that you do. A branded tier-one ring, and then you have three tier-two rings, which is the full two-tier networks. If I’m going to start a new channel and a syndication network broadcast. I call it a broadcast network for videos, but a broadcast network for a new YouTube channel or a new project. I always start with at least one full two-tier network.

That’s just I guess because I have the resources to do that, guys. If you have the resources, I recommend you do that as well. Typically, I end up with usually anywhere between two to five full two-tier networks stacked on one YouTube channel if I’m serious about that particular project or campaign, so it depends. If you can get results, and the only reason I say that, guys, is because I don’t do so much of it anymore, but for a period, for many years there, actually, I did a lot of video broadcasting work for local video production companies, and so I developed out several themed syndication networks that I had themed YouTube channels. One was for Virginia businesses.

One was specifically for contractors. I had one for health and wellness stuff, and they’re just big syndication networks that I created for YouTube. The idea is with blog syndication I always recommend, and I’ve been recommending this for years, to just stick with a branded syndication network and don’t go multi tiers because it can create issues, and it kind of creates a little bit of a maintenance nightmare. Right? It’s a pain in the ass to maintain, but for videos there is no footprint issues. It’s still to this day, guys, there is no footprint issues with broad. As long as you’re using the applets the way that we teach or you buy the syndication networks from us with the applets already built, then they’re going to work fine.

I’ve never had any issues with YouTube videos getting slapped or sand boxed, or anything going through syndication networks, but blog content can if you’re doing multi tiers, so just to bring it back to what you’re asking. I would recommend. You can try. Certainly try it with just one, but if you’re not getting the results that you want, then start stacking tier two networks on to the tier one network, or you can also stack additional tier one networks, persona-based networks. That’s perfectly fine as well. That was a good question, though.

How Do You Determine If A Social Website Is Good To Have In A Network Ring Or Not?

“How do you determine if a social website is good to have in a network ring or not? There are over 200 popular social webs.” They’re all good. If you can get a branded profile on the network or on any one of those social sites, just do it because you’re increasing. You’re validating your entity more every time you add another branded profile, especially if you can interlink. Even if all you can do is link to one other property that’s branded, that’s good enough. Guys, that’s why in Syndication Academy we do the update webinars, and we add. Not every month, but almost every month, we add at least one new property. Again, it’s not every month, but almost every month we add at least one new property, whether it can be syndicated to or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we can syndicate to or not. It still acts as a citation.

If it’s a real business, it acts as an entity validator. Guys, the more places you can get your brand out on the Web, the more authority you’ll accrue. Let’s see. “I would have thought Stumble Upon would be a good social website to include, but you seem to neglect it.” No. We’ve done Stumble Upon, but didn’t Stumble Upon go out of business, recently or something?

Marco: No. They moved to something called Mix.com-

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: … but you could still use Mix.com. I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the same way. You can curate content from around the Web.

Bradley: Yep. Okay, cool. What’s up, Nigel? He’s always active. He says, “You are appreciated for the value you bring. G Hypnosis was awesome. Thanks to you guys and Eric.” Yeah. That was a great webinar. Did we ever get a replay available, yet? Adam, if Adam is still on. Hello?

Adam: Sorry.

Bradley: Yeah. Adam must be-

Adam: Technical issues hitting the mute button. I’m still working on that, but we’ll have some info shortly, I believe.

Bradley: Okay, good. All right. Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll get the replay out here in a minute or soon, guys, because that was a great webinar. There was obviously an offer at the end of that webinar for … It was funny because the webinar was for a particular method and a information product, but the first hour of the webinar was not about the product at all. It was about how to prospect and sell to clients. It was fabulous. It was really, really good. Eric has really created a great business. I respect him highly anyways because I’ve known him since the start of my career, so I already respected the guy, but he’s built a really good business and he’s developed his own sales process that it works, and it’s funny, but we were talking.

My salesman that’s working for my agency and I have been trial and error developing sales processes for months now, and we haven’t been very successful, but what we’ve found with Roberto because he’s the one primarily doing it. He’s the one talking to the contractors and everything. What he’s found over the last several months is essentially he’s kind of, through trial and error, come to the same conclusion that Eric uses for his sales process that he revealed on this webinar in this first hour of the webinar. It was funny because I was like, “Damn it! I wish I could have had this webinar with you, Eric, like four months ago, five months ago. It could have saved us four or five months of trial and error, and I probably closed a lot of these contractors that have now gone cold because we screwed up the sales process.”

Any Decent Spammy Fiverr Traffic For Testing?

At least it was good validation to know that we have, even though it took us a bunch of trial and error to figure it out. At least it was good validation to know that we’re on the right track. Thanks for mentioning that, Nigel. It was good to bring that up. Okay. Coming up on four years of goodness, yes. We are. He says, “Any decent spammy Fiverr traffic for testing or is that a myth that it works with RYS, although likely not recommended at first option?” Well, I mean, I’ve used the fiber traffic gigs for getting press releases to stick. I haven’t really tested them with drive stacks or anything. Have you, Marco?

Marco: No.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: No. I haven’t.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can log into Fire real quick and just give you one lady that I ordered a whole lot of them she … Well, who knows if it’s a lady. The profile picture was a lady, but that one I think that gig got taken down or something. I’m not sure. Just give me one second. I think that’s one of them. Yeah. See? That one’s no longer available. All right. This one is. I’ve used this guy, too. You guys can see. This is it’s niche targeted. 2,000 daily visitors for 15 days for five bucks. This one right here I’ll just grab the URL. Whoops! And drop it on the page for you, Nigel. Again, I haven’t tried any of these with drive stacks. I have used these types of gigs for getting press releases to stick longer in the search.

For example, if you get a press release, guys, to rank on page one. You guys probably know that a lot of times press releases they rank really well for a short period of time, and then they start to slip in the search. I’ve used these types of gigs to be able to drive traffic to them to get them to stick in the search longer, and it absolutely works. I don’t know about drive stack stuff, but I can’t imagine it would probably hurt, especially since it’s drive stack stuff. Good question, though. Damn, guys. You’ve posted a whole shit-ton of questions all of a sudden because there wasn’t much before.

Are You Using Rotator Link For Landing Pages?

Anyone using Rotator Link for landing pages and, if so, any recommendations? You mean for split testing landing pages? There’s a rotator inside click funnels, and that’s all I use for landing pages. If anybody has any recommendations for doing split testing landing pages or link rotators and stuff like that, plugins or anything like that, let Nigel know, please. Just post on the page here.

What Strategies Are You Using With Alignable And LinkedIn To Get Leads Business?

“What strategies are you using with Alignable and LinkedIn to get business leads?” Well, I started playing with Alignable, and every now and then I’ll take an hour, an hour and a half and go in and become really active for an hour, but it’s not something I do consistently. It’s one of those things I’ve always had intentions to do consistently, but I never do it consistently.

Every now and then, like I said, I’ll go in and spend an hour in there and I’ll be like, “Wow! There’s a lot of opportunity here, and all that,” and I’ll get all excited, and then three weeks goes by before I do it again. I’m not really doing a lot of in there. I think there’s opportunity, but I haven’t had enough time to. I haven’t spent enough time in there to really figure out a process for getting repeatable results. LinkedIn we spent a lot of time. Well, Roberto, my salesman, spent a lot of time in LinkedIn trying to develop a process for tree service contractors. We realize now that was probably a really, really shitty industry to try to approach in LinkedIn just because there’s not a lot of contractors in LinkedIn, tree service contractors, and when they are, again, it’s not really a platform made for that type of a contractor.

We’re actually doing started prospecting just in the last two weeks again for general contractors and remodeling contractors, so we’re going to take what he started to develop for tree service contractors on LinkedIn and apply that to that industry, and see if we can get better results. I believe we will because, again, I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, but those type of contractors seem to be a bit more digitally savvy or a bit more sophisticated. There is more of them on LinkedIn and they seem to be a bit more engaged on LinkedIn. In the coming weeks, Nigel, especially I don’t know if you’re still in the Mastermind or not, but in the coming weeks as we have more data from that or more results, or experience, good, bad, or ugly, I’ll be sharing that about the LinkedIn stuff.

Do You Have Any Creative SEO Strategies For A Business That Sells Psychiatric Services To Skillled Nursing Care Facilities?

Jordan, okay. “A new client coming onboard that sells psychiatric services to skilled nursing care facilities, and then expanding. Obviously, the search volume is incredibly low and there aren’t that many decision makers. Less than a thousand, but each enlistment is worth about 70,000 per year to them.” Wow. “Doing everything digital for them: site, social, SEO, content, marketing conferences, collateral, et cetera. Any creative SEO strategies for this type of highly niched B2B client?” That’s a tough one, Jordan.

Adam: Actually, yeah. This is cool. Jordan, I’ll have to send you … I listened to a podcast recently and I can’t remember the guy’s name. Sorry. I’ll have to look it up, but basically the guy did this, and he did it in one region. I can’t remember. It wasn’t where you’re at, but talking about this, and going into the specifics of obviously you’re generally not, and I’m sure you already understand this, but you’re not marketing to consumer. You’re marketing. This is like a family member would be looking for this, so words like mom, dad, and all the associated words like that, and then going into it, and potentially can you offer other than I’m looking at what you’re saying? Can you do any sort of remarketing?

There is a lot of stuff you can do because it’s worth so much to them which, obviously, you just listed but, also, you could maybe open their eyes and maybe, again, you’ve already done this. Once they reach a certain amount of let’s say like it takes 75% booking or rooms filled for them to be profitable that you become highly profitable to them once you bring them past that point, so that maybe you can get more funds in order to expand some of these activities. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

What’s The Best Way To Handle WordPress Security Issues?

Bradley: That’s great. Thanks, Adam. If you can tag him on it and find it, that’d be great. All right, cool. What’s up, Dan? KD, there we go. “Hey, guys. What’s the best way to handle WordPress security issues and not mess up SEO? I have a client ranked on page one. It is now under heavy brute force attack. I cranked up the settings on iTheme security.” Now, guys. Personally, there is a couple of things I would recommend. Number one, get a really good host. Liquid Web is fantastic for this kind of stuff, guys. They have their own firewall and all this other stuff. They’re really, really good at security over at Liquid Web. Guys, we talk about this. I just mentioned hosting earlier on this webinar. My two go-to resources, Liquid Web is hands down my favorite. I also have been recently using WPX hosting for a lot of one-off WordPress sites.

For testing purposes or for lead gen sites and stuff, I’ve been using WPX, which seems to be good. Their support is really, really good, too, but there are some drawbacks to that where I think Liquid Web is even better, but Liquid Web has some really, really good security features; however, I see that you mentioned down here about security. I’ve got two of my clients on security, actually, and they have the security firewall, and they have the malware removal programs, and all that stuff, and I got two of my … One of my clients is a pest control company. Actually, it’s a tick and mosquito control company. So it’d be like outdoor pest control, and they have been hacked like at least eight times in the last five years since they’ve been working with me.

Even after we put their site on Sucuri, they still have been hacked a couple of times, but Sucuri always goes in. All you got to do is submit a request to Sucuri and they’ll go in, and find the problem. Unhack the site. Restore the site and they’ll take care of everything for you. All you have to do is submit a ticket. Again, it’s worth it. I think it’s like 300 bucks a year or something like that but, in my opinion, it’s totally worth it or get a really good host like Liquid Web and let them do it. As far as changing the DNS, would that affect rankings? No, not at all. That shouldn’t affect rankings at all. In fact, actually, changing DNS from a shitty host through something like Sucuri will likely improve the site.

Marco: Yes. What I would like to say is, depending on her needs, we have a really neat way where we trap these rouge bots that do these attacks, and if you want to talk about that, I mean, it’s not cheap, just so you know, but you can always find me in Facebook, Katie, and we can talk, and then we could set up and then all of these rogue bots you can just eliminate. You can trap them and eliminate them, and it’s over and done with.

Bradley: Yep. Bob Lowe, I love that comment. “Master manipulation makes your palms hairy.” That’s funny, Bob. All right. We’re almost done, guys. I got to wrap up in just a couple of minutes, anyways. I get to take my daughter to dinner tonight. Let’s see. R. Banking says, “If using a set number of credits and maps powerhouse, is it better to use all of them on the embed or split them up between embeds and secondary posts?” That’s a good question. I prefer doing a split between embeds and secondary posts just because I was mentioning.

I was talking about YouTube networks earlier, syndication networks, and I mentioned that I like to use two-tier networks for YouTube syndication; however, you can stack multiple tier-one rings onto a channel to where they’re all being triggered directly from the channel instead of being secondary triggers from a blog in your first-tiered network. The reason why I like the second two-tiered networks is because I’ve found that the effect lasts longer through two-tiered networks. In other words, if I were to take a channel and stack 10 tier-one networks on the channel, the video is likely going to rank really quickly, but it typically will start, and I haven’t tested this, now, in probably two years, but about two to three years ago I did a lot of testing on this, guys.

I found that multiple tier-one networks the video would rank really quickly, but it would start to slip in the rankings a lot sooner, whereas, if I used multiple tier-two networks or multi-tiered networks, then it might not rank as quickly, but it would indeed rank eventually, and it would end up sticking a lot longer. I’ve always applied that same methodology to video Powerhouse and Maps Powerhouse to where I prefer doing like the tiers and secondary embeds and or back links as well instead of just doing all tier-one stuff. So that’s going to be my answer, but I haven’t tested specifically to see if one is going to perform better than the others. Does anybody here have any insight on that?

Marco: No. I do the same exact thing simply because it adds relevance at the other tiers coming back to your tier one.

Bradley: There you go. Bob Lowe, he said he ordered his Verified GMB and can’t wait to get it back. “I’m ready with the website content and PR.” Boom! There you go, Bob. Perfect. That’s perfect. Thank you. “Bradley, will this process improve the position and the pack if you’re already there?” No. Well, Dan. If you’re talking about the GMB Sniping, the Map Sniping that I’ve been talking about, no because that’s talking about finding locations that you can register a GMB or verify a GMB, and get into the three pack within … So far, like I said, I’ve been able. I’m three for three in under 72 hours. The method I’m talking about is getting into a three pack with a brand-new listing.

If it’s an existing listing, then I would recommend local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro. Those are the two things that I’m using specifically now. Local PR Pro for getting into the three pack. Local GMB Pro for generating leads regardless of three pack. Does that make sense? The two combined are absolutely brutal, guys. There is no way that you can’t get results with those two, and you add a drive stack on top of it. Forget about it. Right? Market Samurai, there you go, Walt. Thank you. Thank you, Walt. Yeah, Market Samurai. That was the keyword research tool that was like the go-to. It was industry standard for several years. You guys remember that? Like, the pink and the green lines, and all that, and the chart. It would create like a spreadsheet and it would show in-bound back links, and keyword rank. It was crazy.

I used to use that thing like daily. That’s awesome. Thanks, Walt. We’re almost done, guys. Let’s see. He’s doing Pinterest stuff, too. Is that what he’s doing? That’s Pinterest stats, right?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: That’s good. I posted my stats on there. I just want people to see what you could do. I mean, the type of traffic that you can actually generate with this thing, which is ridiculous. I know Dan is doing really well, but this one, the one that I posted, is in the millions, now.

Bradley: Clint. “GoDaddy bought Sucuri.” No shit? Yeah. “Plan on that sucking soon.” Okay. Well, I’m glad I know that now because I won’t recommend it going forward, Clint. Thank you. I appreciate that because yeah, guys. GoDaddy hosting sucks, by the way, so if they bought Sucuri, it’s probably going to suck, too. Clint is right. No doubt. Scott says, “Still wrestling with a client attempting to get them onboard with GMB verification. He already has a verified listing for the suburb, and has no traction in the much larger city. He is afraid he will lose the verified listing he already has with Google. Without giving away your processes, would he have a new Google listing for the larger city or will his current GMB be impacted in any way?”

Okay, Scott. What I’m going to tell you is look. I can’t reveal too much, guys. Actually, let me just say this. What I would do in that case if you have a client is already a client, and you’re trying to talk them into getting a second GMB for another area that they want to generate leads from because, again, it’s more difficult to get one listing to rank in multiple areas, a wide geographic region. It’s harder to do that, in my opinion, than it is to just create a new damn listing for the areas that you want. What I would recommend is if he’s already a client and you’re already making money, just go register the GMB yourself. Get it. Do it yourself, right? Build it with a generic brand, a pseudo brand, and then once the damn thing is ranked, then show them. “Look what I did.”

Because look. You can monetize that property, whether it’s for that client or another client. It doesn’t matter. My point is: Why not build that asset? If he’s already a client and you know he wants the leads in that area, but he’s scared, just go create a GMB listing with a pseudo brand. It’s in the same category, all that shit. Get it set up. Get it ranked, and then approach him with it and say, “Look. I’ve already got this asset. It’s already ranked in the area that you want these leads from.” Now, you can sign him up for like an increase on a monthly retainer or you can just sell him the damn leads. In any way, you own that asset, now. You can rebrand it for him or he can turn it down and you can say, “That’s fine. I’ll sell the leads to another person in the same industry in the same area.” Does that make sense?

My point is don’t try to pull the client’s teeth. If he’s giving you resistance, just go register it yourself. Rank the damn thing. Now, you’ve got another asset in your portfolio that you can use to entice him to increase his services with you, his commitment with you. If he doesn’t, who cares. You’ve got an asset now that you can monetize with another company. Let’s see. Local host publish fee FTP to server. I don’t know what that means, Mike. I’m sorry. “Will premium domain solve the link equity described in a previous discussion instead of using Alley like Marco mentioned? What do you mean by premium domain, Mike?” I don’t follow that one, either. I don’t know what you mean by that Mike. I apologize, but we’re out of time anyways, so if you want to post this question again in the SEO tutorials group, maybe we can comment in on that.

Hey, Clint still has Market Samurai installed. I didn’t even know if they still … Apparently, they do. I think that’s what he was saying earlier. I didn’t know that that tool was still being supported and all that. I haven’t seen it in years. “Thanks for the GMB, very helpful. All set up.” Yep. There you go. Scott remember. You can buy it now, and you don’t even have to leave your damn house. Scott you’re in the Mastermind. Follow the training that I talked about in the newsletter as well. You’ll get that in about a week, as well as the last two Mastermind webinars I’ve touched on. It’s just is very specifically how to research the areas to find the best opportunity. Right? All right. Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate every for sticking around.

Adam: Awesome.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Adam: Bye, everybody.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: See y'all next week.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199 published first on https://dilatepage.tumblr.com/

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199

Click on the video above to watch Episode 199 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. This is Episode 199. It is the 29th of August, 2018. We are here with the full crew as we inch closer to Episode 200, so we’re going to say hello to everyone real quick, and then we’re going to make some good announcements today. We got some cool limited time stuff coming up as well as some things we want to share with you all before we dive into the questions. So real quick, Chris. How are you doing today?

Chris: Doing good. Glad to be here. How are you doing?

Adam: Can’t complain. I’m trying out this fancy, new screen in the background. That’s not a green screen. I bought one of those. It’s like a folding shoji screen thing so you guys don’t have to look at my office futon and white boards, and so I did it for you guys, not for me. Hernan, how are you doing?

Hernan: Hey, what’s up? I’m traveling, so connection is not the best, but I’m excited to be here. Yeah. I’m excited for POFU Live. Right now, I’m writing a message on the event, so I’m going to just drop the link over there. If you guys want to join, that’s going to be epic.

Adam: Nice. Yeah, so if you’re watching live, you can check it out, if not, we’ll include that in the show notes, and tickets are selling, so if you’re thinking about going or you want to know more, now is a very good time to go check that out. We are capping it at 25 max. I think we’re halfway there and so grab you a ticket while you can. Marco, how are you doing?

Marco: Working on POFU, man. You guys saw it. You guys saw it. You know what I’m working on. It never stops. It never stops. Manipulation never stops. Those of you who are not manipulating, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Adam: Oops, sorry. I was muted. I was like, “Man, strong start to Hump Day Hangouts today, but for real.” That’s also the theme of … That’s why we’re calling it POFU Live. Right? That’s our live event and talking about ourselves, as well as the people who are attending how we can help each other get to that point where you get to choose what you want to do, either with your time, your projects, your clients. Bradley, how are you doing, man?

Bradley: Great, man. Happy to be here. Got a lot of exciting stuff cooking up right now. Gearing up for POFU Live. I got a couple of things that I’m actually developing specifically for that, and some stuff that I’ve been developing. I started talking about in the Mastermind a couple of weeks ago, and actually did the newsletter entry for the newsletter that gets mailed out in a week or so specifically addressing that, and then we had the Mastermind webinar last, or excuse me, Thursday, and I went into a little bit more detail, and I’ve just been like neck deep in this new process that I’m developing. It’s just absolutely crushing it for sniping Maps pack rankings, like within 24 hours. It’s crazy. I’m three for three in the last month, and I actually just ordered another verified GMB profile now to see if I can be four for four.

If that’s the case, which, again, I’m working on a process right now to be able to scale this. Client work is great, but if you can develop your own assets, that’s even better, and so that’s something I’m working on inside of the Mastermind, and really excited about it, and looking forward to sharing that at POFU Live.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Well, if you’re just watching this, and this is the first time watching or maybe you’ve just been to a few, first of all, thanks for checking us out on the Hump Day Hangouts. We’re here every Wednesday and if you haven’t grabbed it, yet, the battle plan is the best place to start. We get asked a lot. “Hey, I’m new to Semantic Mastery. I just started watching you guys’ videos or I came across this or that. What should I do first?” The battle plan is the place to start. There will be a link below where you can check that out. If you’re ready to kick things up a notch, we do have the Mastermind and, again, the link is there for you to take a look at that. I’m not going to go into the details here, but it’s the place to be if you’re into local digital marketing and you want to take things up a few notches.

Now, one thing we did want to talk about briefly today. This is actually a service of ours that I’ve used because we haven’t actually offered this outside of testing and getting the process set up, and this is keyword research that Marco spearheaded in getting this set up. Marco, do you want to talk about this real quick and let people know what we’re going to be sharing?

Marco: Yeah, sure. How this started out is, of course, it was in RYS Academy because we needed to give people an opportunity to have keyword research. You have to know your market. You have to know your niche. You have to know what you’re getting into. We started doing it Semantic Mastery style. We would do Google Trends, as Bradley recommends, and then we would do AdWords, of course, the keyword tool, and then we would do Power Suggest Pro. We would just come up with thousands of keywords to target. We could have left it at that because that’s fabulous, but then we said, “That’s not enough. If we’re going to offer something that’s keyword research, it needs to be more comprehensive.” So we added Ubersuggest, which that wasn’t enough, so we went into Answer the Public, and that wasn’t enough.

We started using the methods taught in Jeffrey Smith’s SEO Bootcamp and, by the way, Jeffery Smith is the best. If you guys don’t have SEO Bootcamp, you’re missing out. Ultimate SEO Bootcamp it is like the ultimate when it comes to going into and exploring your competition, your niche, but the keyword research is still a little bit short. It’s fabulous, but it doesn’t include everything that we’ve talked about. Not only that, we incorporated some of the stuff that’s taught in Network Empires. What is it? Ultimate Keyword Research Tool, and I said, “We could have left it at that.” Right? But we actually go and we classify the keywords, and then we set them up in silos.

Then all you have to do is go in and start plugging in the keywords, and using them, and developing content. The only thing that we will not do is content, of course, because nobody knows the niche better than the person that’s working in it. Right? We don’t know every niche, but we can research every niche, and dig up the keywords, and I’m looking at a tab. We ended up, I don’t know, like 10 tabs at the class. Well, we call it the classification tab, and I scrolled down thousands and thousands of keywords. It’s just ridiculous the amount of keywords that you get. I haven’t seen anything that’s as comprehensive, and all encompassing, as our keyword research, so that’s what you get when you order keyword research from us. Right? We either do things, we go all the way. We kill it or we just don’t do it. We don’t do shit half-assed, man.

Adam: I’ve just got to say this real quick. This is something we’re going to start offering through MGYB. That’s you, which is a store where you can … We’re going to talk about a little bit more briefly because we got a few things we want to share with everyone, but this is something. Like I said, we haven’t offered before. I meant it. I’ve used it. We’re using it for an internal site we’re putting together, as well as some other projects, and we wanted to start offering it. We’re going to just offer this to three people. It’s going to be $97, and Marco, roughly, what’s the turnaround time so we can give people kind of a time range, do you think?

Marco: It’ll be anywhere from three to five days.

Adam: Okay. So done by next week. I would say safely done by next week sometime.

Marco: Yeah.

Adam: This is going to be killer for a bunch of applications, so this is definitely a deal. Obviously, we’re offering it for 97 bucks right now to three people, so I’m going to put that on the page, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and then, eventually, it’ll be in the store available for purchase.

Marco: That’s about half price of what it’s actually going to cost.

Adam: Around there? All right, and then the other awesome thing we wanted to share with everybody was for the GMB verifications. So we’re offering 25 bucks off of these and I’ve got a coupon code I’m going to post, and I’ve used the keyword research. I haven’t used the GMB verifications. Marco or Bradley, do you guys want to tell them anything about this?

Bradley: Yeah. It’s funny, but I just ordered my first one today, believe it or not, because I was testing the sniping method that I’ve been developing just using P.O. boxes, like I always have and it’s just because old habits die hard, but I actually just placed my first order for GMB Verified today in part because it prevents me or now I don’t have to spend the time to go drive to a P.O. or, excuse me, a post office and fill out the paperwork, pick up the keys, and then drive back a week later after I’ve requested the verification card to pick it up, which sometimes, probably about 30 or 40% of the time, the card isn’t there when I drive back the second time, so I got to drive back a third time, and that uses a lot of time, and that’s okay.

I mean, it’s not so bad when it’s somewhat local, but when you got an hour drive in one direction to go pick something up and it’s not there, that’s shitty. Not only that, but what’s your time worth, right? So we have to verify GMB services now where you can buy them, basically, and we’ll create it, and verify it for you. It’s guaranteed for 60 days. Marco and I were talking a couple of days ago about this new method that I’ve been developing and he was like, “Dude, just use ours.” I was like, “Yeah. I guess I could.” I ordered my first one today. I’m really anxious to see how soon it comes back.

Marco: It’ll take two to five days to come back. It depends on just how difficult the niche is to get verified. If it’s easy, sometimes it’s overnight. I mean, we do have the express service at an additional cost. You get it back in 24 hours. I’ve ordered them. I mean, I have. I don’t know. I don’t keep track, but I know that it’s over 10, and they’re all sticking. They’re all working really well. We’re actually doing some super secret squirrel stuff to them that we’re not ready to share right now until all of the data comes back, until we have proof of concept, of course, and until we can replicate. That’s why all of this POFU, this ultimate POFU that I’ve been talking about, I can’t really say, “Guys, it’s working really well.”

We’ve already tested it. It’s in beta testing and it’s just going to get developed out from there. Once we have all the data and we can show you just how much money you can make, I said it before. Right? With RYS Academy, RYS Academy Reloaded we said we were going to turn the SEO world on its ear. We said it would Google My Business Pro. No rankings. No SEO, but you get leads. Now, let me do it again. We’re going to turn the SEO world on its fucking ear, and what I love about this and what keeps me going, guys, because I’m 55. I just turned 55, so every day that I get up it’s like, “Why are you doing this? Why do you keep doing?” It’s just I have, I don’t know, a magnificent obsession with getting over on Google.

That’s mine. That’s my thing. I love what I do. I enjoy what I do and I get up every morning with that mindset. “Today, I’m going to do something more to get over on Google,” and then every day I work on that and more, and more. Of course, that often equates into money. Oftentimes, it equates into nothing. It goes in the crapper, but that’s what testing is all about. Why am I still doing it at my age after 15 years? Because I love this shit. This is what keeps me going, man. I live for this, man. I live for getting over.

Adam: Awesome. I can’t top that, so all I’m going to say is go check out this stuff. If you want the GMB verification, that’s an awesome service, and then the keyword stuff is going to get rolling, and if you got any projects coming up or anything you’re even thinking about, I highly suggest it. It’s awesome. It is so complete and you get that, and then you just start putting stuff together. You can lay out a site like that once you get this stuff back, and all sorts of good stuff with it. I love it. I think it’s a big time saver, but enough of that. Do you guys got anything else or are we ready to jump into questions?

Bradley: I think I’m ready. Are you guys ready?

Hernan: Let’s do it.

Adam: All right.

Chris: Let’s do it.

Bradley: All right. Now, I got to tease this just a little bit more, guys, because I’m telling you. You got to come join the Mastermind. Guys, I just want to point out something. Again, this Maps Sniping Method that I’m kind of working out, now, and developing a process for scaling it. I kind of disclosed on a very high level our conceptual overview of what it is that I’m planning on building to our Mastermind members last week and, like I said, I mentioned it three for three in the last month for getting into three pack with brand-new verified GMB listings in under 24 hours. Well, one of them took about three days, so three for three in under three days, and I’ve just again, like I said, I’m attempting a fourth and I just picked up a fifth with using our verification service today that I’m going to be testing. I just want to point this one out.

This is just a screenshot from my phone earlier today because I set up a call center for my tree service leads, and that’s what I’ve been testing this method out with for this Maps Pack Sniping, and this is one that I sniped on Thursday, so essentially I registered a P.O. box which, again, I’m not even going to do that anymore because we have a verification service now where I can buy them and it saves me all that time from having to go drive and pick up the keys, and then drive back and pick up the verification card, and all that kind of stuff. It’s way better. It’s going to save me a ton of time. Costs a little bit of money out of pocket, but my time is worth more than that. Right?

This is one that I had rented a P.O. box for and, yet, on Thursday the day of the Mastermind webinar last week, I verified it and by the time we had the Mastermind webinar, which is at 3:00 p.m., it was already ranking. I verified it that morning. It was already ranking. Well, we got a call came through today already because everything goes through my call center, at least for the tree service leads it does. This is the lead email that came in today from that one, which is in Orange County, Virginia. It just goes to show you guys. I was able to rank a Maps listing in under 24 hours and, literally, just a couple of hours from the time that it was verified to the time that it made it into the three pack, and within four days, I guess, yeah. Four or five days it’s already generating calls, now. Right?

These are money-making calls. I get 10% of any closed contracts from this particular contractor. So think about that, guys. I mean, that’s just incredible. It cost me a few bucks and a little bit of time, and there you go. I’m already making money. One of the other ones that I had just set up was the first one that I had attempted this on. It’s in a very small area, so it’s not a whole lot of traffic or anything as far as website traffic clicks and calls, but I’ve already made money on that one because, again, that particular contractor he pays me 10% of any closed jobs, and he let me know because I told him I got him another area, and he let me know that we had already closed our first job, and I got paid off of that. I’m already profitable on that one. Just think about that, guys.

If you’re not in the Mastermind, you probably right now would be a really good time. If you’re doing local or lead gen, or a combination or a hybrid of both, I highly recommend you come check it out in the Mastermind because there’s a lot of really good stuff going on in there. Okay? Enough pitching anyways. Sorry, guys.

Do You Know An Alternative Plugin To Video Traffic X That Auto Creates Video Based On A Page Or Post Content?

Christoper, I answered your question a little bit further up. I don’t know if it’s going to be the exact same thing that you’re looking for, but there is a really good video program that creates content rather easily. I’ve used it. I used it like two years ago, and it might have even been three years ago, now, when it was first launched. It’s called Content Samurai.

It’s by the same makers of … What was that? You have to be an old school SEO to know what I’m talking about. It was Keyword Samurai.

Adam: I thought it was Keyword Samurai. Yeah.

Bradley: Yeah. I thought it was Keyword Samurai, too, or something like that. That was an old tool. When I first got started in SEO, that was the go-to tool for figuring out competitive metrics, and all that. The same developers behind that developed Content Samurai, which is their video platform. Again, it might have even been three years ago when it was first launched. I got in and played with it for a bit, and they have continued to develop it, and develop it. I know several of our Mastermind members. That’s their preferred video tool, and so that’s the reason why I posted that. Again, I don’t know that it’s going to do exactly what you’re asking, but I would check that one out because just like what you’ve mentioned here about video traffic X, that was a WordPress plugin and, obviously, the developer went out of business.

That’s what happens, guys, with a lot of these JVZoo offers. A lot of them are they’re fly-by-night product developers that don’t … They don’t withstand the test of time. Right? There’s not a whole lot of product developers out there that five years down the road are still in business, especially WordPress plugin developers. Unless they’re an established developer, it’s likely that the support is going to … Like, eventually, they’re going to stop supporting it because the company just goes out of business. Right? Again, that’s why I recommend something like Content Samurai that has a strong development platform behind it and they’ve been around for years, and they continue to develop the tools, so I don’t think that’s going anywhere anytime soon.

Adam: Yeah, real quick, too. I just went over to check it out and it’s got a seven-day free trial, so no loss there. Go check it out.

Bradley: There you go. Last thing guys, just think about it, man. I know how tempting it is, guys. I used to be a JVZoo and what they were called Warriors Special Offers, WSOs, back in the day, but I used to be a junkie. I used to always buy all the new WordPress plugins, and all the new tools because they were all push button like you’re going to get rich overnight, and all that kind of stuff. I’m a sucker for good marketing. That’s why I’m in the marketing industry. I would read a sales page, and I always had my credit card in hand by the time I got to the bottom of the sales page. I would buy all these damn tools and, first of all, that’s one way to quickly destroy your business because, well, first of all, you’re spending money. You’re spending revenue. Instead of generating revenue, you’re spending revenue.

Also, you end up spending a lot of time playing with a bunch of these stupid, shitty tools that aren’t going to move your business forward at all. Honestly, you don’t need most of the stuff. I guarantee probably everybody watching this webinar or listening to this webinar right now has enough tools in their toolbox that they can build a business. They don’t need anymore shiny objects. Right? You should be looking for ways to improve or streamline processes. You should be looking for things that might help make your job a little bit easier, such as automation, stuff for automating, and things like that, but you don’t need to go out and buy a shit-ton of tools, guys. Trust me. It will only slow your business down or prevent growth.

If you are going to buy tools, and that’s what I was getting at; sorry. I lost my train of thought for a moment, but if you are going to buy tools, try to buy tools from established developers. Even though they might be a bit more expensive, there’s a reason. Because what happens if you go out and buy one of these shitty JVZoo or Warrior Form or whatever offers that are $27 and you spend a lot of time implementing that into your business, depending processes for it? You become familiar with the tool, and now you rely on that tool to perform some specific function in your business, and now that tool goes out of business or it’s not supported. Right? Like they stop supporting it or stop development.

What happens then? Now you’ve got to go back. Go search for another tool. Buy it. Go through the learning curve. Implement it into your business. Develop processes. You have to reorganize all your shit because of a crappy tool that you bought. Right? Instead of just spending a little bit more money and getting something from an established developer, and the only reason why I’m saying this is because it’s very similar, guys, to hosting. Right? Everybody wants to go out and get … What is it? HostGator or, God forbid HostGator or GoDaddy or any of these really crappy budget hosts because it’s cheap, and they think they’re saving money. They’re being smart, but then your sites don’t rank, and they go down all the time.

There’s all kinds of issues with that. Right? You’re better off spending money on good hosting. The same thing goes with tools and training. Don’t buy shitty training, either. You guys have any comments on that before I move on?

Adam: No. I think that’s 100% what you need to say and I feel the same way. I would only follow up and say that, like you’re saying, “Don’t do it.” Because everyone does it. It’s just you got to, over time, wean yourself off of that and realize, “Oh, hey. This monthly recurring fee I’m paying means that they’re probably going to support it. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good product. You still got to find a good product, but looking at it from the point of view of, “I want a developer who’s invested and making money because I want them to continue making sure that the product works and works well.”

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: Take it from people who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on shiny, new objects, and on crappy training. You don’t need to go through all that. Just find something that works and stick to it, and then just keep getting up every day, and doing it, and just creates a process that you can repeat, and you’re going to make money.

Did You Ever Hear About Legal Problems When Using The Address Of Virtual Box & Or Local Person You Know To Receive The GMB Letter?

Bradley: That’s it. Okay. This is Dustin just because she signed it. “Hey, Semantic boars.” Maybe that’s supposed to be boys. “Got a business-related question. Did you ever hear about legal problems when using the address, a virtual box, or a local person you know to receive the GMB letter? I was wondering because aren’t you registering the location for a real business?” Well, no. I mean, if you were to … All right. I’m not an attorney, guys, so I would highly recommend that you consult an attorney if you’re concerned about any of this, but the way I look at it is you’re not. When you register a business in Google, it’s not like registering a company with the state corporation commission or anything. It’s not like registering a company with the IRS, right? It’s not an official agency.

It’s Google. Right? It’s a search engine, so you can register anything you want there. Now, there are times. I’ve had this happen. I had to have one of my clients, actually. The case study for the local GMB Pro Course. It’s a taxi service. We had to contact Google to have an existing, verified listing deleted or taken down because the business owner didn’t have access to it. We created the new listing, which was also at a new address, a new physical location. We created a new Google My Business listing, and then contacted Google Support or Google My Business Support to tell them what the situation was, that there was an ex-employee that had created and verified the old or the existing GMB profile, and they didn’t work for the company anymore, and we didn’t have access to it.

Also, the company had moved to a different physical location. The same city, but different location so we needed to update all that. The reason I’m saying all this is because in order for them to, because it was a verified listing that we were asking to have removed and update to a new one, they required corporate documents, so we had to literally submit corporate documents to Google to show that the business indeed exists, and that it’s a valid business. It had an LLC. What do they call it? Articles of Organization or an operating agreement. They also needed to see the updated physical address. So, in other words, they had to see corporate documents with the new updated mailing address. Right?

So just consider that. It’s not a legal issue to register a business in Google. Google might require legal documentation, and if that’s the case, then you won’t be able to do it unless you have that legal documentation, but when registering your company or business with local agency, state agencies, or federal agencies then yes. You’re going to have to have a real, valid business. If you’re doing lead gen, guys, here’s one of the ways to get around that if you need to.

If you’re doing lead gen and you’re establishing “fake businesses” or pseudo businesses, is another term for it, generic brands, if you’re setting up lead-gen properties where you’re creating a pseudo brand, then what you can do is if you have a legal entity, a corporate entity, so if you’re an LLC or incorporated, whether it’s an S corp, a C corp, or whatever, then you can actually register that pseudo entity as a DBA or doing business as. So that, essentially, it’s your corporation. For example, my corporation is Big Bamboo Marketing, LLC. So I have DBAs for several of my lead-gen properties because that way even if Google asked for corporate documents for a lead-gen property, I can produce the doing business as certificate from the county.

It costs me, I think, 13 bucks or $14 to register a DBA. That’s all. You just go down to your local courthouse and ask for a DBA form. Wherever your business is registered, you go to that courthouse wherever your product … Like my agency it’s registered in Culpeper, so I go to the Culpeper County Courthouse. I tell them, “Hey, I need a” … or clerk of the circuit court or whatever, and I tell them that I need a DBA form. I fill it out with the lead-gen pseudo business or pseudo brand that I’m saying is a business, so that now is Big Bamboo Marketing doing business as, and so that way if Google ever requires me to verify that corporate document, all I have to do is submit the DBA and in my operating agreement for my LLC. Does that make sense?

So it’s not an issue. So that’s what I would recommend that you guys do. You don’t have to do that all the time, guys. For example, I’ve got a ton of lead-gen properties out there I don’t have DBAs for. I’m not going to lie, but if in case there was a time where I needed one, like Google required it, then I could always go down and get a DBA, and then submit it. Any comments guys or should I move on?

Adam: Good to go.

Does The Local PR Pro Course Includes A Demo On Getting 3 Pack Map Rankings In Surrounding Cities/Towns Using The Press Release Methods Without Getting A New Verified GMB Listing?

Bradley: Okay. That was a great question, by the way, Dustin; a really good question. Okay, support question from Ed Ryan. “I purchased GMB Pro the day it came out, and I love it.” Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. He says, “In Local PR Pro does Bradley show us specifically how to get three pack map rankings in surrounding cities/towns using the press release method without getting a new verified GMB listing for the business for the surrounding town?” Not specifically, but I talk a lot. We’ve talked about that many times in the Mastermind. I don’t think it’s specifically a local PR Pro, but there’s a couple of things that you could do that I can reveal here. If you wanted to try to rank in the adjacent areas, it’s not always going to be possible, guys, but there are things that you can do to kind of help facilitate that.

It requires on page. It requires having, basically, categories or silo structures or geo posts for the areas that you’re trying to get ranked in. I would also recommend that within your GMB profile, since you’re doing GMB Pro, that you start using the GMB posts just the way that we teach in the training with images, with meta tag or geo tags for the areas that you’re trying to rank in, all that kind of stuff. Try to use those keywords in those posts. Right? Then for using press releases, specifically, then you could target those locations that you want to rank in in your press releases as part of the title is incredibly important for press releases, so target the locations that you want to rank in, as long as they’re adjacent, and the title.

Make sure that you’re linking to the content that is also optimized for that location, whether it’s on your website or on your GMB profile or wherever it may be. So those are some of the things that you can do. Now, again, if you want some more in-depth training on that Ed, you got to come back to the Mastermind. Specifically in Local PR Pro I don’t talk about that because Local PR Pro the way that I’ve found. I’m talking about getting three pack rankings using press releases for the city that the business is located in. Obviously, because of the GMB Pro stuff that we’re doing, personally, I’d prefer to just get more GMB listings now than trying to rank one listing in multiple locations.

It’s so easy now, guys. Whether you’re doing P.O. boxes, which is what I’ve always done or now, which is even better using our verified GMB service. You don’t even need to leave your damn house. You can just order it online. It gets done and now you can set up as many GMB profiles as you want, and just literally target an entire region if you want. I think that’s easier. It takes less work than trying to rank one GMB for a wide service area or geographic area, if that makes sense. Guys, I like easy and the thing about it is if you develop a process, Ed, or excuse me. Yeah, Ed. If you develop a process for buying, and that’s what I’m doing, guys. I’m developing a process for scaling this method, so that I can outsource 90 to 95% of it.

It will require very little effort from me once the process is developed, and when I say it’s going to be automated, it’s going to be automated to me because I’m going to have virtual assistants doing most of the work. Does that make sense? That’s why I said it would be better, less work for you, to develop a process for building out additional GMBs even for one specific business so that you can expand their service area, and what they’re generating leads from. Develop out a process for that and that way you can outsource. Even if you don’t outsource it, it’s repeatable. If you develop like a checklist and a flowchart on what to do, then it becomes almost second nature.

You can do it like it becomes routine and it’ll become a lot easier than trying to rank one listing for a really wide geographic area or at least in my opinion it is.

Marco: One last thing. Ed, go to the Facebook group and just say you’d like a webinar on how to extend the business center, and we can get into that.

Bradley: Yep. Yeah, especially if you’re in the GMB Pro Course, because I know that question has come up a couple of times, and I think Marc. Yeah, Marco when you did the Unlimited Local Images and Videos Webinar, you touched on that briefly.

Marco: Yeah. We talked it, but we can expand on it because it’s not that difficult.

What Is The Best Combination Of Serp Space Link Packages That Provide The Best Juice At Specific Price Ranges?

Bradley: Yeah. So there you go, guys. We’ll do a follow-up webinar on GMB Pro for that. What’s up, Kevin? I haven’t seen you here in a while, man. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen Kevin post a question. He’s been around for a long time. “Hey, guys. How has everyone been? It’s been a while. Life gets in the way. You know.” Yes. I do. It’s good to have you back, buddy. He says, “Wanted to ask about service space tiered link building for local clients. I’m thinking of adding in on month three of a campaign. Service space tiered link building to as many as possible of the clients tier ones; links they’ve accumulated over the years. I see about four options for Web 2.0 contextual, and four more options for non-contextuals, plus this can be all done for four tiers. That is a lot of different combinations and price points.”

“What would be the best combination or lack of combination to provide the most use at the cheapest price, a middle price, and a higher price, but not as high as the just max everything out?” Okay. I’m not the spam guy anymore, guys. I actually rarely even use it anymore.

Marco: Shame on you.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, I don’t. It’s just I don’t use a lot of spam links anymore because I don’t need to. We’re able to get results now using RYS, Local GMB Pro, Local PR Pro, and syndication networks. It seems silly to do that. Now, there are certainly times when spam can help and I can certainly power up drive stacks, and press releases, and syndication networks, all of that, with spam, but I’ve been getting results recently without doing it, so I’m not really the big spam guy anymore that I used to be. I would recommend that you … I can give you a little bit of advice here, but what I would recommend, Kevin, is to repost this question in the SEO Tutorials and Case Studies Semantic Mastery Facebook Group, which is the free group, and then tag. You could tag me on it if you want, and I’ll tag Daddio, which is our link-building guy.

He’s been with me for, shit, at least five years, and he’s our manager. The guy’s a ninja. He’s got a full staff that all they do is build links, and so he can answer that question and direct you to specifically what you need. Now, the slight advice that I’ll give you and, again, I don’t even know if it’s accurate. I would still repost this question in that group and get his advice because his advice is going to be a hell of a lot more current than mine, but what I would say is I always go with contextual links. Anything non-contextual is like kitchen sink spam, and that’s the kind of stuff that I would keep way, way far away from my money site, like four or five hops away if I’m going to use it at all.

I would stick with Web 2.0 contextual links for at least three tiers before I would do GSA kitchen sink spam or anything like that. Again, that’s just because that’s kind of evolved, too, because it used to be that we would just do to tier one links. We would do contextual links, so your tier two links would be contextual Web 2.0s, and then we would push spam behind that. Your tier three links would just be kitchen sink spam, but that’s changed because Google is looking further, and Marco can comment on this, but this is about distance graph and all that stuff. So it’s really important, at least in my opinion, to keep kitchen sink spam further and further away, and so I believe Daddio’s recommendation, now, is for tier two and tier three that you use contextual Web 2.0. Marco, you want to comment on that a little bit?

Marco: Yeah. I mean, Daddio has all the answers for you. The guy’s been at it for years. He knows exactly what to do, and how to do it. He can give you the best recommendation.

Bradley: Yep.

Marco: One thing that I would tell you. Since Google is looking out further and further, make sure you put a drive stack in there so that all of your link building goes through the drive stack, and it’ll come out the other end just pristine, no matter what it is. Even if a set of links turns bad for whatever reason, it won’t hurt.

Bradley: There you go.

Marco: That’s how good drive stacks are at cleaning up spam.

Are You Still Using RSS Feed Directory Submission And Other RSS Tactics?

Bradley: That’s good advice. Thank you. Second question, now. “One more question if that’s okay. Are you still using RSS feed directory submissions and other RSS tactics that have been mentioned before? Tactics seem to come and go so quick. It’s hard to know if something that was done eight-plus month ago is still valid and worth the time and money to implement today.” Yeah. Actually, believe it or not, I still think RSS feeds are one of the most underutilized things in SEO. There is a lot of things you can do with RSS feeds that are really powerful. I mean, obviously, syndication networks they’re RSS feed driven the way that we’ve always set up the triggers that way, but there is still a lot of other things that you can do.

Now, I don’t spend a shit-ton of time on that stuff anymore, but if you’re in a competitive niche where every little push helps or you need every little push, then absolutely RSS stuff is still valid. The easiest way to do it, guys, is just collect your money side RSS feed or your Web 2.0 feeds or all of them. If you want, you can combine them together with the feed splicer, and then submit that one super feed to just go to Fiverr and search for RSS feed submits, and you can get a Fiverr gig that will do the work for you that will submit to 70 directories and aggregators for you, and they’ll send you tips. A lot of times they’ll send you back a report, and it’ll cost you five or 10 bucks, or something like that.

So what? It’s easy. It’ll only take you a few seconds, and let them do the work for you. Okay? Yeah. It still works, guys. There is no doubt. It’s funny because I think RSS stuff it’s an old technology, and so a lot of people don’t think that it’s still valuable, but it certainly is. There is no doubt it is. Okay. Good question. Good to have you back, Kevin. All right. Let’s see.

Is It Enough To Only Build Money Channel Or Brand Ring To Stick The Videos On SERPs?

It says, “Hi. First, thanks for answering my question. This SEO shit keeps me never run out of question.” Isn’t that the truth? “The more you get into it the more questions come.” That’s correct. “About IFTTT networks, is building only one ring that is the money channel brand ring reason for sticking the videos on SIR?”

Well, it can be. I mean, there is a lot of variables there. Typically for video stuff, though, guys I don’t even start syndication networks for videos for YouTube channels unless I’m going to use at least one full two-tier ring. Right? So you’re going to have a branded ring or a tier-one ring. It doesn’t have to be branded, but I recommend that you do. A branded tier-one ring, and then you have three tier-two rings, which is the full two-tier networks. If I’m going to start a new channel and a syndication network broadcast. I call it a broadcast network for videos, but a broadcast network for a new YouTube channel or a new project. I always start with at least one full two-tier network.

That’s just I guess because I have the resources to do that, guys. If you have the resources, I recommend you do that as well. Typically, I end up with usually anywhere between two to five full two-tier networks stacked on one YouTube channel if I’m serious about that particular project or campaign, so it depends. If you can get results, and the only reason I say that, guys, is because I don’t do so much of it anymore, but for a period, for many years there, actually, I did a lot of video broadcasting work for local video production companies, and so I developed out several themed syndication networks that I had themed YouTube channels. One was for Virginia businesses.

One was specifically for contractors. I had one for health and wellness stuff, and they’re just big syndication networks that I created for YouTube. The idea is with blog syndication I always recommend, and I’ve been recommending this for years, to just stick with a branded syndication network and don’t go multi tiers because it can create issues, and it kind of creates a little bit of a maintenance nightmare. Right? It’s a pain in the ass to maintain, but for videos there is no footprint issues. It’s still to this day, guys, there is no footprint issues with broad. As long as you’re using the applets the way that we teach or you buy the syndication networks from us with the applets already built, then they’re going to work fine.

I’ve never had any issues with YouTube videos getting slapped or sand boxed, or anything going through syndication networks, but blog content can if you’re doing multi tiers, so just to bring it back to what you’re asking. I would recommend. You can try. Certainly try it with just one, but if you’re not getting the results that you want, then start stacking tier two networks on to the tier one network, or you can also stack additional tier one networks, persona-based networks. That’s perfectly fine as well. That was a good question, though.

How Do You Determine If A Social Website Is Good To Have In A Network Ring Or Not?

“How do you determine if a social website is good to have in a network ring or not? There are over 200 popular social webs.” They’re all good. If you can get a branded profile on the network or on any one of those social sites, just do it because you’re increasing. You’re validating your entity more every time you add another branded profile, especially if you can interlink. Even if all you can do is link to one other property that’s branded, that’s good enough. Guys, that’s why in Syndication Academy we do the update webinars, and we add. Not every month, but almost every month, we add at least one new property. Again, it’s not every month, but almost every month we add at least one new property, whether it can be syndicated to or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we can syndicate to or not. It still acts as a citation.

If it’s a real business, it acts as an entity validator. Guys, the more places you can get your brand out on the Web, the more authority you’ll accrue. Let’s see. “I would have thought Stumble Upon would be a good social website to include, but you seem to neglect it.” No. We’ve done Stumble Upon, but didn’t Stumble Upon go out of business, recently or something?

Marco: No. They moved to something called Mix.com-

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: … but you could still use Mix.com. I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the same way. You can curate content from around the Web.

Bradley: Yep. Okay, cool. What’s up, Nigel? He’s always active. He says, “You are appreciated for the value you bring. G Hypnosis was awesome. Thanks to you guys and Eric.” Yeah. That was a great webinar. Did we ever get a replay available, yet? Adam, if Adam is still on. Hello?

Adam: Sorry.

Bradley: Yeah. Adam must be-

Adam: Technical issues hitting the mute button. I’m still working on that, but we’ll have some info shortly, I believe.

Bradley: Okay, good. All right. Yeah. Hopefully, we’ll get the replay out here in a minute or soon, guys, because that was a great webinar. There was obviously an offer at the end of that webinar for … It was funny because the webinar was for a particular method and a information product, but the first hour of the webinar was not about the product at all. It was about how to prospect and sell to clients. It was fabulous. It was really, really good. Eric has really created a great business. I respect him highly anyways because I’ve known him since the start of my career, so I already respected the guy, but he’s built a really good business and he’s developed his own sales process that it works, and it’s funny, but we were talking.

My salesman that’s working for my agency and I have been trial and error developing sales processes for months now, and we haven’t been very successful, but what we’ve found with Roberto because he’s the one primarily doing it. He’s the one talking to the contractors and everything. What he’s found over the last several months is essentially he’s kind of, through trial and error, come to the same conclusion that Eric uses for his sales process that he revealed on this webinar in this first hour of the webinar. It was funny because I was like, “Damn it! I wish I could have had this webinar with you, Eric, like four months ago, five months ago. It could have saved us four or five months of trial and error, and I probably closed a lot of these contractors that have now gone cold because we screwed up the sales process.”

Any Decent Spammy Fiverr Traffic For Testing?

At least it was good validation to know that we have, even though it took us a bunch of trial and error to figure it out. At least it was good validation to know that we’re on the right track. Thanks for mentioning that, Nigel. It was good to bring that up. Okay. Coming up on four years of goodness, yes. We are. He says, “Any decent spammy Fiverr traffic for testing or is that a myth that it works with RYS, although likely not recommended at first option?” Well, I mean, I’ve used the fiber traffic gigs for getting press releases to stick. I haven’t really tested them with drive stacks or anything. Have you, Marco?

Marco: No.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: No. I haven’t.

Bradley: Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can log into Fire real quick and just give you one lady that I ordered a whole lot of them she … Well, who knows if it’s a lady. The profile picture was a lady, but that one I think that gig got taken down or something. I’m not sure. Just give me one second. I think that’s one of them. Yeah. See? That one’s no longer available. All right. This one is. I’ve used this guy, too. You guys can see. This is it’s niche targeted. 2,000 daily visitors for 15 days for five bucks. This one right here I’ll just grab the URL. Whoops! And drop it on the page for you, Nigel. Again, I haven’t tried any of these with drive stacks. I have used these types of gigs for getting press releases to stick longer in the search.

For example, if you get a press release, guys, to rank on page one. You guys probably know that a lot of times press releases they rank really well for a short period of time, and then they start to slip in the search. I’ve used these types of gigs to be able to drive traffic to them to get them to stick in the search longer, and it absolutely works. I don’t know about drive stack stuff, but I can’t imagine it would probably hurt, especially since it’s drive stack stuff. Good question, though. Damn, guys. You’ve posted a whole shit-ton of questions all of a sudden because there wasn’t much before.

Are You Using Rotator Link For Landing Pages?

Anyone using Rotator Link for landing pages and, if so, any recommendations? You mean for split testing landing pages? There’s a rotator inside click funnels, and that’s all I use for landing pages. If anybody has any recommendations for doing split testing landing pages or link rotators and stuff like that, plugins or anything like that, let Nigel know, please. Just post on the page here.

What Strategies Are You Using With Alignable And LinkedIn To Get Leads Business?

“What strategies are you using with Alignable and LinkedIn to get business leads?” Well, I started playing with Alignable, and every now and then I’ll take an hour, an hour and a half and go in and become really active for an hour, but it’s not something I do consistently. It’s one of those things I’ve always had intentions to do consistently, but I never do it consistently.

Every now and then, like I said, I’ll go in and spend an hour in there and I’ll be like, “Wow! There’s a lot of opportunity here, and all that,” and I’ll get all excited, and then three weeks goes by before I do it again. I’m not really doing a lot of in there. I think there’s opportunity, but I haven’t had enough time to. I haven’t spent enough time in there to really figure out a process for getting repeatable results. LinkedIn we spent a lot of time. Well, Roberto, my salesman, spent a lot of time in LinkedIn trying to develop a process for tree service contractors. We realize now that was probably a really, really shitty industry to try to approach in LinkedIn just because there’s not a lot of contractors in LinkedIn, tree service contractors, and when they are, again, it’s not really a platform made for that type of a contractor.

We’re actually doing started prospecting just in the last two weeks again for general contractors and remodeling contractors, so we’re going to take what he started to develop for tree service contractors on LinkedIn and apply that to that industry, and see if we can get better results. I believe we will because, again, I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, but those type of contractors seem to be a bit more digitally savvy or a bit more sophisticated. There is more of them on LinkedIn and they seem to be a bit more engaged on LinkedIn. In the coming weeks, Nigel, especially I don’t know if you’re still in the Mastermind or not, but in the coming weeks as we have more data from that or more results, or experience, good, bad, or ugly, I’ll be sharing that about the LinkedIn stuff.

Do You Have Any Creative SEO Strategies For A Business That Sells Psychiatric Services To Skillled Nursing Care Facilities?

Jordan, okay. “A new client coming onboard that sells psychiatric services to skilled nursing care facilities, and then expanding. Obviously, the search volume is incredibly low and there aren’t that many decision makers. Less than a thousand, but each enlistment is worth about 70,000 per year to them.” Wow. “Doing everything digital for them: site, social, SEO, content, marketing conferences, collateral, et cetera. Any creative SEO strategies for this type of highly niched B2B client?” That’s a tough one, Jordan.

Adam: Actually, yeah. This is cool. Jordan, I’ll have to send you … I listened to a podcast recently and I can’t remember the guy’s name. Sorry. I’ll have to look it up, but basically the guy did this, and he did it in one region. I can’t remember. It wasn’t where you’re at, but talking about this, and going into the specifics of obviously you’re generally not, and I’m sure you already understand this, but you’re not marketing to consumer. You’re marketing. This is like a family member would be looking for this, so words like mom, dad, and all the associated words like that, and then going into it, and potentially can you offer other than I’m looking at what you’re saying? Can you do any sort of remarketing?

There is a lot of stuff you can do because it’s worth so much to them which, obviously, you just listed but, also, you could maybe open their eyes and maybe, again, you’ve already done this. Once they reach a certain amount of let’s say like it takes 75% booking or rooms filled for them to be profitable that you become highly profitable to them once you bring them past that point, so that maybe you can get more funds in order to expand some of these activities. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

What’s The Best Way To Handle WordPress Security Issues?

Bradley: That’s great. Thanks, Adam. If you can tag him on it and find it, that’d be great. All right, cool. What’s up, Dan? KD, there we go. “Hey, guys. What’s the best way to handle WordPress security issues and not mess up SEO? I have a client ranked on page one. It is now under heavy brute force attack. I cranked up the settings on iTheme security.” Now, guys. Personally, there is a couple of things I would recommend. Number one, get a really good host. Liquid Web is fantastic for this kind of stuff, guys. They have their own firewall and all this other stuff. They’re really, really good at security over at Liquid Web. Guys, we talk about this. I just mentioned hosting earlier on this webinar. My two go-to resources, Liquid Web is hands down my favorite. I also have been recently using WPX hosting for a lot of one-off WordPress sites.

For testing purposes or for lead gen sites and stuff, I’ve been using WPX, which seems to be good. Their support is really, really good, too, but there are some drawbacks to that where I think Liquid Web is even better, but Liquid Web has some really, really good security features; however, I see that you mentioned down here about security. I’ve got two of my clients on security, actually, and they have the security firewall, and they have the malware removal programs, and all that stuff, and I got two of my … One of my clients is a pest control company. Actually, it’s a tick and mosquito control company. So it’d be like outdoor pest control, and they have been hacked like at least eight times in the last five years since they’ve been working with me.

Even after we put their site on Sucuri, they still have been hacked a couple of times, but Sucuri always goes in. All you got to do is submit a request to Sucuri and they’ll go in, and find the problem. Unhack the site. Restore the site and they’ll take care of everything for you. All you have to do is submit a ticket. Again, it’s worth it. I think it’s like 300 bucks a year or something like that but, in my opinion, it’s totally worth it or get a really good host like Liquid Web and let them do it. As far as changing the DNS, would that affect rankings? No, not at all. That shouldn’t affect rankings at all. In fact, actually, changing DNS from a shitty host through something like Sucuri will likely improve the site.

Marco: Yes. What I would like to say is, depending on her needs, we have a really neat way where we trap these rouge bots that do these attacks, and if you want to talk about that, I mean, it’s not cheap, just so you know, but you can always find me in Facebook, Katie, and we can talk, and then we could set up and then all of these rogue bots you can just eliminate. You can trap them and eliminate them, and it’s over and done with.

Bradley: Yep. Bob Lowe, I love that comment. “Master manipulation makes your palms hairy.” That’s funny, Bob. All right. We’re almost done, guys. I got to wrap up in just a couple of minutes, anyways. I get to take my daughter to dinner tonight. Let’s see. R. Banking says, “If using a set number of credits and maps powerhouse, is it better to use all of them on the embed or split them up between embeds and secondary posts?” That’s a good question. I prefer doing a split between embeds and secondary posts just because I was mentioning.

I was talking about YouTube networks earlier, syndication networks, and I mentioned that I like to use two-tier networks for YouTube syndication; however, you can stack multiple tier-one rings onto a channel to where they’re all being triggered directly from the channel instead of being secondary triggers from a blog in your first-tiered network. The reason why I like the second two-tiered networks is because I’ve found that the effect lasts longer through two-tiered networks. In other words, if I were to take a channel and stack 10 tier-one networks on the channel, the video is likely going to rank really quickly, but it typically will start, and I haven’t tested this, now, in probably two years, but about two to three years ago I did a lot of testing on this, guys.

I found that multiple tier-one networks the video would rank really quickly, but it would start to slip in the rankings a lot sooner, whereas, if I used multiple tier-two networks or multi-tiered networks, then it might not rank as quickly, but it would indeed rank eventually, and it would end up sticking a lot longer. I’ve always applied that same methodology to video Powerhouse and Maps Powerhouse to where I prefer doing like the tiers and secondary embeds and or back links as well instead of just doing all tier-one stuff. So that’s going to be my answer, but I haven’t tested specifically to see if one is going to perform better than the others. Does anybody here have any insight on that?

Marco: No. I do the same exact thing simply because it adds relevance at the other tiers coming back to your tier one.

Bradley: There you go. Bob Lowe, he said he ordered his Verified GMB and can’t wait to get it back. “I’m ready with the website content and PR.” Boom! There you go, Bob. Perfect. That’s perfect. Thank you. “Bradley, will this process improve the position and the pack if you’re already there?” No. Well, Dan. If you’re talking about the GMB Sniping, the Map Sniping that I’ve been talking about, no because that’s talking about finding locations that you can register a GMB or verify a GMB, and get into the three pack within … So far, like I said, I’ve been able. I’m three for three in under 72 hours. The method I’m talking about is getting into a three pack with a brand-new listing.

If it’s an existing listing, then I would recommend local GMB Pro and Local PR Pro. Those are the two things that I’m using specifically now. Local PR Pro for getting into the three pack. Local GMB Pro for generating leads regardless of three pack. Does that make sense? The two combined are absolutely brutal, guys. There is no way that you can’t get results with those two, and you add a drive stack on top of it. Forget about it. Right? Market Samurai, there you go, Walt. Thank you. Thank you, Walt. Yeah, Market Samurai. That was the keyword research tool that was like the go-to. It was industry standard for several years. You guys remember that? Like, the pink and the green lines, and all that, and the chart. It would create like a spreadsheet and it would show in-bound back links, and keyword rank. It was crazy.

I used to use that thing like daily. That’s awesome. Thanks, Walt. We’re almost done, guys. Let’s see. He’s doing Pinterest stuff, too. Is that what he’s doing? That’s Pinterest stats, right?

Marco: Yeah.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: That’s good. I posted my stats on there. I just want people to see what you could do. I mean, the type of traffic that you can actually generate with this thing, which is ridiculous. I know Dan is doing really well, but this one, the one that I posted, is in the millions, now.

Bradley: Clint. “GoDaddy bought Sucuri.” No shit? Yeah. “Plan on that sucking soon.” Okay. Well, I’m glad I know that now because I won’t recommend it going forward, Clint. Thank you. I appreciate that because yeah, guys. GoDaddy hosting sucks, by the way, so if they bought Sucuri, it’s probably going to suck, too. Clint is right. No doubt. Scott says, “Still wrestling with a client attempting to get them onboard with GMB verification. He already has a verified listing for the suburb, and has no traction in the much larger city. He is afraid he will lose the verified listing he already has with Google. Without giving away your processes, would he have a new Google listing for the larger city or will his current GMB be impacted in any way?”

Okay, Scott. What I’m going to tell you is look. I can’t reveal too much, guys. Actually, let me just say this. What I would do in that case if you have a client is already a client, and you’re trying to talk them into getting a second GMB for another area that they want to generate leads from because, again, it’s more difficult to get one listing to rank in multiple areas, a wide geographic region. It’s harder to do that, in my opinion, than it is to just create a new damn listing for the areas that you want. What I would recommend is if he’s already a client and you’re already making money, just go register the GMB yourself. Get it. Do it yourself, right? Build it with a generic brand, a pseudo brand, and then once the damn thing is ranked, then show them. “Look what I did.”

Because look. You can monetize that property, whether it’s for that client or another client. It doesn’t matter. My point is: Why not build that asset? If he’s already a client and you know he wants the leads in that area, but he’s scared, just go create a GMB listing with a pseudo brand. It’s in the same category, all that shit. Get it set up. Get it ranked, and then approach him with it and say, “Look. I’ve already got this asset. It’s already ranked in the area that you want these leads from.” Now, you can sign him up for like an increase on a monthly retainer or you can just sell him the damn leads. In any way, you own that asset, now. You can rebrand it for him or he can turn it down and you can say, “That’s fine. I’ll sell the leads to another person in the same industry in the same area.” Does that make sense?

My point is don’t try to pull the client’s teeth. If he’s giving you resistance, just go register it yourself. Rank the damn thing. Now, you’ve got another asset in your portfolio that you can use to entice him to increase his services with you, his commitment with you. If he doesn’t, who cares. You’ve got an asset now that you can monetize with another company. Let’s see. Local host publish fee FTP to server. I don’t know what that means, Mike. I’m sorry. “Will premium domain solve the link equity described in a previous discussion instead of using Alley like Marco mentioned? What do you mean by premium domain, Mike?” I don’t follow that one, either. I don’t know what you mean by that Mike. I apologize, but we’re out of time anyways, so if you want to post this question again in the SEO tutorials group, maybe we can comment in on that.

Hey, Clint still has Market Samurai installed. I didn’t even know if they still … Apparently, they do. I think that’s what he was saying earlier. I didn’t know that that tool was still being supported and all that. I haven’t seen it in years. “Thanks for the GMB, very helpful. All set up.” Yep. There you go. Scott remember. You can buy it now, and you don’t even have to leave your damn house. Scott you’re in the Mastermind. Follow the training that I talked about in the newsletter as well. You’ll get that in about a week, as well as the last two Mastermind webinars I’ve touched on. It’s just is very specifically how to research the areas to find the best opportunity. Right? All right. Thanks everybody for being here. I appreciate every for sticking around.

Adam: Awesome.

Bradley: Thanks, guys.

Adam: Bye, everybody.

Marco: Bye, everyone.

Bradley: See y'all next week.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 199 published first on your-t1-blog-url