#And man the turnaround time on that “something bad happens” was like. 15 seconds or less. They got that EXPEDITED smiting

[gaykamenridermemes]

[buffyversefanfiction]

Slayer of Slayers

Warnings: I do not own, nor do I claim to own any of the copyright or characters within the Buffyverse which includes but not limited to the television shows Buffy and Angel, as well as the Darkhorse comics series’ continuation.

15+ Strong to moderate violence, Graphic to mild descriptions of gore, and torture, sexually charged scenes, sexual innuendos, mild to strong language, and practices of witchcraft.

M/M, F/F, M/F, GEN, OTHER +

PART TWO LINK HERE

Part Three: Slayer Supervision

Faith Lehane walked into the room within the Hyperion Hotel that she had made her own every time she came to Los Angeles, walked over to her bed, and pulled a rucksack out from under it, before proceeding to open the bag and pull out her favorite knife, the one Buffy stabbed her with, the one she eventually returned to Faith, and as she began looking the blade up and down she was filled with a dreaded sense of nostalgia as she remembers how much blood she had spilled with this knife, fearing she would soon be spilling more with it. “He has really got to you, hasn’t he?” Angel asked as he walked into the slayer’s hotel room. “Faith, this Theo is not you nor is he the past you, he is something else entirely and if we have to kill him that does not make you the rogue slayer again…” “Doesn’t it? How come I get a second chance at getting this right and he doesn’t? We do not know how hard his life has been? How he came to be in that dive bar full of all kinds of monsters, maybe he was brainwashed or maybe he’s just like us and got lost along the way, maybe he just needs saving like what you did for me.” Faith replied, admitting her reluctance to fight Theo. “And you did me…” Angel said with a sincere smile. “If you think he can be saved then I hope we get the chance to save him…” “Angel…” Faith began to say only to be interrupted by Illyria storming into the room. “I found your so-called slayer of slayers I do not even think he is trying to hide…strange he is meant to be this fearsome foe and I would not underestimate him but all I sense from him now is sadness,” Illyria announced. “I think it may be somewhat kind to put him down now…and I do not know how I feel about that.” Faith could not help but feel guilty over Theo’s misery as she had found herself forming a strange bond with the rogue slayer, she had only met him and Tobias briefly, but it was enough time to realize how much they really cared for each other, and Faith knew how rare something like that was. Things were far simpler for her when she was the one on team bad killing and pretending not to care about a damn thing but despite the complications that came with redemption, she had something now which she had never had before, and that was friends, friends who helped her fight her darkness, and friends who had her back, whereas she suspected Theo only ever truly had Tobias and now he was gone. Faith found herself caring for this stranger far more than she had ever cared for a stranger before, there was a kinship between the two that she could not deny, and because of this, she wanted nothing more than for Theo to have a chance at true redemption, a chance she hoped she could give him…

“If you think you are the only one with surprises slayer then think again!” Theo declared as Faith, Angel, and Illyria walked into an abandoned warehouse, somewhere within the city limits of Los Angeles. “If anything, your surprise was half expected but what I have in store will blow all of your minds.” “What are you human? Your slayer like but not slayer like, there is something more to you than the average blood bag.” Illyria questioned the rogue male vampire slayer. “If I have to break every bone in your body then reassemble you to find out then I will.” “Oh, I’m a slayer alright but unlike the others, I chose my path, I chose this power, and if anything, I am the only true slayer since the first.” Theo willingly revealed to them. “How do you choose to be a slayer? How is that even possible?” Faith wondered. “A witch casting some spell does not make you a slayer it just makes you lucky.” “It’s a little more complicated than that Faith, if we had more time, I’d have told you not only what I am but who I am…the who being far more important in this story,” Theo replied, being as cryptic as possible. “There’s only one of you and three of us,” Angel stated, giving the guy a chance to hand himself over to them, but within seconds vampires began walking in from all the different entrances of the abandoned warehouse. “These bloodsuckers will take mere seconds to kill.” Illyria declared before turning to Faith. “How about you show the petulant man-child what a slayer really is?” As Illyria and Angel charged towards the vampires and began fighting, killing, and slaying their opponents with a little too much ease for Theo’s liking, Faith charged towards Theo beginning a fight between the two slayers, one that Theo managed to hold his own in rather well as he delivered almost as many punches and kicks to Faith, as she did him, proving to be quite a match, but before long Faith got the better of the rogue slayer making it clear she was far stronger than him and victoriously slammed him to the ground before pulling out her infamous knife from her pocket. “It does not have to go down like this kid.” Faith told Theo as she stood above him, knife in hand, while Theo lay on the ground looking at his army being slaughtered easily by Angel and Illyria, knowing he was defeated. “Just kill me already…I’d rather dance in hell with my Tobias again than ever give in to a slayer!” Tobias shouted at Faith, only to be met by the blunt end of Faith’s knife, as she used it to knock the slayer of slayers out cold. “Lucky for you I’m not a killer anymore.” Faith declared, knowing she had just won the fight without having to get her hands bloody.

After keeping Theo held up in the cage within the basement of the Hyperion Hotel, one once used for Angelus, Faith made arranges with Giles to come to pick him up and take the rogue slayer to the Giles and Harris Rehabilitation Centre for the Supernatural, a place established by Rupert Giles and Xander Harris intended to rehabilitate rogue slayers and the odd supernatural creature. Faith knew Theo would be in good hands with Giles, the watcher she wished she had from the start, knowing his center had helped many struggling slayers get back on their right paths but if Theo was truly going to be rehabilitated at some stage, he would, of course, need to want it and that was something that Faith feared would never happen. “Not going to lie when you pulled up in that big ass truck, I got immediate flashbacks of the watchers' council trying to take me in for their version of slayer rehab, but I know you’re a better guy than any of them plus it helps to have slayers on the side at your center, slayers helping slayers and all that, like a sisterhood, except now I guess we have a brother too.” Faith admitted to Giles as the two of them stood in a random parking lot, standing to the side of the truck that Faith had mentioned, a truck that had Theo tied up inside. “You are by far the biggest rogue turned redeemed slayer success story Faith never forget that I would probably never have even considered opening a place as this had you not shown me the amazing capacity one can have to truly change. Look at you’re now the number one girl in demand saving lives all over the place, like the true hero I knew you could one day be.” Giles gushed showing fatherly pride towards the slayer whom he had grown closer and closer towards over recent years. “So, what happens with the boy now? I mean we still don’t know how he is a slayer if he is even a slayer and that whole dormant power thing Illyria was talking about has sure got my interest peaked.” Faith quizzed the former watcher, eager to learn more about the mysterious Theo. “We will do all that we can to help him but I’m afraid our progress entirely rests on him some slayers have good turnaround but then others stay for a long time…perhaps too long but there’s nowhere else for the dangerous ones except under supervision by those who are just as strong if not stronger than them,” Giles informed Faith. “I can tell you really want this one to be a success story all I can promise you is that I will try my hardest to make that happen not only for you but for him too.”

Rupert Giles kept his promise to Faith and over the next few weeks he tried relentlessly to get through to the first male slayer Theo, hoping to break through to him, and find out what it was that Faith saw in him worth saving, but he only got games, awkward flirting, and more games, as Theo refused to break at the hands of the former watcher, or less surprisingly his no so silent business partner Xander Harris who had his construction company help build the rehabilitation center at a reasonable family discount, and had now thought himself something of a therapist but was mostly put up with by the slayer bodyguards because he’d always show up with hot beverages and bakery delicacies. And so, to keep his promise to the vampire slayer, Giles decided to call in a certain redheaded witch who knew a thing or two about coming back from the darkness herself, Willow Rosenberg, best friend to Xander Harris and the infamous vampire slayer Buffy Summers. “I am sorry about the shackles and everything, but you do have super strength and I guess the people working here have to got to have some sense of security.” Willow apologized to Theo as she walked into the prison-style interrogation room where she found Theo handcuffed to the table with chains around his feet. “This place is the best for you even it does feel like a prison…oh boy I never noticed how prison-like this place really was.” “I’ve been in worse prisons in my time although they did not have fancy slayer proof chains that’s for sure, I guess you’re the next interrogator, shame I enjoy the flirting with the old man, but I suppose you are better than that goof with the donuts…admittedly good donuts,” Theo replied to the witch, as he looked her up and down, examining her in her mind, beginning to form the guess that this could be the all-powerful Willow Rosenberg. “Giles is a good guy no he is a great guy the greatest, you’re in perfect hands here, I do not know what you have been through or what led you to hunt down your own kind, but I want you to know we are going to do everything we can for you,” Willow stated with discomfort, trying to hide her own queries about the place that Giles and Xander had set up. “So, you lock me up for hunting my own kind but you lot imprison your own at least my damage on them ends quickly where I guess this little operation here does a lot of damage on the weaker minds, but you do not have to worry about me my mind is perfectly intact,” Theo responded, not sold on Willow’s attempts to sell him this place. “So, tell me, Theo, where did you get your name, have you got the last name, I mean of course you have the last name, where did you grow up, who are your parents?” Willow questioned the rogue slayer, eager to get some answers from him. “Here’s the thing red you seem super cute and everything you know for a witch for the tendency to flay people alive, but I am not going to sit here and spill the details about how I wound up slayer of slayers. Now had Buffy herself had the courage to face off with me then maybe I’d be more willing to spill my guts.” Theo answered her, now knowing from the quirky attitude, and the signature red hair, that this was the Willow he had been described. “So, how about you let me go before I have to go all prison break up in here leading to me killing a bunch of your friends maybe even the old man too.” “Are you seriously telling me you have no remorse about killing all those people, slayers, humans, innocent lives that you ended?” Willow snapped at the rogue slayer, refusing to believe he had no remorse. “You will not be leaving here until there is proof that there is some kind of soul still inside of you Theo and if we cannot find it then consider this place your new home!” “Do not sit there and tell me you did not feel the thrill of literally ripping the skin of a man who took the love of your life from you, the pleasure you got in revenge. Sure, it is easy being all remorseful now that you got your revenge, but I still have people to die before I get my peace, and thanks to everyone involved in taking me here, I

now have even more to add to that list.” Theo admitted to her, unintentionally revealing to the redheaded witch that something had to have happened to him to make him want to seek out revenge in the first place. “I am not proud of the person I became when I lost her…and yes I enjoyed every minute of my revenge but once I got it, there was nothing…I still did not have her and all I did was bloody my hands and betray the ones I love.” Willow said as tears began forming in her eyes. “Whatever revenge you are seeking is not worth it because even if you do get it, then what? Vengeance eats you up until that is all that is left of you and then when it leaves you well, that is when you are truly alone.” “Vengeance was not everything I had…I used to have him.” Theo replied, surprising Willow by opening to her, clearly showing he understood some of the pain she was feeling. “I was happy once, living the boring suburban life and then everything changed…I never thought I would ever be happy again but Tobias, he loved me so intensely, with all of his heart, he showed me love like never before, and then that blue-haired bitch took him from me.” “The fact that you loved him, the fact that you still loved him shows there is some goodness in you and clearly he saw it too. I do not pretend to understand vampires and their souls but if you two were able to love each other then neither of you could be truly evil because true evil does not feel anything let alone love.” Willow advised the rogue slayer, believing she was getting through to him, as she started to see in him what Faith had seen. “I am sorry he was taken from you nobody should have to go through that pain!” “Thanks for the pep talk witch but you either release me now or this prison is about to get bloody!” Theo warned Willow, hiding back behind his virtual mask, hiding his vulnerability which he thought of as nothing but weakness.

After attempting to get through to him and failing, well at least partially failing, Willow walked out of the so-called counseling room, which was clearly more of an interrogation room, and walked into a nearby hallway to find Faith there stood anxiously waiting for Willow’s appointment with Theo to be over, as Willow realized just how involved Faith was becoming in this case. “He has definitely read the rogue slayer playbook that you created in another world he could be the Chucky doll to your Tiffany despite all the weird romantic stuff considering he’s a gay guy and you are not a dude,” Willow mumbled to the slayer as she walked over to greet her. “Oh god, now I’m going to be having wacky nightmares about you and him in doll form trying to kill me.” “Nice to see you too Will but can we just get to the part where you tell me all you got out of the troublemaker?” Faith asked the witch, eager to get new information on the latest rogue slayer. “I think he needs to talk to somebody, and I do not mean any of us, somebody with an actual license in psychology. I get the whole dangerous thing but the person in there that I just met is someone deeply hurting like you were…I am so sorry we did not see how badly you were hurting back then.” Willow revealed to her, as she apologized for failing the rogue slayer many years ago. “Maybe Giles can get a psychiatrist up in here or something?” Faith suggested as she looked around the place that she had found herself in. “This place seems more prison-like than actual prison but at least they had doctors and everything.” “I am going to find out everything I can about Theo, cast some spells, locate family, find records of his life, there must be some kind of paper tracks I can find to find out who he was and what made him who he is now,” Willow said, reassuring her friend that this rogue slayer was not beyond saving. “Thanks, Willow.” Faith replied genuinely. “Hey, you have been a one-man army since Buffy went all recluse on us all and with Xander and Dawn busy co-parenting baby Joyce since their split you have kind of been my most frequently in touch friend lately,” Willow admitted to Faith making it clear that she appreciated Faith just as much as Faith appreciated her, showing how far the former enemies had come since the days of Sunnydale High.

Theo may have been in the so-called rehabilitation center for a few weeks now but they were far from wasted weeks, while they tried to work him out he was busy working out the layout of the player, the techniques of the slayer guards, eying up the weaknesses of not only the people within this prison but the building itself and as he sat in his literal prison cell bed bouncing a small bouncy ball against a wall he knew his escape would be soon. “If your master plan is to continuously bounce that ball against the wall until it breaks then I have nothing to fear about you breaking out of this place.” Faith told Theo as she walked up to the gates of his prison cell. “I hear there’s more than just slayers went bad up in this place and yet I’ve not seen a single vampire, demon, or anything non-human looking here,” Theo replied, noting the double standards of the place that claimed to be for all things supernatural. “I guess you got to look human or it’s straight to the slaying for you guys which sounds about right. You know there are more monstrous humans in this world than there are evil creatures…you cannot tell me every demon you’ve met was evil and yet there is not even one here to be rehabilitated.” “This is not my prison not my rules but if it was, I’d have everything scaly, hairy, or whatever up in here, minus the actual monsters I mean I am not a saint.” Faith told him, making it clear she didn’t entirely disagree with him. “But right now, you should consider yourself lucky that this place’s rules benefit you!” “After the carnage, you caused to me and my people…to my Tobias, you should consider yourself lucky that there are slayer-proof bars on this cell standing between because even if you were able to take me, I’d make damn sure you died with me!” Theo threatened his fellow slayer, once again living up to his reputation as the slayer of slayers. “Listen up you little brat I do not know why I give a damn about your redemption but somehow I do, and I tend to stop at nothing to get what I want so I will get through to your psychotic ass and one day you’ll be thanking me not threatening me.” Faith responded, keeping her cool, making it clear there was nothing he could say to discourage her in her mission to save his soul. At that moment Theo hated Faith, the slayer who came between him and his beloved Tobias leading to the death of the love of his life, but he still respected her nonetheless, she was a badass bitch who seemed to fear nothing, and most of all she and Illyria, her lover’s actual killer, were the only ones so far to beat him in a fight, and he looked forward to one day beating them both, and avenging Tobias’ death.

After her latest altercation with the rogue slayer, she could not find herself to give up on, Faith had agreed to meet Willow at a nearby dinner, Willow remaining rather cryptic about what she had found out, and why she needed to meet away from Giles’ little prison operation and after a twenty-minute ride on her motorbike Faith met up with the witch in a diner that was completely empty of people except for Willow who was sat at a booth holding a cup of coffee, eagerly awaiting the slayer. “Either you certainly have a way with words with folk or you super witched everyone right out of this place.” Faith assumed as she walked over to Willow and sat down next to her. “I’m assuming the latter considering your going all secret spy on me.” “I started off running Theo’s DNA through a criminal database which I swear is getting easier and easier to hack into as the years go by, and I found a bunch of aliases he went by until a clearly fake birth certificate led to me to the people who raised him from a baby right up until their suspicious deaths which judging by the crime photos I managed to get my hands on tells me they were killed by vampires.” Willow impressively revealed her findings to a stunned Faith, who could not believe that she had discovered all this in such a short space of time. “So, here’s when things get uber wacky, I did a blood finding spell from some blood samples Giles had acquired from him to see if there were any living relatives that could help us get through to him…” “Have I ever said how much I love the fact you’re the smartest person I ever met I mean you are pretty super even without the magic?” Faith complimented her friend, eager to learn more about the mysterious Theo. “So, who did you find if you found anyone that is?” “Buffy Summers, Dawn Summers, Hank Summers,” Willow replied, shocking Faith by her revelation. “And no, he is not some long-lost brother or some distant cousin he is Buffy’s son, the one who should only be about a year-old right about now.” “Holy shit!” Faith stated in a sense of disbelief. “When we lost him in that emergency portal that you created, we didn’t lose him to some other dimension we lost him to the past. So, you are telling me Buffy’s son grew up in the past and is now a twenty-something psychopath clearly out to kill his mother…now that’s messed up even for us!” “We all failed him as a baby…especially me I mean I created who he is today by shoving him through that damn portal!” Willow confessed, feeling all the guilt for what they were forced to do. “Buffy will never forgive me for this, I will never forgive me for this!” “Will, we had the whole of hell chasing us wanting the miracle child, we were out-numbered and out of ideas if you did not magic up that last-minute portal, he would have died that night for real and so would the rest of no doubt…or worse we’d live knowing we couldn’t save an innocent child, Buffy and Angel’s son.” Faith responded to Willow, making it clear to her that nobody was innocent that night, but they all did what they thought was best for Buffy’s son, who they know realized was none other than Theo himself. Suddenly, Faith’s determination to get through to him, Angel’s feeling of familiarness towards him, and Illyria’s claims of hidden power, all of it made sense to both Faith and Willow, he was the son of a slayer and a vampire with a soul, Angel had recognized his own son without even knowing it, and Faith’s guilt over him as a baby had transported onto the adult version. Last year they were forced to take drastic actions in order to protect Buffy and Angel’s child from the rest of the world, a child that logically should never have existed, and yet he did anyway, but deep down neither Faith, Willow, or Buffy ever got over the guilt of those actions and now that Faith and Willow learned the result of them, and how it molded that innocent child into becoming Theo, they were more determined than ever before to get through to the rogue slayer.

However, Theo had no plans of being rescued, in fact, he was planning to rescue himself from the Giles and Harris Rehabilitation Centre for the Supernatural which to him was just fancy words replacing prison to help make those working there feel better about themselves and sure a prison for the supernatural made a lot of sense, but just call it a prison already. And so, the rogue slayer kicked off his escape plan by simply bouncing the bouncy ball harder and harder against the wall, now standing closer to his prison cell gates knowing that the nearby slayer powered guard was growing more and more annoyed by the irritation until she could not take it any longer. “Cut it out already!” The female shouted as she marched over to Theo’s prison gates, playing into his plans as he grabs his little rubber ball and launched it straight into the woman’s throat and as the slayer began choking it caught the attention of another one of the guards but before the other guard could come to the woman’s rescue Theo grabbed the choking guard in towards him, snapping her neck with all the force in his hands, before swiping the keys out of the guards pocket and throwing her now lifeless body to the ground, as he used the other guards' shock and terror to quickly unlock his gate and walk out of his cell. As the stunned slayer came to her senses, she quickly charged towards her colleague’s callous killer only for Theo to get the better of her with a single punch before he lifted her body and threw it against the prison bars, the guard crashing off them before hitting the ground with full impact before the slayer of slayers quickly turned his attention towards the other rogue slayers being held captive there. “I am not much of a team player, but I am going to let you all free, kill whoever stops you from getting your freedom and make sure as hell if you get caught you at least slow these bastards down so I can make my escape!” Theo shouted down the prison hallway to all the prisoners he knew were on this floor, determined to cause as much carnage as possible.

After unlocking many prison gates himself he then let the other slayers take over the prison break duties as Theo quickly began his own escape plan, ditching the others as he found himself running through an empty window before reaching the large bay window which looked out towards the nearby river, the prison’s only view, and that view would be the means of his escape, all he’d have to do is survive the rather large fall but as he ran up towards the window he came to a grinding halt when he heard the sound of a warning shot, the bullet hitting the very window in front of it, smashing it into pieces, as he turned around to find Rupert Giles stood there holding the gun, ready to fire at the slayer of slayers if he made another move. “As much as I love doing this little dance with you and feeding my daddy issues, I’ve had enough fun now and I’m ready to blow this joint,” Theo told Giles making it clear not even a bullet would stop him from leaving. “You killed two of my girls and set free a bunch of killers unleashing god knows what madness by doing so!” Giles shouted at the rogue slayer furiously as he kept a firm hand on his gun, making sure not to take his eye of Theo. “You do not cage an animal then blame it for biting you when it breaks free.” Theo taunted the former watcher. “So, you better have one hell of a shot, or else I’m going to get really pissed and there is not enough British charm in your body to make me not break you into tiny little pieces.” “Get on the ground now and put your hands up or I will shoot!” Giles shouted nervously, not wanting to take the slayer’s life but knowing if he had to shoot, he would, and he would not miss, he could not miss. “Oh, please I am not going to die at the hands of some stuffy old librarian who fancies himself a prison warden to wayward slayers.” Theo laughed, mocking the former watcher ruthlessly. “Get on the ground!” Giles repeated one more time, only for Theo to begin to run towards him, giving Giles no other choice but to fire his gun frantically, not once, or twice, but three times, two of the bullets managing to hit Theo’s body, one launching itself into the slayer’s chest, the other straight through his stomach, knocking him backward as he fell to the ground heavily bleeding out. “No!” Willow screamed as she and Faith came running from around the corner, witnessing Theo’s bloodied state at the hands of Giles, the former watcher not realizing he had just shot his slayer’s son. But before either Faith or Willow could get over to Theo to check on him, nurse his wounds, and try to save him, Theo struggled back to his feet, shocking them all by his tenacity as he continued to bleed out, doing himself no favors whatsoever by moving with all his blood loss as he limped his way over to the broken window. “Like I said I will not die at the hands of a stuffy librarian.” Theo struggled to say before he began coughing up blood and just as Faith began running towards her fellow slayer, Theo launched himself out of the window plummeting towards the river and a more than certain death. “No!” Faith cried as she ran towards the window desperately looking for some sign of Buffy’s son, only for her hopes to be met with more dread when she could see nothing but the river, realizing that she had once again failed that same child that she, Willow, and Buffy swore to protect. “He killed two of my girls then set free a bunch of slayers almost as bad if not even worse than him…I did not want to shoot but he gave me no choice.” Giles mumbled, clearly guilt-ridden over what he had just done. “I understand that casualties are bound to happen around here Giles…but this one’s different,” Willow stated with tears in her eyes, grief-stricken by the death she had just witnessed. “You just killed Buffy and Angel’s kid!” Faith shouted at the former watcher, as she turned around to look at him with fury in her eyes. “That baby died over a year ago, he’s an adult that is absolutely impossible!” Giles argued with her, in disbelief by her claims. “That’s what we told everyone when we lost him…and now we

lost him again.” Willow cried as she realized all hope was lost, the chance of Theo’s redemption, the possibility of reuniting him with his parents, to get Buffy back, all that hope of any of that was now truly gone.

Although nobody knew it then their tears were well and truly wasted for Theo’s story was nowhere near its end, and as his seemingly lifeless body washed up on a nearby sandy shore in the dead of night the deliciously delirious and devilish vampire Drusilla appeared from a distance in full vampire form, walking over to the fatally injured slayer, picking him up in her arms lovingly, as if he was a baby, her baby, and in her mind that is exactly what Theo was. “Do not worry my darling boy mummy is going to make you all better and then we will make them all pay for the damage they have done to our family.” Drusilla declared to a seemingly lifeless Theo, ready to nurse him better, and then the games could really begin.

[neo-culture-taste]

Loosen Your Tie, Doyoung

Genre: AU, college, frat life, comedy, romance

Pairing: Doyoung X Fem (w/ the lovely appearance of fuccboi Yuta)

Rating: M for language, suggestive themes

Word Count: 9100+

Summary: He was an uptight nerd that just wanted to relax after taking his exams, but the universe had something more eventful planned for this particular evening.

Masterlist in blog description @neo-culture-taste.

Author’s note: A year ago Nctzens were given the gift that was NCT 2018 and with that gift came Doyoung’s teaser photo with him donning a blazer and tie. That one photo caused my creative juices to flow and thus this oneshot was born—an entire year ago. So a whole year later and a few tweaks here it is. Enjoy! - C

P.S - my imagination was running rampant when I first wrote this so 🤷🏽‍♀ 

“You have five minutes left.”

He flinched at the sudden tickle of the proctor’s words against his skin as he whispered into his ear. Doyoung absentmindedly nodded in agreement forcing down a scowl at the interruption of re-re-re-reviewing his physics based calculus midterm exam for the fourth time.

He absolutely hated computer-based exams. He had written several letters to the head of the physics department pleading that they change their decision on computer-based tests, citing that difficult mathematical exams of this magnitude would be more beneficial if the professors were present for any questions the student(s) may have. Not to mention the wrong numerical typo could be the decision between an A or D, and unfortunately Doyoung had witnessed that first hand amongst he and his classmates. It was a depressing sight to see aspiring engineers momentarily yanking their hairs out in fear of failing an exam thanks to one little, measly typo.

At first his letters fell on deaf ears until he became a class representative for his major on the student council. He was tired of seeing his classmates struggle and tired of having to visit his professor after each exam on the basis of a typo in order to raise his 93% A to a 100% A+. The department heads had no choice but to listen to the pleas of both Doyoung and his fellow students after a lengthy, yet informative presentation to the entire department.

After reaching the final question on what would be his last computer based physics exam of the semester, Doyoung took a deep breath and hovered the mouse over the submit button. The computer would automatically score his test once the time went down whether he was ready to see his grade or not; so deciding to bite the bullet, he closed his eyes and hit submit only waiting a few seconds before opening his eyes.

A beautiful 15 out of 15, 100% A+ graced the liquid crystal display, and a large smile fanned over Doyoung’s face as he released the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Unfortunately, the wretched garlic breath of the proctor finally infiltrated his senses despite occurring five minutes prior. That was just how focused he was.

Doyoung exited the exam’s browser and reached for his backpack underneath his chair, careful not to disturb the other students. With a bounce in his step he made way for the quad, stopping momentarily to do a celebratory twirl in the middle of the hallway and then popping in his earbuds. He had aced all of his midterms and could finally relax and take full advantage of a well-deserved break.

The sun was shining as brightly as ever casting shadows on students spread throughout the quad. Some were furiously doing last minute cramming, while others cried oceans of tears over their unsuccessful attempts at cramming, and others mirrored Doyoung and radiated the same exam-passing glow.

Feeling starved after supplying the neurons in his brain with enough glucose to ace his exam, Doyoung decided to make a quick turnaround in the quad and head towards the dining hall. Upon entering the cafeteria, he swiped his meal card before quickly reveling in the realization that today was Pizza Friday.

He grabbed a plate from the counter and loaded it with four slices of pizza before moving to the fruit counter to grab some watermelon. Once he was finished, he noticed that his favorite booth in the back corner of the dining hall was free, prompting him to maneuver his way towards it. He carefully placed his plates on the table and threw his backpack in the other side of the booth before realizing he was missing a nice, cold beverage to accompany his lunch.

He made his way to the drink counter which was only a couple feet away, filling two plastic cups with soda so he didn’t have to get up and get more later. Once finished, he made way toward his booth, the music in his ears keeping him walking at a steady beat, but also prompting him to do another victory spin.

However, his twirl unfortunately did not come to completion because he felt the sudden collision of his hands against another object. Despite the heavy base rippling through his ear canal, he heard the spine-chilling shriek erupting from the human body directly in front of him; the contents of both his glasses inappropriately bathing the front of her blouse. He quickly popped out the ear buds form his ears, a flurry of apologies falling from his lips--some coherent and some barely even a language.

He looked down at the ruined white blouse before him in dismay. The palms of the soda soaked girl were turned upward as if she had absolutely no idea how to move on from this situation that could have been avoided. And the longer she stood in front of Doyoung, the quicker the liquid spread across her blouse, finding a comfortable fiber to soak into all while revealing a baby blue lace tank top underneath that clung to the curvature of her bosom. To make matters worse, the liquid had trickled down the front of her skirt and down her legs, causing Doyoung to give her an unintentional once over. Once his eyes returned upward, she served him expressions of both shock and lividness to say the least.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you-“ He said quickly setting down his now empty glasses in order to grab napkins to help her. With a bit too much force, she yanked the napkins from his hands and began aggressively patting her chest. He felt bad. But not bad enough to dampen his post test high. Ain’t nobody would be fucking with his post test high. “I can go ask for a towel-“

“Ew. A dirty dishrag? Don’t worry about it. I live in the dorm next door. But watch where you’re twirling next time, you fake ass ballerina.” The girl abruptly threw her damp napkins on the table, her neck tinged with a rosy shade from anger and embarrassment before quickly scurrying away.

Doyoung hung his head low and turned back to his table picking up the wet napkins in disgust, as she had thrown them on his Friday pizza and watermelon.  It was an accident for goodness sake, but she didn’t have to be so rude about it either, Doyoung thought. He tried to apologize! And that was one of the reasons why he kept to himself most times and disliked significant amounts of human interaction. Someone was always bound to piss him off.

"If you're just going to sit there and mean mug your plate, then why not give me what's on it.”

Speaking of someone always pissing him off, Doyoung looked up from the table as he was pulled away from glaring at his pizza by the voice of the ultimate pain in the ass of his life: Nakamoto Yuta.

“Shake it off, bro. A little wet pepperoni never killed anybody,” said Yuta has he grabbed a slice of pizza from Doyoung’s plate and shook it from side to side before sitting across from him. Yuta was one of Doyoung’s few close friends and the use of the word “friend” to describe Yuta was oftentimes inaccurate.

Continuing to munch on Doyoung’s pizza, he chuckled. “I saw what happened, dude. Smooth move! When I suggested you should get a girl wet after midterms I didn’t mean like that.” Yuta was the last person Doyoung wanted to see his blunder with the opposite sex. Whenever hilarious, embarrassing, or social status dampening events occurred, Yuta was like the appointed historian to always make people remember times they wished hadn’t even occurred.

Doyoung sent Yuta a death glare but it only resulted in more loud chuckling from his friend. It really was times like these that Doyoung questioned why he had continued to keep Yuta around after entering university. He didn’t take his studies seriously like Doyoung, despite being at the university on a soccer scholarship where he needed to keep his marks up. He also had proved to be unreliable, as on countless occasions he flaked on hanging out because he said he “needed to give thanks to mother nature for the cosmic gift she had bestowed upon man in the form of female orgasms” through numerous trysts with the university’s cheerleaders. One would assume that someone who only wanted to climb the social ladder, attend the best college parties, and drink until he was ass-backwards or passed out (if it was the off season) would have already left a hardworking nerd, who desperately wanted to become an engineer. Alas...he didn’t. The two of them were like night and day, yet they just couldn’t be one without the other.

Despite being a huge nuisance to his nerves, Yuta did however possess the minimal characteristics of what Doyoung would qualify the use of the “friend” title. Sometimes. He was an asshole but he was an asshole that looked out for Doyoung and was always there to lend a helping hand, albeit it oftentimes led to more harm than good whenever Yuta inserted himself in a situation. But his intentions were in the right place and the situations would eventually work themselves out. All in all, there was some use to keeping Yuta around. And it wasn't all one big headache. They had fun a lot of the time, too.

Defeated, Doyoung picked up one of his slices that hadn’t been tormented by the wet paper. “Why are you here, Yuta? Shouldn’t you still be in a midterm or something?”

Yuta sighed. “I just finished up, actually. It was an oral final, but it didn’t last that long.” He shrugged his shoulders with disinterest.

“You waited until the last minute to come up with what you were going to say, didn’t you?” questioned Doyoung innocently wiping some pizza sauce from the corner of his mouth.

Yuta cocked his head to the side and looked at Doyoung somewhat disappointedly. “No, no. I went prepared. I could have tongued a few more sentences if she would have let me. But she grabbed the back of my hair too roughly, and then she came all over my tongue, but was too stimulated to con-“

Doyoung choked for obvious reason. “Yuta!” He reached for one of his glasses only to realize it was empty and quickly remembered the accident with the girl that had happened a few minutes prior.

“What?” asked Yuta nonchalantly.

“I’m eating! And it’s pizza day!” He was accustomed to his friend being lewd at all hours of the day and normally it wouldn't phase him, but he had been caught off guard this time.

“And I got an A! What’s the problem?!” Yuta reached in his backpack for his water bottle and tossed it towards Doyoung who was still coughing over loose pizza crust.

Taking a long ass swig, Doyoung gave Yuta a pointed look before harshly whispering. “You had relations with your professor?! Do you know how much trouble you would be in with the university if anyone found out? Not to mention you would probably get kicked off the team and consequently kicked out of school!”

Yuta did a dramatic neck and eye roll at his friend across the table. “Sometimes...I want to twist the stick that’s shoved so far up your ass and make you mellow out.”

“You and everyone else,” muttered Doyoung as he stared incredulously at the idiot.

“I’m in college, dude,” continued Yuta. “I’m allowed to fuck up.  And if you must know I did do my presentation in class and earned my A the right way. I just…had more things to say that wasn’t able to fit within the time limit. And I had already requested an appointment for office hours beforehand and this chemistry had been brewing between us since the beginning of the semester. So one thing led to another and--“

“Yuta, fuck off,” said Doyoung, his tolerance wearing thin. “Between you and that girl I just ran into, the both of you have tried my patience today. I aced all my midterms and I just want to be left alone to recuperate.”

“Now you know how I feel having a friend that only wants to study all day! You’re always so serious. Once we graduate you will regret not having as much or more fun as I’m having. You need to loosen your tie, Doyoung, and liiiive~. The books will always be there but your youth won’t. Get this pussy now and get the money later!"

Now it was Doyoung's turn to cock his head to the side as he absentmindedly forked his watermelon. “Do you ever think about what you say before you say it, Yuta? Do you ever realize what kind of idiotic logic you’re spewing?”

“It’s not idiotic. It’s fact. Now moving on to the real reason I interrupted your lonely ass pizza day.” He shoved a neon green flyer adorned with terrible font towards Doyoung’s side of the table. “I’m throwing my first official party tonight at the frat house. You had been ignoring my texts all week because you were studying or whatever it is you do when you read a book and make flashcards. So now I’m reminding you in the flesh. I’m treating this party as if it is my first kid. If it’s successful, I know I can bang out a few more. So I need you to come out and support me like the true friend I know that you are.” Yuta batted his eyelashes at Doyoung who merely pushed his plate away, his appetite clearly vanishing.

“Yuta, I hate parties and all that encompasses them. And as a true friend you would already know this.” He slid the flyer back towards Yuta and reached for his backpack.

“Doyoung, please. You haven’t been to a party in the three years that we’ve been here and you literally have nothing exciting planned for tonight, and I know because you're you and you never really do anything besides…doing nothing.”

Doyoung scoffed and stood up, partly because he was annoyed and partly because Yuta was correct with his assumption. He was indeed going home to do nothing exciting in particular, but at least he wouldn’t be surrounded by wasted young adults who just wanted to fuck each other and adults that couldn’t take the hint and graduate already because they were scared of adult responsibilities.

“C’mon, dude!” Yuta stood up to stand eye level with his basic ass friend. “I really need you to be there.”

“Why?”

Yuta ran his hands down his face before calmly placing his hands on his hips. “The only way I can strip this one girl and bathe in her cosmic essence—with her permission of course—is if you come to the party and…y’know, hang out with her friend. Who, by the way, thinks you’re really attractive for some reason. I think she likes the way your tie is tightly wound around your neck like it’s choking you, but you find a way to sexily breathe through it. And that any minute you’ll rip it off and bind her wrists or blindfold her or some shit. I don't know. Girls are weird. But she likes you, man! She just wants to make sure your stuck up façade and actual personality aren’t synonymous. And if you don’t hit it off with her, there will be plenty of other girls you can-- ”

“No, Yuta. I will not babysit your potential fuck’s bestie so she can relieve her kinky fantasies and gossip to her friends saying, ‘Girls, he may look like a cute little bunny, but he fucks like a wild tiger that was just begging to be tamed.’” Yuta scrunched up his nose at the high pitched voice Doyoung put on to mimic a girl, and also because he had a hard time comprehending why Doyoung would compare himself to a giant jungle cat in bed. “Nor will I accidentally wind up in some room with some cute girl only to find out she was using me to make her jock boyfriend jealous.”

“DUDE, THAT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO IN HIGH SCHOOL!” Yuta exclaimed, exasperated that his friend was still bitter after all this time. “You gotta let that shit go! I told you not to go upstairs with her. And we need to revisit how you think you’re good in bed when you’ve only slept with like, one person.”

“No, Yuta. Leave me alone. Have fun at your party.” Doyoung curtly walked off and left Yuta standing there at the booth with his flyer crumpled angrily in his fist.

I’m not that stuck up, am I?, thought Doyoung as he left his friend in the dining hall. But he shrugged away the notion and continued to walk toward his apartment.

~~~

The cacophonous soundtrack that played on Doyoung’s laptop signaled yet another end credit scene for one of his favorite tv shows that he promised he would binge after midterms. More like the show was watching him as Doyoung had long casted aside his laptop and curled into the fetal position, sleep having grabbed him no more than ten minutes after he had returned to his apartment. His roommate, Winwin, hadn’t been home, serving as the perfect time to just relax alone.

The only thing that had managed to break him from his snooze cruise was the blatant disrespect of his cell phone ringing obnoxiously loud next to his ear. He quickly stirred and sat up looking at his phone in disgust as the words YUTA YUTA YUTA flashed across the screen. He begrudgingly answered deciding to be rude and not even say hello.

“Hello? Hello?” Asked Yuta whose voice was a bit drowned out thanks to the blaring EDM in the background. “Doyoung?!”

“Yuta! I didn’t change my mind about coming to the party!” Yelled Doyoung because he was pissed off and cranky.

“I know! But Winwin, ugh! Some clown from that BBX frat dared Winwin to keg stand and now your poor roommate is drunk off his mother fucking rocker! I told him not to do it, but he acted like he had something to prove and now he’s shitfaced, dude.”

Doyoung slapped his face and dragged his hand downward. “So, what are you asking me, Yuta? You’re his friend too and more than capable of-”

“Oh, shit! Winwin, that’s fucking disgusting!” Cried Yuta and interrupting Doyoung. “Quick, Kun, let’s take him to the bathroom. Here, Lucas. Talk to Doyoung.”

Doyoung heard the rustling of the phone being passed around through the receiver before a gruff voice spoke. “Hey, man! I’m sad you’re not here but I shall pour you one in your honor...and then not drink it because Taeyong won’t let me.”

“Thanks, Lucas. And you’re under the legal age to drink anyway.”

“Yeah but, I wanna keg stand, too!”

The thought of lil’ baby Lucas acting a fool and puking his brains out like the rest of his friends moved Doyoung enough to decide and go save his roommate. “It’s not worth it, dude. Tell Yuta I’m on my way.” He jumped from his bed and grabbed his keys before heading to the EXT frat house.

The walk to the frat house from his apartment was about eight minutes and twenty seconds. A time Doyoung remembered from several nightly trips when Yuta actually had time for guys night or when he needed to be saved from a girl he decided he didn’t want to sleep with after sobering up. Doyoung was always his scapegoat.

Upon arriving at the frat house, Doyoung immediately noticed all the loitering bodies of drunk college kids on the front lawn. He had to maneuver through the small sea of plastic red cups and beer bottles littered across the walkway before stopping abruptly as some guy flew across the cobblestone pavement and ran into the plastic flamingo on the lawn. “DUDEEE THAT NOSEDIVE WAS SICKK!” was heard causing Doyoung to roll his eyes and quickly make his way into the frat house. The sooner he retrieved Winwin, the faster he’d return home and relax. Well, not really. Not if he had to babysit Winwin all night and make sure he didn’t swallow his vomit and choke.

Doyoung entered the frat house and immediately noticed Lucas standing across in the foyer. He wasn’t hard to miss as he was the tallest human standing in the area with all the other new frat recruits who were tiny compared to him.

Doyoung sauntered over to Lucas who gave him a big hug causing the other recruits to disperse. Although Doyoung wasn’t in the frat, Yuta knighted him an honorary member, meaning no one was allowed to mess with him, yet was allowed to give him special treatment. “Bro, you made it!”

Doyoung’s face morphed into a grimace after telling Lucas he had come to get Winwin. He began to ask what bathroom in that giant frat house had Yuta dragged him to but was cut off when two tall, beautiful young ladies interrupted their conversation.

“Hey, stud? What’s your name?” Asked one of the girls, one Doyoung recognized as being the star junior of the girl’s soccer team.

Lucas quickly looked toward Doyoung as if he needed confirmation of what his name was before turning back to the girls and blushing. “I’m 20.”

Doyoung immediately hung his head low and scratched his eyebrow, rapidly giving up on humanity. He didn’t have time for this awkward shit. He had come here for one reason and one reason only, and now he felt precious time slipping away from him as he stood there fooling around with Lucas. “They asked for your name…”

“Oh, uhh. Sorry.” Said the giant baby clearing his throat. “Lucas. My name is Lucas.”

“Aw, you’re so cute and funny.” Both girls closed the space between themselves and Lucas, causing Doyoung to roll is eyes and become even more annoyed. Like, hellloooo? Were they too entranced by Lucas’ pretty face to not see him standing there having a conversation with somebody?

“Let’s go somewhere and chat for a bit?” suggested the other girl.

Lucas laughed again before his “how to be a fuccboi manual by Yuta, illustrated by Taeyong” kicked in, causing his cute smile to quickly change into a sexy smolder. His voice dropped a couple of octaves lower, which Doyoung didn’t even think was possible. “How about I meet you guys out back on the patio? I have to show my loser friend here something first.” His comment made Doyoung roll his lips into a straight line in aggravation. He knew Lucas had only said that to seem as cool as he thought he was. It was classic textbook Yuta.

“He can come, too,” said the girl eyeing Doyoung up and down. “I like them stoicc.” The annunciation she put on the last syllable was hella thicc.

“I’m sorry, ladies I’m flattered, but I'm really not interested. I have more pressing matters to attend to. Lucas. Winwin, please,” Doyoung demanded to Lucas sternly.

The girls were taken aback by the unintended harshness of Doyoung’s tone and Lucas made up for it by kindly reminding them he’d meet them soon. He lead Doyoung to one of the corridors on the other side of the frat house. There were even more bodies in this area as the pool table and other assorted games were being drunkenly utilized.

As they approached some party goers playing darts and dodging the projectiles as to not be impaled by one, Doyoung heard Yuta’s thunderous guffaw before he even saw him. Brushing past Lucas while channeling on the cackle, Doyoung spotted Yuta and grabbed his shoulder to turn him around. Before he could speak, his attention was drawn to Winwin sitting on the couch across from him, his clothes in perfect place, hair nice, and not a sign of having emptied out his entire digestive system through his mouth. If anything, he would say his roommate was simply a little buzzed. Winwin noticed him staring incredulously and gave him a sheepish smile and a wave. Doyoung was livid.

“Oh, hey~, Doyoung!” A beer in his hand, Yuta stuck his neck out to look around at his perturbed friend and pointed an accusatory finger at Lucas. “Dammit, you! You were supposed to text me when he got here!”

“Sorry, I got distracted! But I’ll be in the backyard if you need me! Bye!” rushed Lucas ready to run off to his rendezvous but was called back by Yuta.

“Oh, bro! You got distracted by some hot girls, huh?!” The knowing grin on Yuta’s face grew twice its size when Lucas nodded in affirmation. “MAH, MAN!” He went in for a high five with the taller young man, but Doyoung blocked them from coming in contact with one another by violently slapping their arms down.

“Enough! ”After using eight minutes and twenty seconds of his precious life to walk over to that frat house for what had now made itself clear as complete bullshit, Doyoung needed to get something off his chest. “Yuta. Can I speak with you in priv--” he began, but he was cut off for the second time that night.

“No, man! No more talking!” Yuta grabbed two bottles of beer from the cooler near his feet and popped them open, the noise agitating Doyoung closer to the point of no return, and shoved both bottles in his hands. “So, Winwin isn’t shitfaced and I lied. You walked into that trap on your own.”

“Yeah, and Doyoung’s the smart one,” cackled Johnny, another one of his so-called friends. He was clearly drunk, so Doyoung spared him from a possible verbal beatdown.

“But you’re here now and that’s all that matters!” continued Yuta. “There’s unlimited drinks and unlimited girls--except this one. She’s mine.” He slithered his arm around the waist of his Friday date (who had a bigger bosom than last Tuesday’s date), who Doyoung assumed was the one who’s friend wanted some facetime with him.

Upon that realization, the gears in his brain quickly switched over to escape mode. His eyes quickly glanced around the room in a small panic that he immediately realized was futile considering he had no idea what the girl looked like. Now with the sudden shift of his objective, Doyoung's top priority was to get out of there before whoever she was entered within a ten foot radius of his person.

“So, go crazy and have some fun! I’m really glad that you’re here, dude.” Yuta raised his beer up, a sly and cheeky grin plastered on his visage that Doyoung desperately wanted to punch. “To Doyoung!”

The people around responded in unison as Yuta clanked his bottle with Doyoung’s, who simply stood there in a silent rage. The aspirated sounds of quenched thirsts emanating from everyone’s throats prompted Doyoung to turn on his heels and walk out the game area. Not only did Yuta forcibly drag him to participate in an event he was clearly against from the moment the flyer was shoved in his face, he used his roommate Winwin as bait. He made a mental note to not invite Winwin shopping the next time their apartment needed groceries as payback. He then made another mental note that he was trying to punish his roommate who wouldn’t ever hurt a fly, and that wasn't something he thought he was capable of doing (purposely passive aggressively hurting Winwin, that is), which caused him to make yet another note that Yuta needed to be unfriended.

“He really likes screwing with me. He should stop harping about being my friend if he can’t under-” Doyoung’s mutterings were cut short when he felt a familiar pillowy thud hit against the back of his palm causing both bottles of beer to fly upwards before shattering on the floor. Tuning out the people around him yelling that he had just committed a party foul, his instincts immediately prepared his lips for a second set of apologizes that day as he looked to see who he had run into. Upon realization, his mouth fell open in surprise and he soon felt the front of his blazer soaking with beer.

“Why does this keep happening to me?!” She screamed. Her palms faced upwards, stuck like they were earlier in the dining hall and her expression was just as dumbfounded. “This is the second time today. First it was the fake ass ballerina and now-” She lifted your head and scoffed in absolute disbelief and possibly even a hint of disdain. “Still the fake ass ballerina. I knew I shouldn't have come here tonight. Ugh! Do you have absolutely noth--HEY! Where are you going, asshole?!”

A little ticked off by her attitude, Doyoung held up a finger signaling her to wait and silently brushed past her to head towards the conveniently nearby supply closet. Despite not even being a member of the frat, this wasn’t the first time Doyoung had to fetch the broom and dustpan from this particular room. He had Yuta to thank for that incident as well.

When he returned to the girl, her body was still tense although she had lowered her hands to pull her soaked halter top away from the front side of her body. Her face was adorned with complete discomfort, however she stepped aside as she watched Doyoung sweep the shards of glass and scoop them up with the dustpan.

He stood in front of her and gazed at her pitiful form in exasperation. He took a deep breath before saying what he had to say. It took a lot of strength for him not to go completely off on an innocent bystander who unfortunately kept getting in his way.

“I’m sorry. Once again, I truly am sorry,” he stressed. “I was lost in my train of thought because of my dumbass friends. Because I, too, do not want to be here. I’m sorry I ruined your outfit again. Although it really isn’t appropriate for this weather, by the way. Especially now that your clothes are wet. But still, I am sorry.” He chucked the shards of glass into the also conveniently nearby trash bin before bending back down to pick up the last pieces.

The girl narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side in agitation. “Okay, but your apologies can’t magically dry the front of my shirt and shorts, and remove the awful stench of cheap ass beer. I look like I fucking pissed on myself upwards!” She wanted to cross her arms over her chest, but she would risk getting them sticky.

“That’s impossible,” said Doyoung matter of factly. Standing up again, he looked at her now as if she were incompetent before emptying more glass into the trash bin.

“DUDE, REALLLY?! Is that really what’s on your mind right now? The physical impossibility of me being able to pee upwards is what you’re worried about?!” Frustrated with her current situation, and apparently the world given her actions and word choice since the beginning of the day, she rubbed her hands against her face and slowly slid down the wall behind her.

Now, Doyung was a nice dude. Ladies--even ones outside of his family--found him to be a real gentleman...if you caught him on a good day. He could have very well informed the girl that the ground was still very much wet, but today wasn’t a very good day. Not anymore, at least. So, he didn’t. Instead he watched her slowly sink to her demise, the liquid quickly seeping into her shorts. Any moment now...3...2...1. “AW, FUCK! THE GROUND IS STILL WET! Why didn’t you say anything?!”

He returned the broom and the dustpan to the closet before addressing her question. “I didn’t feel like mopping.” He stated without any remorse. Her eyes almost bulged out her sockets at his response, so he immediately backtracked realizing he didn't mean to be that big of a dick. He wasn’t really a dick at all, actually. “Because I didn’t think you’d hear me over your incessant yelling--” Okay, maybe he was a dick.

“I’m not yelling. This is how I talk.” She ran her hands through her hair in frustration. “Now my ass is wet. And I reek of beer. I don’t even drink! Never even touched the stuff! This has been the worst day of my life. But I can’t leave because I promised to be a designated driver. And if I leave, what if I get stopped by the police?! ARE THEY GONNA BELIEVE THAT I’M SOBER?! I should be at home studying!” She threw her head against the wall and winced at the hard impact she didn't mean to make with it.

Doyoung’s feet made to leave, but his moral compass pointed towards the girl when the word “studying” tumbled from her lips. It was as if she had calmed some of his anger knowing she could be potentially studious as he was. He also sympathized with her on the fact that he too had been roped into being a designated driver countless times. Although, he never attended the parties. He would only show up when he thought his friends had had enough and throw them all into the backseat. Upon rethinking the situation, he made a decision to help the girl and bent down, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet.

“W-what are you doing?” The girl was a little shocked to say the least. His attitude had done a surprising 90 degrees. He was being gentlemanly, yes, but it was not a complete turn around. He was still tense, just not as much.

“Follow me.” He commenced to walk her hand in tow, but his pace was hindered by her hesitance.

“Where are we going?”

“To get you out of these wet clothes.” But before she could take it the wrong way and retort, he stopped walking and clarified. “Not like that. My asshole friends are inhabitants of this frat house. My clothes are damp as well and like you, I hate the feeling of wet clothing on my skin. We can grab a change of clothes and then we both can go our separate ways. Cool?”

Visibly relaxing after his explanation, she mulled it over, her tongue poking the inside of her cheek as she weighed the possible outcomes. “Fine. Lead the way.”

He lead her upstairs towards Yuta’s room, flicking the light upon entering the masculinely decorated room. He silently thanked his friend for not being a slob this weekend and not waiting forever to launder his soccer practice clothing that he usually just left on the floor to rot.

“Wait here,” said Doyoung dropping her hand. He quickly moved across the room towards Yuta’s black dresser, opening the first drawer a bit rougher than he intended and caused Yuta’s collection of bobbleheads to, well, bobble. The drawer contained an assortment of socks and underwear neither of which Doyoung needed, so he proceeded to the next row of drawers which contained athletic shorts and shirts.

He heard something ruffle against Yuta’s bed so he assumed it was the girl, his newfound companion who didn’t understand simple instructions of “wait here”. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw in annoyance, only to reopen his eyes and catch her form in the mirror. She apparently wasn't shy and wasted no time shedding off her sticky shirt. She discarded the wet material on the floor beside her feet and let out a deep sigh. Doyoung relaxed and continued to stand there admiring her reflected figure from behind. His eyes trailed from the top of her head to the strap of her baby blue bralette haphazardly falling down her shoulder, then to her lace trimmed jean shorts that had turned a darker hue (primarily on the curvature of her booty cheeks), which was entirely his fault. And in that moment, he could honestly say he was glad he didn’t tell her about the wet floor.

The motion of her reaching for her bra strap shook him from his reverie and he proceeded to grab two shirts and two shorts from the drawer. With his head hung low and eyes only focusing on the clothes, he turned around and extended a pair of clothes towards her. When she didn’t accept them, he noticed she was no longer standing there. “Hey. Where’d you go?”

He did a complete 180 degree turn and found her standing on the other side of Yuta’s room near his large armoire. “Oh. You move very quietly...umm I have dry cloth--NO DON’T OPEN THAT!”

His cry was too late as the girl had already opened the doors of the armoire and was already being showered with several boxes of condoms that had collapsed from the overstuffed piece of furniture. Before he could move to help her subdued form, he heard the door to Yuta’s room close shut and lock. He ran towards the wooden door and pounded on it, yelling in anger that his attempts to open the door from the inside were futile. “Hey! Open up!”

“No!” Screamed the terrible voice on the other side.

Doyoung dropped his hands from the doorknob knowing full well that no matter how much he retaliated he was not going to leave the room anytime soon. “Yuta...you asshole. Let us out. Right now. Open the damn door!” Doyoung’s chest ferociously rose and fell as his mind shrouded with rage.

“No, Dodo. I will not open the door. If you don’t want to mingle with us rowdy college kids, then mingle with the half naked girl you got in the room with you! Bye!” Doyoung heard footsteps and snickers trail away down the hallway.

He leaned his head on the door before remembering the ladder Yuta used to sneak in and out the frat house after hours. He ran towards the window and lifted it up happy to see the ladder right where he remembered it would be.

“What is going on?” the girl asked as she massaged her temples and continued to lay under the boxes of condoms.

“I’m going to get us out of here.” He kicked some boxes out of his way and grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet. So far their relationship with one another consisted of repeated actions and events. It was so unromantic it was lowkey romantic.

He gave her the set of clothes and motioned toward the closet and told her to quickly change. He discarded his blazer, shirt, and pants before sliding on the fresh pair of shorts. While deciding he could make do without taking off his tank top and tie he heard scraping outside against the wall.

“No, no, no.” He looked out the window only to find a drunk Johnny and Jaehyun trying to confiscate the ladder from the wall. “Stop!” He latched onto the ladder and tightened his grip as the pair pulled from the opposite end. Two against one was proving to be difficult as Doyoung’s waist was starting to go past the window sill, but he tried to maintain his grip as best as he could, hoping the drunks would give up soon.

“Hey these shorts have--OMG!” The girl had come out of the closet only to have to quickly run to the window and grab Doyoung’s waist so he wouldn’t fall forward and out the window. “Let go of the ladder! LET GO! LET GO! LET GO!”

“NO!”

“It’s not worth it!” She tugged him back harshly causing his grip to release from the ladder.

“Have fun Doyoung!” Yelled Johnny and Jaehyun as they hauled off with the ladder, laughing as they went.

“This is bullshit!” He closed the window and threw the dry T-shirt on the floor before he started pacing back and forth in the room. “That was our only way out! We’re going to be stuck here until Yuta decides he’s done playing this little game of his!”

The girl shifted and crossed her arms before speaking, “You have the biggest--“

“STICK UP MY ASS! YES, I KNOW.” He took a deep breath a little sorry she kept getting mixed up in all his shit. “I’m sorry—“

“Stop saying you’re sorry. It’s starting to sound weird coming from you.“ She placed her hand over your mouth to smother a laugh. “And that wasn't what I was going to say.”

“What?” He knitted his eyebrows and looked at her, only now noticing her bare legs peeking from under the hem of Yuta’s oversized T-shirt. Her baby blue undergarments showing underneath. “What is it?”

She picked up the shorts she had been given earlier. “I can’t wear these.” She handed them to Doyoung and stepped backwards meekly, trying to hold in her giggles.

“Why are you laughing?” He opened the shorts and noticed the big ass cut out hole on the crotch area before flinging them to the ground.  “Dammit, Yuta! I didn’t know--“ He looked down at the shorts he had changed into and noticed the giant whole in the middle of his crotch, showcasing his Scooby Doo boxers. He looked up and saw the girl keel over on Yuta’s bed in laughter. And despite the outrageous situation, he relished in defeat and succumbed to laughter himself.

Once the girl had adequate use of her lungs to breathe again she said, “I didn’t peg you for a cartoon guy. Your face screams you enjoy the five o’clock news and peer reviewed journals.”

He rolled his eyes and sat on Yuta’s bed as well as wiping the tears that had accumulated in his eyes. “They’re my lucky exam boxers.”

“So you wear them three times a week?”

“The stench holds the knowledge.”

“Gross! Guys are so weird,” she said before locating Yuta’s crotchless shorts from before and chucking them at him.

“No. Not all of us. I never liked that group assumption. Why do girls group all guys together? Some of us are cool!”

“You...cool?” He watched as she stood up from her kneeling position and removed his wet blazer and shorts from the floor before finding her own wet clothes. She went towards the closet and hung the clothes to dry. Doyoung watched her intently, his eyes admiring her backside once again. “You’ve been in a mood since we first bumped into each other. That’s not cool.”

“It’s the circumstance. I’m usually a nice guy. I just...today wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. I was supposed to finish my physics midterm, enjoy Pizza Friday, and then relax at home. Midterms were hard this semester. I deserved the break. I didn’t want to get dragged to a party and get stuck--“

“In here with me?” She walked across the room toward the several boxes of condoms still littered across the floor.

“I didn’t mean--“

“It’s okay. I didn’t think my day would end up like this either.” She bent down and absentmindedly picked up a half full box of condoms. “We can just sit here quietly and not talk to one another until Yuta let’s us out. Or we can talk about why Yuta has an armoire full of condoms that nearly ended my life.”

“Despite Yuta’s assholelery, he’s a big activist for safe sex. He lives with all these young and horny guys so he has to look out for their well-being. Whenever they need protection or stupid advice Yuta is who they run to. Plus, a frat with a reputation for STDs would be bad publicity.”

“Interesting,” she said simply. Doyoung watched curiously as she dug inside the box and pulled out a foil packet that she then proceeded to open with her teeth. “But how’d he get all of these boxes? He went on a condom shopping spree?” She blew air through the condom and tied a knot at the end before neatly placing it on the nearby desk.

“No.” Doyoung watched her tear open another packet and wanted to advise her that opening it that way could puncture and render its contents ineffective, but he stopped himself when he realized what she was up to. “Spring Break contest sophomore year. He had to lick whip cream off a girl’s body and eat a cherry out of her mouth within a time limit at a resort we went to. He won first place, which included a lifetime supply of condoms and 5000 dollars cash.”

“Wow.” She deadpanned.

Doyoung reached for a packet in the box she was holding and began blowing one up like she did earlier. He carefully placed his condom balloon in Yuta’s pencil holder, making sure it didn’t pop. “By the way, my name is Doyoung.” He extended his hand towards his fellow prisoner while reaching for another packet with the other. She stopped blowing her latex balloon to shake his hand. She told him her name in return.

~~~

After going through about four boxes with twelve packets each, both she and Doyoung had run out of air. He was still on a devious power high from semi-trashing Yuta’s room, so he was glad when she agreed to his suggestion of filling the condoms with water. After going through a box of thirty-two, the two of them finally decided to call it quits. Yuta’s drawers, closet, backpack, shelf, bathroom just about every surface of his room was covered in an assortment of either air or water filled latex balloons in various colors, shapes, sizes, and texture. It was a condom carnival.

She was reclined on Yuta’s bed, Doyoung having found her a blanket to cover herself with as Yuta’s questionable fashion sense was out of the question. “So why do you continue to hang out with him if he’s so troublesome?” she asked.

Doyoung took a moment to answer. “Because he’s the complete opposite of me. He’s the fun one and I’m…the not fun one.” Doyoung lowered his chin atop the desk chair he was sitting backwards on.

“Well, I think you’re sort of fun. I’ve only known you for…an hour and twenty-five minutes? Plus the five minutes in the dining hall this afternoon makes it an hour and thirty minutes?”

He laughed. “Thanks? You’re pretty cool, too. I wouldn’t have done this interior decorating we did otherwise. I mean I would have, but it wouldn’t have been as fun.”

“I honestly didn’t think you had it in you. You’re always so focused in class I figured you would be pretentious and stuck up. Plus, you wear a blazer and tie everyday.”

Doyoung’s face fell at her words. “We have a class together?” He chose to ignore the latter part of her comment.

Her cheeks took on yet another red hue that day as she gripped the blanket tighter in embarrassment. “Uh…no not exactly?”

Doyoung clearly heard the inflection on her last word. “Well then how?“

“I’m not a stalker!” she suddenly blurted.

“I didn’t say--“

“Your physics class is across the hall from my physics class at the same time on the same days. You sit down in the front near the door, and I sit towards the top in my classroom, but I can still see you through the doorway. You’re directly in my line of sight.”

“Yeah, that’s a stalker alright,” joked Doyoung. “What physics are you in? Did you pass your midterms?”

She was a little embarrassed to answer that. “I’m in general physics for pre-medical students. I made a 64. That’s a D. I might as well withdraw from the course at this point. I don’t think I can save my grade.”

“Well, that makes sense...Oh!” Doyoung snapped his fingers, something suddenly returning to his memory. “You’re that girl that eats candy and texts the whole class period. You own a light grey sweater that you wear every time the air conditioner kicks on.”

“You noticed me?”

“Yeah. You’re in my line of sight, too. I mean I’ve never seen you up close, that’s why I didn’t immediately recognize you from our run-ins today. But in case you didn't know, your behavior is why you failed your exam. If you ask me, I think you deserved an F rather than a D. And judging by all the candy you eat, I’m surprised you even have teeth--“

Without thinking, she grabbed the water filled condom from the nightstand and chucked it at Doyoung, which burst all over his face and white tank top. He looked shocked and blinked slowly as the water trickled down the desk chair. Before either of them realized what was happening, Doyoung was standing over her popping a balloon on top of her head, dousing her with cold water.

And thus, the war began.

After several back and forths of overhand throws and running around the room, there were now less condom balloons, severely wet furniture, and two soaking wet human bodies.

“Yuta is going to be so pissed,” she said looking around the room.

“He’ll survive.” Doyoung grabbed the blanket from the bed and moved to dry her off but she dodged, considering the wet t-shirt was cooling her skin from her sudden rise in body temperature. The impromptu physical activity, closeness and contact between the two of them, and the way their wet clothes clung to each of their bodies, and outlining every detail of their figures were to blame.

Doyoung dropped the blanket only to catch her furiously fiddling with the oversized wet shirt. “There’s no point,” she muttered. “You won’t be able to get every part of me that’s wet, so why bother?” He watched as she looked to the side at nothing in particular, her fourth time in one day garnering that rosy hue of embarrassment. He was starting to find it rather cute. However, while her expression dictated she couldn’t believe she had said that aloud, his dictated the internal struggle he currently faced with her words bouncing around in his head, immediately causing his lower head to fight against the tight restriction of the wet material clinging to his skin.

Doyoung was very intelligent. However, it didn’t take his stellar 4.0 GPA to know that Yuta’s diabolical plan since the beginning of the afternoon was finally starting to make progress. And one thing he hated was when people, well namely Yuta, got away with their evil plans. So he quickly turned away from her and walked toward the bathroom, closing it shut behind him. He laid his forehead on the door and took a deep breath. Cold water, he thought. Buddy you have to go down. Wait, I’m already soaking wet with cold water. Function, brain! He moved toward the shower anyway when he heard her lightly tap on the door.

“Doyoung? I’m sorry if what I said was inappropriate. What drawer are the clothes in?” Doyoung simply looked at the door and didn’t respond. “Doyoung?” After three more repeats of his name she let it go with a heavy sigh and went to find the drawer herself.

Doyoung felt bad for ignoring her so he peeped his head out the bathroom only to find the wet T-shirt discarded. She was standing in only her bralette and panties this time, the garments perfectly outlining the shape of her assets. He couldn’t help the choking noise that was caught in his throat, causing her to spin around in surprise.

Both their eyes grew wide like two horny teenagers who accidentally saw the half naked body of the opposite sex for the first time.

“I found the drawer and--”

Legend has it Doyoung lost control of his body as he walked from behind the door and into the room. The tent residing on his lower half at full attention and on display for her enjoyment.

He locked his eyes with hers. “After three years of pent up sexual frustration, my prefrontal cortex has decided to shut off and allow my glans and shaft to think for itself. Hence the situation I have in my boxers.” He motioned a hand downwards and she couldn't help her eyes from quickly darting to and from the area. “Now, I’m not one of those dudes like you see running around this frat house that needs to bang girls everyday. My education comes first. Speaking of coming,” her eyes slightly widened at the abrupt segway, “I haven’t done so with another person since high school, which was with my ex-girlfriend who later cheated on me with a football player. Therefore, I’m super clean with minimal, yet enough experience.

“Okay, Yuta is a horrible best friend, but I have to give him props because without him I wouldn’t be in this current situation. I was awarded a full scholarship to this school for my academic achievement, so I’m smart enough to know that there’s a 99% chance of the both of us leaving this room after pleasuring one another.” There wasn't even a chance for her mouth to fall open as he kept on speaking. “If not, I would have killed this boner in the bathroom and you would not be standing here with me looking this damn sexy in your...fuck!” He urgently ran a hand through his hair as sweat started to accumulate on his brow. “I’m not forcing you to do anything, we don’t have to do anything, and I’m not insinuating that you’re a girl that came to this party just to hook up with a guy. We can just continue to sit it out and wait to be rescued and then maybe I can show you what a pizza Friday should be and maybe help you bring your failing class average to a decent C+, maybe even B-. I don’t know. How’d your other tests go? Wait, who’s your profess--“

“Doyoung!” For a guy that looked like he had it together he sure let it all go in front of her. She stepped closer to him, her skin igniting as she did so. Whether the stars were aligned or not, admittance to paying attention to one another during class time was the first step of mutual chemistry. That and the evident arousals in both their underwear.

Doyoung’s breath hitched when she placed one hand over his chest and watched her carefully as she played with his wet tie with the other. “Fuck it,” she shrugged. “I’m all in. Me, mons pubis, and friends.”

Both of them had to stifle a laugh and then she tugged him closer by the accessory. His arms instinctively wrapped around her, his palms warm against the smooth skin of her cold back. He watched her eyes flicker from his lips back to his eyes as she bit the side of her bottom lip.

“Loosen your tie, Doyoung.”

And loosen his tie he did.

- C

[vinspiration-book]

Son of Palaven, Daughter of Earth Playlist

Based on the story by miceenscene

Story Here

Spotify Playlist Here

Playlist Status: Synced up to ch. 47

This wonderful piece of fanfiction inspired me to create a soundtrack for it.  Here is a track listing and some thoughts about each piece.  I try to pick thematic tracks for each story beat, while still retaining a rhythm between each song.

1. The Arranged Marriage - Gavin Luke

An instrumental piece by film composer Gavin Luke is the overture.  Anxious and urgent, it depicts a quiet, unhappy uncertainty that is nevertheless peppered by bright chords.  Combined with the name, it sets the tone for Shepard and Garrus’ unwilling journey into matrimony.

2. I Still Taste Fire - Stephanie Mabey

“I woke up with ashes in my mouth”

Shepard’s beginning theme.  A dark and driving song of regret and grit.  Shepard feels that she, Flaming Death, has personally lost the war and didn’t even get to see the ending.  The line “Thought I'd always remember what it felt like / To want you / But it's all kind of hazy now / Almost like I burned it down” normally refers to a lover, but in Shepard’s case, the “you” is an end to the war that she thought she wanted.  Now that the price of peace is her freedom, it's a bitter thing to swallow.

3. This Means War - Marianas Trench

“I hate to admit it but I miss the war”

Garrus’ beginning theme.  Whereas Shepard’s song was all seriousness and loss, Garrus can never quite be 100% sass-free.  So we get this jocular tune about having to play nice with someone even though you’d rather be fighting them.

4. Can’t Be Tamed - Miley Cyrus

“If you try to hold me back I might explode”

The wedding: Shepard’s view.  Deep in enemy territory, forced to participate in a ritual meant to demean her and her species, Shepard is nevertheless putting on a fierce display, just like the brash attitude of this number.  The irony of the song is that the singer keeps repeating over and over how she can’t be tamed; almost as if no one believes her?  Also includes the line “I'm like a puzzle / But all of my pieces are jagged” which has a double meaning that ties in to the story: as Garrus says much, much later both literally and metaphorically, “[A puzzle] is the best thing you could have gotten me”.

5. Love Runs Out - OneRepublic

“I'll be doin' this, if you ever doubt, / 'Til the love runs out”

The wedding: Garrus’ view.  Is this a romantic song, or a resigned one?  Or is it duplicitous?  Garrus may be a bad turian, but he’s still obedient to the Hierarchy, even if it’s only going through the motions and hoping for an escape.  The driving punch of the bass notes echoes this sentiment in a song that could be read as either loving commitment or bitter commitment.  It contains a lot of fire imagery too, especially the singer being someone to help someone else start a fire… perfect for being tied to Flaming Death. The song also mentions an (arch?)angel and the strong influence of the singer’s mother, both of which are important to the story.

6. Poker Face - Lady Gaga

“Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun”

Spying: Shepard’s view.  So Shepard and Garrus only ever play a board game in this story rather than poker, but come on.  It’s Poker Face.  It’s the best song ever about selfishly conning your partner to further your own high-stakes goals.

7. Fraud - Jonathan Coulton

“Sharp teeth test your skin / Too late, you let an angel in”

Spying: Garrus’ view.  This song takes a more meditative approach to being disingenuous, but just about every verse is packed with imagery that pairs perfectly with the story, from unwanted houseguests, to painting, fighting, and losing.  The refrain is even about an angel with fangs!

8. Didn’t Know You - Karmin

“Like a bird of prey / Out of nowhere you came / Do you always get your way?"

The reports: Shepard’s view.  An angry song about being the victim of deception and invasive tactics.  The singer talks especially about upending their entire life (setting “dreams ablaze”--fire imagery again) for the sake of someone who turned out to be a liar that controls their every move.  Turians are sometimes referred to as “birds” as a pejorative in Mass Effect, making the repeated line fit even more.

9. Can’t Go to Hell - Sin Shake Sin

“This romance with ignorance has left us behind”

The reports: Garrus’ view. Unlike Shepard’s reaction to finding the reports--which is very much about personal betrayal--Garrus’ reaction is a more public outcry about the situation going FUBAR.  One of the central tenets in ME canon about Shepard and Garrus’ relationship (to the point that even the characters themselves talk about it in these terms) is that he willingly follows her into hell every single time.  This makes the bitter anger of the chorus (“We can’t go to hell if we’re already there”) especially poignant.  The second verse evokes Shepard and Garrus’ situation closely too, mentioning being “blind by design” and stating “...history keeps getting paid to change its mind”, which is the purpose of the arranged marriage in the first place.

10. Home - Machine Gun Kelly & X Ambassadors

“Now tell me, how did all my dreams turn to nightmares?”

Shepard and Garrus: no extraction.  A rare male/female duet of frustration and longing for respite that neatly applies to the protagonists’ mindsets.  Both Anderson and the Hierarchy have turned away their soldiers, leaving them in this untenable situation.  Though they arrived at it differently--and aren’t commiserating at this point--Shepard and Garrus are feeling the same thing now:  They must continue to live together, but there’s no way this life can bring them any happiness or rest.

11. Hide and Seek - Imogen Heap

“Speak no feeling, no, I don't believe you”

Shepard is broken, and so is Garrus, a little.  This haunting acapella song (delivered in dual-toned overdub kind of like how a turian speaks, interestingly) was famously used by a TV drama for an overly dramatic murder scene, and then used again by Saturday Night Live to spoof that scene.  But Hide and Seek is technically about a divorce… and how a former home now becomes unrecognizably empty as the former couple moves out and apart.  Although they can’t separate, this is essentially what has happened to Shepard and Garrus.  Shepard tries to “live” as little as possible in the house while still being confined to it.  Garrus tries to escape to work.  

12. Rumble - Hi Fashion

“He said, she said / You better mind your space”

The alley brawl.  A complete turnaround from the previous song, this abrupt battle anthem (sung by dual tones again, and with a notable mention of a man and a woman both throwing the punches) is both high-energy, but also a slower tempo than you’d expect.  The effect is that of measured, precise violence rather than a chaotic frenzy; perfect for trained soldiers giving a beatdown.  Canon Shepard gets ribbed for being an awful dancer--outside of the battlefield, at least, giving an ironic twist to the dance imagery in the lyrics.  But this is technically the first time in the story that Shepard and Garrus are in sync: their first metaphorical dance together.

13. Hammer to Fall - Queen

“Tow the line and play their game / Yeah, let the anesthetic cover it all”

Medigel.  This story's version of Shepard loves Queen, and this song provides the title for the story’s later chapters, so it had to be on the soundtrack of course.  A disillusioned anthem to soldiers who are asked to fight wars for reasons someone else decided, it describes Shepard and Garrus’ situation perfectly--their lives have been ruined because of Fedorian’s unjust war.  Even though this is a small snippet of background to the story, it’s nevertheless a critical turning point, when Garrus realizes just how badly Shepard has been wronged… and that he himself contributed to it.

14. Karma - Marina

“So vicious, this cycle / When you live in sweet denial”

The apology: Shepard’s view.  Garrus apologies to Shepard, but she doesn’t know how to take it.  She’s skeptical, and with good reason.  Although this song is talking about a great deal of betrayal, the tone is less angry--or even melancholy--than weary and aloof.  The singer has made what peace she can with the situation, and is just waiting to see how everything plays out, rather than actively wishing harm on someone.  Karma is usually about an equal return of bad experiences, but Shepard is too defeated at this point to really care about that.  Garrus’ distress at his actions is actually better karma than if he himself were to be betrayed.

15. I Won’t Let You Down - OK Go

“Maybe all you need is someone to trust”

The apology: Garrus’ view.  Garrus is a man of action, and this upbeat track wastes no time in sorrow, instead attempting to reach out to the wounded party with a direct promise of support.  The lyrics talk about people who have every right to be distrustful, even using battle imagery (“no flag to fly”, “strap that armor tighter on”)... but rather than trying to get past their defenses, the singer encourages the downtrodden to fight harder--together.  A very Garrus point of view.

16. Rumors - Lindsay Logan

"You're probably gonna write what you didn't see”

The interview.  Ah, Khalisah.  A pretty straightforward song about paparazzi doing what paparazzi do, sung by the aggrieved celebrity.

17. One Shot - Rob Thomas

"We get one chance to make this kickstart”

Bottle shooting at the valley.  While Shepard and Garrus fire a lot of rounds during this little date, it's the final shot that's the most important.  Garrus' previous actions since their fight have been peace offerings, but this is his first actual gift to Shepard.  He gives Shepard his crown just to see her smile.  Essentially, his first romantic gesture is literally “one shot”.  The sentiment pairs perfectly with this energetic tune about starting something rare and good.

18. Souvenir - Johnnyswim

“It's those little things that I hold dear”

Terra Goods.  At this point, Shepard and Garrus are starting to do things to really support each other in little ways and in big ways, culminating in Garrus creating a whole souvenir trading company just to make Shepard happy.  This song, a duet that alternates between jaunty and staid, talks about a couple that had a brief good time, then separated due to some unnamed conflict.  Now they both think fondly of their time together, making souvenirs of the memories.  Both singers individually wish for another chance, while not realizing the other person does too.

19. DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love - Usher, Pitbull

“I think I remember those eyes”

Clubbing with Solana.  This throbbing dance tune is simple enough that even Shepard could probably keep to the beat.  Seeing Shepard (attempting to) dance is one of the first moments where Garrus is physically attracted to her.

20. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen

“Easy come, easy go / Little high, little low”

The walk back.  Shepard sings this most famous Queen song as she stumbles home under Garrus’ watchful eye.  It describes a murderer with a guilty conscience, which Shepard is somewhat.  She’s killed a lot of turians, but now they are people to her instead of monsters.  Shepard probably isn’t thinking about that, though… it’s just a fun song to sing when you’re drunk.  Or anytime.

21. Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight - The Good Johnsons

“I’m right here to stay”

Splashing in the fountain.  This whimsical cover of an old song is just silly enough for Shepard’s drunken water foray.  Although it’s been building for a bit, it takes hard liquor for Shepard to admit she might be happy on Palaven.  But there’s a slight undercurrent of the singer not believing their own message.  The line “I’m as free as any daughter” is especially ironic in this context.

22. Mom - Meghan Trainor

“Ain’t nobody got a mom like mine”

Visiting with Galena.  Shepard’s relationship with Garrus’ mother is one of my favorite parts of the story, and it’s one of the things that cements Shepard’s feeling that she may just belong here.  It’s also significant that even though Shepard is starting to love Garrus, she can only express love towards his mother at first.  In a way, loving Galena teaches Shepard how to love Garrus.  Hence why this story beat gets its own song.

23. With A Little Help From My Friends - The Beatles

“Are you sad because you're on your own?”

The care package.  Finally, Shepard finds out that Earth hasn’t completely abandoned her.  This song especially talks about isolation when your lover is not there, and how friends can help you through it.  When Garrus isn’t there, Shepard is almost totally alone on the planet, so learning her squad still supports her is a huge relief.

24. Tongues - Joywave, KOPPS

“Tell me all the things I've missed”

Ashley.  This furtive song is about returning to where you are from, only to find out you are now a stranger to them.  While Shepard’s argument with Ashley is a little more circumspect than that, the gist is that Shepard learns that even though she now has this lifeline back to Earth, she’s not welcomed like she was before… which is just what she has been fearing since her interview with Khalisah.

25. Unbreakable - Jamie Scott

“I won't let you fall down now”

Garrus comforts Shepard and comes to a realization.  This song of gentle encouragement talks about a woman who has lost everything, and the man who wants to love her regardless.  It’s emotive and warm and seems to capture just what Garrus is thinking as Shepard cries in his arms.

26. War Paint - Fletcher

“I write the colors on my face”

The dress shop.  Keslia describes the Gala being a battle, and Shepard’s dress being her armor.  This song of self-empowerment uses loads of battle imagery and works in tandem with the previous one… Shepard’s been wounded emotionally but she’s still fighting.  Turians’ face markings have important meaning for family and home.  But for humans, the same sort of marks are called war paint and are used by warriors to represent ferocity and power.  Shepard turns an outfit that could just make her into the ornament that the turians want and turns it into a symbol of her survival.

27. Ballroom Blitz - Tia Carrere

“She could kill you with a wink of her eye”

The Gala, part 1.  A fun cover of an energetic song talking about a crazy party fight.  Between the turian generals and Cyntha, Shepard and Garrus really do have a battle on their hands.  While nothing violent actually happens, they have each other’s backs throughout the event, even standing up solo versus their partner’s enemies.

28. Blue Dress - Benjamin Franklin Leftwich

“I should love you better than that”

The Gala, part 2.  Shepard asks Garrus if her presence is harming his career, but he doesn’t reply.  This song is meant to be the answer he doesn’t say.  It’s an apology from a man whose work/travel has prevented him from participating in a relationship like he should.  Interestingly, in ME canon, it’s the opposite: the Shadow Broker notes that Garrus’ attachment to Shepard prevents him from being a better commander.  The line “But still my only weakness / Is you baby in that blue dress” fits nicely with the story, but funnily enough also with canon… as blue is the color of the Alliance uniforms that canon Shepard typically wears.

29. Vie En Rose - Pomplamoose

“It’s only him for me / and me for him, for life”

Dancing in the driveway.  This version of Shepard speaks French, so this slow, lilting, classic French love song is what I imagine coming out of the car stereo when Garrus teaches Shepard to dance.  Ok, so it’s probably more likely a turian song playing in this scene, but still.  I especially like the stanza that says “He speaks words of love to me / They are everyday words / And they do something to me” because unlike canon, where Shepard and Garrus’ bond is forged in battle, in this AU it’s built from all the little everyday things they say and do for each other.

30. Bad Liar - Selena Gomez

“If you're the art, I'll be the brush”

Painting.  Shepard and Garrus made that “100%” promise, but when it comes to feelings, they don’t exactly follow through.  This breathy song is about admitting--at least to yourself--that you were denying your emotions, and that your love interest seems to be as well.  Not that Shepard is clued in enough to realize Garrus feels the same way, but putting together the easel with Garrus also helped Shepard put together why she’s reacting to him the way she is.  Once again, they are in sync without realizing it, the dorks.  This song also contains numerous lines that fit the story nicely, such as talking about living arrangements, the battle of Troy (and isn’t that just the funniest view of Shepard’s infiltration of Palaven), and “feelings on fire”.

31. Anne of Green Gables - The Charlottetown Festival

“Anne of Green Gables, sweet and strange, / stay as you are today.”

Reading to Galena.  Oh, boy, here we go.  Get those tissues ready, it’s coming soon.  This simple song from the Anne of Green Gables musical doesn’t say much, but it has a sorrowful timbre that speaks of heartache to come.

32. I Think I Love You - The Partridge Family

“Do you think I have a case? Let me ask you to your face”

Happy Anniversary!  In canon and most fanon, Garrus is slick as oil until comes to telling Shepard how he feels, and then he gets adorably pitiful and nervous.  While at this point in the story, Garrus himself is probably not ready to call it “love”, this anxiety-ridden song still captures that fragile state of mind.  Sadly, Garrus gets interrupted before he makes it as far as the singer does in his confession.

33. Galena - Kerri Sherwood

Galena’s passing.  Did you know there are a lot of songs called “Galena”?  But though I searched and searched--and quite a few of them were sad songs--none of them had the right words.  Because there aren’t any right words for this, are there?  And so, a solemn, sad instrumental piece describes Galena’s last day.

34. In My Arms - Plumb

“All I can do is hold you tight”

Garrus’ breakdown.  This song is from a mother who wants to protect her child from the harshness of the world.  But Garrus’ mother is gone, so Shepard has to sing it instead.  Growing up is hard, and the very last and hardest part of growing up for most people is losing your parents.  As a side note, the song starts by mentioning blue eyes--one of Garrus’ most notable features.

35. Calling All Angels - Jane Siberry, k.d. lang

"Don’t leave me alone"

The Vigil, part 1.  A song imploring various spirits and saints to help guide you through a trying time.  On Palaven, where they ask the Spirits’ help for everything, this would probably be especially appropriate.  Granted, this song gets used in A LOT of soundtracks, but that’s because it’s so perfect for when you’ve lost someone.  More than just loss, this song also says that you know life will go on... but those first steps afterwards are the hardest.  It’s like the MVP of movie funeral songs, and Galena deserves the best, dammit.

36. Hope Will Lead Us On - Barlow Girl

"Become the flame / That shows us the way"

The Vigil, part 2.  Shepard steps up wonderfully for the Vakarian family and helps them heal.  This song, sung almost from a sort of battle commander’s perspective, mixes strong, driving beats with inspiring statements… while still having an underlying piano refrain that is haunting and forlorn.  It doesn’t try to move past the pain, but rather keeps it as a foundation for a new beginning.

37. That’s How You Know - Amy Adams, from “Enchanted”

"It's not enough to take the one you love for granted"

Operation Two Turtle Doves.  Shepard’s getting ready to meddle with Solana’s love life.  So we have a cute song from a cute movie on that very topic.  I wish the pronouns were correct for a wlw relationship like in the story, but what can ya do.  The line “Don’t treat her like a mind reader” made me laugh, because… Keslia literally is one, being an asari and all.

38. Can’t Help Falling In Love - Elvis Prestley

"Shall I stay?"

Kissing in the study.  One of my favorite parts of the story… a tired kiss that’s all about love and comfort rather than passion.  When Shepard and Garrus are both drained emotionally and physically from the Vigil, all that’s left is a quiet gravity that draws them together.  There are many versions of this song, but Elvis’ gentle crooning rendition is all about slow movements and tender questions.

39. Love Of My Life - Queen

“You don’t know what it means to me”

Singing to babies.  Shepard’s still singing Queen, so here is her next solo.  This is such a heartwarming scene, plus we get a bit of sibling slapstick for a laugh.  The funny part is that even though Shepard is the one singing this song to the babies, the lyrics are really describing what Garrus is feeling in this scene.  It works as a cute lullaby, in the way that lullabies often are kind of dark for some reason.

40. Heaven Is A Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle

"When I feel alone, I reach for you / And you bring me home"

Going to Earth.  There Garrus goes again with the grand gestures.  Not just anybody can say they gave their partner the world.  As much as this Shepard likes Queen, I bet she also likes other 80’s classics like Belinda Carlisle.  This song represents Shepard’s response to Garrus’ gift.

41. Girl On Fire - Alicia Keys

“Everybody stands, as she goes by / Cause they can see the flame that's in her eyes”

Arriving at Earth.  This song is meant to be from Garrus’ perspective, seeing Shepard in her natural habitat, and is particularly inspired by the story’s description of Shepard being “swallowed by sunlight” as she leaves the ship...which would make her look like she was on fire.  It’s a song of admiration and wonder over the power of this one woman who stands out from everyone else.  P.S. Did anyone else imagine the spaceship was the Normandy, even though it wasn’t?  I did.

42. Wannabe - Spice Girls

“If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends”

The Squad.  Ok, so this song is not serious at all, but Shepard’s squad are a bunch of goofballs anyway.  Although at this point Shepard probably wouldn’t tell Garrus goodbye if he bugged her like the song mentions, she does state that it means a lot to her that Garrus makes friends with her group.

43. Where Everybody Knows Your Name - Gary Portnoy

I initially added this song for Hudson’s, as it’s the theme song from the sitcom Cheers, which is all about this type of bar.  HOWEVER, there are verses in the full song that you never hear in the tv show, including one that’s a bit of toxic masculinity bordering on transphobia.  So, this song can just go in the trash where it belongs.

43. Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

“Home is wherever I’m with you”

The broken nose.  Shepard’s gotten another reminder that she doesn’t quite belong on Earth anymore… but that ends up being okay, because Garrus is her home now.  This fun duet talks about how even if you travel and have a variety of experiences, you can find that the person you shared it with is what’s really important.  This is in direct contrast to the song of the same name earlier in the playlist, which talked about needing Home to be an actual place.  In the middle of the song is a spoken-word section about the man realizing he’s in love with the woman only when she gets injured… which is so Shepard and Garrus it’s funny.  I thought for a long time that the woman’s name in the song was “Jane,” which would have made an even better fit, but it turns out it’s “Jade”.  Ah well.

44. Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty - Chris & Pui

“Purr, purr, purr”

Mr. Biscuits.  A children’s lullaby about cats napping and purring.  The main verse mentions London, which is just a coincidence as a significant location for canon Shepard & Garrus. But really I just wanted a song that Shepard could tease Garrus with.

45. I Want To Break Free - Queen

“I've fallen in love for the first time / And this time I know it's for real”

Operation I Want To Break Free.  Another of Shepard’s Queen-inspired choices that of course had to be on the soundtrack.  This rock anthem has several elements that apply to the story, including falling in love in a strange circumstance, and trying to escape from an oppressive situation.  The song is not necessarily addressed to the singer’s lover though, so the “you” referenced is more likely the outside oppressor.  As Shepard is planning this operation without Garrus’ help, it would make sense that this not song is speaking to him directly.

46. Aurora Borealis - Bohnes

“I saw with my own eyes something beautiful”

Seton Lake:  Garrus’ view.  This location actually exists in real life and is worth googling an image of!  This breathy ballad is an ode to love that is as sublime and ineffable as the northern lights.  With lyrics that talk about stellar phenomena and our place in the universe, it’s especially poignant for lovers from different planets.  The line about “a beautiful coincidence that causes love” also fits pretty well, since the arranged marriage turning to love was all unplanned.  There’s also a line, “the world inside your eyes is more than black and white to me,” and one of Garrus’ most famous lines in canon is about how he’s unsure how to operate outside of black and white morality… but as it turns out, when it’s Shepard, he’s okay with it.

47. I Choose You - Sara Bareilles

“I believe in something again”

The Mark.  While this chapter is explicit, it’s also really charming, humorous, and emotional.  So this light and breezy song about choice and beginnings fits well as Shepard’s perspective.  This story is largely about Shepard having her autonomy taken from her, with the course of her entire life decided by others.  But when she is finally in a position to do something about it--and when Garrus even offers her an out--she chooses him.  The song mentions outside influences trying to convince the singer that her love is impossible or wrong, which is again something that Shepard has had to deal with.  But Shepard now willingly accepts the mark from Garrus that she once rejected… As the song says, the mark is a visible symbol that will “Tell the world that we finally got it all right”.  The line “I will become yours and you will become mine” sounds like a wedding vow, which seems especially appropriate.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

[the-amaryka]

Unpopular Opinion:  I enjoyed season 8

So first, I’m mostly doing this to sort out my own feelings, but I DO think there are some things worth considering here.

To be clear, Enjoying something and thinking that something was perfect are different.  I enjoy plenty of things that are garbage and I do think this season had it’s fair share of flaws, but it’s not nearly as awful as some of ya’ll are ripping into it over.  In addition, regardless of if it is bad or not harassment of the creators is never justified.  EVER.  So if you feel the need to take out your frustrations on the cast/crew stop what you are doing then DON’T.

Sorry in advance if you’re on mobile cuz this is a long one under the read more.

Why I was able to enjoy it:

Three major things I always keep in mind going into a new season:

1.  Don’t watch it FOR the ship, enjoy the show for what it is.  I think the primary thing that has allowed me to enjoy each season is I try to watch it without shipping goggles.  At the end of the day, shipping is fun but it is for fandom and not the reason I’m watching the show, especially a show made for 7 year old boys.  

2.  I (along with most of the fandom on this website) am not the target audience for this show.  Voltron may be an abnormally good kids show, but it is still a kids show.  I have never walked into a season thinking that it is content made for me, and the things that are important to me just aren’t important enough to 7 year olds to have the time I want spent on them.  I have to be okay with that because as much as I would love to have a whole episode of Shiro really struggling with what it means to be a leader, and the weight of Adam’s sacrifice, the 7 year old this show was made for is going to be bored shitless and decide “I don’t want that Voltron toy for my birthday after all.”  So yeah, that is going to change the choices the crew makes when they create these episodes.

3.  This is a reboot.  Several different companies have BIG stakes in Voltron.  Things like LGBT rep are only going to go as far as ONE important old white man who thinks (insert your fave here) is straight.  Anybody who has followed me for more than 3 seconds knows I ship Sheith, but knowing how the entertainment industry works changed how I thought the direction of the series was going from day one.  If it was so hard for them to get even ambiguous ‘Takashi, how much do I mean to you’ when both Shiro and Adam are legally original characters, there is NO WAY the powers that be will allow them to gay up big names in the franchise like Keith or Lance.  For that reason I never expected a canon gay relationship between any of the main characters.  No Sheith, no Klance, no Pallura, no Hance.  I do believe it was important to the creators and they did they absolute best with what they had, but ultimately it was not their decision and a lot of ya’ll need to stop acting like you are performing some kind of holy service by harassing them about it.  They did their jobs as best they could and the fandom was pressuring them the whole time to make promises they didn’t know if they could keep.

For these reasons I was able to enjoy the new season for what it was: a reboot aimed toward children that I shouldn’t expect a primary romantic plot out of.  And honestly?  Thats what I got.  The only big romantic plot revolved around Lance and Allura and even that was only a handful of scenes.  I think the main problem with this fandom has always been people putting unrealistic expectations on a show that wasn’t aimed at them.  Why people chose to put all of their expectation eggs in the Voltron basket specifically is beyond me, and frankly a bit unfair to the people who made it.  But we don’t have to get into that right now.

Things that I enjoyed:

1.  Hunk is best boy.  I loved his and Lance's friendship shining through and when he turned into team mom.  Some highlight include:  “It’s happening tonight, young man!” “I’m sorry I yelled at you.  I’ll make you dog treats later.”  When he made that Altean dessert because he is so sweet and knows how to bring people together.  What a star, what a diplomat, what a fine, fine man. 2.  BaBy LoToR 3.  Seeing all the paladins in their under armor.  I would feel robbed because Shiro was left out but the entire series has been Shiro fan service so I’m not even mad. 4.  VERONICA AND AXCA BONDING?  NICE.  Didn’t expect to ship them?  I do.  Nice. 5.  Everything about Day Fourty-Seven.  A filler episode I genuinely enjoyed.  MY only wish is we could have gotten Keith and Krolia in an interview together and she went out of her way to embarrass him like “while we were in the Quantum Abyss-” “Mom, why are you doing this to me?” “I have 20 years of Mothering to catch up on, young man.” 6.  Shiro feeling like a bad ass and looking cool during the arm wrestling competition.  What a good. 7.  This was really Allura’s season, wow, what a queen. 8.  Keith giving Lance a bunch of pep talks and opening up to become not only a good leader but a good friend. 9.  Keith YELLING at the Zarkon mech because he had leadership responsibility feels. 10.  I did not expect to have FEELINGS over seeing young Zarkon. 11.  Honerva’s motivations were honestly....so honest.  So realistically human, you know?  It seems so fitting that this whole thing began with a rift into another reality, and a broken family.  And it ended with a rift into another reality, and that family finally being able to be at peace.  That is the theme that has been following us form the beginning: family.  And even the final villain just wanted to fix the damage that had been done to hers.  Though I do feel like her turnaround was a little quick, I can forgive it for kinds show reasons. 12.  Allura getting to hug Alfor again. 13.  Lance getting the stamp of approval from the dad. 14.  Speaking of which, even I thought the Allurance scenes were pretty cute despite not being a huge fan of the ship. 15.  The character development that is evident.  If you compare all these characters to who they were in E1S1 they are all vastly different.  The only exception to this is Coran, though I do feel like Allura’s is mostly internal and she has a way of conducting herself that can make it difficult to perceive. 16.  I am VERY SAD about Allura dying...but you know what?  I think this ending actually suited her.  I don’t think she would be satisfied withotu making a grand reality wide sacrifice.  She restored Altea, and returned into the fabric of space-time itself with her family.  This has been being foreshadowed since Season 1 to be honest.  She is always taking risks and wanting to keep moving and bettering things.  She is perfect and we don’t deserve her and in my heart she is the goddess of reality itself. 17.  The scene where the lions all came to life and flew away, and then that lovely art of them going into the rift.  I really think they went back to Allura, and the next time the Universe needs Voltron, it will be her spirit leading the way.  And honestly?  I don’t think she would want it any other way. 18.  The MFE Pilots grew on me... 19.  MMMMMBIG ROBOT PRETTY 20.  We got Shiro and the rest of the paladins piloting all together again. 21.  ALMOST Galra Emperor Keith.

The things I didn’t think were great:

1.  What the fuck happened to Ezor’s voice?  She only said one word and I thought she was dying? 2.  Keith and Shiro like...didn’t even talk.  And even without shipping goggles that just seems wrong to me.  Their bond has been one of the points the story has turned on.  We got all the build up but none of the payoff.  No shoulder touches, no ‘I’m proud of you, Keith’, none of the usual friendship or dynamic they usually have with each other.  It felt kind of empty honestly :(  And whats more is...Keith has been sacrificing and fighting and loving Shiro for 7 seasons now, and Shiro never got to repay him.  Like he wasn’t in his hospital room when he woke up and nobody can fucking tell me when Shiro said “spend time with the people you love” Keith wouldn’t be spending time with Shiro.  It just....feels so dissatisfying to see one of the major emotional bonds in the show not even be acknowledged in the end.  It makes everything Keith worked for feel...not...there.  Like what did all that mean in the end?  As many times as it takes but he gives and gives and gives and the only one who returns what he gives is Krolia.  It used to be Shiro returned it too, but now...  Even without it being romantic, their relationship was done a dirty.  I didn’t need canon Sheith I just needed some kind of acknowledgement that all the suffering they endured was worth it.  I wanted to see them happy. 3.  Despite what I said above I am sad Allura is gone. 4.  Shiro was hardly in the season at all actually :((((((((((((((((((( 5.  Yeah, as cute as the scenes were I’ve never felt Allura and Lance have a chemistry that makes their relationship sit well with me.  But I guess it was necessary to show how Lance has matured as a person.  I always thought they have the POTENTIAL for chemistry but it’s always fallen short for me.  Allura just takes her life too seriously and her walls never actually came down enough for me to see a connection there. 6.  James and Keith never like...talked?  I would have liked for them to have had a reconciliation like Keith and Lance did. 7.  Lack of Krolia. 8.  Something was off about Kolivan’s voice 9.  TBH, I feel like The real fulfillment for Keith’s arc would have been his teammates encouraging and lifting him up as well.  Display his emotional availability which was completely closed off at the start.  I feel like they may have just dropped the ball on a couple of character’s arc resolution but...eh.  You gotta pick and choose what to focus on when you have an ensemble cast, and 7 year olds just aren’t always interested in that. 10.  Woulda been nice to get a bit more detail on the nature of the rift creatures and some more clarity for a through line from the beginning thousands of Years ago to now.  Along with that exactly what kind of entity IS Voltron itself?  A lot of seeds planted that made a half attempt at being resolved but weren’t quite clear enough to create something cohesive. 11.  I can’t put my finger on why but overall it just feels...Incomplete.  Like there is still a pit in my stomach that doesn’t feel satisfied by the ending.  I’m not sure how much of that is the season itself, and how much is I’ve been involved in this show for nearly 2 years and it’s hard to let go, especially on something that doesn’t quite feel like going out with a bang.

Highly unpopular opinion in my neck of the woods:

That wedding at the end?  I’m happy about it.  Do I think its bad writing to marry off one of your main five to a rando we don’t even know the name of?  Yes.  Am I annoyed that the fandom was SO awful and so accusatory toward the showrunners they felt the need to shoehorn in a last minute wedding because they honestly felt bad when the truth is this has always been a glorified ship war?  MEGA YES.  They shouldn’t have felt like they had to make this bad writing decision on the behalf of fans who have treated them and their efforts like shit.  Shame on the people who treated them this way.  They tried so FUCKING hard to give us something and ya’ll threw it away and called them evil.  I get how you feel but damn why don’t YOU try to make social change happen in the entertainment industry and see how well your LGBT paradise vision goes over when there are dozens of other people with a say.  (I could go on about how poorly that was handled on both ends, but that is another point altogether.)

More than anything, I’m happy that some 7 year old kid who LOVES the badass Captain Takashi Shirogane is going to see him get married on screen and kiss a MAN.  Like holy shit, that is HUGE.  Do I think it could have been written better?  Absolutely.  But This show wasn’t made for me it was made for the 7 year kid out there is going to think “Shiro kissed a boy, maybe I’m not weird for wanting to kiss boys” and THAT is what Representation in children’s media is all about.  I’m going to celebrate this and everything else related to Shiro’s LGBT status because what matters to me way more than ships or satisfying romantic arcs is maybe when my little nephew sees his favorite character is gay he will be a little more open and comfortable when I bring my girlfriend to family dinner.

I think it would do the fandom (especially the Sheith shippers) some good to step back, take off their shipping goggles, and recognize this for the stride in Children’s media that it is. That being said I’m gonna be reading and writing the fix-it fics along with the rest of you, because fandom and how I enjoy the show can be whatever I want.

The conclusion and why I still love Voltron:

You know what?  Yes I felt a little let down by the writing, but Voltron is one of the first fandoms I’ve been so involved in and I have had such wonderful experiences while enjoying this show.  I’m never going to let some dissatisfaction ruin this for me.  The nice thing about fandom, is I can enjoy my version of the show however I want it, and it doesn’t have to effect how I feel about canon at all.  And when I take off my fandom goggles, this season was actually pretty enjoyable.

I encourage anybody who has enjoyed the show up to this point to put your bitterness aside and do what you’ve been doing from the start.  Create some content, consume some content, ship what you want, and don’t you dare let anybody ruin this for you.  You have good memories with this show, keep them good and move froward.

Peace out my dudes, I’m gonna be hanging out in Sheith hell for at least another 6 months.

It was an honor flying with you all.

[breakingarrows]

Twin Peaks Season 1 & 2 Storylines Ranked

1. Who killed Laura Palmer?

Cooper, the red room, the man from another place, Mike, Bob, the Giant, this IS Twin Peaks. While it ended prematurely this is a strong string of episodes. Cooper is the heart of this mystery as the one trying to solve it and he is such an endearing character even if he works for the FBI. Since Cooper is the heart of the show once his most engaging storyline is resolved there is just nothing to do until later on and even then it never recaptures the strength of the beginning.

2. The Black Lodge mystery

Windom Earle starts to save the second season with his chess game and offbeat villainy. His grooming of Leo Johnson is meant to establish him as more threatening than Leo, who was always a ticking time bomb of fear before, but it is more a buddy comedy where one continually abuses the other. Earle also brings us to the Black Lodge mystery/finale that I have to thank him for as mid-late Season 2 is ROUGH and the finale’s final half hour is complete terror.

3. Andy’s ineptness

Andy is a comedic relief character who is the butt of the joke in most all the scenes he is in. Despite this he is still sweet and endearing and the turnaround from being a joke to being the officer who saves Harry during the big arrest is great. I wish they had kept that up instead of reverting back to a joke for the rest of the season.

4. Audrey’s investigation

Audrey is great and her relationship with Cooper is also great. She is a fantastic femme fatale who gets in over her head at One Eyed Jacks and her father nearly forces himself on her, which, yikes! I love her theme so much.

5. Albert and Truman butting heads

Albert’s dialogue is great and the reveal/turn of him showing his love is great

6. Leo Johnson/Shelly/Bobby

Leo is terrifying, Shelly is dumb, Bobby is a dick but that scene with his father is really touching

7. Benjamin/Catherine/Josie

Josie sucks but Benjamin and Catherine being lovers but also trying to trick each other is a lot of fun and is a long thread

8. Nadine/Big Ed/Norma

Big Ed and Norma need to shit or get off the pot, Nadine is great and her reversion to senior high is ridiculous but I like it

9. Benjamin’s Civil War

This is just a weird time filler but I loved it.

10. Donna/Maddy/James

James seems incapable of staying still but Donna and Maddy make up for it, even if it comes at the cost of Maddy’s life at the hands of Bob. Their mini-investigation is typical teen sleuthing.

11. Eckhardts puzzle box

This is mostly successful due to Jack Nance finally having something to do besides guest appearances, and the final explosion. I can still hear Nance pronouncing “percolator.”

12. Dwayne/Dougie/Lana Milford

The sibling rivalry is fun, the brother’s mourning effective, and Lana’s affect on men pretty funny when Lucy gets to react to it

13. Jacques Renault revenge

Renault is imposing enough to keep this interesting but there isn’t much else going on. Renault is supposed to care about his brother’s death but it is never sold to me.

14. Blackie/Benjamin/Renault

Blackie is underutilized but the antagonistic forces between the three of them over One Eyed Jacks is pretty good even if it is fairly short.

15. Audrey/John

Audrey is great but this romance is so-so.

16. Hank/Norma/Ed

Norma shoulda dumped Hank awhile ago and Ed gets knocked out like a dupe. I like seeing Norma and Ed together, and Hank get knocked on his ass by that asian dude and then Nadine is great.

17. Andy/Lucy/Dick

Dick was fine when he was just a potential father to Lucy’s kid but then it became a weird competition/partnership and the comedy never landed.

18. Save the weasel

What a time waste.

19. Ms. Twin Peaks

Another time waster, at least Earle shows up to save the ending.

20. Will or Ben the father of Donna

Why?

21. James framed

I’m glad James left.

22. Packard/Eckhardt/Josie

Josie sucks and this doesn’t even last that long, Eckhardt is some old white guy who leads a Hong Kong gang? Packard is alive out of nowhere, Josie just wimpers about the place. What the hell happened to the Josie during the confrontation with Benjamin where she showed she wasn’t just an entirely a wimp?

23. Harry/Josie

Josie is just sooooo bad all she does is wimper and moan and say she can’t tell you that she murdered a few guys in the past. How the hell did she end up killing anyway she can barely handle breathing. Truman is fine.

[thecollegefootballguy]

2020 ACC Coaching Power Rankings

Hello folks, it’s time to bust out the power rankings once again. I’ll be rating coaches against their peers conference by conference, weighing success both in the short and long term. I’ve adjusted my metrics a bit since last time so there might be more movement here than usual.

Let’s see where each man stands.

Check out last year’s rankings here.

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The ACC is in a strange place as a Power conference. The league boasts Clemson, one of the best teams in the country for the past 5 years, but on balance they’re still the weakest league in the P5 because the other 13 programs aren’t that impressive.

There was a bit of turnover since last year. Willie Taggart (last year’s #13 coach) didn’t last the season after the boosters revolted following another loss to Miami. Steve Addazio (#12) was canned for going 6-5 against teams that aren’t Clemson every year.

I’m not convinced that the two men stepping into the shoes of the dudes we lost are better coaches, but time will tell.

And since he has to go somewhere, I have been putting Brian Kelly in the ACC rankings because I don’t do rankings for the Independent coaches. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

-

15. Jeff Hafley

Record Overall: N/A

Movement: N/A

Newbies start at the bottom. Hafley was Ohio State’s secondaries coach and co-DC last season, so hopefully he can get the ball rolling at Chestnut Hill.

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14. Geoff Collins

Record at Georgia Tech: 3-9 Overall Record: 18-19

Movement: Same

Geoff Collins had to completely overhaul Georgia Tech’s offense in 2019, and the Yellow Jackets played like it. GA Tech was the worst team in the Coastal last year and the rebuild may take another season to truly show signs of life.

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13. Manny Diaz

Record at Miami: 6-7

Movement: Up 2 spots

Manny Diaz’s promotion (with a zig zag in the middle) was supposed to continue the momentum established under Mark Richt. Unfortunately Year 1 didn’t quite go that way. Miami showed promise in wins over division champ Virginia, rival FSU, and a surging Louisville, but were far too inconsistent. An embarrassing loss to Georgia Tech and a three game skid to end the year against FIU, bowl-missing Duke, and Louisiana Tech ended things on a sour note. Diaz moves up the list mostly just because the Hurricanes didn’t go 3-9 like the Jackets.

-

12. Pat Narduzzi

Record at Pittsburgh: 36-29 Division Championships: 1 (2018)

Movement: Down 3 spots

Pat Narduzzi gets busted down the list through no fault of his own. Pittsburgh was again a solid Coastal squad, going 8-5 last year with a giant-killing win over UCF. Narduzzi just got leapfrogged by a couple guys who had better years. The Panthers remain a contender, but rarely the best team in a weak division. You gotta do better than that to move up.

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11. Mike Norvell

Overall Record: 38-15

Movement: N/A

Mike Norvell begins his tenure in the ACC as the 11th best coach in the conference (a higher place than Taggert managed in his two seasons in the list). Norvell spent 4 years at traditionally terrible Memphis and won three straight division titles before leaving for Tallahassee. The Tigers were the hottest G5 in the country last year, going 12-1 and winning the American en route to the Cotton Bowl. Norvell is the second straight head coach to make it out of the Liberty Bowl to the Atlantic Coast, following predecessor Jusin Fuente. He will have his work cut out for him, and a short leash if Taggart’s firing has proven anything. Godspeed.

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10. Dino Babers

Record at Syracuse: 23-26 Overall Record: 60-42

Movement: Down 2 spots

After Syracuse’s breakout 2018 season, which saw the Orange win 10 games for the first time since 2001, they fell back to earth. Cuse went a punchless 5-7. It’s hard to build a winning program in the Carrier Dome and Syracuse will have to come back stronger for Babers to move up the list.

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9. Justin Fuente

Record at Virginia Tech: 33-20 Overall Record: 59-43 Division Championships: 1 (2016)

Movement: Down 2 spots

The honeymoon really seems to be over in Blacksburg. Fans are grumbling about Virginia Tech’s inability to win the division against mostly mediocre competition. The Hokies could have done so much more this year if they had just taken care of business. They lost by a touchdown to BC, suffered an inexplicable blowout loss at home to Duke, and only fell to Notre Dame by 1 point on the road. Oh yeah, and they lost the Commonwealth Cup to archrival Virginia for the first time since 2003, losing the division in the process. Winning seasons aren’t always this dispiriting, but 2016 is starting to feel a long way off, especially with Bud Foster’s retirement.

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8. Dave Doeren

Record at Syracuse: 47-42 Overall Record: 70-46

Movement: Down 3 spots

After fielding some of the best non-Clemon teams in the conference for the past few seasons, NC State really collapsed in 2019. The Wolfpack managed only 1 conference win against near-equally bad Syracuse before losing their final six games. I’m genuinely curious what happens in Raleigh from here.

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7. David Cutcliffe

Record at Duke: 72-79 Overall Record: 116-108 Division Championships: 1 (2013)

Movement: Down 3 spots

I really hate to do this, Cutcliffe is one of my favorite coaches, but it’s hard to stay in the top 5 with a losing record. The Blue Devils could have easily gone bowling if they had won just one game against Pitt, UNC, or Wake teams that weren’t that much better than them, or if they hadn’t gotten wrecked by a bad Syracuse squad, or if they hadn’t scheduled Alabama in Week 1. Tough luck.

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6. Bronco Mendenhall

Record at Virginia: 25-27 Overall Record: 124-70 Division Championships: 1 (2019)

Movement: Up 4 spots

It paid off. Bronco Mendenhall just turned in the finest season at Virginia since Al Groh’s 2007 squad at the very least, and many fans would push that year back much further. The Cavaliers claimed their first ever Coastal title, beat Virginia Tech for the first time since 2003, and played in the Orange Bowl for the first time in program history. Their #25 finish in the Coaches’ Poll was their first end of year ranking since 2004. Mendenhall has done a stellar job improving UVA from 2-10 to 6-7 to 8-5 to 9-5. I am very curious to see if they can keep the momentum up. We’re in uncharted waters in Charlottesville.

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5. Scott Satterfield

Record at Louisville: 8-5 Overall Record: 59-29

Movement: Up 6 spots

I don’t think anybody expected this. Scott Satterfield only needed one season to completely erase the stain left by Bobby Petrino’s disastrous 2-10 campaign in 2018. I think most people thought it would take years to rebuild, but things are really looking up at Louisville. The Cardinals are in excellent position to repeat as the 2nd place team in the Atlantic after Clemson and they can start to aim for NY6 bowls again if they follow anything close to Satterfield’s trajectory at Appalachian State.

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4. Dave Clawson

Record at Wake Forest: 36-40 Overall Record: 126-119 Division Championships: 1 (2013)

Movement: Up 2 spots

Clawson has done it again. For the fourth straight season, the smallest school sponsoring Power 5 football has gone bowling. Wake Forest has been punching above their weight class for several years now, and it’s all thanks to Clawson’s turnaround effort. They still haven’t broken through to the top strata of the conference, and that may never happen, but as long as they play like this Clawson has his place in the top five.

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3. Mack Brown

Record at North Carolina: 76-52-1 Record Overall: 251-128-1 National Championships: 1 (2005)*

*with Texas

Movement: Same

Something is brewing in Chapel Hill. Mack Brown is ahead of schedule at North Carolina, delivering winning football in his first season back with the Tar Heels. UNC went 7-6 after successive awful performances at the end of the Larry Fedora era. Wins over regional rivals South Carolina, Duke, and NC State were big morale boosts to the program, and they nearly knocked Wake off. There’s still plenty of room to improve, but for now let’s enjoy the having one of the most colorful coaches in the game back in football.

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2. Brian Kelly

Record at Notre Dame: 92-37 Overall Record: 263-94-2

Movement: Same

It was a very Notre Dame season. The Irish couldn’t quite hang with the best teams on the schedule, but brutalized pretty much everybody else to go 11-2. ND remains one of the toughest teams in the country and as long as Kelly is there they’re a great bet to win at least 10 games a year and make the Playoff every now and again.

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1. Dabo Swinney

Record at Clemson: 130-31 Division Championships: 8 (2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019) Conference Championships: 6 (2011, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019) National Championships: 2 (2016, 2018)

Movement: Same

Dabo Swinney has been lapping the competition. Clemson is by far the best team in the ACC, especially when you take Notre Dame out of the conversation the way we really should. For the fifth year in a row, the Tigers were a Playoff team, and made their fourth national championship game in that span. Sure, the loss to LSU hurts, but it’s not often you play the best college football offense of all time. Clemson will be right back in the mix when football starts up again whenever that may be and it’s all thanks to Dabo. He’s one of the best coaches in the nation without a doubt.

[junker-town]

TITLELESS: 16 NBA championship contenders who weren’t good enough

The cold, hard reality of the NBA Playoffs is that only one team can be champion. These 16 teams weren’t quite good enough.

The cold, hard reality of the NBA Playoffs is that only one team can be champion. That means that countless great and memorable teams have suffered the unfortunate fate of running into an opponent that’s just a bit better. Meet the 16 teams of the Not Good Enough Division.

APRIL 13: 16 teams that flamed out early in the playoffs APRIL 14: 16 “Overachievers” COMING THURSDAY: 16 teams who were robbed or had their era cut short

16. 1996-97 Atlanta Hawks

ERA: Dikembe’s Hawks

RECORD: 56-26

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +5.4

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in second round to Chicago Bulls (4-1)

KEY STAR(S): Dikembe Mutombo

COACH: Lenny Wilkins

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Mookie Blaylock, Steve Smith, Christian Laettner, Tyrone Corbin, Alan Henderson, Eldridge Recasner, Henry James, Jon Barry

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: None

Once upon a time, the Atlanta Hawks were a free-agent destination. At least they were for Dikembe Mutombo, a young, shot-blocking center who wore out his welcome in Denver. Mutombo seemed headed to Phoenix in a three-team sign-and-trade that would’ve sent Charles Barkley to Houston, but the deal fell apart when Mutombo asked the Suns for more money. Detroit initially jumped to the front of the line, but Atlanta ended up winning the war with a seven-year, $70 million contract offer.

The money was the biggest factor in Mutombo’s decision, but Atlanta also won Mutombo over by promising a bigger offensive role and rewarding close friend Steve Smith with a fat new contract of his own. “I’m much happier, but poorer,” team president Stan Kasten ominously said after retaining Smith. “He was really hard on us, that’s all I’m going to say.”

Atlanta got better the next season, improving by 10 wins and even taking a game off the mighty Bulls in the second round. That was the high-water mark of this era, though. Chicago won that series in five, and the Hawks slowly faded after a fast start to the 1997-98 season.

15. 1984-85 Denver Nuggets

ERA: Doug Moe’s run-and-gun fun bunch

RECORD: 52-30

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +2.4

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in West Finals to Los Angeles Lakers (4-1)

KEY STAR(S): Alex English

COACH: Doug Moe

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Fat Lever, Calvin Natt, T.R. Dunn, Wayne Cooper, Dan Issel, Bill Hanzlik, Elston Turner, Mike Evans

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1987-88

The Denver Nuggets of the 1980s were the prototype for the Seven Seconds Or Less Suns and other up-tempo marvels of the modern era. In many ways, coach Doug Moe was a precursor to Mike D’Antoni. He created a revolutionary whiplash pass-and-move style of play and then left the details for the players to figure out. While other coaches diagrammed intricate set plays and poured over what passed for game film those days, Moe often cancelled practice and never really studied his opponents.

The Nuggets lit up the scoreboard because nobody could get a read on them, but also gave up a ton of points and thus weren’t taken seriously. Not that it bothered Moe too much. This quote from a 1988 Sports Illustrated profile sounds a lot like something D’Antoni would shout to the rooftops years later:

”Most of my career, we’ve been first in offense and last in defense,” Moe says. “But what people don’t realize is that total scores have nothing to do with defense or offense, just the pace of the game. It’s the dumbest statistic ever, totally wacko, and yet everyone uses the total scores as an indication of the kind of defense you play. I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but as long as people go by that stat, I know there’s someone out there dumber than I am.”

Adjusting raw stats to account for pace … what a concept!

The 1984-85 team was Moe’s best of the bunch, though it also was the one that looked most traditional. Before the season, Denver traded Kiki Vandeweghe, a 29-point-per-game scorer who couldn’t guard a chair, to Portland for a king’s ransom that included big man Calvin Natt, point guard Fat Lever, shot-blocking center Wayne Cooper, and multiple draft picks. All three thrived while rounding out the roster around star Alex English.

Denver reached the conference finals and had a real shot to beat the mighty Los Angeles Lakers. They blew LA off the court in Game 2 to tie the series, with English dropping 40 on a stunned Forum crowd.

After losing Game 3 at home, Denver came out hot in Game 4, with English scoring 26 first-half points. Disaster struck in the second half when English re-aggravated a thumb injury that kept him out the rest of the series. Denver rallied from eight down in the fourth quarter without English, but lost Game 4 when the Lakers got seven zillion offensive rebounds before a game-winning James Worthy putback with 20 seconds left.

“That has to rank with one of the most courageous performances I’ve ever seen,” said Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, never a man to resort to hyperbole, in a TV interview.

Without English, Denver had no chance in Game 5. Too bad. That was a fun team.

14. 1982-83 San Antonio Spurs

ERA: The Iceman

RECORD: 53-29

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +3.6

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in West Finals to Los Angeles Lakers (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): George Gervin

COACH: Stan Albeck

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Artis Gilmore, Mike Mitchell, Gene Banks, Johnny Moore, Mike Dunleavy, Bill Willoughby

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1978-79

George Gervin, the skinny, slick wing who brought the finger roll into our lives, had two real chances to win a title.

The first was in 1979. Led by Gervin and high-scoring running mate Larry Kenon, the high-octane, loosey-goosey Spurs ran circles around the aging Washington Bullets to take a 3-1 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals. (Why were the Spurs in the East then? :shruggie:) They blew the next two games, but zipped ahead in Game 7 on the road, with Gervin lighting up the scoreboard for 34 points in three quarter. They led by 10 in the fourth and six with two minutes left, but fell apart down the stretch. Gervin didn’t score or even get a shot late, and was bullied inside by Greg Ballard on the other end. Meanwhile, Washington’s Bobby Dandridge took over down the stretch and eventually won the game with a baseline turnaround over three Spurs.

Gervin’s second real chance came in 1982-83, with a team that barely resembled the one that was forged in the wide-open ABA. The Spurs replaced coach Doug Moe with Stan Albeck, who believed San Antonio needed to slow the game down and build a smash-mouth team exclusively around Gervin. Kenon made way for Mike Mitchell, a former all-star in Cleveland who rediscovered his game with the Spurs. After the Lakers swept them in 1982, San Antonio made a bold move for Artis Gilmore, a big-name center to match up with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. San Antonio won four of five against LA in the regular season, but a pissed-off Abdul-Jabbar raised his game to another level and destroyed Gilmore in LA’s six-game West Finals victory.

Which to choose? The 1979 team got closer, but the 1983 team had more top-end talent and was more equipped to succeed in the playoffs. They just happened to run into a buzzsaw in Abdul-Jabbar and the Lakers.

13. 1971-72 Chicago Bulls

ERA: Dick Motta’s Bulls

RECORD: 57-25

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +9.3

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in second round to Los Angeles Lakers (4-0)

KEY STAR(S): Bob Love

COACH: Dick Motta

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Chet Walker, Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier, Bob Weiss, Tom Boerwinkle, Clifford Ray

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1970-71, 1972-73, 1973-74, 1974-75

The Bulls were to the 70s what the Bucks were to the 1980s: a well-rounded ensemble cast that always put itself in the mix, was one piece short of taking down the best teams of their era.

In Chicago’s case, that piece was a center. Jerry Sloan and Norm Van Lier were pit bull defensive guards, and the combination of Chet Walker and Bob Love were nearly unstoppable at the forward spots. But Chicago kept getting beat by the great big men of their era, losing three times to Wilt Chamberlain’s Lakers and once to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Bucks. Tom Boerwinkle and Clifford Ray got more out of their talent than they should have, but they were dramatically overmatched against the best of their era.

Chicago came closer to the Finals in 1971, 1973, and 1975, when they lost in the seventh game of the conference finals. The 1972-73 team actually held a seven-point lead over the Lakers with less than three minutes left of Game 7 before fumbling it away. But the 1971-72 club had the best point differential of the bunch and destroyed everyone not named Los Angeles or Milwaukee. Unfortunately, they had to face the 69-win Lakers in the playoffs, which ended in a sweep.

12. 2008-09 Denver Nuggets

ERA: Melo’s Nuggets

RECORD: 54-28

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +3.4

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in West Finals to Los Angeles Lakers (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): Carmelo Anthony

COACH: George Karl

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Chauncey Billups, Nene, Kenyon Martin, J.R. Smith, Anthony Carter, Linas Kleiza, Chris Andersen, Dahntay Jones

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: None

The early-season acquisition of Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson turned these undisciplined Nuggets into a tough unit that actually played up to expectations. Billups gave George Karl much-needed leadership and enabled Carmelo Anthony to focus on what he did best: score. If only they could complete an inbounds pass in the closing seconds of tight West Finals games against the Lakers. My God.

How hard could it be?

11. 1996-97 Houston Rockets

ERA: The old “Superteam”

RECORD: 57-25

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +4.5

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in West Finals to Utah Jazz (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler

COACH: Rudy Tomjanovich

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Mario Elie, Matt Maloney, Kevin Willis, Eddie Johnson, Sedale Threatt, Brent Price

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: None

This was the original Superteam, at least in the inorganic, player-empowered way we now associate with the term.

Following a rough year in Phoenix, Charles Barkley threatened to retire if the Suns didn’t trade him to a contender. Houston obliged, giving up a package centered around Sam Cassell and Robert Horry, two key members of their back-to-back title teams in 1994 and 1995. “I’m excited because I called the shots,” Barkley said when the trade was reported. “When push comes to shove, I think you have to stand up to the system.” These kinds of trades are common now, but they weren’t back then.

The move left the Rockets as an old, shallow team, with Barkley joining fellow graybeards Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. Houston patched together enough of a supporting cast to reach the conference finals, but fell to a John Stockton buzzer beater in Game 6.

They then succumbed to injury the next couple seasons, with the bottom falling out after an ill-fated deal for Scottie Pippen during the lockout season.

If you ask Horry, the deal for Barkley was the moment the Rockets’ dynasty died. From a 2015 Huffington Post interview:

“It’s one of the things that me and Sam Cassell talk about all the time. If they would have made the changes and bring in Kevin Willis and Eddie Johnson to that team adding to me and Sam, that’s all we needed. Now they bring in Barkley, a guy who doesn’t like to practice and a guy that doesn’t work hard — it’s documented by Jordan. Now you would’ve added us to that mix with two vets; we would have had a great team. But, no, they think, ‘Oh, we’re going to bring in Charles,’ and, hell, you just realize Charles didn’t win anything in Phoenix — he didn’t win in Philly. And sometimes great players don’t make a great team better.”

Horry’s right that Barkley’s fit was awkward, but he’s dramatically overrating a pre-trade Rockets team that was already showing its age after the Sonics swept them out of the 1996 playoffs. Were the 72-win Bulls really gonna be scared of that Rockets team, plus two 34+-year-old aging vets? At least adding Barkley gave the Rockets a chance.

10. 1975-76 Denver Nuggets

ERA: David Thompson’s Nuggets

RECORD: 60-24

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +6

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in ABA Finals to New Jersey Nets (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): David Thompson

COACH: Larry Brown

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Dan Issel, Bobby Jones, Ralph Simpson, Chuck Williams, Byron Beck, Gus Gerard, Claude Terry, Jim Bradley

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1974-75, 1976-77, 1977-78

The lone ABA representative on this list might have been disrespected in the rankings. As the ABA fell apart around them, the Nuggets turned into a powerhouse. In 1974-75, young coach Larry Brown led Denver to 65 wins before they were overwhelmed by George McGinnis’ one-man show in Indiana. That team then added David Thompson, a breathtaking rookie from NC State whose grace and high-flying aerial assaults mimicked a young Michael Jordan a decade later. (Jordan idolized Thompson, which is why he asked Thompson to present him at his Hall of Fame induction.)

But the Nuggets were again defeated by a one-man band, falling to Julius Erving and the Nets in the ABA’s last Finals series. Denver led by 22 points in the second half of Game 6 before falling apart to lose the crown.

Thompson and the Nuggets’ NBA careers were decidedly less memorable. Thompson dealt with injuries and a cocaine addiction that nearly wrecked his life. (He is thankfully sober today.) His relationship with Brown soured, with Brown chafing by Thompson’s $800,000-a-year new contract before calling it quits midway through the 1978-79 season. (Larry Brown folding early? Why I never.) The Nuggets have occasionally thrived in the NBA, but have never reached their ABA heights.

9. 1996-97 Miami Heat

ERA: Riley and Zo

RECORD: 61-21

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +5.5

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in East Finals to Chicago Bulls (4-1)

KEY STAR(S): Alonzo Mourning

COACH: Pat Riley

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Tim Hardaway, Jamal Mashburn, Dan Majerle, P.J. Brown, Voshon Leonard, Isaac Austin, Keith Askins, Kurt Thomas, John Crotty

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1997-98, 1998-99, 1999-00

Four of the five legitimate Heat teams of the ugly-but-effective Pat Riley-Alonzo Mourning era lost as favorites in the playoffs. Three of those losses were to the Knicks, while the fourth was a thorough evisceration by Baron Davis’ Charlotte Hornets. This was the fifth of those five, and they may have lost to the Knicks too if not for the league’s controversial rule about leaving the bench during a fight. You remember this, don’t you?

I remembered the fight, but I forgot the politicking by both teams thereafter. I forgot P.J. Brown saying he doesn’t believe “all that choir boy image stuff” with the Knicks. I forgot Charlie Ward claiming he was just “boxing out like I usually do on free throws” even though the Knicks were down 15 with less than two minutes remaining. I hadn’t seen Pat Riley’s firm insistence that the fight only got “out of hand” because the Knicks players left the bench. (Riley’s annunciation on “com-BAT-ants” was especially well executed.) I very much enjoyed Jeff Van Gundy’s withering sarcasm at the thought of the NBA allowing “6’11 guys picking on six-foot guys.” (Think of the children!)

But Tim Hardaway is the one who really stole the show. Look at his wink-winking to the camera while saying, “it’ll be very interesting to see what [NBA rules czar] Rod Thorn does.” It was not subtle.

It worked, though. Thorn tossed Brown for the rest of the series, but made five Knicks — Ward, Allan Houston, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and Larry Johnson — serve one-game suspensions. The first three missed Miami’s Game 6 victory at MSG, while the latter two sat out as Miami closed out the series in seven. The Heat ended up losing in five to the Bulls in the next round.

8. 2003-04 Minnesota Timberwolves

ERA: KG and Flip

RECORD: 58-24

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +5.4

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in West Finals to Los Angeles Lakers (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): Kevin Garnett

COACH: Flip Saunders

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Latrell Sprewell, Sam Cassell, Wally Szczerbiak, Ervin Johnson, Trenton Hassell, Fred Hoiberg, Michael Olowokandi, Mark Madsen

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: None

The one and only credible Timberwolves team in the Kevin Garnett era rose and fell in a flash. Dogged by first-round exits carrying a limited supporting cast, Garnett went to owner Glen Taylor and asked for more help. He did his part by signing a new contract below the max, and Taylor’s embattled general manager Kevin McHale did his by acquiring Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell. Both veterans came with high salaries and as distressed assets, having worn out their welcomes in Milwaukee and New York.

After a slow start, the team gelled beautifully, racing to the top of the Western Conference. They survived a formidable Kings team in the second round, then split the first two games with the vaunted Lakers in the conference Finals. But their Game 2 victory was tarnished by a debilitating Cassell injury, which turned out to be a torn hip that rendered him useless the rest of the series. With Cassell and backup Troy Hudson both out, Minnesota had to use third-stringer Darrick Martin, with Garnett of all people supplying additional playmaking. “I knew for a fact that if I was healthy, we would have won a championship,” Cassell said in 2014.

Minnesota lost that series in six, and then all hell broke loose. Sprewell and Cassell asked for contract extensions, but didn’t get them. (This is where Sprewell’s famous “feed my family” quote was born.) Hudson and Wally Szczerbiak, both former starters displaced by Sprewell and Cassell the previous season, wanted their jobs back. As a horrendous follow-up season came to a close, Taylor called the trades for Cassell and Sprewell “a failed experiment” and “financial-wise, a poor decision on our part.” Ten months ago, they were the missing pieces in the best Timberwolves team of all time. Now, they were a failed experiment? The about-face was remarkable.

Sprewell left in free agency and never played again, while Cassell was included along with a first-round pick in a disastrous sign-and-trade with the Clippers for the right to give Marko Jaric a six-year, $37 million contract. Two years later, the Timberwolves traded Garnett to the Celtics. Now that’s how you destroy a contender.

7. 1997-98 Indiana Pacers

ERA: Reggie!

RECORD: 59-23

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +6.1

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in East Finals to Chicago Bulls (4-3)

KEY STAR(S): Reggie Miller

COACH: Larry Bird

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Rik Smits, Mark Jackson, Dale David, Antonio Davis, Chris Mullin, Jalen Rose, Derrick McKey, Travis Best

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1993-94, 1994-95, 1998-99, 1999-00

This was the best Pacers team of the Reggie Miller era, though others may have advanced further in the playoffs (2000), suffered more disappointing defeats (1999), or produced more iconic moments (1994, 1995).

The 1997-98 club was rock solid, having replaced taskmaster coach Larry Brown with the more laid-back Larry Bird. They were deep, with young Jalen Rose emerging as a dynamic bench player to complement the veteran core of Miller, Mark Jackson, Rik Smits, Chris Mullin, and the Davises. If only they could have snagged a defensive rebound or two in that Game 7 defeat to the Bulls.

6. 1985-86 Milwaukee Bucks

ERA: Don Nelson’s Bucks

RECORD: 57-25

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +9

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in East Finals to Boston Celtics (4-0)

KEY STAR(S): Sidney Moncrief

COACH: Don Nelson

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Terry Cummings, Paul Pressey, Ricky Pierce, Alton Lister, Craig Hodges, Randy Breuer

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1980-81, 1981-82, 1982-83, 1983-84, 1984-85, 1986-87

Any of the wonderful-yet-forgotten Bucks teams from the 1980s would be a strong entry in this tournament. You could make a great case for the 1980-81, which relied on an in-prime Marques Johnson, an emerging Sidney Moncrief, and an aging-but-still-effective Bob Lanier in the middle. They won 60 games despite enduring several injuries, but fell to the 76ers in the second round by the slimmest of margins. Game 7, played in front of a sparse Philadelphia crowd, featured 19 ties, 11 lead changes, and one furious Bucks’ rally from 16 points down that fell just short.

But the 1985-86 Bucks get the nod because they did the one thing no other Bucks team could during the decade: beat the 76ers. It took a missed jumper by Julius Erving in the closing seconds of Game 7, but it happened. One point on the right side in 1986 vs. one point on the wrong side in 1981 was the difference.

Just getting past Philly took everything out of Milwaukee. Moncrief, who always seemed to have nagging health issues, was nursing a painful foot injury that kept him out of Game 6 against the 76ers. Young co-star Terry Cummings, acquired in a masterful trade with the Clippers for Johnson before the 1984-85 season, was fighting through a dislocated finger. Ricky Pierce, the Bucks’ fabulous sixth man, played through a sprained ankle. They might have been drawing dead against the fantastic 1985-86 Celtics even at full strength, but we never really got to find out.

5. 1963-64 San Francisco Warriors

ERA: Young Wilt

RECORD: 48-32

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +5.1

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in NBA Finals to Boston Celtics (4-1)

KEY STAR(S): Wilt Chamberlain

COACH: Alex Hannum

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Guy Rodgers, Al Attles, Wayne Hightower, Gary Phillips, Nate Thurmond

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1959-60, 1961-62

Fair or not, Young Wilt Chamberlain had a reputation for being a selfish coach-killer that only cared about his own stats. That got taken to its logical extreme in 1961-62, when Chamberlain averaged 50 points a game for a Philadelphia Warriors team that catered to his every move.

After those Warriors fell narrowly to Bill Russell’s Celtics in the East Finals, they moved across the country to San Francisco and saw Chamberlain mope his way through a 31-49 season that alienated his new fans. “He felt like someone who bought a Rolls-Royce only to discover that the horn didn’t work,” read one Sports Illustrated article.

In came Alex Hannum, a no-nonsense, 6’7 former championship coach who was there to stand up to Chamberlain. The two men got into a screaming match early in the season, but Chamberlain responded by playing more team ball and empowering the rest of the Warriors players. They lost in five games to Boston in the Finals, but the Hannum-Chamberlain partnership seemed poised for the long haul.

Instead, the Warriors fell apart the next season. Chamberlain was nowhere near himself after a preseason bout with pancreatitis, and eccentric new owner Frankie Mieuli traded him to the 76ers to avoid paying out a massive salary. Hannum left the next season and later reunited with Chamberlain to win the 1967 title as 76ers coach.

4. 1961-62 Los Angeles Lakers

ERA: Elgin and Mr. Clutch

RECORD: 54-26

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +2.2

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in NBA Finals to Boston Celtics (4-3)

KEY STAR(S): Elgin Baylor, Jerry West

COACH: Fred Schaus

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Dick Barnett, Frank Selvy, Rudy LaRusso, Jim Krebs, Hod Rod Hundley, Ray Felix, Tom Hawkins

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1962-63, 1964-65, 1965-66, 1967-68

It’s a real shame Elgin Baylor never won a championship. His Lakers always ran into the same brick wall that was Bill Russell’s Celtics, and always seemed to fall short in the same way. He and Jerry West were always spectacular, but the Celtics always had more depth and cohesion.

Baylor came closest in 1962, and damn did he come close amid remarkable circumstances. He was called up to the Army Reserve during the season — because he was stationed in Washington, he could only travel back to play in weekend Lakers games. His service was finished by the time the playoffs rolled around, making LA a much more dangerous team than its record indicated.

Led by Baylor and West, the Lakers split the first three games and 47:55 with the Celtics. With five seconds left in Game 7, the Lakers inbounded the ball to Hot Rod Hundley. Legendary Celtics point guard Bob Cousy inexplicably gazed at the ball, leaving Frank Selvy wiiiide open from 12 feet away. But Selvy missed, and Boston eventually survived in overtime when Cousy dribbled out the clock.

Seriously, what was Cousy doing???

Dogged by injuries, Baylor was never quite the same player thereafter. He retired early in the 1971-72 season as a shell of his former self. Months later, those Lakers won the title.

3. 1992-93 Phoenix Suns

ERA: Barkley’s Suns

RECORD: 62-20

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +6.7

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in NBA Finals to Chicago Bulls (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): Charles Barkley

COACH: Paul Westphal

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Kevin Johnson, Dan Majerle, Richard Dumas, Tom Chambers, Danny Ainge, Mark West, Oliver Miller, Frank Johnson

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 1993-94, 1994-95

These Suns are remembered for their star power, high-octane offense, and memorable duel with the Bulls in the 1993 Finals. They swung a huge trade for Charles Barkley and ran away with the West. Barkley won MVP, scowling and shouting his message from the rooftops whenever he could find a microphone. The Barkley-Michael Jordan Finals duel occurred at arguably the peak of NBA interest in this country.

As fun as they were, though, they’ve become a bit overrated over the years. Their point differential was about the same as the previous two Suns teams without Barkley, and their defense was porous for a title favorite. Barkley and holdover Kevin Johnson co-exited, but never developed great on-court chemistry thanks in part to Johnson’s injuries. They lost the first two games of their first-round series against a dogshit Lakers team before rallying to win in five. Their West Finals victory over Seattle could’ve gone either way. Key reserve Cedric Ceballos missed the tail end of their playoff run.

I’m just saying they might be over-ranked.

2. 2017-18 Houston Rockets

ERA: James Harden’s Moreyball

RECORD: 65-17

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +8.5

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in West Finals to Golden State Warriors (4-3)

KEY STAR(S): James Harden, Chris Paul (injured Games 6-7)

COACH: Mike D’Antoni

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Trevor Ariza, Eric Gordon, Clint Capela, P.J. Tucker, Ryan Anderson, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Gerald Green, Nene

OTHER SEASONS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 2014-15, 2016-17, 2018-19

Fortified by the offseason acquisition of Chris Paul, the Rockets dominated the regular season behind a switch-everything defense and a deadly isolation attack spearheaded by James Harden.

Everything they did was to match up against the Warriors, a team nobody else dared to challenge. They took a 3-2 lead in their conference finals series, but lost Paul due to injury late in Game 5. Somehow, they led both Games 6 and 7 by double-digits at halftime. But Golden State flipped the switch and the Rockets faded, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 missed threes at a time.

1. 1996-97 Utah Jazz

ERA: Stockton and The Mailman

RECORD: 64-18

POINT DIFFERENTIAL: +8.8

PLAYOFF RESULT: Lost in NBA Finals to Chicago Bulls (4-2)

KEY STAR(S): Karl Malone, John Stockton

COACH: Jerry Sloan

OTHER KEY PLAYERS: Jeff Hornacek, Byron Russell, Greg Ostertag, Antoine Carr, Chris Morris, Shandon Anderson, Adam Keefe, Greg Foster

OTHERS CONSIDERED FROM THIS ERA: 8987-88, 1989-90, 1991-92, 1993-94, 1994-95, 1995-96, 1997-98, 1998-99

Twenty-three years later, the subhead on Jackie MacMullen’s “Inside the NBA” piece for the March 17, 1997, issue of Sports Illustrated sticks out like a sore thumb. “[Karl] Malone is playing like an MVP,” it read. “Not that anyone has noticed.”

Whether the piece changed the narrative or simply reflected something deeper beneath the surface, it had a major effect. Two months later, Malone edged out Michael Jordan in the voting to win the NBA’s preeminent regular-season prize.

The Bulls seethed, which proved to be bad news for Malone when he finally reached his first NBA Finals. As he stepped to the line in the closing seconds of a tied Game 1, Scottie Pippen whispered the now-iconic words: “The Mailman don’t deliver on Sundays.” Malone missed both, opening the door for Jordan to hit a game-winning jumper at the buzzer.

That set the stage for a Finals in which Malone played below par and the Jazz lost in six games despite often being on the doorstep of victory. Their Game 5 loss has been memorialized as Jordan’s “Flu Game” moment, and they gave up a game-winning jumper to Steve Kerr in Game 6 before throwing the ball away at the buzzer.

Too bad, because these Jazz were a dominant force. They zipped through the West playoffs, schooling the young Lakers in five and outlasting the superteam Rockets of Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and Charles Barkley in the West Finals. In any other season, they would have been champions.

[cheznieba2a2]

Spending far too long making maquettes for characters I could’ve just drawn

It’s true, I could have just drawn out my cast and been done with it in 2 days max, but, that’s boring. I’ve done enough character drawing in this project already and my hands were getting withdrawal symptoms from clay. These dudes took me way longer than I anticipated, used up far more clay than I prepared for and on one occasion, made me cry, yet I had so much pure, child-like joy making them that I really don’t care.

Here we go lads

Base Structure

cuttin wood, twistin wire, glueing wire in wood, making a skeleton

I cut up some little almost squares of wood (don’t judge me, I’m terrible with a hand saw and I really couldn’t see a big enough pay out from whipping out an electric one) and sanded the edges down so my hands wouldn’t die. I then proceeded to do one of my least favourite model making activities and twisted together a bunch of wire so I could start making some little skeletons.

I didn’t have any sketches for the crew members that weren’t Steve, only a vague idea of what style I was going for so this was terribly planned. HOWEVER, I just went for the classic one little one and one big one which spoiler worked out super well.

I drilled holes in my poorly cut bases and used some Araldite to secure those bad boys in there. I didn’t attach the arms to the rest of my skeleton yet because I had no idea where I wanted them yet and thought that waiting until the tinfoil body shape was sorted would help me out a wee bit.

I was correct! putting the tinfoil on first made figuring out the arms way easier, however, they aren’t exactly securely in there so let’s pray to the maquette gods that that won’t be an issue later on.

Super Sculpey time

Because of my loose-ish arms and incredible ability to mess something up if it’s not rock solid, I decided to shove down a relatively thin layer of clay over my tinfoil and wire friends and bake it so I could just build over solid foundations. They currently look absolutely horrifying but I’m really happy with their proportions both in themselves and to each other which I didn’t expect to happen. I’m also digging that I decided to go with interesting stances and not just a stood up and rigid kinda thing.

If whoever is marking this somehow remembers my blog posts about making the maquette for Greg during that stop mo project, you will recognise my skills for using various glassware from my poor Mother’s cupboard to help to support my chaps and hopefully save them from imminent death in the oven.

I then realised I completely forgot about all the extra bits on Steve and set to work fixing that with a power drill up the bum, through the head, even more twisted wire (still hate it) and some extra tin foil padding. Also, once I added the tail thing, I realised that his bottom half was no where near as fat as I wanted it to be, and it would have been way to much mass to do in just clay so I went ham with that foil.

This is when I cried. 

I just dropped him while working on the face and it was a moment. I refused to pick him up to assess the damage for 5 solid minutes, so all I was going on was an awful smack sound, a pile of crumbled clay and a concerned look from my Dad who happened to be in the room at the time. Thankfully, I was being dramatic and the damage wasn’t even too bad, I had him right as rain in 15 minutes and a little extra oven time.

Here he is! all fixed and honestly better than he was pre death drop.

I’m aware that the lush yellow blanket draped over a piano stool is a wee dramatic from a WIP shot, but this is when I read the email about the stop motion work experience and I needed a good shot of these fellas to send in. 

Anyway,

I’m actually so proud of this trio. Yeah non of them can stand up on their own and they are currently secretly propped up in some way, BUT, for something I did literally no planning apart from random brain waves here and there, they’re turning out wicked.

Painting

I wasn’t going to paint them, because they’re just maquettes and I had told myself that I was already spending way too much time on these chaps but I just hated the full skin tone look. It just gave me the absolute chills. Also, I’m currently thinking that I want to use actual fluffy fabric where I want these just to be fluffy and it would just look so wrong if I had a different coloured fabric over a block tone body soooooo here we are.

I kept them all on the same colour scheme and I’m actually really happy with how it turned out. I stuck some glitter onto Steves weird ball thing just because I found it in my draw like 2 days and I wanted an excuse to use it and I fully love the result. I did have concerns about their mouths looking rate weird, but with a lick of paint i’m living for it.

Getting around trying to texture clothes with clay

I did indeed end up going with my fabric idea.

I popped to my nearest wilko, found a cheap pillow that I kinda liked the texture off (it had two fabrics so I had to go for it, I love options), and cut it up like a mad man. I used good ol’ hot glue to attach it and during the process got so much white fluff everywhere that I don’t think my parents want me coming home from Norwich anymore.

Steve looks fab, but, I’m an idiot and did the fluffy fabric before some the smoother, less gets-in-your-way stuff, so I’m going to have some real fun trying to hot glue that down around this fur.

For example, this is the order I should’ve done the fabric in, but hey, I learnt and I’m now a better person.

I decided to leave sleeves and trouser legs off my little guy because not only did I like the diversity, but he was too little anyway and he would’ve become just a bundle of dead pillow.

I love how they look now, and The fur is just beautiful.

Giving them a base for no particular reason

Since they can’t really stand on their own and looks good together anyway, I decided to make just one big base that they could stand upon.

I made the smart person decision to paint around their crystal white feet with the soul sucking black before I glued them down so that I could really get those angles going for a pretty finish.

I glued them down with hot glue which worked way better than I thought it would. Originally I was just using the hot glue to temporarily hold those suckers down while I drilled and screwed nails into the underside but after realising how difficult that would be with their very very delicate limbs, I risked leaving it with just hot glue and it’s proper secure.

Shockingly, the two puppets that had both legs on the ground were the worst balance wise, and I could see their ankles cracking and bodies tilting the longer I left them to stand on their own. My mum had the fab idea of shoving some dowel under them, so I painted it black and used far too much hot glue to make sure my lads didn’t die. It actually worked really well and is way more subtle than I thought it would be.

The finished gang

Cast sheet

It’s basically the non-animated version of my turnaround. I took a bunch of screen shots, shoved them into the photoshop document lovingly provided by Jon, and made it all fit while putting my tetris skills to good use. 

Conclusion

It’s been 7 days of solid hard work, including through Christmas eve and day (can I get some points for dedication here), and they’re finally finished! Yes, I did exactly what I said I shouldn’t do and got so caught up in a minor aspect of the bigger project that I spent too much time on it, but I absolutely loved doing this. Maquette making is one of my favourite parts of this course and I do not regret a second of this. Sure they have their flaws, like two of them can’t stand without a pole on their bum and most fingers have fallen off and been glued back on, but I love them. This has to be one of my proudest achievements since Greg, so I’m so ready to take this project further.

Also, i’m rate proud of my cast sheet for the character bible.

[dantelaw21]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289

Click on the video above to watch Episode 289 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

Welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 289 to one where Hernan looks continuously shocked for some reason.

Hi, how’s it going? Hernan Is everything okay. It’s great, man. I’m feeling like shit, but here we are. All right, good, good stuff. Well, keep going here. Like I said it’s Episode 289. Today’s the 27th of May 2020. I can see we got a lot of really good questions already today. But if you haven’t yet and you got a question, please put it on the page. First come first serve. And then I’m going to get into a few announcements. We’ve got some cool stuff that happened earlier this week. And then some last-minute announcements, things that we just found out about today that I want to touch on But first, let’s say hi to the guys real quick and see how everyone’s doing so

I’ll start to my top left here Bradley. How are you doing today?

Good. I’m good. I just edited the video description in YouTube because still had some stuff from the webinar we did yesterday. So anyway, but I’m good. Things are good. I’m back from taking a week off, and it sucked cuz I went away for a week camping and ATV riding, thinking that I was going to get away and get to enjoy it and it rained the entire week, all day every day and it was awful. It was fucking miserable. So I wish I would have stayed home and worked.

Yeah, man, speaking of weird weather that so I’m in the Bay Area. So we just hit 95 the last three days, which is like 34 Celsius. It’s just like, Okay, well guess I’ll go out in the morning, go for a walk and then come hunker in here, shut the blinds and turn the air just thinking. So that’s been my life for the past couple of days. So let’s head go with the happier weather report. Marco. How are you doing?

The sun’s out again. It’s the rainy season and he’s like the sun’s out. It’s rainy season man. Look, I live in paradise. All right, I can’t help that. Make some money. Right? First of all, go get the battle. You follow the Battle Plan.

make some money. Hire someone who will help you. Train, apply, and make money. lather, rinse, repeat. And then you can go find your own Fortress of Solitude where you can just watch the world go by and you don’t give up. Push your mouth but other than the outstanding weather

How are you doing marking things are going good. Things are good here man. Things are good. Yeah, I’m still like things are opening up a little bit here. Essential businesses and all that and all this other stuff, but I’m still self-parenting. I got three kids. They got to think about it and I’m not a spring chicken so that there’s another person that I had to think about right because I can go out or like one but I have to think about my family. Yeah. And what I might bring, bring home and closer to home to make somebody.

I knew personally died of this. It’s not as if it’s totally foreign to me like I don’t know anyone who is affected by this. I like what I do know. And so having it that cloth is not any longer six degrees of separation. it’s like I know and so no, it ain’t happening and we’re gonna see how this plays out and I’ll let everybody you guys can all go and enjoy yourselves you know to do whatever the hell you want and then let me know how that turns out and then I’ll decide after that second one what it is that we’re going to do but for now we’re cool we take it easy and that’s it, man. We did we just but my personal choice, right, my personal choice to do that. It’s not as if someone is forcing me to do it. I’m choosing that this is the best way for myself and my family. Enough. All right. Well, Hernan How about you man, things are like you’re moving into wintertime right? I always get

Yeah, it’s hot summer-like wait a second I was wearing a sweatshirt what hell’s going on? Yeah, actually actually all of you guys are well Marco Marco is like, you know, he’s in a good spot 20% but all of you guys are you know getting the nice season. I’m getting the shooting season. Yeah now so now but yeah man it’s good today was a good day.

Like warm-ish. But yeah, we’re getting into winter and all of that so see how that goes, could you? Oh, Chris How about yourself? Yeah, yeah can’t complain man sun’s out the sun is shining all day. I mean it’s dark right now and the best part of all Friday the gyms opening back up and stuff so things are really good standing. Well, I’m going to circle back around Bradley, you mentioned a webinar and I wanted to touch on that because we had Brian, a mastermind member, along with Bruno, and you all listening can get to know both of them better and see what Bradley has to say to about this go high-level system. And Bradley, you want to tell real quick, I’m gonna pop the link in where people can go and check out the replay. Do you want to tell them about the webinar a little bit?

Yeah, Brian, one of our mastermind members reached out and basically said that he was using a platform, an agency automation platform that consolidates a whole bunch of different services and such all under one roof. He reached out because he thought that it would fit really, really well with the 2xyoruagency training.

Because it does a lot of the stuff that I talked about in 2xyouragency about how to automate, delegate or eliminate because this platform consolidates a lot of services that you may have separate subscriptions for and I always call it duct taping them together using Zapier or some similar application. And basically these have integrated services that do all

All of the same things that many of these external services do that we put, you know, we connect via Zapier, and it’s all under one dashboard. And so it’s a lot more seamless. And there’s a lot of really cool features inside there, like one of the primary feature that was, is used to pitch this go high-level application or platform is what’s called database reactivation, which is a very easy way or a simple way for you to get your foot in the door as an agency owner with potential marketing clients because you can. So anyway, I can’t really go into depth right now about that, but it’s a really cool platform. I signed up my own agency on the agency level account level so that I can create a first of all, I’m gonna use it for my own agency, but second of all, so I could also create a case study for how I’m using it. I’ve got some really good ideas that I’m going to be sharing in that case study that I’m gonna be putting to the test and then sharing in the case study.

As well on how I’m using it and how to generate kind of exponential revenue growth from it, as opposed to just linear. And so anyway, I think it’s bad, it’s very valuable, I would encourage you guys to go check it out, it does come with a 14-day free trial. So once you see the webinar, you know, comes with some free or some, I think it’s free, or it’s like five bucks may be to pay for some of the training that Bruno had put together, what he calls the quick start training for that. And so you can get all of that. And your first 14 days determine if it’s for you or not, but I think once you see some of the potentials of this, it would be something if any of you are trying to grow. I think you should absolutely take a good hard look at it. Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t do generally local stuff. But I check this out. And like I’ve been looking at it and I talked to Brian about all the details and like I was starting to be like maybe I could find a way to you just like no stop it. But like for anyone out there who’s dealing with especially local clients or can find the right use case

Yeah, just blew me away from the number of services and automation that’s packed into that suite of tools and how seamless that is, is pretty amazing. So definitely worth checking it out. Real quick to this one came up today. So we constantly get questions about GMB verifications, right? You know, hey, where can you guys do GMB verifications work in MGYB, when is it going to be available? I’m going to cut to the chase GMB verifications are available right now. As always, we cannot tell you how long that is going to be the case. So if you are doing lead gen if you’re needing a verification for some other reason, this would be a very good time to put your order in because not only can you order now what you couldn’t have yesterday, you can get a 15% discount today while we’ve got it opened up. Also, it comes with a 30-day guarantee. And it’s about I believe, 14 day turnaround time. So pretty quick. I’ll post all of that in the chatbox for those who are live. If you’re not just head to mgyb.co, and head to the store, you can look for GMB verifications there you can also get syndication networks, Rs drive stacks, SEO shield, link building all that sort of good stuff.

And circling back around. I wanted to touch on this real quick for those of you who are watching us for the first time, thank you very much whether you’re watching live or catching the replay on YouTube. If you want to go to the right place, head to semantic mastery comm slash HD questions every week, we asked you to limit your questions just to one. Unless you’re live, you can ask some more. You know, we get down there. We just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions. So if you ask some questions, we may not get to all of them just before Warren. And then secondly, we encourage everyone to check out the battle plan and go to battle plan dot semantic mastery. If you want to get repeated repeatable SEO results that is for you. I’m not going to read the page to you you can go over there and check it out. But it is a fantastic tool that we recently just updated them released version four a month ago.

And then Bradley touched on this too if you’re an agency owner or a consultant that you want to get more clients, yes, you want to grow your revenue. Yes. And you want to scale your team, hopefully, yes. Then if you want to do that, head over 2xyouragency.com. There’s a ton of incredible training lets you crush it, whether you’re again, being a consultant, or if you want to build a true agency, and it doesn’t matter if that’s SEO, it’s other areas of digital marketing. It’s going to help you grow and make more money. That’s the bottom line.

All right, with that said, Guys, any other quick announcements before we dive into questions?

Good. All right. Let’s do it.

All right. Grab the screen.

You guys confirm when you see. See my screen.

Would You Recommend Ordering Another Drive Stack To A New Website Section Targeting Service Keywords In Different Locations?

So it looks like BB Now that might have been from last week. It looks like it was it will start with Bobby. Bobby says Hey guys, I got some questions. The first one was would you recommend ordering another drive stack to a completely new section of a website targeting a different service keyword in different locations on a large content site that would be perfect for the location sealed, am I right? Marco?

Yeah, that’s perfect for the extension. And it’s currently available and as a coupon sweep. So that’s what the drive stack expansion.

Yeah, we’re saying, Yeah, maybe if he already has the brand it because he’s saying another, right, a completely new section of the website. So we’re talking about the same website, money site. That’s how I’m seeing. I’m seeing something different.

He has a different service keyword, and a different location on a large content what so that’s, that’s just an inner page, I think what he’s describing the top of the silo. So you would aim the expansion on the current drive stack at that inner page, you’d get much more power going and extending that initial drive stack then you would be doing a completely different drive stack, g site. Sure, gotcha. Okay.

Would You Recommend RSS Masher To Drive Traffic To A Money Site And Lead Gen Assets?

The next question was  GMB.Thanks again, I’ve not used them for lead gen assets but I have in the past I haven’t built since the updated the new version of RSS master which is even better. But to create the kind of like Kwazii PBNs and when I say PBNs, they’re not like what we would traditionally think of a treat PBN, these are real sites to generate real traffic and that’s the differentiator, right? having real sites generate real traffic. With automated content posting to them right through all the RSS feeds that you splice together and RSS masher and all the really cool shit you can do. You can take a look at the most recent webinar we did with Damon Nelson, about the most current version of RSS masher and see some of the examples of the sites that he builds are 100% honest.

Major content sites using RSS masher. And they’re freaking beautiful sites. And he’s generating affiliate income and, you know, like AdSense income. And so such using those sites because they do generate traffic, they look beautiful. But from an SEO standpoint, I looked at it as like, hey, this could be really good to generate, you know, in related content type sites that could feed traffic back to a money site or a lead gen site or whatever. So, I mean, I think it’s certainly possible to use it for that I haven’t done it myself just to be honest because it’s not the strategy that I’ve been pursuing. I’ve wanted to in fact, I even talked about it with my partners here. I would love to have some time to play with that and set up some sights but I haven’t done it yet. I think Marco. Weren’t you guys gonna try playing with that a bit. I know it probably hasn’t been done but wasn’t that on the to-do list?

It is being done. What we are currently testing it and we won’t like there is anything. I’m not personally doing it but I got my mini mastermind, which is where all the evil takes place where we can go after everything. And there’s a couple of people in there who have a license. And then one of them is using our license as I gave her our license to go and try it out. So they got together. Three of the people in my seven-person mini mastermind got together. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing information on how to make make it work in the best way possible. And then they’re going to come back and report it to me and we’re either going to make it available through MGYB as a service, or I’m not sure how we’re going to offer that but there’s definitely something in the works with that RSS masher. It’s just you guys if you go get it just be prepared because there’s a high learning curve is that simple software that you’re just going to go and plug and play

You have to be prepared to go through the training to go through the process, gathering up the feeds making everything look right. And then you know that that’s when the magic happens and I can’t wait to blast that. Now get it, give it a companion g site and drive stack, expand it, and then blast it with link building and some embeds and see what happened. I can’t wait.

Yeah, it looks good. As I said, I wish I had more time to mess with it. Because I think there’s a lot of potentials there as well. So, so maybe next Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, we can give people a preview. But again, the first ones that’ll get a preview, it will be my mini mastermind, and then the semantic mastery mastermind, the heavy hitter club, and then we’ll go public with whatever we have. It’s still a few weeks away, it takes time. That’s all

Is It Possible To Get An Iframe For A Drive Folder?

so Frank’s up. He says it is it possible to get an iframe for a drive folder tried adding a link into iframe generator and it came back saying the page was blocked from being displayed? also. Well, first of all,

The first part of that is Yeah, you can use to be able to do that. But no, I haven’t tried since the updates recently. Marco, can you? Yeah. Not through the iframe January? That’s why I tell people to code their own code. Yeah, because you can’t do it that way. You have to separate the, I can’t go through the process that you have to get the folder ID to be able to iframe it. And what you have to insert in an iframe generator is the entire URL, and you can’t do it that way.

Okay.

Publish to the web would be a file setting in the drive used to say publish to the web, it would give you an embed code for the file or for the folder, but I think that has been taken away correct recently. Uh, no. I can check that right now. I mean, go on and let me take a folder that has nothing in it. And we’ll just move on while you’re looking that up.

Do You Have Any Link Building Services In MGYB For T1 Money Site?

He says also with MGYB, do you have any link building services that could be used for tier-one money site or only g sites? Yeah, that while the SEO shield can point back to your money site, right, which includes the drive stack files and folders as well as the G site. Also, press releases could be used for tier-one money site, right where your money site tier-one money site is. It’s redundant. That’s like the Department of redundancy department. You know what I mean? So, yeah, your money site, again, press releases and the SEO shield? Those are the two things that I would recommend. Am I missing something?

No, no, no, I don’t think so. And I can’t find it. I can’t find published on the web by the way. That’s what I thought had been removed since the recent update. But it used to be able to do it that way. So hopefully that was helpful.

What MGYB Service You Should Use To Rank For A City That Is Three Hours Away From The Dealership Location?

Mohammed’s up, it’s up mom and he says, Hey, guys, a client is asking me if I can rank his Volkswagen dealership for VW related keywords in a city. Three hours away from where the dealership actually is.

Actually, how would I go about this? I know I can get a GMB from MGYB for the New City and add a new city page to the money site. What else would I do?

Well, the problem that I see with that Mohammed is it’s a dealership right? So if you’re getting a GMB for a dealership which is a storefront business, right with the customers come to the business location, and you’ve got a spammed GMB listing, that’s three hours away from where the dealership actually exists, then, how is that going to play with potential car buyers? When they’re looking to go to a dealership in their local area and they’ve come to find out it’s a spam listing and instead they’ve got to go three hours away to buy a Volkswagen. To me, I don’t think that would be advisable for the reasons I just mentioned. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question. Anybody else interprets this another way?

No, that’s the way I’m I’m reading it unless the dealer is opening up a dealership in that city in which case, you would need spam. GMB. Right. Correct. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I am not willing to drive three hours to go look at a car, like my dealer has to be closed by where I can just jump in the car. 1015 minutes, I’m there and look at the car and decide if I’m gonna buy it. Because I’ll be people. Yes. I mean, the idea behind it is correct. People are going to first look online to find a car that they liked, and they’re going to find the dealer, then they’re going to go visit the dealer to see the cart. Who’s going to drive? Did you talk that to this dealership owner, by the way, and ask him Who do you know that’s going to drive three hours to buy a car when they can buy one mic in the city? I don’t understand the thinking behind that. Not only that, but don’t you think it would piss a potential customer off if they were misled to believe that a dealership was in their local area just to come to find out that it’s three hours away? I mean, it’s not just that like if he was promoting like ranked a page organically for the city that is three hours away, and says, Hey, we sell cars. Were our dealerships over here and they’re honest about where it is. It’s very likely most people are going to drive three hours away anyways, but at least they weren’t being dishonest about it. Whereas having a GMB for a storefront business where a store doesn’t actually exist, that I think in my view would piss me off if I put driving directions and go show up at this place to find out that it’s it doesn’t exist, and then I got to drive three hours away to go where I intended. What about other car dealers dealerships? wouldn’t they be pissed if you’re faking? A GMB and I just totally am in the area. I don’t think VW corporate would be too happy with that with you faking GMB.  I don’t know how much trouble I mean, you can get into a whole lot of trouble behind that. talk to this guy. talk some sense and then

yeah, just find out what his intent is really. And maybe you already know it, Mohammed and it just wasn’t conveyed in that message.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean like I said if I was going to do anything it would be to try to just rank organically for that and just be honest about where the dealership is and why they should drive three hours away to purchase a car at that particular dealership.

SEO Shield Question

Alright, moving on uh, next question is Hello everyone recently I purchased an SEO shield and since I got some discount for link building, I also bought that so I placed the order for SEO shield and link building altogether. What I found out that instead of building the links to my properties, they pointed all the direct all directly to your money site. Okay, you can edit the URLs to build links to an M GI Bill, Why be disregarded that and build all the links to your money site? No continue can find that hard to believe okay. When I inquired from support about it, they said since you had provided the URL file, we built all the links around that. But they also said that they don’t recommend it. I’m a new user purchasing SEO shield first time and also not aware of the internal tech now technicalities excuse me of SEO SEO. So I provide all the information including the URL file because I thought it might be required to build the SEO shield since I bought the SEO, SEO, and link building. So I believe that SM support will follow the best practice since I’ve gone blindly trust SM for SEO related stuff. So my question is Why were the links built directly in the money site even when it is not recommended? No one will pay for the money to I’m not sure what he says.

Now, he says that the links can’t be removed. This website is my six months old hard work. I don’t want to degrade my website by any means. So what should I do now? Should I disavow the links pointing in the Excel sheet? Please suggest, okay, um, the first part of that. I’m not sure if you came to us cold and you don’t know anything about our methodology, then then I could understand where that confusion may have come from.

Perhaps we need to have that clearly explicitly outlined on this on the order page or the order submit Details page. In other words, if it’s not already, but

As far as what you know, we didn’t build all the links to your money site URL. If your money site URL was listed in your submitted URLs list, then some links will have been built to your money site URL. But in all of our training, we always suggest we actually won’t build links to your money site URL if we know that it’s in there. So I don’t know what to tell you on that other than and as far as disavowing Marco doesn’t ever recommend that I’ve done it in the past haven’t done it for years.

I don’t think Have you seen anything negative happen? We don’t suggest it, but I don’t know that it is going to cause any problems. Marco, what do you say about this? I say I have a really big problem with this guy. Right? Because this was sent to support at mg y v.co. And I heard from Deadia and he said, hey, look, you know what, what can we do it with this? What can we do for this person? So we’re looking to do the right thing. Here. Look, I can remove all I think I can remove all the links

But it’s gonna take a while I so we aren’t talking about it, he doesn’t even give support a chance to respond and let him know what the answers are. He comes here to a public forum to air the laundry. And I understand that. I mean, in no way Is this a recommended practice. But I mean, he submitted the URLs for us to build links to if you give us a spreadsheet, how are we to know that there’s a money site included in the spreadsheet? I mean, he’s assuming that we’re supposed to assume and look these, the logic behind this evades me because I just don’t see it, how we’re supposed to know that he’s submitting his money site from now on. And so now we know that we need to make sure that we tell people explicitly on the order form do not submit your money site URL. So thank you for that. But I don’t appreciate

This being aired on a public forum, where we’re taking care of when we’re looking to do what’s best for you and for your website. Not that anything bad has happened. Not that anything bad will happen. We don’t know yet what would happen, but it’s still in the discussion stage and he doesn’t even give it an opportunity comes publicly as Hey, you guys, I thought you were supposed to follow best practice practices and whatever else he says. And I just don’t appreciate it. Give us at least a chance to do the right thing. And then if there’s a problem, if there’s no resolution, then you come here and you speak to us publicly. I thought about writing to you by the way. Because I saw this, I saw the way he called it the ticket, come through and I know I’m supposed to stay away from customer service. But I thought about writing to him because I don’t see the logic. If he submits the URLs to build links. That’s what we’re going to build links to because the customer as always, right? So if you want links built to your money site, in spite of the fact that we don’t recommend it, and then we say, Don’t ever do it, we don’t do it. If you submit the URL, and it’s by mistake, and I’m not saying that you did it on purpose, if by mistake you included in my site, or you didn’t know, it’s going to get links built to it. Now, yeah, we are going to try to do the right thing. That’s all I can say. We were trying to do the right thing before, even after having come on a public forum, and then like hitting on my last nerve, we’re still going to help you out.

Yeah and I don’t know that it’s going to cause any problem. We just, we don’t build links, the types of links that we sell at MGB directly the money site, we always in all of our training suggest not to do that because that’s the whole reason for the SEO shield right is because and that’s why it’s named the SEO shield because it shields your money site, from all the external threats.

SEO and link building that you can do because link building to your money site can, doesn’t always but can create a problem. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have problems because that happened, it might not cause any problems at all, we just don’t recommend it, we suggest not to do it, because there’s no need to because we push all the power to the SEO shield and use the SEO shield to launder basically clean any potential negative juice through Google properties and through high authority assets, that and push relevancy essentially, eventually to the money site. So again, we don’t know that it’s gonna cause a negative impact at all, we just don’t, we don’t test it. Because we don’t do that we always recommend building them directly to the SEO shield. Again, that’s the whole point of the SEO shield. So we have learned, we have now decided or just came to the realization that that needs to be very explicit on the order form, submit page, and that makes sense and we’ll make sure that we make that change and Marco and Dadea, our link builder, are going to do what they can for you. So hopefully that will suffice.

How Do You Use Press Release To Achieve Better Rankings?

Next question, SMS insurances total newbie here, I just ordered the press release. Not sure where to start. I’m clueless on what to do, and the advice would be great. This is awesome that you asked this question because I’m actually working on a little mini-course for press releases for people that want to order and not for SEOs. But for business owners. I mean, anybody can have access to it that they want, but it’s I’m doing a little mini-course for press releases.

For MGYB, in other words, a little mini-course on trying to teach a layman right or a business owner, somebody that’s not an SEO, how to get the most use in the best use the most traction from press releases that you order from MGYB. And I’ll have that done by next Tuesday for sure. Maybe even possibly will be available on by next Wednesday for people to go download as a Lead Magnet or whatever, we’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna have it ready by Tuesday. I don’t know if it’ll be ready on Wednesday for public consumption. That said, I can give you a brief rundown on it. Because I was actually working on that presentation earlier today. In fact, it’s over here. So I can show you that I’m not kidding, do it yourself press releases, leveraged PR marketing for your business. So this will be both a presentation as well as some of that stuff hasn’t been added yet. But it will be a presentation that will be available, as well as some videos. So it’ll be like a little mini training course, on how to get the best uses of press releases, and then what to do next as well. So really a quick rundown on that is, first have an understanding of what your keywords are that you want to promote, right? So your primary products and services, products and or services, or an event if you’re promoting an event, whatever, whatever you’re trying to promote. You want to have a set of keywords that you’re looking to promote. And you want to submit that as the primary keyword for each one of the press releases.

So the press release writers, the writers that they’re really good about creating brand plus keyword association. So if you submit the keyword that you want to be used as the primary keyword, they’re going to create that they’re going to use the brand name and the keyword in the title. Okay, which is very, very important. And then they’re going to write about whatever it is that you instruct them to write about. And you can be as descriptive about how to like, you can tell them the tone that you want, that you want them to write it in, you can tell them certain things that you want them to highlight within the press release. Or you can be vague, you can just say, here’s the URL that I want you to promote. And they’ll go look at the URL, also look at the brand and they’ll create a news angle story, that they’ll write a press release about so it makes it easy for you guys if you have something specific you want written about. add that in the writing description. If you don’t and you don’t know how to create a newsworthy angle, don’t worry about it because that’s what the press release riders do. So you can just submit a URL and say this is the primary

URL I want promoting, write a story about it right. And though they’ll figure out a way, which is why I love using it, because it takes the responsibility right off of us to come up with the angle all the time. They’re really good about that once the press release is published, or you want to also link back to whatever you’re primarily trying to promote. So for example, I like to, by the way, if you’re new SM, s and s insurance, you can go to our YouTube channel youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery and use the channel search feature. And you can even go to Google and search for a press release or PR silo stalking or press release, SEO, semantic mastery, something like that, and you can find a webinar it’s actually still on mg y v. If you go to the webinars tab on the MG y v.co. website, you can take a look, I think that was the last webinar that we did was PR silo stalking, and that’ll give you a really good description. It was almost an hour You know, I don’t know 40-minute webinar or whatever specifically about how to get the

Most uses out are the best use out of sight, press releases. So again, you’re going to want to have at least one URL that you’re going to promote, you can have up to three, I usually recommend only two URLs per the press release, unless you’re siloing press releases, in which case you’ll have three, three target URLs that you’re promoting within the press release because you’re going to be linking back to the previous press release within that silo. if all of this sounds foreign to you, just go check out that webinar that I just described. And then it will tell you exactly what we do to get really, really good results with press releases. And just an aside to kind of a point to kind of reinforce this is I was just talking in the mastermind two weeks ago when I did my last mastermind webinar, about how I have a GMB asset as a lead gen asset that I hadn’t done anything with it was published about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, but I never optimized it never did anything to rank it. And I did three press releases in one week to push that GMB asset and all it has is it’s a GMB location. You know, profile and it’s got a GMB website. It’s not connected to a money site. The money site is the GMB website. And I did three press releases in a week. And the son of a bitch disappeared from maps all together for about three weeks. But then it popped after three weeks of it like not even showing I thought it got it was doing a Google dance. But I’ve not seen one this drastic, or this is significant of a Google dance to where it like literally, the listing disappeared, it disappeared entirely from Google Maps. And then all of a sudden bounce it when it popped, it popped into number three, the C position in the maps three pack from just three press releases in a week. Now that’s those results aren’t typical, but I’m just sharing that because it does show you that and all I did was PR silo stacking method, the same one that I’m suggesting you go watch that webinar to learn the strategy. And it works guys. It really does work. So that’s what I would recommend is

Just first go look at that webinar. And then after you have published the press release, it’s always better to do like one press release isn’t going to move the needle much, if at all, but when you start to do the silo stacking with press releases, you can do significant damage with that, and in a good way, right, yeah. And then from there, the next thing you can do is do link building gigs to the press releases or to the organization page that we provide. When you order a press release. That’s something else and embed gigs. You can do embed gigs as well, but don’t link directly to your money site. Anyway, you want to comment on that anybody?

From dance is real man. Right? We tell people 21 days actually, it’s 20 days. But I tell people 21 days just to be sure they’re clear of it. And then that’s when you go and take a look at everything. You decide what to do, but it’s very real. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about that. They just see rankings drop and then they go try to fix it and they make things worse instead of trying to instead of the result being better.

You just supposed to leave it alone until like you said, it just comes back and then you decide.

Unknown Speaker 35:06 Yeah, what’s interesting is, like you said, for about three weeks, I haven’t seen something that drastic of a dance in quite some time to be honest with you. And so I was a little bit nervous. I was thinking like, What the fuck is going on with this, this listing? And all I did was a handful of GMB posts to that listing over the course of those three weeks that was it, nothing else. And like I said, it popped and when it did, it’s, it’s in the number. In fact, I just got a lead from that today for sure, for Tree Removal in that particular city. So it’s producing and all it took was three press releases, which again, is very, very powerful. So it used the exact same method I just mentioned was PR silo stacking, so just go watch that webinar. It’s done in the MGYB, webinar archive, and it’s PR silo stacking, and it works really, really well.

Okay, next question. DC SEO says, Hey guys, I received the ROI as part of my shield back and your wise keywords are the ones that gave your team they’re in the same niche, but very different to what I handed in Is this right? Mine didn’t have any location or mine, I guess he means mine didn’t have any location as per instructions and what I received that keyword plus locations from around the world. I’m in the UK as well as a ton of keywords that are irrelevant to my services. I don’t know how that could happen. Any, any suggestion? No, that doesn’t sound right. But this isn’t the forum for that is it support at MGYB.co. What happened? Give us the order number. We’ll go track it down. And if we have to do it over, we’ll do it over we’ll talk to the VA who built it. I mean, we take care of everything guys. We always do we always try to do right, by everyone. You have to do things in the proper forum.

Last week, end of last week or whatever, I think it was Friday, I announced that we had cracked the code that we were able to now extend the drugs tax because we had automated it. And then someone posted in all of our groups, well, what if I have a VA? How do I train them?

And so now, no matter where I respond, it’s going to look like I didn’t respond and all of the other I would have to go and respond in all of the other groups, the very same thing that I responded in the one group and it’s gonna make it look in the other in the groups where I don’t respond like I don’t care or it doesn’t matter or I didn’t want to respond or whatever. I don’t like guys do things in the right place. And at the right time, this first goes to support. If support doesn’t take care of you, then come to us and let us know. And then like, I know, one of the owners in MGB and I’ll have a talk with him and see what we can do about rectifying the situation, but it’s in here in a public forum. I can’t do anything for you.

Yeah, Fidel. If it was indeed a mistake on our end, then absolutely. We just kill that drive, stack, and build and one for you. So and it won’t, it won’t hurt you at all. So it’s not an issue if it was indeed our problem. If you submitted the wrong keyword file, that’s one thing, but if it was, somehow it got built with keywords that you didn’t submit, which is unlikely, but people are human things happen. So if that was the case, just bring it to supports attention, we’ll take a look at it and if that was indeed the case, it would just kill that stack and then go to a new one, and it won’t it won’t cause any problems. So that’s the beautiful thing about those guys and that’s also why we talked about using the SEO shield for clients and stuff like that because you get the accounts back and you could protect your work right? Because if something happens and you get fired or the client stops paying you I’ve had that happen where they just ghost on you, you know what I mean? The business still exists but they just won’t answer phone calls or emails when they owe you money that kind I’ve had that happen several times over my career. You can go in and just kill the drive stack, delete it. I don’t even set it to not public which is it’s changed now anyways and because it can still push power, even when it’s not indexable. But you can go in and just kill the damn thing or rework it to point somewhere else, you know, to meet to their competitor, that you can go land as a client. So that’s one of the beautiful things about it. So it can be remedied. That’s not a problem.

Can You Create A Subdomain, Rank, And Redirect All The Pages To Another Site While Maintaining Its Ranking?

The next question was, can you create a subdomain website and rank it and then redirect all the pages to another site? And the subdomain maintain its rankings? No, because the redirect will point to the new location and new locate the new location is going to replace the subdomain at some point, right? You can’t redirect a URL and have both the URLs still appear in search, or they might temporarily, and I don’t even know that that’s true. But Google will whatever the redirect is eventually that’s what will rank and the other one will fall out of the index entirely. Am I right in that, or am I missing something? I’m not I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t see how you can’t since you’re telling the bot through the 301 that the page or everything in that sub-domain moved permanently somewhere else. Yeah. You could use I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah, you could use a canonical. And it can both pages can rank. I’ve seen that many times, you’re telling Google with a canonical, like, hey, this page is similar to this page over here, give the credit to this page, right? And then Google sometimes disregards that and well, you know, both pages will index and they’ll both rank. And that happens. So I would suggest a canonical instead of a 301 if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, but remember that just because you canonicalize. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mean Google’s going to honor that. It also doesn’t mean that they won’t honor it. Right? It just kind of it’s kind of a crapshoot. So yeah, what, what that is canonical is when you have similar or the same, and it doesn’t have to be two. It could be two or more, however many copies of that document. There is there exists. You can tell Google which ones the master copy is and to rank that one, rather than all the other. Now, whether Google follows the directive, well, that’s up to Google. And they’re not telling what they’ll do is right.

Yeah, and just to, you know, kind of reinforce that I’m working on a tree care project. for it, you know, for new, a new lead gen service provider that I got. And it’s a case study that I’m doing in the mastermind, and I use tags, tags to create location silos anyways, a Google, it’s a new site, right? And my blogger just started blogging for the location posts on the site. And the way that we’re doing building it out with using tags to create the location silos. Google was ranking the tag pages, but not, but not the posts that I wanted to be ranked. And it indexed the tag pages first, right and the tag pages because some in some cases, they’re unique tags, which means that the tag page is a duplicate of post, that if you guys understand how tags work, that’s what happens if it’s a unique tag, it’s only in one post, then the tag page itself is essentially a duplicate of the post. And so for whatever reason, Google index the tag pages instead of the posts, and so the tag pages were ranking for the keywords, but not the post. And so and I even set the canonical in the tag setting with SEO ultimate Pro, you can do that because you can go to what’s called the Global canonical manager, or even the code inserter plus module, you can actually go in and add like a separate canonical for each tag and all that kind of stuff anyway. So I added the canonical URLs for the tag pages to canonicalize to the post, right, when it’s a unique tag, you can do that. And but Google wasn’t honoring it. And about two weeks went by and so finally I went just this week, I just went to search console, and forced Google to recrawl the posts or excuse me, the tag pages because they had the canonical URLs in the HTML header to point to the posts that I wanted to give the credit to. Right and that’s what I want to be ranked, and it only took about 24 hours, and lo and behold, now the tag pages aren’t indexed, but the posts are, which is what I wanted. So again, it, you know, that doesn’t mean that that’s always going to happen, because it could be that Google doesn’t honor the canonical or doesn’t, you know, doesn’t recognize it for whatever reason, they, By the way, you can also check that when you submit inspect URL in Search Console. And once it inspects the URL, it’s going to tell you whether it’s in Google or not. And there’s a drop-down setting that your menu that you can click on to expand, it shows you additional details, and it’ll tell you what the Google recognized canonical is for that page, or that post whatever URL it is that you’re inspecting. Right? And so you can clearly see what Google seeing. So you can force a canonical, and then go ask Google to request indexing. And then once it does, you know you can look at the code that it shows like the rendered page and it’ll tell you the details of that and it’ll show you if it if it saw the canonical or not. So anyway, hopefully, that was helpful. Do you see SEO

Is It Okay To Embed MyMap Via Tag Manager?

Is it? Is it okay to embed the mind map via Tag Manager? I’m not sure how you would do that.

I’m not sure how you would do that. Tag Manager creates container codes, right header code, and Body Code. And then you inject things into that like scripts and tracking codes and pixels and that kind of stuff. And I don’t know what embedding a my map would do, or if it would even read. Is that something you have any idea about? Marco?

Hello, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. I was talking intimidated might not I think you can. You can use iframes with Tag Manager not not only that, you can track them. Hmm. Am I giving away too much? Oh, nevermind.

I’ll have to play with that DC. I’m not sure. I’ve never done it. Don’t listen, go play with it. And then and then look at all the nice stuff that happens in there.

Okay.

Cool, well there you go.

Is It A Good Deal To Have A 1500 Monthly Retainer Plus Sale Percentage?

Unknown Speaker 45:03 Alright, so moving on next one is Josh says I am changing locations from my current office to a shared workspace and apparently with Google, this isn’t a verifiable address so they won’t verify my GMB profile with this type of address. With the MG y b GMB service will this help with this issue?

Is it a storefront or a service area business that would be my question. Can you get a listing right now a GMB listing through MGYB? Yes.

As we talked about with Mohammed’s question earlier, if it’s a storefront business, I don’t recommend using a spam GMB listing for any type of storefront business because you mislead potential customers because they think it’s in one location and you are indeed in another location. So the only time I would ever recommend using a spammed GMB listing, let’s call it what it is. As for a service area business where the actual physical location in the GMB profile is hidden from the public, so it makes sense. So again, if it’s a service area business, then yes, that would help you. If it’s a storefront business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Any comments, guys?

No, I think that’s absolutely right, man. It’s a myth. You got to know what you’re getting into. Especially if you’re, if you’re going to spam it, right?

Yeah.

I’ve gotten away from doing spam, GMB listings just because the how much volatility there’s been in the last, you know, many months. Um, so I’m working more heavily on the organic side. Now, again, which has been years since I really pushed that. So it’s interesting, and that’s what the tree care project that I’m working on is, in part is a case study for the mastermind, is working on mostly organic rankings. I do have some GMB locations that are going to be incorporated into the project most of the organic rankings. And I’m also doing a lot of call ads call-only ads for Google ads. They are

If you’re very specific with Google call-only ads with your what I call Bullseye keywords, then you can get some pretty good results with that. It’s a lot less expensive than actual clicks to like, you know, regular PPC pay per Click type ads, pay per call ads are a little bit less expensive if you have very, very targeted keywords with location modifiers and such. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

What MGYB Service Should You Use Get More SEO Clients?

Lonnie says I landed my first client concrete company 1500 dollars per month plus percentage of sales. This is a good deal fucking a man. Congratulations, Lonnie. That’s all that looks like it looks like a really good deal. Absolutely. That’s a cherry deal for sure. So congratulations, man. I’m gonna hop in real quick and say it’s all relative, right? One congrats on getting that. Especially the percentage of sales and revenue. That’s a big one that I think a lot of people miss out on. But keep in mind too, this is totally dependent on what he’s doing for that. 1500 That’s true. You’d be getting worked to the fucking ground for 1500 but you know

It’s up to you, you You are the person who can determine whether or not that’s worthwhile. Yeah, that’s a great point, Adam.

And just know this, if it’s your first client, you probably are going to be work to death anyways. Because it’s your first client and you will learn over time, how to set boundaries with clients. Just talk to Mohammed who’s always here asking questions every single week. Mohammed’s been following us for a long, long time, and we’ve watched him grow considerably over the last couple of years. And he’s experienced a lot of growing pains and come here and ask for advice. And that’s what this forum is for Lonnie. So feel free to come back and ask questions every week. concerning how to handle certain situations doesn’t always have to be SEO related either. It could just be about how to handle particular clients, business operations, management, outsourcing, all that kind of stuff. Guys, we’re here to help grow your business as much as possible. Yes, we talk a lot about SEO. But there’s a lot of other things that we’ve all learned with our experience over the years on how to, you know, help you to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve all made.

But just know that it is your first client there, it’s likely you’re going to be work to death for that client. And that’s okay. Because you’re going to learn a lot from that. And you’ll begin to learn how to start to set boundaries. And remember, you know, one thing I want to recommend is, you do need to also set like communication boundaries, I don’t know that your new client is is somebody that might message you outside of business hours or over the weekend and that kind of stuff. But I’ve got a lot of clients that still to this day do, but I’ve trained them that I don’t reply to messages after hours or on weekends. Unless it’s an emergency like I have a preschool client that had a site go down on over a weekend and I had my daughter and I did actually help him because he’s a really good client and me, you know, I felt for him and I wanted to help him but very rarely do I ever reply to anything outside of ours, because once you set that precedent, people will take advantage of it. I don’t know that they mean to be malicious, but they just think that hey, I messaged him at night and he answered me, so, therefore, it’s okay for me to ask questions at any time, I would recommend that you know, as your first client, you need to start to learn how to set boundaries right upfront.

Anyways, let’s get back to the question. Sorry, I’m glad that Adam put that into perspective, because I immediately saw that percentage. And my mind went to the mat, my mind always goes to the numbers, where I normally get this company to 100-200k a month recurring for you know, out of if it’s like Costa Rica, where they work around, like, it’s killer money, it’s killer money, but even if it’s seasonal, right, you can’t work in the winter, if what if they’re doing driveways or whatever it is that they’re paving. If they’re laying a concrete slab, you’re talking about 100 k easy and if you charge 10 to 15% of that recurring, then I’m seeing that as a really good deal. If you’re going to be worked to the bone and the client can’t close. Then you got a problem. So thanks for putting that into perspective.

Yeah, not to downplay it. Yeah, definitely just wanted to tell because the way he phrased it that’s what gave me the hesitation. It’s like, Is this good? Like, man, there’s no way for us to know you’re the one who’s got to do that. But you know, congratulations on doing that. That’s good to see. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, Just remember, as your first client, you will make mistakes, there’s no question, you will work harder than you probably should. And that’s okay. Like I said, you’re going to learn from that. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Remember, come back here and ask questions often and we’ll try to provide you as much advice as we can. He says, also, I’m looking for simple services I can use to get me in on getting clients and suggestions. By the way, I love the video lead gen 2xyoruagency. Well, there, there you go. You have the video lead gen system and 2xyoruagency which is great for prospecting and generating prospects, right? Don’t build that pipeline first. Right? And that’s super, super important in through having a full pipeline of prospects and making presentations sending proposals, right so pitching prospects, you will get better, you’re gonna lose money upfront, and that’s okay. But you will get better you’ll be able to polish your presentation and your pitch and your message and all of that. And so just that’s why it’s so important guys to fill that pipeline full of prospects so that you can make those mistakes. And not every prospect that you talk to is going like you depend on them to be able to put food on your table. If because if that’s the case, desperation comes through and everything that you do, and they can smell that from a mile away. And so I think it’s better to have a pipeline full of prospects because then it’s okay, you don’t need anyone of them because you have more behind them. Right, that makes sense. As far as simple services, I recommend getting the most updated version of the battle plan if you don’t already have that. A lot of that was covered in 2xyoruagency anyways, but the battle plan is a very succinct version of what we recommend to get results and timelines for doing so and all of that and it’s very inexpensive. So I’d recommend you pick that up if you don’t have it already.

I’d also say mgyb.co, I mean everything there for you to offer your clients, whatever it is that they want. Everything is their press releases, liquidity and anything and everything that you need to do to produce results for your clients in MGYB.co. And if it doesn’t mean you have a good idea of a product that let us know.

What Is A Money Site?

This is a great question from Josh, he says, And see, guys, this is the thing you know, I think we often forget. Because we’ve been in this industry so long that not everybody understands the terminology. He says one more quick question, what exactly do you mean by money site that means your primary digital asset so like, whatever your primary domain is that you host your, your website for your business on? That’s what we call a money site. Why? Because it’s the site that generates you money, right? A lot of the other stuff that you know, we talked about is tier-one branded entity assets. Again, big terminology for basically meaning like social profiles and stuff that you can build a branded profile or presence on that you’re going to link back to your money site, your money site is your Epicenter, right? It’s your point of origin, it’s the golden frame, you always want to drive, all traffic all leads as much as possible back to your money site, because you have control over that’s an asset that you own and control, having ancillary profiles on social media properties and, you know, web to Dotto properties, and all that kind of stuff is great. And that’s what we do with the SEO shoot as we build all that stuff out. But ultimately, you don’t own those platforms. They could be taken away from you by Google, by YouTube, by Facebook, whatever, at any time. So they’re great to have. They’re great to use. But it’s best to try to use those to push people push traffic back to your money site because you do have control over that. And there’s so much more than you can do that. So your money site is again it’s your self hosted primary domain asset for your business, your company, your project, whatever it may be. Anybody else wants to take a stab at that? Yeah.

It could be your Google My Business website. It could be that it could be your your G site. It could be, you know, a free WordPress blog or blogger, Tumblr, or wherever it is that you choose to blog from, like, you don’t have to have something that’s self hosted. WordPress, are a self hosted domain for you to have a money site. This is like you said, it’s the place where you plan to send people to in order to make money and edit in order to sell your product service or whatever it is that you want people to see or buy. That’s your money site. Why? Because it makes you money. Not to say that there are other places that could make you money like social media, but it’s the primary source of what it is that you’re planning to do. Yeah, that’s a great point because as we talked about a lot of lead gen assets that I have don’t have a self-hosted money site. They are just GMB website.

In other words, the website, the Google My Business provides you which is free. And ultimately you don’t have full control over that Google does. Right. So I, you know, I’m glad Marco brought that up. Because I just mentioned self-hosted website, it doesn’t have to be that recommend that was possible. But there are times where it makes sense to not build a self-hosted website, for example, spammed GMB listings, it might not be wise to go through the trouble of building out a, you know, a self-hosted site because of all the work that goes into it. Whereas, you know, in case it was to get suspended, you lose all of them, the work that you did, essentially. So in that case, you know, the GMB website becomes the primary website for that location. Or another option would be like Marco said, you know, Google Site g site, right, so sites.google.com, that they, Marco and Rob have done several projects using those as the money site, and it works. It works really, really well. So the money site is exactly what Marco described, which is whatever it is that you’re using to make money.

If you’re going to build a brand, I think it’s important to build a self-hosted website with the brand name as the domain name, because you can really grow the authority of that brand and you benefit from that in so many ways. So, it’s a great question though. Alright, so the last question and we’ve only got three minutes left, we’re gonna wrap it up.

What SEO And Lead Gen Contract Do You Recommend?

He says, Lonnie says I’m having trouble with putting an SEO and lead with I’m sorry, with put an SEO and lead gen contract. Do you have any recommended contract forms? No, I don’t, you know, you could probably just go online and find some templates that you could use. I personally don’t like to use contracts I, I mean, I have in the past, but typically, it’s only for bigger companies that, you know, they want the contract. I like to do everything on a verbal agreement. So that and I always say this to potential prospects or customers look, you know, if I’m doing my job, you’re gonna want to continue paying me if I’m not, you’re not gonna want to continue paying me and that’s okay. I also want to be able to part ways from that client if we don’t dive well, we don’t agree on things if it’s just not a good fit, and I don’t want to be locked into a contract either. So I don’t expect my clients to want to be locked into a contract. And sometimes that burns me, for example, I had a home inspector client, that, you know, I very clearly stated what the timeline was going to be on results.

I typically asked for, hey, give me this much time. And before that time had passed before I reached that certain level of time that I mentioned, he canceled services. And I you know, And to me, that’s really unfair for both of us because he wasn’t able to get the results that he wanted, because it wasn’t, you know, fast enough for him even though I clearly stated all of that before we agreed to work together. But at the same time, I put a lot of work into that and it wasn’t able to fully realize the efforts you know, for him or for myself for my own satisfaction because he stopped paying me before all the work had been completed, if that makes sense. Sometimes I wish I did have a contract in place. But for the most part, I like the ability to be able to walk away from a client. And I also like them to know that they don’t, they’re not locked into a contract that kind of eases that.

That low and lowers the barrier to entry, so to speak. However, that said, there might be a difference of opinion here for some of the other guys. And you guys have a suggestion for him.

Now, you know me, I don’t do contracts. I hate him. I hate him. He locks me into everything. And what if I want to go out and maybe the client doesn’t want to go well, what if I want to go? What if I can’t stand the client? I want to go and then I’m bound by a contract for a year with this guy that I can’t stand that knows more or supposedly knows more than I do, which sometimes happens.

If you know how to produce results, then always go, “Look, I’ll give you results.” But record the quality I always record the call that that call. We talk

Bradley, what is going to take this long? I always have that recorded even though there’s no contract and I let the guy know Look, I’m gonna record the call. And then you can always refer revert back to that’s a contract, believe it or not, that’s a contract. Right? And it’ll hold up in most courts. I believe in the US. It’ll hold up, it’ll hold up in Costa Rica.

That’s a good idea. And yeah, if you disclose that right up front, and then get it on the recording, you do agree that this is being recorded, and that’s okay, right.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’m going to be recording this, I’m just gonna point this way. This way, we can refer back to the conversation, you know exactly what took place. I know exactly what to put in you walk them through, you know that this is going to take about 90 days for results. thereabouts. Because if you don’t, then you go into the process because I have to set everything up. And then we get everything going. I’m probably going to get two results before but I can’t guarantee any Google experience tells me that within 90 days, we should be able to see something, and then we can work from there but I need 90 days from you.

Are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re gonna get that nine out of 10. So now you have a binding contract now, at the end of it you tell at the end of those 90 days when we meet again, then we’ll decide if we continue.

Now real quick, I know Adam is if you’re still paying attention, I know we’re a little bit over, but I think you have a little bit of a different methodology. Is there any way you can comment on this? Um, yeah, I just I’m trying to think like, I don’t have too much of a difference it’s kind of constantly evolving. But yeah, I mean, as far as contracts go like I stay out of that I’ve never done anything. Okay. Yeah. And then, if he’s looking for actual he may just mean, he’s looking for an outline for like a proposal or an engagement proposal. If that’s the case, just contact support at semantic mastery comm will point you in the right direction. I know Hernan put one out there we had as a free opt-in that you could get as an outline. And that can be really helpful. I mean, I’ve used other people’s as a starting point when I’m changing services.

Adding something in just so that I have a good starting point then you tailor it kind of to your specifics.

Very good. Thank you. Alright guys, thanks everybody for being here is Chris were you gonna says something? I’m sorry. I mean like he is like a lead gen contract. I mean, like why not sell on a per lead basis? I don’t see there’s an issue you can do like a contract that states the price of the elite.

Yeah. So you should be fine that way. It should be super easy.

Sweet. Well, thanks for your input, guys. And thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289

Click on the video above to watch Episode 289 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

Welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 289 to one where Hernan looks continuously shocked for some reason.

Hi, how’s it going? Hernan Is everything okay. It’s great, man. I’m feeling like shit, but here we are. All right, good, good stuff. Well, keep going here. Like I said it’s Episode 289. Today’s the 27th of May 2020. I can see we got a lot of really good questions already today. But if you haven’t yet and you got a question, please put it on the page. First come first serve. And then I’m going to get into a few announcements. We’ve got some cool stuff that happened earlier this week. And then some last-minute announcements, things that we just found out about today that I want to touch on But first, let’s say hi to the guys real quick and see how everyone’s doing so

I’ll start to my top left here Bradley. How are you doing today?

Good. I’m good. I just edited the video description in YouTube because still had some stuff from the webinar we did yesterday. So anyway, but I’m good. Things are good. I’m back from taking a week off, and it sucked cuz I went away for a week camping and ATV riding, thinking that I was going to get away and get to enjoy it and it rained the entire week, all day every day and it was awful. It was fucking miserable. So I wish I would have stayed home and worked.

Yeah, man, speaking of weird weather that so I’m in the Bay Area. So we just hit 95 the last three days, which is like 34 Celsius. It’s just like, Okay, well guess I’ll go out in the morning, go for a walk and then come hunker in here, shut the blinds and turn the air just thinking. So that’s been my life for the past couple of days. So let’s head go with the happier weather report. Marco. How are you doing?

The sun’s out again. It’s the rainy season and he’s like the sun’s out. It’s rainy season man. Look, I live in paradise. All right, I can’t help that. Make some money. Right? First of all, go get the battle. You follow the Battle Plan.

make some money. Hire someone who will help you. Train, apply, and make money. lather, rinse, repeat. And then you can go find your own Fortress of Solitude where you can just watch the world go by and you don’t give up. Push your mouth but other than the outstanding weather

How are you doing marking things are going good. Things are good here man. Things are good. Yeah, I’m still like things are opening up a little bit here. Essential businesses and all that and all this other stuff, but I’m still self-parenting. I got three kids. They got to think about it and I’m not a spring chicken so that there’s another person that I had to think about right because I can go out or like one but I have to think about my family. Yeah. And what I might bring, bring home and closer to home to make somebody.

I knew personally died of this. It’s not as if it’s totally foreign to me like I don’t know anyone who is affected by this. I like what I do know. And so having it that cloth is not any longer six degrees of separation. it’s like I know and so no, it ain’t happening and we’re gonna see how this plays out and I’ll let everybody you guys can all go and enjoy yourselves you know to do whatever the hell you want and then let me know how that turns out and then I’ll decide after that second one what it is that we’re going to do but for now we’re cool we take it easy and that’s it, man. We did we just but my personal choice, right, my personal choice to do that. It’s not as if someone is forcing me to do it. I’m choosing that this is the best way for myself and my family. Enough. All right. Well, Hernan How about you man, things are like you’re moving into wintertime right? I always get

Yeah, it’s hot summer-like wait a second I was wearing a sweatshirt what hell’s going on? Yeah, actually actually all of you guys are well Marco Marco is like, you know, he’s in a good spot 20% but all of you guys are you know getting the nice season. I’m getting the shooting season. Yeah now so now but yeah man it’s good today was a good day.

Like warm-ish. But yeah, we’re getting into winter and all of that so see how that goes, could you? Oh, Chris How about yourself? Yeah, yeah can’t complain man sun’s out the sun is shining all day. I mean it’s dark right now and the best part of all Friday the gyms opening back up and stuff so things are really good standing. Well, I’m going to circle back around Bradley, you mentioned a webinar and I wanted to touch on that because we had Brian, a mastermind member, along with Bruno, and you all listening can get to know both of them better and see what Bradley has to say to about this go high-level system. And Bradley, you want to tell real quick, I’m gonna pop the link in where people can go and check out the replay. Do you want to tell them about the webinar a little bit?

Yeah, Brian, one of our mastermind members reached out and basically said that he was using a platform, an agency automation platform that consolidates a whole bunch of different services and such all under one roof. He reached out because he thought that it would fit really, really well with the 2xyoruagency training.

Because it does a lot of the stuff that I talked about in 2xyouragency about how to automate, delegate or eliminate because this platform consolidates a lot of services that you may have separate subscriptions for and I always call it duct taping them together using Zapier or some similar application. And basically these have integrated services that do all

All of the same things that many of these external services do that we put, you know, we connect via Zapier, and it’s all under one dashboard. And so it’s a lot more seamless. And there’s a lot of really cool features inside there, like one of the primary feature that was, is used to pitch this go high-level application or platform is what’s called database reactivation, which is a very easy way or a simple way for you to get your foot in the door as an agency owner with potential marketing clients because you can. So anyway, I can’t really go into depth right now about that, but it’s a really cool platform. I signed up my own agency on the agency level account level so that I can create a first of all, I’m gonna use it for my own agency, but second of all, so I could also create a case study for how I’m using it. I’ve got some really good ideas that I’m going to be sharing in that case study that I’m gonna be putting to the test and then sharing in the case study.

As well on how I’m using it and how to generate kind of exponential revenue growth from it, as opposed to just linear. And so anyway, I think it’s bad, it’s very valuable, I would encourage you guys to go check it out, it does come with a 14-day free trial. So once you see the webinar, you know, comes with some free or some, I think it’s free, or it’s like five bucks may be to pay for some of the training that Bruno had put together, what he calls the quick start training for that. And so you can get all of that. And your first 14 days determine if it’s for you or not, but I think once you see some of the potentials of this, it would be something if any of you are trying to grow. I think you should absolutely take a good hard look at it. Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t do generally local stuff. But I check this out. And like I’ve been looking at it and I talked to Brian about all the details and like I was starting to be like maybe I could find a way to you just like no stop it. But like for anyone out there who’s dealing with especially local clients or can find the right use case

Yeah, just blew me away from the number of services and automation that’s packed into that suite of tools and how seamless that is, is pretty amazing. So definitely worth checking it out. Real quick to this one came up today. So we constantly get questions about GMB verifications, right? You know, hey, where can you guys do GMB verifications work in MGYB, when is it going to be available? I’m going to cut to the chase GMB verifications are available right now. As always, we cannot tell you how long that is going to be the case. So if you are doing lead gen if you’re needing a verification for some other reason, this would be a very good time to put your order in because not only can you order now what you couldn’t have yesterday, you can get a 15% discount today while we’ve got it opened up. Also, it comes with a 30-day guarantee. And it’s about I believe, 14 day turnaround time. So pretty quick. I’ll post all of that in the chatbox for those who are live. If you’re not just head to mgyb.co, and head to the store, you can look for GMB verifications there you can also get syndication networks, Rs drive stacks, SEO shield, link building all that sort of good stuff.

And circling back around. I wanted to touch on this real quick for those of you who are watching us for the first time, thank you very much whether you’re watching live or catching the replay on YouTube. If you want to go to the right place, head to semantic mastery comm slash HD questions every week, we asked you to limit your questions just to one. Unless you’re live, you can ask some more. You know, we get down there. We just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions. So if you ask some questions, we may not get to all of them just before Warren. And then secondly, we encourage everyone to check out the battle plan and go to battle plan dot semantic mastery. If you want to get repeated repeatable SEO results that is for you. I’m not going to read the page to you you can go over there and check it out. But it is a fantastic tool that we recently just updated them released version four a month ago.

And then Bradley touched on this too if you’re an agency owner or a consultant that you want to get more clients, yes, you want to grow your revenue. Yes. And you want to scale your team, hopefully, yes. Then if you want to do that, head over 2xyouragency.com. There’s a ton of incredible training lets you crush it, whether you’re again, being a consultant, or if you want to build a true agency, and it doesn’t matter if that’s SEO, it’s other areas of digital marketing. It’s going to help you grow and make more money. That’s the bottom line.

All right, with that said, Guys, any other quick announcements before we dive into questions?

Good. All right. Let’s do it.

All right. Grab the screen.

You guys confirm when you see. See my screen.

Would You Recommend Ordering Another Drive Stack To A New Website Section Targeting Service Keywords In Different Locations?

So it looks like BB Now that might have been from last week. It looks like it was it will start with Bobby. Bobby says Hey guys, I got some questions. The first one was would you recommend ordering another drive stack to a completely new section of a website targeting a different service keyword in different locations on a large content site that would be perfect for the location sealed, am I right? Marco?

Yeah, that’s perfect for the extension. And it’s currently available and as a coupon sweep. So that’s what the drive stack expansion.

Yeah, we’re saying, Yeah, maybe if he already has the brand it because he’s saying another, right, a completely new section of the website. So we’re talking about the same website, money site. That’s how I’m seeing. I’m seeing something different.

He has a different service keyword, and a different location on a large content what so that’s, that’s just an inner page, I think what he’s describing the top of the silo. So you would aim the expansion on the current drive stack at that inner page, you’d get much more power going and extending that initial drive stack then you would be doing a completely different drive stack, g site. Sure, gotcha. Okay.

Would You Recommend RSS Masher To Drive Traffic To A Money Site And Lead Gen Assets?

The next question was  GMB.Thanks again, I’ve not used them for lead gen assets but I have in the past I haven’t built since the updated the new version of RSS master which is even better. But to create the kind of like Kwazii PBNs and when I say PBNs, they’re not like what we would traditionally think of a treat PBN, these are real sites to generate real traffic and that’s the differentiator, right? having real sites generate real traffic. With automated content posting to them right through all the RSS feeds that you splice together and RSS masher and all the really cool shit you can do. You can take a look at the most recent webinar we did with Damon Nelson, about the most current version of RSS masher and see some of the examples of the sites that he builds are 100% honest.

Major content sites using RSS masher. And they’re freaking beautiful sites. And he’s generating affiliate income and, you know, like AdSense income. And so such using those sites because they do generate traffic, they look beautiful. But from an SEO standpoint, I looked at it as like, hey, this could be really good to generate, you know, in related content type sites that could feed traffic back to a money site or a lead gen site or whatever. So, I mean, I think it’s certainly possible to use it for that I haven’t done it myself just to be honest because it’s not the strategy that I’ve been pursuing. I’ve wanted to in fact, I even talked about it with my partners here. I would love to have some time to play with that and set up some sights but I haven’t done it yet. I think Marco. Weren’t you guys gonna try playing with that a bit. I know it probably hasn’t been done but wasn’t that on the to-do list?

It is being done. What we are currently testing it and we won’t like there is anything. I’m not personally doing it but I got my mini mastermind, which is where all the evil takes place where we can go after everything. And there’s a couple of people in there who have a license. And then one of them is using our license as I gave her our license to go and try it out. So they got together. Three of the people in my seven-person mini mastermind got together. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing information on how to make make it work in the best way possible. And then they’re going to come back and report it to me and we’re either going to make it available through MGYB as a service, or I’m not sure how we’re going to offer that but there’s definitely something in the works with that RSS masher. It’s just you guys if you go get it just be prepared because there’s a high learning curve is that simple software that you’re just going to go and plug and play

You have to be prepared to go through the training to go through the process, gathering up the feeds making everything look right. And then you know that that’s when the magic happens and I can’t wait to blast that. Now get it, give it a companion g site and drive stack, expand it, and then blast it with link building and some embeds and see what happened. I can’t wait.

Yeah, it looks good. As I said, I wish I had more time to mess with it. Because I think there’s a lot of potentials there as well. So, so maybe next Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, we can give people a preview. But again, the first ones that’ll get a preview, it will be my mini mastermind, and then the semantic mastery mastermind, the heavy hitter club, and then we’ll go public with whatever we have. It’s still a few weeks away, it takes time. That’s all

Is It Possible To Get An Iframe For A Drive Folder?

so Frank’s up. He says it is it possible to get an iframe for a drive folder tried adding a link into iframe generator and it came back saying the page was blocked from being displayed? also. Well, first of all,

The first part of that is Yeah, you can use to be able to do that. But no, I haven’t tried since the updates recently. Marco, can you? Yeah. Not through the iframe January? That’s why I tell people to code their own code. Yeah, because you can’t do it that way. You have to separate the, I can’t go through the process that you have to get the folder ID to be able to iframe it. And what you have to insert in an iframe generator is the entire URL, and you can’t do it that way.

Okay.

Publish to the web would be a file setting in the drive used to say publish to the web, it would give you an embed code for the file or for the folder, but I think that has been taken away correct recently. Uh, no. I can check that right now. I mean, go on and let me take a folder that has nothing in it. And we’ll just move on while you’re looking that up.

Do You Have Any Link Building Services In MGYB For T1 Money Site?

He says also with MGYB, do you have any link building services that could be used for tier-one money site or only g sites? Yeah, that while the SEO shield can point back to your money site, right, which includes the drive stack files and folders as well as the G site. Also, press releases could be used for tier-one money site, right where your money site tier-one money site is. It’s redundant. That’s like the Department of redundancy department. You know what I mean? So, yeah, your money site, again, press releases and the SEO shield? Those are the two things that I would recommend. Am I missing something?

No, no, no, I don’t think so. And I can’t find it. I can’t find published on the web by the way. That’s what I thought had been removed since the recent update. But it used to be able to do it that way. So hopefully that was helpful.

What MGYB Service You Should Use To Rank For A City That Is Three Hours Away From The Dealership Location?

Mohammed’s up, it’s up mom and he says, Hey, guys, a client is asking me if I can rank his Volkswagen dealership for VW related keywords in a city. Three hours away from where the dealership actually is.

Actually, how would I go about this? I know I can get a GMB from MGYB for the New City and add a new city page to the money site. What else would I do?

Well, the problem that I see with that Mohammed is it’s a dealership right? So if you’re getting a GMB for a dealership which is a storefront business, right with the customers come to the business location, and you’ve got a spammed GMB listing, that’s three hours away from where the dealership actually exists, then, how is that going to play with potential car buyers? When they’re looking to go to a dealership in their local area and they’ve come to find out it’s a spam listing and instead they’ve got to go three hours away to buy a Volkswagen. To me, I don’t think that would be advisable for the reasons I just mentioned. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question. Anybody else interprets this another way?

No, that’s the way I’m I’m reading it unless the dealer is opening up a dealership in that city in which case, you would need spam. GMB. Right. Correct. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I am not willing to drive three hours to go look at a car, like my dealer has to be closed by where I can just jump in the car. 1015 minutes, I’m there and look at the car and decide if I’m gonna buy it. Because I’ll be people. Yes. I mean, the idea behind it is correct. People are going to first look online to find a car that they liked, and they’re going to find the dealer, then they’re going to go visit the dealer to see the cart. Who’s going to drive? Did you talk that to this dealership owner, by the way, and ask him Who do you know that’s going to drive three hours to buy a car when they can buy one mic in the city? I don’t understand the thinking behind that. Not only that, but don’t you think it would piss a potential customer off if they were misled to believe that a dealership was in their local area just to come to find out that it’s three hours away? I mean, it’s not just that like if he was promoting like ranked a page organically for the city that is three hours away, and says, Hey, we sell cars. Were our dealerships over here and they’re honest about where it is. It’s very likely most people are going to drive three hours away anyways, but at least they weren’t being dishonest about it. Whereas having a GMB for a storefront business where a store doesn’t actually exist, that I think in my view would piss me off if I put driving directions and go show up at this place to find out that it’s it doesn’t exist, and then I got to drive three hours away to go where I intended. What about other car dealers dealerships? wouldn’t they be pissed if you’re faking? A GMB and I just totally am in the area. I don’t think VW corporate would be too happy with that with you faking GMB.  I don’t know how much trouble I mean, you can get into a whole lot of trouble behind that. talk to this guy. talk some sense and then

yeah, just find out what his intent is really. And maybe you already know it, Mohammed and it just wasn’t conveyed in that message.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean like I said if I was going to do anything it would be to try to just rank organically for that and just be honest about where the dealership is and why they should drive three hours away to purchase a car at that particular dealership.

SEO Shield Question

Alright, moving on uh, next question is Hello everyone recently I purchased an SEO shield and since I got some discount for link building, I also bought that so I placed the order for SEO shield and link building altogether. What I found out that instead of building the links to my properties, they pointed all the direct all directly to your money site. Okay, you can edit the URLs to build links to an M GI Bill, Why be disregarded that and build all the links to your money site? No continue can find that hard to believe okay. When I inquired from support about it, they said since you had provided the URL file, we built all the links around that. But they also said that they don’t recommend it. I’m a new user purchasing SEO shield first time and also not aware of the internal tech now technicalities excuse me of SEO SEO. So I provide all the information including the URL file because I thought it might be required to build the SEO shield since I bought the SEO, SEO, and link building. So I believe that SM support will follow the best practice since I’ve gone blindly trust SM for SEO related stuff. So my question is Why were the links built directly in the money site even when it is not recommended? No one will pay for the money to I’m not sure what he says.

Now, he says that the links can’t be removed. This website is my six months old hard work. I don’t want to degrade my website by any means. So what should I do now? Should I disavow the links pointing in the Excel sheet? Please suggest, okay, um, the first part of that. I’m not sure if you came to us cold and you don’t know anything about our methodology, then then I could understand where that confusion may have come from.

Perhaps we need to have that clearly explicitly outlined on this on the order page or the order submit Details page. In other words, if it’s not already, but

As far as what you know, we didn’t build all the links to your money site URL. If your money site URL was listed in your submitted URLs list, then some links will have been built to your money site URL. But in all of our training, we always suggest we actually won’t build links to your money site URL if we know that it’s in there. So I don’t know what to tell you on that other than and as far as disavowing Marco doesn’t ever recommend that I’ve done it in the past haven’t done it for years.

I don’t think Have you seen anything negative happen? We don’t suggest it, but I don’t know that it is going to cause any problems. Marco, what do you say about this? I say I have a really big problem with this guy. Right? Because this was sent to support at mg y v.co. And I heard from Deadia and he said, hey, look, you know what, what can we do it with this? What can we do for this person? So we’re looking to do the right thing. Here. Look, I can remove all I think I can remove all the links

But it’s gonna take a while I so we aren’t talking about it, he doesn’t even give support a chance to respond and let him know what the answers are. He comes here to a public forum to air the laundry. And I understand that. I mean, in no way Is this a recommended practice. But I mean, he submitted the URLs for us to build links to if you give us a spreadsheet, how are we to know that there’s a money site included in the spreadsheet? I mean, he’s assuming that we’re supposed to assume and look these, the logic behind this evades me because I just don’t see it, how we’re supposed to know that he’s submitting his money site from now on. And so now we know that we need to make sure that we tell people explicitly on the order form do not submit your money site URL. So thank you for that. But I don’t appreciate

This being aired on a public forum, where we’re taking care of when we’re looking to do what’s best for you and for your website. Not that anything bad has happened. Not that anything bad will happen. We don’t know yet what would happen, but it’s still in the discussion stage and he doesn’t even give it an opportunity comes publicly as Hey, you guys, I thought you were supposed to follow best practice practices and whatever else he says. And I just don’t appreciate it. Give us at least a chance to do the right thing. And then if there’s a problem, if there’s no resolution, then you come here and you speak to us publicly. I thought about writing to you by the way. Because I saw this, I saw the way he called it the ticket, come through and I know I’m supposed to stay away from customer service. But I thought about writing to him because I don’t see the logic. If he submits the URLs to build links. That’s what we’re going to build links to because the customer as always, right? So if you want links built to your money site, in spite of the fact that we don’t recommend it, and then we say, Don’t ever do it, we don’t do it. If you submit the URL, and it’s by mistake, and I’m not saying that you did it on purpose, if by mistake you included in my site, or you didn’t know, it’s going to get links built to it. Now, yeah, we are going to try to do the right thing. That’s all I can say. We were trying to do the right thing before, even after having come on a public forum, and then like hitting on my last nerve, we’re still going to help you out.

Yeah and I don’t know that it’s going to cause any problem. We just, we don’t build links, the types of links that we sell at MGB directly the money site, we always in all of our training suggest not to do that because that’s the whole reason for the SEO shield right is because and that’s why it’s named the SEO shield because it shields your money site, from all the external threats.

SEO and link building that you can do because link building to your money site can, doesn’t always but can create a problem. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have problems because that happened, it might not cause any problems at all, we just don’t recommend it, we suggest not to do it, because there’s no need to because we push all the power to the SEO shield and use the SEO shield to launder basically clean any potential negative juice through Google properties and through high authority assets, that and push relevancy essentially, eventually to the money site. So again, we don’t know that it’s gonna cause a negative impact at all, we just don’t, we don’t test it. Because we don’t do that we always recommend building them directly to the SEO shield. Again, that’s the whole point of the SEO shield. So we have learned, we have now decided or just came to the realization that that needs to be very explicit on the order form, submit page, and that makes sense and we’ll make sure that we make that change and Marco and Dadea, our link builder, are going to do what they can for you. So hopefully that will suffice.

How Do You Use Press Release To Achieve Better Rankings?

Next question, SMS insurances total newbie here, I just ordered the press release. Not sure where to start. I’m clueless on what to do, and the advice would be great. This is awesome that you asked this question because I’m actually working on a little mini-course for press releases for people that want to order and not for SEOs. But for business owners. I mean, anybody can have access to it that they want, but it’s I’m doing a little mini-course for press releases.

For MGYB, in other words, a little mini-course on trying to teach a layman right or a business owner, somebody that’s not an SEO, how to get the most use in the best use the most traction from press releases that you order from MGYB. And I’ll have that done by next Tuesday for sure. Maybe even possibly will be available on by next Wednesday for people to go download as a Lead Magnet or whatever, we’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna have it ready by Tuesday. I don’t know if it’ll be ready on Wednesday for public consumption. That said, I can give you a brief rundown on it. Because I was actually working on that presentation earlier today. In fact, it’s over here. So I can show you that I’m not kidding, do it yourself press releases, leveraged PR marketing for your business. So this will be both a presentation as well as some of that stuff hasn’t been added yet. But it will be a presentation that will be available, as well as some videos. So it’ll be like a little mini training course, on how to get the best uses of press releases, and then what to do next as well. So really a quick rundown on that is, first have an understanding of what your keywords are that you want to promote, right? So your primary products and services, products and or services, or an event if you’re promoting an event, whatever, whatever you’re trying to promote. You want to have a set of keywords that you’re looking to promote. And you want to submit that as the primary keyword for each one of the press releases.

So the press release writers, the writers that they’re really good about creating brand plus keyword association. So if you submit the keyword that you want to be used as the primary keyword, they’re going to create that they’re going to use the brand name and the keyword in the title. Okay, which is very, very important. And then they’re going to write about whatever it is that you instruct them to write about. And you can be as descriptive about how to like, you can tell them the tone that you want, that you want them to write it in, you can tell them certain things that you want them to highlight within the press release. Or you can be vague, you can just say, here’s the URL that I want you to promote. And they’ll go look at the URL, also look at the brand and they’ll create a news angle story, that they’ll write a press release about so it makes it easy for you guys if you have something specific you want written about. add that in the writing description. If you don’t and you don’t know how to create a newsworthy angle, don’t worry about it because that’s what the press release riders do. So you can just submit a URL and say this is the primary

URL I want promoting, write a story about it right. And though they’ll figure out a way, which is why I love using it, because it takes the responsibility right off of us to come up with the angle all the time. They’re really good about that once the press release is published, or you want to also link back to whatever you’re primarily trying to promote. So for example, I like to, by the way, if you’re new SM, s and s insurance, you can go to our YouTube channel youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery and use the channel search feature. And you can even go to Google and search for a press release or PR silo stalking or press release, SEO, semantic mastery, something like that, and you can find a webinar it’s actually still on mg y v. If you go to the webinars tab on the MG y v.co. website, you can take a look, I think that was the last webinar that we did was PR silo stalking, and that’ll give you a really good description. It was almost an hour You know, I don’t know 40-minute webinar or whatever specifically about how to get the

Most uses out are the best use out of sight, press releases. So again, you’re going to want to have at least one URL that you’re going to promote, you can have up to three, I usually recommend only two URLs per the press release, unless you’re siloing press releases, in which case you’ll have three, three target URLs that you’re promoting within the press release because you’re going to be linking back to the previous press release within that silo. if all of this sounds foreign to you, just go check out that webinar that I just described. And then it will tell you exactly what we do to get really, really good results with press releases. And just an aside to kind of a point to kind of reinforce this is I was just talking in the mastermind two weeks ago when I did my last mastermind webinar, about how I have a GMB asset as a lead gen asset that I hadn’t done anything with it was published about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, but I never optimized it never did anything to rank it. And I did three press releases in one week to push that GMB asset and all it has is it’s a GMB location. You know, profile and it’s got a GMB website. It’s not connected to a money site. The money site is the GMB website. And I did three press releases in a week. And the son of a bitch disappeared from maps all together for about three weeks. But then it popped after three weeks of it like not even showing I thought it got it was doing a Google dance. But I’ve not seen one this drastic, or this is significant of a Google dance to where it like literally, the listing disappeared, it disappeared entirely from Google Maps. And then all of a sudden bounce it when it popped, it popped into number three, the C position in the maps three pack from just three press releases in a week. Now that’s those results aren’t typical, but I’m just sharing that because it does show you that and all I did was PR silo stacking method, the same one that I’m suggesting you go watch that webinar to learn the strategy. And it works guys. It really does work. So that’s what I would recommend is

Just first go look at that webinar. And then after you have published the press release, it’s always better to do like one press release isn’t going to move the needle much, if at all, but when you start to do the silo stacking with press releases, you can do significant damage with that, and in a good way, right, yeah. And then from there, the next thing you can do is do link building gigs to the press releases or to the organization page that we provide. When you order a press release. That’s something else and embed gigs. You can do embed gigs as well, but don’t link directly to your money site. Anyway, you want to comment on that anybody?

From dance is real man. Right? We tell people 21 days actually, it’s 20 days. But I tell people 21 days just to be sure they’re clear of it. And then that’s when you go and take a look at everything. You decide what to do, but it’s very real. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about that. They just see rankings drop and then they go try to fix it and they make things worse instead of trying to instead of the result being better.

You just supposed to leave it alone until like you said, it just comes back and then you decide.

Unknown Speaker 35:06 Yeah, what’s interesting is, like you said, for about three weeks, I haven’t seen something that drastic of a dance in quite some time to be honest with you. And so I was a little bit nervous. I was thinking like, What the fuck is going on with this, this listing? And all I did was a handful of GMB posts to that listing over the course of those three weeks that was it, nothing else. And like I said, it popped and when it did, it’s, it’s in the number. In fact, I just got a lead from that today for sure, for Tree Removal in that particular city. So it’s producing and all it took was three press releases, which again, is very, very powerful. So it used the exact same method I just mentioned was PR silo stacking, so just go watch that webinar. It’s done in the MGYB, webinar archive, and it’s PR silo stacking, and it works really, really well.

Okay, next question. DC SEO says, Hey guys, I received the ROI as part of my shield back and your wise keywords are the ones that gave your team they’re in the same niche, but very different to what I handed in Is this right? Mine didn’t have any location or mine, I guess he means mine didn’t have any location as per instructions and what I received that keyword plus locations from around the world. I’m in the UK as well as a ton of keywords that are irrelevant to my services. I don’t know how that could happen. Any, any suggestion? No, that doesn’t sound right. But this isn’t the forum for that is it support at MGYB.co. What happened? Give us the order number. We’ll go track it down. And if we have to do it over, we’ll do it over we’ll talk to the VA who built it. I mean, we take care of everything guys. We always do we always try to do right, by everyone. You have to do things in the proper forum.

Last week, end of last week or whatever, I think it was Friday, I announced that we had cracked the code that we were able to now extend the drugs tax because we had automated it. And then someone posted in all of our groups, well, what if I have a VA? How do I train them?

And so now, no matter where I respond, it’s going to look like I didn’t respond and all of the other I would have to go and respond in all of the other groups, the very same thing that I responded in the one group and it’s gonna make it look in the other in the groups where I don’t respond like I don’t care or it doesn’t matter or I didn’t want to respond or whatever. I don’t like guys do things in the right place. And at the right time, this first goes to support. If support doesn’t take care of you, then come to us and let us know. And then like, I know, one of the owners in MGB and I’ll have a talk with him and see what we can do about rectifying the situation, but it’s in here in a public forum. I can’t do anything for you.

Yeah, Fidel. If it was indeed a mistake on our end, then absolutely. We just kill that drive, stack, and build and one for you. So and it won’t, it won’t hurt you at all. So it’s not an issue if it was indeed our problem. If you submitted the wrong keyword file, that’s one thing, but if it was, somehow it got built with keywords that you didn’t submit, which is unlikely, but people are human things happen. So if that was the case, just bring it to supports attention, we’ll take a look at it and if that was indeed the case, it would just kill that stack and then go to a new one, and it won’t it won’t cause any problems. So that’s the beautiful thing about those guys and that’s also why we talked about using the SEO shield for clients and stuff like that because you get the accounts back and you could protect your work right? Because if something happens and you get fired or the client stops paying you I’ve had that happen where they just ghost on you, you know what I mean? The business still exists but they just won’t answer phone calls or emails when they owe you money that kind I’ve had that happen several times over my career. You can go in and just kill the drive stack, delete it. I don’t even set it to not public which is it’s changed now anyways and because it can still push power, even when it’s not indexable. But you can go in and just kill the damn thing or rework it to point somewhere else, you know, to meet to their competitor, that you can go land as a client. So that’s one of the beautiful things about it. So it can be remedied. That’s not a problem.

Can You Create A Subdomain, Rank, And Redirect All The Pages To Another Site While Maintaining Its Ranking?

The next question was, can you create a subdomain website and rank it and then redirect all the pages to another site? And the subdomain maintain its rankings? No, because the redirect will point to the new location and new locate the new location is going to replace the subdomain at some point, right? You can’t redirect a URL and have both the URLs still appear in search, or they might temporarily, and I don’t even know that that’s true. But Google will whatever the redirect is eventually that’s what will rank and the other one will fall out of the index entirely. Am I right in that, or am I missing something? I’m not I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t see how you can’t since you’re telling the bot through the 301 that the page or everything in that sub-domain moved permanently somewhere else. Yeah. You could use I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah, you could use a canonical. And it can both pages can rank. I’ve seen that many times, you’re telling Google with a canonical, like, hey, this page is similar to this page over here, give the credit to this page, right? And then Google sometimes disregards that and well, you know, both pages will index and they’ll both rank. And that happens. So I would suggest a canonical instead of a 301 if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, but remember that just because you canonicalize. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mean Google’s going to honor that. It also doesn’t mean that they won’t honor it. Right? It just kind of it’s kind of a crapshoot. So yeah, what, what that is canonical is when you have similar or the same, and it doesn’t have to be two. It could be two or more, however many copies of that document. There is there exists. You can tell Google which ones the master copy is and to rank that one, rather than all the other. Now, whether Google follows the directive, well, that’s up to Google. And they’re not telling what they’ll do is right.

Yeah, and just to, you know, kind of reinforce that I’m working on a tree care project. for it, you know, for new, a new lead gen service provider that I got. And it’s a case study that I’m doing in the mastermind, and I use tags, tags to create location silos anyways, a Google, it’s a new site, right? And my blogger just started blogging for the location posts on the site. And the way that we’re doing building it out with using tags to create the location silos. Google was ranking the tag pages, but not, but not the posts that I wanted to be ranked. And it indexed the tag pages first, right and the tag pages because some in some cases, they’re unique tags, which means that the tag page is a duplicate of post, that if you guys understand how tags work, that’s what happens if it’s a unique tag, it’s only in one post, then the tag page itself is essentially a duplicate of the post. And so for whatever reason, Google index the tag pages instead of the posts, and so the tag pages were ranking for the keywords, but not the post. And so and I even set the canonical in the tag setting with SEO ultimate Pro, you can do that because you can go to what’s called the Global canonical manager, or even the code inserter plus module, you can actually go in and add like a separate canonical for each tag and all that kind of stuff anyway. So I added the canonical URLs for the tag pages to canonicalize to the post, right, when it’s a unique tag, you can do that. And but Google wasn’t honoring it. And about two weeks went by and so finally I went just this week, I just went to search console, and forced Google to recrawl the posts or excuse me, the tag pages because they had the canonical URLs in the HTML header to point to the posts that I wanted to give the credit to. Right and that’s what I want to be ranked, and it only took about 24 hours, and lo and behold, now the tag pages aren’t indexed, but the posts are, which is what I wanted. So again, it, you know, that doesn’t mean that that’s always going to happen, because it could be that Google doesn’t honor the canonical or doesn’t, you know, doesn’t recognize it for whatever reason, they, By the way, you can also check that when you submit inspect URL in Search Console. And once it inspects the URL, it’s going to tell you whether it’s in Google or not. And there’s a drop-down setting that your menu that you can click on to expand, it shows you additional details, and it’ll tell you what the Google recognized canonical is for that page, or that post whatever URL it is that you’re inspecting. Right? And so you can clearly see what Google seeing. So you can force a canonical, and then go ask Google to request indexing. And then once it does, you know you can look at the code that it shows like the rendered page and it’ll tell you the details of that and it’ll show you if it if it saw the canonical or not. So anyway, hopefully, that was helpful. Do you see SEO

Is It Okay To Embed MyMap Via Tag Manager?

Is it? Is it okay to embed the mind map via Tag Manager? I’m not sure how you would do that.

I’m not sure how you would do that. Tag Manager creates container codes, right header code, and Body Code. And then you inject things into that like scripts and tracking codes and pixels and that kind of stuff. And I don’t know what embedding a my map would do, or if it would even read. Is that something you have any idea about? Marco?

Hello, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. I was talking intimidated might not I think you can. You can use iframes with Tag Manager not not only that, you can track them. Hmm. Am I giving away too much? Oh, nevermind.

I’ll have to play with that DC. I’m not sure. I’ve never done it. Don’t listen, go play with it. And then and then look at all the nice stuff that happens in there.

Okay.

Cool, well there you go.

Is It A Good Deal To Have A 1500 Monthly Retainer Plus Sale Percentage?

Unknown Speaker 45:03 Alright, so moving on next one is Josh says I am changing locations from my current office to a shared workspace and apparently with Google, this isn’t a verifiable address so they won’t verify my GMB profile with this type of address. With the MG y b GMB service will this help with this issue?

Is it a storefront or a service area business that would be my question. Can you get a listing right now a GMB listing through MGYB? Yes.

As we talked about with Mohammed’s question earlier, if it’s a storefront business, I don’t recommend using a spam GMB listing for any type of storefront business because you mislead potential customers because they think it’s in one location and you are indeed in another location. So the only time I would ever recommend using a spammed GMB listing, let’s call it what it is. As for a service area business where the actual physical location in the GMB profile is hidden from the public, so it makes sense. So again, if it’s a service area business, then yes, that would help you. If it’s a storefront business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Any comments, guys?

No, I think that’s absolutely right, man. It’s a myth. You got to know what you’re getting into. Especially if you’re, if you’re going to spam it, right?

Yeah.

I’ve gotten away from doing spam, GMB listings just because the how much volatility there’s been in the last, you know, many months. Um, so I’m working more heavily on the organic side. Now, again, which has been years since I really pushed that. So it’s interesting, and that’s what the tree care project that I’m working on is, in part is a case study for the mastermind, is working on mostly organic rankings. I do have some GMB locations that are going to be incorporated into the project most of the organic rankings. And I’m also doing a lot of call ads call-only ads for Google ads. They are

If you’re very specific with Google call-only ads with your what I call Bullseye keywords, then you can get some pretty good results with that. It’s a lot less expensive than actual clicks to like, you know, regular PPC pay per Click type ads, pay per call ads are a little bit less expensive if you have very, very targeted keywords with location modifiers and such. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

What MGYB Service Should You Use Get More SEO Clients?

Lonnie says I landed my first client concrete company 1500 dollars per month plus percentage of sales. This is a good deal fucking a man. Congratulations, Lonnie. That’s all that looks like it looks like a really good deal. Absolutely. That’s a cherry deal for sure. So congratulations, man. I’m gonna hop in real quick and say it’s all relative, right? One congrats on getting that. Especially the percentage of sales and revenue. That’s a big one that I think a lot of people miss out on. But keep in mind too, this is totally dependent on what he’s doing for that. 1500 That’s true. You’d be getting worked to the fucking ground for 1500 but you know

It’s up to you, you You are the person who can determine whether or not that’s worthwhile. Yeah, that’s a great point, Adam.

And just know this, if it’s your first client, you probably are going to be work to death anyways. Because it’s your first client and you will learn over time, how to set boundaries with clients. Just talk to Mohammed who’s always here asking questions every single week. Mohammed’s been following us for a long, long time, and we’ve watched him grow considerably over the last couple of years. And he’s experienced a lot of growing pains and come here and ask for advice. And that’s what this forum is for Lonnie. So feel free to come back and ask questions every week. concerning how to handle certain situations doesn’t always have to be SEO related either. It could just be about how to handle particular clients, business operations, management, outsourcing, all that kind of stuff. Guys, we’re here to help grow your business as much as possible. Yes, we talk a lot about SEO. But there’s a lot of other things that we’ve all learned with our experience over the years on how to, you know, help you to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve all made.

But just know that it is your first client there, it’s likely you’re going to be work to death for that client. And that’s okay. Because you’re going to learn a lot from that. And you’ll begin to learn how to start to set boundaries. And remember, you know, one thing I want to recommend is, you do need to also set like communication boundaries, I don’t know that your new client is is somebody that might message you outside of business hours or over the weekend and that kind of stuff. But I’ve got a lot of clients that still to this day do, but I’ve trained them that I don’t reply to messages after hours or on weekends. Unless it’s an emergency like I have a preschool client that had a site go down on over a weekend and I had my daughter and I did actually help him because he’s a really good client and me, you know, I felt for him and I wanted to help him but very rarely do I ever reply to anything outside of ours, because once you set that precedent, people will take advantage of it. I don’t know that they mean to be malicious, but they just think that hey, I messaged him at night and he answered me, so, therefore, it’s okay for me to ask questions at any time, I would recommend that you know, as your first client, you need to start to learn how to set boundaries right upfront.

Anyways, let’s get back to the question. Sorry, I’m glad that Adam put that into perspective, because I immediately saw that percentage. And my mind went to the mat, my mind always goes to the numbers, where I normally get this company to 100-200k a month recurring for you know, out of if it’s like Costa Rica, where they work around, like, it’s killer money, it’s killer money, but even if it’s seasonal, right, you can’t work in the winter, if what if they’re doing driveways or whatever it is that they’re paving. If they’re laying a concrete slab, you’re talking about 100 k easy and if you charge 10 to 15% of that recurring, then I’m seeing that as a really good deal. If you’re going to be worked to the bone and the client can’t close. Then you got a problem. So thanks for putting that into perspective.

Yeah, not to downplay it. Yeah, definitely just wanted to tell because the way he phrased it that’s what gave me the hesitation. It’s like, Is this good? Like, man, there’s no way for us to know you’re the one who’s got to do that. But you know, congratulations on doing that. That’s good to see. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, Just remember, as your first client, you will make mistakes, there’s no question, you will work harder than you probably should. And that’s okay. Like I said, you’re going to learn from that. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Remember, come back here and ask questions often and we’ll try to provide you as much advice as we can. He says, also, I’m looking for simple services I can use to get me in on getting clients and suggestions. By the way, I love the video lead gen 2xyoruagency. Well, there, there you go. You have the video lead gen system and 2xyoruagency which is great for prospecting and generating prospects, right? Don’t build that pipeline first. Right? And that’s super, super important in through having a full pipeline of prospects and making presentations sending proposals, right so pitching prospects, you will get better, you’re gonna lose money upfront, and that’s okay. But you will get better you’ll be able to polish your presentation and your pitch and your message and all of that. And so just that’s why it’s so important guys to fill that pipeline full of prospects so that you can make those mistakes. And not every prospect that you talk to is going like you depend on them to be able to put food on your table. If because if that’s the case, desperation comes through and everything that you do, and they can smell that from a mile away. And so I think it’s better to have a pipeline full of prospects because then it’s okay, you don’t need anyone of them because you have more behind them. Right, that makes sense. As far as simple services, I recommend getting the most updated version of the battle plan if you don’t already have that. A lot of that was covered in 2xyoruagency anyways, but the battle plan is a very succinct version of what we recommend to get results and timelines for doing so and all of that and it’s very inexpensive. So I’d recommend you pick that up if you don’t have it already.

I’d also say mgyb.co, I mean everything there for you to offer your clients, whatever it is that they want. Everything is their press releases, liquidity and anything and everything that you need to do to produce results for your clients in MGYB.co. And if it doesn’t mean you have a good idea of a product that let us know.

What Is A Money Site?

This is a great question from Josh, he says, And see, guys, this is the thing you know, I think we often forget. Because we’ve been in this industry so long that not everybody understands the terminology. He says one more quick question, what exactly do you mean by money site that means your primary digital asset so like, whatever your primary domain is that you host your, your website for your business on? That’s what we call a money site. Why? Because it’s the site that generates you money, right? A lot of the other stuff that you know, we talked about is tier-one branded entity assets. Again, big terminology for basically meaning like social profiles and stuff that you can build a branded profile or presence on that you’re going to link back to your money site, your money site is your Epicenter, right? It’s your point of origin, it’s the golden frame, you always want to drive, all traffic all leads as much as possible back to your money site, because you have control over that’s an asset that you own and control, having ancillary profiles on social media properties and, you know, web to Dotto properties, and all that kind of stuff is great. And that’s what we do with the SEO shoot as we build all that stuff out. But ultimately, you don’t own those platforms. They could be taken away from you by Google, by YouTube, by Facebook, whatever, at any time. So they’re great to have. They’re great to use. But it’s best to try to use those to push people push traffic back to your money site because you do have control over that. And there’s so much more than you can do that. So your money site is again it’s your self hosted primary domain asset for your business, your company, your project, whatever it may be. Anybody else wants to take a stab at that? Yeah.

It could be your Google My Business website. It could be that it could be your your G site. It could be, you know, a free WordPress blog or blogger, Tumblr, or wherever it is that you choose to blog from, like, you don’t have to have something that’s self hosted. WordPress, are a self hosted domain for you to have a money site. This is like you said, it’s the place where you plan to send people to in order to make money and edit in order to sell your product service or whatever it is that you want people to see or buy. That’s your money site. Why? Because it makes you money. Not to say that there are other places that could make you money like social media, but it’s the primary source of what it is that you’re planning to do. Yeah, that’s a great point because as we talked about a lot of lead gen assets that I have don’t have a self-hosted money site. They are just GMB website.

In other words, the website, the Google My Business provides you which is free. And ultimately you don’t have full control over that Google does. Right. So I, you know, I’m glad Marco brought that up. Because I just mentioned self-hosted website, it doesn’t have to be that recommend that was possible. But there are times where it makes sense to not build a self-hosted website, for example, spammed GMB listings, it might not be wise to go through the trouble of building out a, you know, a self-hosted site because of all the work that goes into it. Whereas, you know, in case it was to get suspended, you lose all of them, the work that you did, essentially. So in that case, you know, the GMB website becomes the primary website for that location. Or another option would be like Marco said, you know, Google Site g site, right, so sites.google.com, that they, Marco and Rob have done several projects using those as the money site, and it works. It works really, really well. So the money site is exactly what Marco described, which is whatever it is that you’re using to make money.

If you’re going to build a brand, I think it’s important to build a self-hosted website with the brand name as the domain name, because you can really grow the authority of that brand and you benefit from that in so many ways. So, it’s a great question though. Alright, so the last question and we’ve only got three minutes left, we’re gonna wrap it up.

What SEO And Lead Gen Contract Do You Recommend?

He says, Lonnie says I’m having trouble with putting an SEO and lead with I’m sorry, with put an SEO and lead gen contract. Do you have any recommended contract forms? No, I don’t, you know, you could probably just go online and find some templates that you could use. I personally don’t like to use contracts I, I mean, I have in the past, but typically, it’s only for bigger companies that, you know, they want the contract. I like to do everything on a verbal agreement. So that and I always say this to potential prospects or customers look, you know, if I’m doing my job, you’re gonna want to continue paying me if I’m not, you’re not gonna want to continue paying me and that’s okay. I also want to be able to part ways from that client if we don’t dive well, we don’t agree on things if it’s just not a good fit, and I don’t want to be locked into a contract either. So I don’t expect my clients to want to be locked into a contract. And sometimes that burns me, for example, I had a home inspector client, that, you know, I very clearly stated what the timeline was going to be on results.

I typically asked for, hey, give me this much time. And before that time had passed before I reached that certain level of time that I mentioned, he canceled services. And I you know, And to me, that’s really unfair for both of us because he wasn’t able to get the results that he wanted, because it wasn’t, you know, fast enough for him even though I clearly stated all of that before we agreed to work together. But at the same time, I put a lot of work into that and it wasn’t able to fully realize the efforts you know, for him or for myself for my own satisfaction because he stopped paying me before all the work had been completed, if that makes sense. Sometimes I wish I did have a contract in place. But for the most part, I like the ability to be able to walk away from a client. And I also like them to know that they don’t, they’re not locked into a contract that kind of eases that.

That low and lowers the barrier to entry, so to speak. However, that said, there might be a difference of opinion here for some of the other guys. And you guys have a suggestion for him.

Now, you know me, I don’t do contracts. I hate him. I hate him. He locks me into everything. And what if I want to go out and maybe the client doesn’t want to go well, what if I want to go? What if I can’t stand the client? I want to go and then I’m bound by a contract for a year with this guy that I can’t stand that knows more or supposedly knows more than I do, which sometimes happens.

If you know how to produce results, then always go, “Look, I’ll give you results.” But record the quality I always record the call that that call. We talk

Bradley, what is going to take this long? I always have that recorded even though there’s no contract and I let the guy know Look, I’m gonna record the call. And then you can always refer revert back to that’s a contract, believe it or not, that’s a contract. Right? And it’ll hold up in most courts. I believe in the US. It’ll hold up, it’ll hold up in Costa Rica.

That’s a good idea. And yeah, if you disclose that right up front, and then get it on the recording, you do agree that this is being recorded, and that’s okay, right.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’m going to be recording this, I’m just gonna point this way. This way, we can refer back to the conversation, you know exactly what took place. I know exactly what to put in you walk them through, you know that this is going to take about 90 days for results. thereabouts. Because if you don’t, then you go into the process because I have to set everything up. And then we get everything going. I’m probably going to get two results before but I can’t guarantee any Google experience tells me that within 90 days, we should be able to see something, and then we can work from there but I need 90 days from you.

Are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re gonna get that nine out of 10. So now you have a binding contract now, at the end of it you tell at the end of those 90 days when we meet again, then we’ll decide if we continue.

Now real quick, I know Adam is if you’re still paying attention, I know we’re a little bit over, but I think you have a little bit of a different methodology. Is there any way you can comment on this? Um, yeah, I just I’m trying to think like, I don’t have too much of a difference it’s kind of constantly evolving. But yeah, I mean, as far as contracts go like I stay out of that I’ve never done anything. Okay. Yeah. And then, if he’s looking for actual he may just mean, he’s looking for an outline for like a proposal or an engagement proposal. If that’s the case, just contact support at semantic mastery comm will point you in the right direction. I know Hernan put one out there we had as a free opt-in that you could get as an outline. And that can be really helpful. I mean, I’ve used other people’s as a starting point when I’m changing services.

Adding something in just so that I have a good starting point then you tailor it kind of to your specifics.

Very good. Thank you. Alright guys, thanks everybody for being here is Chris were you gonna says something? I’m sorry. I mean like he is like a lead gen contract. I mean, like why not sell on a per lead basis? I don’t see there’s an issue you can do like a contract that states the price of the elite.

Yeah. So you should be fine that way. It should be super easy.

Sweet. Well, thanks for your input, guys. And thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289

Click on the video above to watch Episode 289 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

Welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 289 to one where Hernan looks continuously shocked for some reason.

Hi, how’s it going? Hernan Is everything okay. It’s great, man. I’m feeling like shit, but here we are. All right, good, good stuff. Well, keep going here. Like I said it’s Episode 289. Today’s the 27th of May 2020. I can see we got a lot of really good questions already today. But if you haven’t yet and you got a question, please put it on the page. First come first serve. And then I’m going to get into a few announcements. We’ve got some cool stuff that happened earlier this week. And then some last-minute announcements, things that we just found out about today that I want to touch on But first, let’s say hi to the guys real quick and see how everyone’s doing so

I’ll start to my top left here Bradley. How are you doing today?

Good. I’m good. I just edited the video description in YouTube because still had some stuff from the webinar we did yesterday. So anyway, but I’m good. Things are good. I’m back from taking a week off, and it sucked cuz I went away for a week camping and ATV riding, thinking that I was going to get away and get to enjoy it and it rained the entire week, all day every day and it was awful. It was fucking miserable. So I wish I would have stayed home and worked.

Yeah, man, speaking of weird weather that so I’m in the Bay Area. So we just hit 95 the last three days, which is like 34 Celsius. It’s just like, Okay, well guess I’ll go out in the morning, go for a walk and then come hunker in here, shut the blinds and turn the air just thinking. So that’s been my life for the past couple of days. So let’s head go with the happier weather report. Marco. How are you doing?

The sun’s out again. It’s the rainy season and he’s like the sun’s out. It’s rainy season man. Look, I live in paradise. All right, I can’t help that. Make some money. Right? First of all, go get the battle. You follow the Battle Plan.

make some money. Hire someone who will help you. Train, apply, and make money. lather, rinse, repeat. And then you can go find your own Fortress of Solitude where you can just watch the world go by and you don’t give up. Push your mouth but other than the outstanding weather

How are you doing marking things are going good. Things are good here man. Things are good. Yeah, I’m still like things are opening up a little bit here. Essential businesses and all that and all this other stuff, but I’m still self-parenting. I got three kids. They got to think about it and I’m not a spring chicken so that there’s another person that I had to think about right because I can go out or like one but I have to think about my family. Yeah. And what I might bring, bring home and closer to home to make somebody.

I knew personally died of this. It’s not as if it’s totally foreign to me like I don’t know anyone who is affected by this. I like what I do know. And so having it that cloth is not any longer six degrees of separation. it’s like I know and so no, it ain’t happening and we’re gonna see how this plays out and I’ll let everybody you guys can all go and enjoy yourselves you know to do whatever the hell you want and then let me know how that turns out and then I’ll decide after that second one what it is that we’re going to do but for now we’re cool we take it easy and that’s it, man. We did we just but my personal choice, right, my personal choice to do that. It’s not as if someone is forcing me to do it. I’m choosing that this is the best way for myself and my family. Enough. All right. Well, Hernan How about you man, things are like you’re moving into wintertime right? I always get

Yeah, it’s hot summer-like wait a second I was wearing a sweatshirt what hell’s going on? Yeah, actually actually all of you guys are well Marco Marco is like, you know, he’s in a good spot 20% but all of you guys are you know getting the nice season. I’m getting the shooting season. Yeah now so now but yeah man it’s good today was a good day.

Like warm-ish. But yeah, we’re getting into winter and all of that so see how that goes, could you? Oh, Chris How about yourself? Yeah, yeah can’t complain man sun’s out the sun is shining all day. I mean it’s dark right now and the best part of all Friday the gyms opening back up and stuff so things are really good standing. Well, I’m going to circle back around Bradley, you mentioned a webinar and I wanted to touch on that because we had Brian, a mastermind member, along with Bruno, and you all listening can get to know both of them better and see what Bradley has to say to about this go high-level system. And Bradley, you want to tell real quick, I’m gonna pop the link in where people can go and check out the replay. Do you want to tell them about the webinar a little bit?

Yeah, Brian, one of our mastermind members reached out and basically said that he was using a platform, an agency automation platform that consolidates a whole bunch of different services and such all under one roof. He reached out because he thought that it would fit really, really well with the 2xyoruagency training.

Because it does a lot of the stuff that I talked about in 2xyouragency about how to automate, delegate or eliminate because this platform consolidates a lot of services that you may have separate subscriptions for and I always call it duct taping them together using Zapier or some similar application. And basically these have integrated services that do all

All of the same things that many of these external services do that we put, you know, we connect via Zapier, and it’s all under one dashboard. And so it’s a lot more seamless. And there’s a lot of really cool features inside there, like one of the primary feature that was, is used to pitch this go high-level application or platform is what’s called database reactivation, which is a very easy way or a simple way for you to get your foot in the door as an agency owner with potential marketing clients because you can. So anyway, I can’t really go into depth right now about that, but it’s a really cool platform. I signed up my own agency on the agency level account level so that I can create a first of all, I’m gonna use it for my own agency, but second of all, so I could also create a case study for how I’m using it. I’ve got some really good ideas that I’m going to be sharing in that case study that I’m gonna be putting to the test and then sharing in the case study.

As well on how I’m using it and how to generate kind of exponential revenue growth from it, as opposed to just linear. And so anyway, I think it’s bad, it’s very valuable, I would encourage you guys to go check it out, it does come with a 14-day free trial. So once you see the webinar, you know, comes with some free or some, I think it’s free, or it’s like five bucks may be to pay for some of the training that Bruno had put together, what he calls the quick start training for that. And so you can get all of that. And your first 14 days determine if it’s for you or not, but I think once you see some of the potentials of this, it would be something if any of you are trying to grow. I think you should absolutely take a good hard look at it. Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t do generally local stuff. But I check this out. And like I’ve been looking at it and I talked to Brian about all the details and like I was starting to be like maybe I could find a way to you just like no stop it. But like for anyone out there who’s dealing with especially local clients or can find the right use case

Yeah, just blew me away from the number of services and automation that’s packed into that suite of tools and how seamless that is, is pretty amazing. So definitely worth checking it out. Real quick to this one came up today. So we constantly get questions about GMB verifications, right? You know, hey, where can you guys do GMB verifications work in MGYB, when is it going to be available? I’m going to cut to the chase GMB verifications are available right now. As always, we cannot tell you how long that is going to be the case. So if you are doing lead gen if you’re needing a verification for some other reason, this would be a very good time to put your order in because not only can you order now what you couldn’t have yesterday, you can get a 15% discount today while we’ve got it opened up. Also, it comes with a 30-day guarantee. And it’s about I believe, 14 day turnaround time. So pretty quick. I’ll post all of that in the chatbox for those who are live. If you’re not just head to mgyb.co, and head to the store, you can look for GMB verifications there you can also get syndication networks, Rs drive stacks, SEO shield, link building all that sort of good stuff.

And circling back around. I wanted to touch on this real quick for those of you who are watching us for the first time, thank you very much whether you’re watching live or catching the replay on YouTube. If you want to go to the right place, head to semantic mastery comm slash HD questions every week, we asked you to limit your questions just to one. Unless you’re live, you can ask some more. You know, we get down there. We just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions. So if you ask some questions, we may not get to all of them just before Warren. And then secondly, we encourage everyone to check out the battle plan and go to battle plan dot semantic mastery. If you want to get repeated repeatable SEO results that is for you. I’m not going to read the page to you you can go over there and check it out. But it is a fantastic tool that we recently just updated them released version four a month ago.

And then Bradley touched on this too if you’re an agency owner or a consultant that you want to get more clients, yes, you want to grow your revenue. Yes. And you want to scale your team, hopefully, yes. Then if you want to do that, head over 2xyouragency.com. There’s a ton of incredible training lets you crush it, whether you’re again, being a consultant, or if you want to build a true agency, and it doesn’t matter if that’s SEO, it’s other areas of digital marketing. It’s going to help you grow and make more money. That’s the bottom line.

All right, with that said, Guys, any other quick announcements before we dive into questions?

Good. All right. Let’s do it.

All right. Grab the screen.

You guys confirm when you see. See my screen.

Would You Recommend Ordering Another Drive Stack To A New Website Section Targeting Service Keywords In Different Locations?

So it looks like BB Now that might have been from last week. It looks like it was it will start with Bobby. Bobby says Hey guys, I got some questions. The first one was would you recommend ordering another drive stack to a completely new section of a website targeting a different service keyword in different locations on a large content site that would be perfect for the location sealed, am I right? Marco?

Yeah, that’s perfect for the extension. And it’s currently available and as a coupon sweep. So that’s what the drive stack expansion.

Yeah, we’re saying, Yeah, maybe if he already has the brand it because he’s saying another, right, a completely new section of the website. So we’re talking about the same website, money site. That’s how I’m seeing. I’m seeing something different.

He has a different service keyword, and a different location on a large content what so that’s, that’s just an inner page, I think what he’s describing the top of the silo. So you would aim the expansion on the current drive stack at that inner page, you’d get much more power going and extending that initial drive stack then you would be doing a completely different drive stack, g site. Sure, gotcha. Okay.

Would You Recommend RSS Masher To Drive Traffic To A Money Site And Lead Gen Assets?

The next question was  GMB.Thanks again, I’ve not used them for lead gen assets but I have in the past I haven’t built since the updated the new version of RSS master which is even better. But to create the kind of like Kwazii PBNs and when I say PBNs, they’re not like what we would traditionally think of a treat PBN, these are real sites to generate real traffic and that’s the differentiator, right? having real sites generate real traffic. With automated content posting to them right through all the RSS feeds that you splice together and RSS masher and all the really cool shit you can do. You can take a look at the most recent webinar we did with Damon Nelson, about the most current version of RSS masher and see some of the examples of the sites that he builds are 100% honest.

Major content sites using RSS masher. And they’re freaking beautiful sites. And he’s generating affiliate income and, you know, like AdSense income. And so such using those sites because they do generate traffic, they look beautiful. But from an SEO standpoint, I looked at it as like, hey, this could be really good to generate, you know, in related content type sites that could feed traffic back to a money site or a lead gen site or whatever. So, I mean, I think it’s certainly possible to use it for that I haven’t done it myself just to be honest because it’s not the strategy that I’ve been pursuing. I’ve wanted to in fact, I even talked about it with my partners here. I would love to have some time to play with that and set up some sights but I haven’t done it yet. I think Marco. Weren’t you guys gonna try playing with that a bit. I know it probably hasn’t been done but wasn’t that on the to-do list?

It is being done. What we are currently testing it and we won’t like there is anything. I’m not personally doing it but I got my mini mastermind, which is where all the evil takes place where we can go after everything. And there’s a couple of people in there who have a license. And then one of them is using our license as I gave her our license to go and try it out. So they got together. Three of the people in my seven-person mini mastermind got together. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing information on how to make make it work in the best way possible. And then they’re going to come back and report it to me and we’re either going to make it available through MGYB as a service, or I’m not sure how we’re going to offer that but there’s definitely something in the works with that RSS masher. It’s just you guys if you go get it just be prepared because there’s a high learning curve is that simple software that you’re just going to go and plug and play

You have to be prepared to go through the training to go through the process, gathering up the feeds making everything look right. And then you know that that’s when the magic happens and I can’t wait to blast that. Now get it, give it a companion g site and drive stack, expand it, and then blast it with link building and some embeds and see what happened. I can’t wait.

Yeah, it looks good. As I said, I wish I had more time to mess with it. Because I think there’s a lot of potentials there as well. So, so maybe next Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, we can give people a preview. But again, the first ones that’ll get a preview, it will be my mini mastermind, and then the semantic mastery mastermind, the heavy hitter club, and then we’ll go public with whatever we have. It’s still a few weeks away, it takes time. That’s all

Is It Possible To Get An Iframe For A Drive Folder?

so Frank’s up. He says it is it possible to get an iframe for a drive folder tried adding a link into iframe generator and it came back saying the page was blocked from being displayed? also. Well, first of all,

The first part of that is Yeah, you can use to be able to do that. But no, I haven’t tried since the updates recently. Marco, can you? Yeah. Not through the iframe January? That’s why I tell people to code their own code. Yeah, because you can’t do it that way. You have to separate the, I can’t go through the process that you have to get the folder ID to be able to iframe it. And what you have to insert in an iframe generator is the entire URL, and you can’t do it that way.

Okay.

Publish to the web would be a file setting in the drive used to say publish to the web, it would give you an embed code for the file or for the folder, but I think that has been taken away correct recently. Uh, no. I can check that right now. I mean, go on and let me take a folder that has nothing in it. And we’ll just move on while you’re looking that up.

Do You Have Any Link Building Services In MGYB For T1 Money Site?

He says also with MGYB, do you have any link building services that could be used for tier-one money site or only g sites? Yeah, that while the SEO shield can point back to your money site, right, which includes the drive stack files and folders as well as the G site. Also, press releases could be used for tier-one money site, right where your money site tier-one money site is. It’s redundant. That’s like the Department of redundancy department. You know what I mean? So, yeah, your money site, again, press releases and the SEO shield? Those are the two things that I would recommend. Am I missing something?

No, no, no, I don’t think so. And I can’t find it. I can’t find published on the web by the way. That’s what I thought had been removed since the recent update. But it used to be able to do it that way. So hopefully that was helpful.

What MGYB Service You Should Use To Rank For A City That Is Three Hours Away From The Dealership Location?

Mohammed’s up, it’s up mom and he says, Hey, guys, a client is asking me if I can rank his Volkswagen dealership for VW related keywords in a city. Three hours away from where the dealership actually is.

Actually, how would I go about this? I know I can get a GMB from MGYB for the New City and add a new city page to the money site. What else would I do?

Well, the problem that I see with that Mohammed is it’s a dealership right? So if you’re getting a GMB for a dealership which is a storefront business, right with the customers come to the business location, and you’ve got a spammed GMB listing, that’s three hours away from where the dealership actually exists, then, how is that going to play with potential car buyers? When they’re looking to go to a dealership in their local area and they’ve come to find out it’s a spam listing and instead they’ve got to go three hours away to buy a Volkswagen. To me, I don’t think that would be advisable for the reasons I just mentioned. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question. Anybody else interprets this another way?

No, that’s the way I’m I’m reading it unless the dealer is opening up a dealership in that city in which case, you would need spam. GMB. Right. Correct. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I am not willing to drive three hours to go look at a car, like my dealer has to be closed by where I can just jump in the car. 1015 minutes, I’m there and look at the car and decide if I’m gonna buy it. Because I’ll be people. Yes. I mean, the idea behind it is correct. People are going to first look online to find a car that they liked, and they’re going to find the dealer, then they’re going to go visit the dealer to see the cart. Who’s going to drive? Did you talk that to this dealership owner, by the way, and ask him Who do you know that’s going to drive three hours to buy a car when they can buy one mic in the city? I don’t understand the thinking behind that. Not only that, but don’t you think it would piss a potential customer off if they were misled to believe that a dealership was in their local area just to come to find out that it’s three hours away? I mean, it’s not just that like if he was promoting like ranked a page organically for the city that is three hours away, and says, Hey, we sell cars. Were our dealerships over here and they’re honest about where it is. It’s very likely most people are going to drive three hours away anyways, but at least they weren’t being dishonest about it. Whereas having a GMB for a storefront business where a store doesn’t actually exist, that I think in my view would piss me off if I put driving directions and go show up at this place to find out that it’s it doesn’t exist, and then I got to drive three hours away to go where I intended. What about other car dealers dealerships? wouldn’t they be pissed if you’re faking? A GMB and I just totally am in the area. I don’t think VW corporate would be too happy with that with you faking GMB.  I don’t know how much trouble I mean, you can get into a whole lot of trouble behind that. talk to this guy. talk some sense and then

yeah, just find out what his intent is really. And maybe you already know it, Mohammed and it just wasn’t conveyed in that message.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean like I said if I was going to do anything it would be to try to just rank organically for that and just be honest about where the dealership is and why they should drive three hours away to purchase a car at that particular dealership.

SEO Shield Question

Alright, moving on uh, next question is Hello everyone recently I purchased an SEO shield and since I got some discount for link building, I also bought that so I placed the order for SEO shield and link building altogether. What I found out that instead of building the links to my properties, they pointed all the direct all directly to your money site. Okay, you can edit the URLs to build links to an M GI Bill, Why be disregarded that and build all the links to your money site? No continue can find that hard to believe okay. When I inquired from support about it, they said since you had provided the URL file, we built all the links around that. But they also said that they don’t recommend it. I’m a new user purchasing SEO shield first time and also not aware of the internal tech now technicalities excuse me of SEO SEO. So I provide all the information including the URL file because I thought it might be required to build the SEO shield since I bought the SEO, SEO, and link building. So I believe that SM support will follow the best practice since I’ve gone blindly trust SM for SEO related stuff. So my question is Why were the links built directly in the money site even when it is not recommended? No one will pay for the money to I’m not sure what he says.

Now, he says that the links can’t be removed. This website is my six months old hard work. I don’t want to degrade my website by any means. So what should I do now? Should I disavow the links pointing in the Excel sheet? Please suggest, okay, um, the first part of that. I’m not sure if you came to us cold and you don’t know anything about our methodology, then then I could understand where that confusion may have come from.

Perhaps we need to have that clearly explicitly outlined on this on the order page or the order submit Details page. In other words, if it’s not already, but

As far as what you know, we didn’t build all the links to your money site URL. If your money site URL was listed in your submitted URLs list, then some links will have been built to your money site URL. But in all of our training, we always suggest we actually won’t build links to your money site URL if we know that it’s in there. So I don’t know what to tell you on that other than and as far as disavowing Marco doesn’t ever recommend that I’ve done it in the past haven’t done it for years.

I don’t think Have you seen anything negative happen? We don’t suggest it, but I don’t know that it is going to cause any problems. Marco, what do you say about this? I say I have a really big problem with this guy. Right? Because this was sent to support at mg y v.co. And I heard from Deadia and he said, hey, look, you know what, what can we do it with this? What can we do for this person? So we’re looking to do the right thing. Here. Look, I can remove all I think I can remove all the links

But it’s gonna take a while I so we aren’t talking about it, he doesn’t even give support a chance to respond and let him know what the answers are. He comes here to a public forum to air the laundry. And I understand that. I mean, in no way Is this a recommended practice. But I mean, he submitted the URLs for us to build links to if you give us a spreadsheet, how are we to know that there’s a money site included in the spreadsheet? I mean, he’s assuming that we’re supposed to assume and look these, the logic behind this evades me because I just don’t see it, how we’re supposed to know that he’s submitting his money site from now on. And so now we know that we need to make sure that we tell people explicitly on the order form do not submit your money site URL. So thank you for that. But I don’t appreciate

This being aired on a public forum, where we’re taking care of when we’re looking to do what’s best for you and for your website. Not that anything bad has happened. Not that anything bad will happen. We don’t know yet what would happen, but it’s still in the discussion stage and he doesn’t even give it an opportunity comes publicly as Hey, you guys, I thought you were supposed to follow best practice practices and whatever else he says. And I just don’t appreciate it. Give us at least a chance to do the right thing. And then if there’s a problem, if there’s no resolution, then you come here and you speak to us publicly. I thought about writing to you by the way. Because I saw this, I saw the way he called it the ticket, come through and I know I’m supposed to stay away from customer service. But I thought about writing to him because I don’t see the logic. If he submits the URLs to build links. That’s what we’re going to build links to because the customer as always, right? So if you want links built to your money site, in spite of the fact that we don’t recommend it, and then we say, Don’t ever do it, we don’t do it. If you submit the URL, and it’s by mistake, and I’m not saying that you did it on purpose, if by mistake you included in my site, or you didn’t know, it’s going to get links built to it. Now, yeah, we are going to try to do the right thing. That’s all I can say. We were trying to do the right thing before, even after having come on a public forum, and then like hitting on my last nerve, we’re still going to help you out.

Yeah and I don’t know that it’s going to cause any problem. We just, we don’t build links, the types of links that we sell at MGB directly the money site, we always in all of our training suggest not to do that because that’s the whole reason for the SEO shield right is because and that’s why it’s named the SEO shield because it shields your money site, from all the external threats.

SEO and link building that you can do because link building to your money site can, doesn’t always but can create a problem. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have problems because that happened, it might not cause any problems at all, we just don’t recommend it, we suggest not to do it, because there’s no need to because we push all the power to the SEO shield and use the SEO shield to launder basically clean any potential negative juice through Google properties and through high authority assets, that and push relevancy essentially, eventually to the money site. So again, we don’t know that it’s gonna cause a negative impact at all, we just don’t, we don’t test it. Because we don’t do that we always recommend building them directly to the SEO shield. Again, that’s the whole point of the SEO shield. So we have learned, we have now decided or just came to the realization that that needs to be very explicit on the order form, submit page, and that makes sense and we’ll make sure that we make that change and Marco and Dadea, our link builder, are going to do what they can for you. So hopefully that will suffice.

How Do You Use Press Release To Achieve Better Rankings?

Next question, SMS insurances total newbie here, I just ordered the press release. Not sure where to start. I’m clueless on what to do, and the advice would be great. This is awesome that you asked this question because I’m actually working on a little mini-course for press releases for people that want to order and not for SEOs. But for business owners. I mean, anybody can have access to it that they want, but it’s I’m doing a little mini-course for press releases.

For MGYB, in other words, a little mini-course on trying to teach a layman right or a business owner, somebody that’s not an SEO, how to get the most use in the best use the most traction from press releases that you order from MGYB. And I’ll have that done by next Tuesday for sure. Maybe even possibly will be available on by next Wednesday for people to go download as a Lead Magnet or whatever, we’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna have it ready by Tuesday. I don’t know if it’ll be ready on Wednesday for public consumption. That said, I can give you a brief rundown on it. Because I was actually working on that presentation earlier today. In fact, it’s over here. So I can show you that I’m not kidding, do it yourself press releases, leveraged PR marketing for your business. So this will be both a presentation as well as some of that stuff hasn’t been added yet. But it will be a presentation that will be available, as well as some videos. So it’ll be like a little mini training course, on how to get the best uses of press releases, and then what to do next as well. So really a quick rundown on that is, first have an understanding of what your keywords are that you want to promote, right? So your primary products and services, products and or services, or an event if you’re promoting an event, whatever, whatever you’re trying to promote. You want to have a set of keywords that you’re looking to promote. And you want to submit that as the primary keyword for each one of the press releases.

So the press release writers, the writers that they’re really good about creating brand plus keyword association. So if you submit the keyword that you want to be used as the primary keyword, they’re going to create that they’re going to use the brand name and the keyword in the title. Okay, which is very, very important. And then they’re going to write about whatever it is that you instruct them to write about. And you can be as descriptive about how to like, you can tell them the tone that you want, that you want them to write it in, you can tell them certain things that you want them to highlight within the press release. Or you can be vague, you can just say, here’s the URL that I want you to promote. And they’ll go look at the URL, also look at the brand and they’ll create a news angle story, that they’ll write a press release about so it makes it easy for you guys if you have something specific you want written about. add that in the writing description. If you don’t and you don’t know how to create a newsworthy angle, don’t worry about it because that’s what the press release riders do. So you can just submit a URL and say this is the primary

URL I want promoting, write a story about it right. And though they’ll figure out a way, which is why I love using it, because it takes the responsibility right off of us to come up with the angle all the time. They’re really good about that once the press release is published, or you want to also link back to whatever you’re primarily trying to promote. So for example, I like to, by the way, if you’re new SM, s and s insurance, you can go to our YouTube channel youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery and use the channel search feature. And you can even go to Google and search for a press release or PR silo stalking or press release, SEO, semantic mastery, something like that, and you can find a webinar it’s actually still on mg y v. If you go to the webinars tab on the MG y v.co. website, you can take a look, I think that was the last webinar that we did was PR silo stalking, and that’ll give you a really good description. It was almost an hour You know, I don’t know 40-minute webinar or whatever specifically about how to get the

Most uses out are the best use out of sight, press releases. So again, you’re going to want to have at least one URL that you’re going to promote, you can have up to three, I usually recommend only two URLs per the press release, unless you’re siloing press releases, in which case you’ll have three, three target URLs that you’re promoting within the press release because you’re going to be linking back to the previous press release within that silo. if all of this sounds foreign to you, just go check out that webinar that I just described. And then it will tell you exactly what we do to get really, really good results with press releases. And just an aside to kind of a point to kind of reinforce this is I was just talking in the mastermind two weeks ago when I did my last mastermind webinar, about how I have a GMB asset as a lead gen asset that I hadn’t done anything with it was published about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, but I never optimized it never did anything to rank it. And I did three press releases in one week to push that GMB asset and all it has is it’s a GMB location. You know, profile and it’s got a GMB website. It’s not connected to a money site. The money site is the GMB website. And I did three press releases in a week. And the son of a bitch disappeared from maps all together for about three weeks. But then it popped after three weeks of it like not even showing I thought it got it was doing a Google dance. But I’ve not seen one this drastic, or this is significant of a Google dance to where it like literally, the listing disappeared, it disappeared entirely from Google Maps. And then all of a sudden bounce it when it popped, it popped into number three, the C position in the maps three pack from just three press releases in a week. Now that’s those results aren’t typical, but I’m just sharing that because it does show you that and all I did was PR silo stacking method, the same one that I’m suggesting you go watch that webinar to learn the strategy. And it works guys. It really does work. So that’s what I would recommend is

Just first go look at that webinar. And then after you have published the press release, it’s always better to do like one press release isn’t going to move the needle much, if at all, but when you start to do the silo stacking with press releases, you can do significant damage with that, and in a good way, right, yeah. And then from there, the next thing you can do is do link building gigs to the press releases or to the organization page that we provide. When you order a press release. That’s something else and embed gigs. You can do embed gigs as well, but don’t link directly to your money site. Anyway, you want to comment on that anybody?

From dance is real man. Right? We tell people 21 days actually, it’s 20 days. But I tell people 21 days just to be sure they’re clear of it. And then that’s when you go and take a look at everything. You decide what to do, but it’s very real. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about that. They just see rankings drop and then they go try to fix it and they make things worse instead of trying to instead of the result being better.

You just supposed to leave it alone until like you said, it just comes back and then you decide.

Unknown Speaker 35:06 Yeah, what’s interesting is, like you said, for about three weeks, I haven’t seen something that drastic of a dance in quite some time to be honest with you. And so I was a little bit nervous. I was thinking like, What the fuck is going on with this, this listing? And all I did was a handful of GMB posts to that listing over the course of those three weeks that was it, nothing else. And like I said, it popped and when it did, it’s, it’s in the number. In fact, I just got a lead from that today for sure, for Tree Removal in that particular city. So it’s producing and all it took was three press releases, which again, is very, very powerful. So it used the exact same method I just mentioned was PR silo stacking, so just go watch that webinar. It’s done in the MGYB, webinar archive, and it’s PR silo stacking, and it works really, really well.

Okay, next question. DC SEO says, Hey guys, I received the ROI as part of my shield back and your wise keywords are the ones that gave your team they’re in the same niche, but very different to what I handed in Is this right? Mine didn’t have any location or mine, I guess he means mine didn’t have any location as per instructions and what I received that keyword plus locations from around the world. I’m in the UK as well as a ton of keywords that are irrelevant to my services. I don’t know how that could happen. Any, any suggestion? No, that doesn’t sound right. But this isn’t the forum for that is it support at MGYB.co. What happened? Give us the order number. We’ll go track it down. And if we have to do it over, we’ll do it over we’ll talk to the VA who built it. I mean, we take care of everything guys. We always do we always try to do right, by everyone. You have to do things in the proper forum.

Last week, end of last week or whatever, I think it was Friday, I announced that we had cracked the code that we were able to now extend the drugs tax because we had automated it. And then someone posted in all of our groups, well, what if I have a VA? How do I train them?

And so now, no matter where I respond, it’s going to look like I didn’t respond and all of the other I would have to go and respond in all of the other groups, the very same thing that I responded in the one group and it’s gonna make it look in the other in the groups where I don’t respond like I don’t care or it doesn’t matter or I didn’t want to respond or whatever. I don’t like guys do things in the right place. And at the right time, this first goes to support. If support doesn’t take care of you, then come to us and let us know. And then like, I know, one of the owners in MGB and I’ll have a talk with him and see what we can do about rectifying the situation, but it’s in here in a public forum. I can’t do anything for you.

Yeah, Fidel. If it was indeed a mistake on our end, then absolutely. We just kill that drive, stack, and build and one for you. So and it won’t, it won’t hurt you at all. So it’s not an issue if it was indeed our problem. If you submitted the wrong keyword file, that’s one thing, but if it was, somehow it got built with keywords that you didn’t submit, which is unlikely, but people are human things happen. So if that was the case, just bring it to supports attention, we’ll take a look at it and if that was indeed the case, it would just kill that stack and then go to a new one, and it won’t it won’t cause any problems. So that’s the beautiful thing about those guys and that’s also why we talked about using the SEO shield for clients and stuff like that because you get the accounts back and you could protect your work right? Because if something happens and you get fired or the client stops paying you I’ve had that happen where they just ghost on you, you know what I mean? The business still exists but they just won’t answer phone calls or emails when they owe you money that kind I’ve had that happen several times over my career. You can go in and just kill the drive stack, delete it. I don’t even set it to not public which is it’s changed now anyways and because it can still push power, even when it’s not indexable. But you can go in and just kill the damn thing or rework it to point somewhere else, you know, to meet to their competitor, that you can go land as a client. So that’s one of the beautiful things about it. So it can be remedied. That’s not a problem.

Can You Create A Subdomain, Rank, And Redirect All The Pages To Another Site While Maintaining Its Ranking?

The next question was, can you create a subdomain website and rank it and then redirect all the pages to another site? And the subdomain maintain its rankings? No, because the redirect will point to the new location and new locate the new location is going to replace the subdomain at some point, right? You can’t redirect a URL and have both the URLs still appear in search, or they might temporarily, and I don’t even know that that’s true. But Google will whatever the redirect is eventually that’s what will rank and the other one will fall out of the index entirely. Am I right in that, or am I missing something? I’m not I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t see how you can’t since you’re telling the bot through the 301 that the page or everything in that sub-domain moved permanently somewhere else. Yeah. You could use I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah, you could use a canonical. And it can both pages can rank. I’ve seen that many times, you’re telling Google with a canonical, like, hey, this page is similar to this page over here, give the credit to this page, right? And then Google sometimes disregards that and well, you know, both pages will index and they’ll both rank. And that happens. So I would suggest a canonical instead of a 301 if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, but remember that just because you canonicalize. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mean Google’s going to honor that. It also doesn’t mean that they won’t honor it. Right? It just kind of it’s kind of a crapshoot. So yeah, what, what that is canonical is when you have similar or the same, and it doesn’t have to be two. It could be two or more, however many copies of that document. There is there exists. You can tell Google which ones the master copy is and to rank that one, rather than all the other. Now, whether Google follows the directive, well, that’s up to Google. And they’re not telling what they’ll do is right.

Yeah, and just to, you know, kind of reinforce that I’m working on a tree care project. for it, you know, for new, a new lead gen service provider that I got. And it’s a case study that I’m doing in the mastermind, and I use tags, tags to create location silos anyways, a Google, it’s a new site, right? And my blogger just started blogging for the location posts on the site. And the way that we’re doing building it out with using tags to create the location silos. Google was ranking the tag pages, but not, but not the posts that I wanted to be ranked. And it indexed the tag pages first, right and the tag pages because some in some cases, they’re unique tags, which means that the tag page is a duplicate of post, that if you guys understand how tags work, that’s what happens if it’s a unique tag, it’s only in one post, then the tag page itself is essentially a duplicate of the post. And so for whatever reason, Google index the tag pages instead of the posts, and so the tag pages were ranking for the keywords, but not the post. And so and I even set the canonical in the tag setting with SEO ultimate Pro, you can do that because you can go to what’s called the Global canonical manager, or even the code inserter plus module, you can actually go in and add like a separate canonical for each tag and all that kind of stuff anyway. So I added the canonical URLs for the tag pages to canonicalize to the post, right, when it’s a unique tag, you can do that. And but Google wasn’t honoring it. And about two weeks went by and so finally I went just this week, I just went to search console, and forced Google to recrawl the posts or excuse me, the tag pages because they had the canonical URLs in the HTML header to point to the posts that I wanted to give the credit to. Right and that’s what I want to be ranked, and it only took about 24 hours, and lo and behold, now the tag pages aren’t indexed, but the posts are, which is what I wanted. So again, it, you know, that doesn’t mean that that’s always going to happen, because it could be that Google doesn’t honor the canonical or doesn’t, you know, doesn’t recognize it for whatever reason, they, By the way, you can also check that when you submit inspect URL in Search Console. And once it inspects the URL, it’s going to tell you whether it’s in Google or not. And there’s a drop-down setting that your menu that you can click on to expand, it shows you additional details, and it’ll tell you what the Google recognized canonical is for that page, or that post whatever URL it is that you’re inspecting. Right? And so you can clearly see what Google seeing. So you can force a canonical, and then go ask Google to request indexing. And then once it does, you know you can look at the code that it shows like the rendered page and it’ll tell you the details of that and it’ll show you if it if it saw the canonical or not. So anyway, hopefully, that was helpful. Do you see SEO

Is It Okay To Embed MyMap Via Tag Manager?

Is it? Is it okay to embed the mind map via Tag Manager? I’m not sure how you would do that.

I’m not sure how you would do that. Tag Manager creates container codes, right header code, and Body Code. And then you inject things into that like scripts and tracking codes and pixels and that kind of stuff. And I don’t know what embedding a my map would do, or if it would even read. Is that something you have any idea about? Marco?

Hello, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. I was talking intimidated might not I think you can. You can use iframes with Tag Manager not not only that, you can track them. Hmm. Am I giving away too much? Oh, nevermind.

I’ll have to play with that DC. I’m not sure. I’ve never done it. Don’t listen, go play with it. And then and then look at all the nice stuff that happens in there.

Okay.

Cool, well there you go.

Is It A Good Deal To Have A 1500 Monthly Retainer Plus Sale Percentage?

Unknown Speaker 45:03 Alright, so moving on next one is Josh says I am changing locations from my current office to a shared workspace and apparently with Google, this isn’t a verifiable address so they won’t verify my GMB profile with this type of address. With the MG y b GMB service will this help with this issue?

Is it a storefront or a service area business that would be my question. Can you get a listing right now a GMB listing through MGYB? Yes.

As we talked about with Mohammed’s question earlier, if it’s a storefront business, I don’t recommend using a spam GMB listing for any type of storefront business because you mislead potential customers because they think it’s in one location and you are indeed in another location. So the only time I would ever recommend using a spammed GMB listing, let’s call it what it is. As for a service area business where the actual physical location in the GMB profile is hidden from the public, so it makes sense. So again, if it’s a service area business, then yes, that would help you. If it’s a storefront business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Any comments, guys?

No, I think that’s absolutely right, man. It’s a myth. You got to know what you’re getting into. Especially if you’re, if you’re going to spam it, right?

Yeah.

I’ve gotten away from doing spam, GMB listings just because the how much volatility there’s been in the last, you know, many months. Um, so I’m working more heavily on the organic side. Now, again, which has been years since I really pushed that. So it’s interesting, and that’s what the tree care project that I’m working on is, in part is a case study for the mastermind, is working on mostly organic rankings. I do have some GMB locations that are going to be incorporated into the project most of the organic rankings. And I’m also doing a lot of call ads call-only ads for Google ads. They are

If you’re very specific with Google call-only ads with your what I call Bullseye keywords, then you can get some pretty good results with that. It’s a lot less expensive than actual clicks to like, you know, regular PPC pay per Click type ads, pay per call ads are a little bit less expensive if you have very, very targeted keywords with location modifiers and such. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

What MGYB Service Should You Use Get More SEO Clients?

Lonnie says I landed my first client concrete company 1500 dollars per month plus percentage of sales. This is a good deal fucking a man. Congratulations, Lonnie. That’s all that looks like it looks like a really good deal. Absolutely. That’s a cherry deal for sure. So congratulations, man. I’m gonna hop in real quick and say it’s all relative, right? One congrats on getting that. Especially the percentage of sales and revenue. That’s a big one that I think a lot of people miss out on. But keep in mind too, this is totally dependent on what he’s doing for that. 1500 That’s true. You’d be getting worked to the fucking ground for 1500 but you know

It’s up to you, you You are the person who can determine whether or not that’s worthwhile. Yeah, that’s a great point, Adam.

And just know this, if it’s your first client, you probably are going to be work to death anyways. Because it’s your first client and you will learn over time, how to set boundaries with clients. Just talk to Mohammed who’s always here asking questions every single week. Mohammed’s been following us for a long, long time, and we’ve watched him grow considerably over the last couple of years. And he’s experienced a lot of growing pains and come here and ask for advice. And that’s what this forum is for Lonnie. So feel free to come back and ask questions every week. concerning how to handle certain situations doesn’t always have to be SEO related either. It could just be about how to handle particular clients, business operations, management, outsourcing, all that kind of stuff. Guys, we’re here to help grow your business as much as possible. Yes, we talk a lot about SEO. But there’s a lot of other things that we’ve all learned with our experience over the years on how to, you know, help you to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve all made.

But just know that it is your first client there, it’s likely you’re going to be work to death for that client. And that’s okay. Because you’re going to learn a lot from that. And you’ll begin to learn how to start to set boundaries. And remember, you know, one thing I want to recommend is, you do need to also set like communication boundaries, I don’t know that your new client is is somebody that might message you outside of business hours or over the weekend and that kind of stuff. But I’ve got a lot of clients that still to this day do, but I’ve trained them that I don’t reply to messages after hours or on weekends. Unless it’s an emergency like I have a preschool client that had a site go down on over a weekend and I had my daughter and I did actually help him because he’s a really good client and me, you know, I felt for him and I wanted to help him but very rarely do I ever reply to anything outside of ours, because once you set that precedent, people will take advantage of it. I don’t know that they mean to be malicious, but they just think that hey, I messaged him at night and he answered me, so, therefore, it’s okay for me to ask questions at any time, I would recommend that you know, as your first client, you need to start to learn how to set boundaries right upfront.

Anyways, let’s get back to the question. Sorry, I’m glad that Adam put that into perspective, because I immediately saw that percentage. And my mind went to the mat, my mind always goes to the numbers, where I normally get this company to 100-200k a month recurring for you know, out of if it’s like Costa Rica, where they work around, like, it’s killer money, it’s killer money, but even if it’s seasonal, right, you can’t work in the winter, if what if they’re doing driveways or whatever it is that they’re paving. If they’re laying a concrete slab, you’re talking about 100 k easy and if you charge 10 to 15% of that recurring, then I’m seeing that as a really good deal. If you’re going to be worked to the bone and the client can’t close. Then you got a problem. So thanks for putting that into perspective.

Yeah, not to downplay it. Yeah, definitely just wanted to tell because the way he phrased it that’s what gave me the hesitation. It’s like, Is this good? Like, man, there’s no way for us to know you’re the one who’s got to do that. But you know, congratulations on doing that. That’s good to see. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, Just remember, as your first client, you will make mistakes, there’s no question, you will work harder than you probably should. And that’s okay. Like I said, you’re going to learn from that. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Remember, come back here and ask questions often and we’ll try to provide you as much advice as we can. He says, also, I’m looking for simple services I can use to get me in on getting clients and suggestions. By the way, I love the video lead gen 2xyoruagency. Well, there, there you go. You have the video lead gen system and 2xyoruagency which is great for prospecting and generating prospects, right? Don’t build that pipeline first. Right? And that’s super, super important in through having a full pipeline of prospects and making presentations sending proposals, right so pitching prospects, you will get better, you’re gonna lose money upfront, and that’s okay. But you will get better you’ll be able to polish your presentation and your pitch and your message and all of that. And so just that’s why it’s so important guys to fill that pipeline full of prospects so that you can make those mistakes. And not every prospect that you talk to is going like you depend on them to be able to put food on your table. If because if that’s the case, desperation comes through and everything that you do, and they can smell that from a mile away. And so I think it’s better to have a pipeline full of prospects because then it’s okay, you don’t need anyone of them because you have more behind them. Right, that makes sense. As far as simple services, I recommend getting the most updated version of the battle plan if you don’t already have that. A lot of that was covered in 2xyoruagency anyways, but the battle plan is a very succinct version of what we recommend to get results and timelines for doing so and all of that and it’s very inexpensive. So I’d recommend you pick that up if you don’t have it already.

I’d also say mgyb.co, I mean everything there for you to offer your clients, whatever it is that they want. Everything is their press releases, liquidity and anything and everything that you need to do to produce results for your clients in MGYB.co. And if it doesn’t mean you have a good idea of a product that let us know.

What Is A Money Site?

This is a great question from Josh, he says, And see, guys, this is the thing you know, I think we often forget. Because we’ve been in this industry so long that not everybody understands the terminology. He says one more quick question, what exactly do you mean by money site that means your primary digital asset so like, whatever your primary domain is that you host your, your website for your business on? That’s what we call a money site. Why? Because it’s the site that generates you money, right? A lot of the other stuff that you know, we talked about is tier-one branded entity assets. Again, big terminology for basically meaning like social profiles and stuff that you can build a branded profile or presence on that you’re going to link back to your money site, your money site is your Epicenter, right? It’s your point of origin, it’s the golden frame, you always want to drive, all traffic all leads as much as possible back to your money site, because you have control over that’s an asset that you own and control, having ancillary profiles on social media properties and, you know, web to Dotto properties, and all that kind of stuff is great. And that’s what we do with the SEO shoot as we build all that stuff out. But ultimately, you don’t own those platforms. They could be taken away from you by Google, by YouTube, by Facebook, whatever, at any time. So they’re great to have. They’re great to use. But it’s best to try to use those to push people push traffic back to your money site because you do have control over that. And there’s so much more than you can do that. So your money site is again it’s your self hosted primary domain asset for your business, your company, your project, whatever it may be. Anybody else wants to take a stab at that? Yeah.

It could be your Google My Business website. It could be that it could be your your G site. It could be, you know, a free WordPress blog or blogger, Tumblr, or wherever it is that you choose to blog from, like, you don’t have to have something that’s self hosted. WordPress, are a self hosted domain for you to have a money site. This is like you said, it’s the place where you plan to send people to in order to make money and edit in order to sell your product service or whatever it is that you want people to see or buy. That’s your money site. Why? Because it makes you money. Not to say that there are other places that could make you money like social media, but it’s the primary source of what it is that you’re planning to do. Yeah, that’s a great point because as we talked about a lot of lead gen assets that I have don’t have a self-hosted money site. They are just GMB website.

In other words, the website, the Google My Business provides you which is free. And ultimately you don’t have full control over that Google does. Right. So I, you know, I’m glad Marco brought that up. Because I just mentioned self-hosted website, it doesn’t have to be that recommend that was possible. But there are times where it makes sense to not build a self-hosted website, for example, spammed GMB listings, it might not be wise to go through the trouble of building out a, you know, a self-hosted site because of all the work that goes into it. Whereas, you know, in case it was to get suspended, you lose all of them, the work that you did, essentially. So in that case, you know, the GMB website becomes the primary website for that location. Or another option would be like Marco said, you know, Google Site g site, right, so sites.google.com, that they, Marco and Rob have done several projects using those as the money site, and it works. It works really, really well. So the money site is exactly what Marco described, which is whatever it is that you’re using to make money.

If you’re going to build a brand, I think it’s important to build a self-hosted website with the brand name as the domain name, because you can really grow the authority of that brand and you benefit from that in so many ways. So, it’s a great question though. Alright, so the last question and we’ve only got three minutes left, we’re gonna wrap it up.

What SEO And Lead Gen Contract Do You Recommend?

He says, Lonnie says I’m having trouble with putting an SEO and lead with I’m sorry, with put an SEO and lead gen contract. Do you have any recommended contract forms? No, I don’t, you know, you could probably just go online and find some templates that you could use. I personally don’t like to use contracts I, I mean, I have in the past, but typically, it’s only for bigger companies that, you know, they want the contract. I like to do everything on a verbal agreement. So that and I always say this to potential prospects or customers look, you know, if I’m doing my job, you’re gonna want to continue paying me if I’m not, you’re not gonna want to continue paying me and that’s okay. I also want to be able to part ways from that client if we don’t dive well, we don’t agree on things if it’s just not a good fit, and I don’t want to be locked into a contract either. So I don’t expect my clients to want to be locked into a contract. And sometimes that burns me, for example, I had a home inspector client, that, you know, I very clearly stated what the timeline was going to be on results.

I typically asked for, hey, give me this much time. And before that time had passed before I reached that certain level of time that I mentioned, he canceled services. And I you know, And to me, that’s really unfair for both of us because he wasn’t able to get the results that he wanted, because it wasn’t, you know, fast enough for him even though I clearly stated all of that before we agreed to work together. But at the same time, I put a lot of work into that and it wasn’t able to fully realize the efforts you know, for him or for myself for my own satisfaction because he stopped paying me before all the work had been completed, if that makes sense. Sometimes I wish I did have a contract in place. But for the most part, I like the ability to be able to walk away from a client. And I also like them to know that they don’t, they’re not locked into a contract that kind of eases that.

That low and lowers the barrier to entry, so to speak. However, that said, there might be a difference of opinion here for some of the other guys. And you guys have a suggestion for him.

Now, you know me, I don’t do contracts. I hate him. I hate him. He locks me into everything. And what if I want to go out and maybe the client doesn’t want to go well, what if I want to go? What if I can’t stand the client? I want to go and then I’m bound by a contract for a year with this guy that I can’t stand that knows more or supposedly knows more than I do, which sometimes happens.

If you know how to produce results, then always go, “Look, I’ll give you results.” But record the quality I always record the call that that call. We talk

Bradley, what is going to take this long? I always have that recorded even though there’s no contract and I let the guy know Look, I’m gonna record the call. And then you can always refer revert back to that’s a contract, believe it or not, that’s a contract. Right? And it’ll hold up in most courts. I believe in the US. It’ll hold up, it’ll hold up in Costa Rica.

That’s a good idea. And yeah, if you disclose that right up front, and then get it on the recording, you do agree that this is being recorded, and that’s okay, right.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’m going to be recording this, I’m just gonna point this way. This way, we can refer back to the conversation, you know exactly what took place. I know exactly what to put in you walk them through, you know that this is going to take about 90 days for results. thereabouts. Because if you don’t, then you go into the process because I have to set everything up. And then we get everything going. I’m probably going to get two results before but I can’t guarantee any Google experience tells me that within 90 days, we should be able to see something, and then we can work from there but I need 90 days from you.

Are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re gonna get that nine out of 10. So now you have a binding contract now, at the end of it you tell at the end of those 90 days when we meet again, then we’ll decide if we continue.

Now real quick, I know Adam is if you’re still paying attention, I know we’re a little bit over, but I think you have a little bit of a different methodology. Is there any way you can comment on this? Um, yeah, I just I’m trying to think like, I don’t have too much of a difference it’s kind of constantly evolving. But yeah, I mean, as far as contracts go like I stay out of that I’ve never done anything. Okay. Yeah. And then, if he’s looking for actual he may just mean, he’s looking for an outline for like a proposal or an engagement proposal. If that’s the case, just contact support at semantic mastery comm will point you in the right direction. I know Hernan put one out there we had as a free opt-in that you could get as an outline. And that can be really helpful. I mean, I’ve used other people’s as a starting point when I’m changing services.

Adding something in just so that I have a good starting point then you tailor it kind of to your specifics.

Very good. Thank you. Alright guys, thanks everybody for being here is Chris were you gonna says something? I’m sorry. I mean like he is like a lead gen contract. I mean, like why not sell on a per lead basis? I don’t see there’s an issue you can do like a contract that states the price of the elite.

Yeah. So you should be fine that way. It should be super easy.

Sweet. Well, thanks for your input, guys. And thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289

Click on the video above to watch Episode 289 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

Welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 289 to one where Hernan looks continuously shocked for some reason.

Hi, how’s it going? Hernan Is everything okay. It’s great, man. I’m feeling like shit, but here we are. All right, good, good stuff. Well, keep going here. Like I said it’s Episode 289. Today’s the 27th of May 2020. I can see we got a lot of really good questions already today. But if you haven’t yet and you got a question, please put it on the page. First come first serve. And then I’m going to get into a few announcements. We’ve got some cool stuff that happened earlier this week. And then some last-minute announcements, things that we just found out about today that I want to touch on But first, let’s say hi to the guys real quick and see how everyone’s doing so

I’ll start to my top left here Bradley. How are you doing today?

Good. I’m good. I just edited the video description in YouTube because still had some stuff from the webinar we did yesterday. So anyway, but I’m good. Things are good. I’m back from taking a week off, and it sucked cuz I went away for a week camping and ATV riding, thinking that I was going to get away and get to enjoy it and it rained the entire week, all day every day and it was awful. It was fucking miserable. So I wish I would have stayed home and worked.

Yeah, man, speaking of weird weather that so I’m in the Bay Area. So we just hit 95 the last three days, which is like 34 Celsius. It’s just like, Okay, well guess I’ll go out in the morning, go for a walk and then come hunker in here, shut the blinds and turn the air just thinking. So that’s been my life for the past couple of days. So let’s head go with the happier weather report. Marco. How are you doing?

The sun’s out again. It’s the rainy season and he’s like the sun’s out. It’s rainy season man. Look, I live in paradise. All right, I can’t help that. Make some money. Right? First of all, go get the battle. You follow the Battle Plan.

make some money. Hire someone who will help you. Train, apply, and make money. lather, rinse, repeat. And then you can go find your own Fortress of Solitude where you can just watch the world go by and you don’t give up. Push your mouth but other than the outstanding weather

How are you doing marking things are going good. Things are good here man. Things are good. Yeah, I’m still like things are opening up a little bit here. Essential businesses and all that and all this other stuff, but I’m still self-parenting. I got three kids. They got to think about it and I’m not a spring chicken so that there’s another person that I had to think about right because I can go out or like one but I have to think about my family. Yeah. And what I might bring, bring home and closer to home to make somebody.

I knew personally died of this. It’s not as if it’s totally foreign to me like I don’t know anyone who is affected by this. I like what I do know. And so having it that cloth is not any longer six degrees of separation. it’s like I know and so no, it ain’t happening and we’re gonna see how this plays out and I’ll let everybody you guys can all go and enjoy yourselves you know to do whatever the hell you want and then let me know how that turns out and then I’ll decide after that second one what it is that we’re going to do but for now we’re cool we take it easy and that’s it, man. We did we just but my personal choice, right, my personal choice to do that. It’s not as if someone is forcing me to do it. I’m choosing that this is the best way for myself and my family. Enough. All right. Well, Hernan How about you man, things are like you’re moving into wintertime right? I always get

Yeah, it’s hot summer-like wait a second I was wearing a sweatshirt what hell’s going on? Yeah, actually actually all of you guys are well Marco Marco is like, you know, he’s in a good spot 20% but all of you guys are you know getting the nice season. I’m getting the shooting season. Yeah now so now but yeah man it’s good today was a good day.

Like warm-ish. But yeah, we’re getting into winter and all of that so see how that goes, could you? Oh, Chris How about yourself? Yeah, yeah can’t complain man sun’s out the sun is shining all day. I mean it’s dark right now and the best part of all Friday the gyms opening back up and stuff so things are really good standing. Well, I’m going to circle back around Bradley, you mentioned a webinar and I wanted to touch on that because we had Brian, a mastermind member, along with Bruno, and you all listening can get to know both of them better and see what Bradley has to say to about this go high-level system. And Bradley, you want to tell real quick, I’m gonna pop the link in where people can go and check out the replay. Do you want to tell them about the webinar a little bit?

Yeah, Brian, one of our mastermind members reached out and basically said that he was using a platform, an agency automation platform that consolidates a whole bunch of different services and such all under one roof. He reached out because he thought that it would fit really, really well with the 2xyoruagency training.

Because it does a lot of the stuff that I talked about in 2xyouragency about how to automate, delegate or eliminate because this platform consolidates a lot of services that you may have separate subscriptions for and I always call it duct taping them together using Zapier or some similar application. And basically these have integrated services that do all

All of the same things that many of these external services do that we put, you know, we connect via Zapier, and it’s all under one dashboard. And so it’s a lot more seamless. And there’s a lot of really cool features inside there, like one of the primary feature that was, is used to pitch this go high-level application or platform is what’s called database reactivation, which is a very easy way or a simple way for you to get your foot in the door as an agency owner with potential marketing clients because you can. So anyway, I can’t really go into depth right now about that, but it’s a really cool platform. I signed up my own agency on the agency level account level so that I can create a first of all, I’m gonna use it for my own agency, but second of all, so I could also create a case study for how I’m using it. I’ve got some really good ideas that I’m going to be sharing in that case study that I’m gonna be putting to the test and then sharing in the case study.

As well on how I’m using it and how to generate kind of exponential revenue growth from it, as opposed to just linear. And so anyway, I think it’s bad, it’s very valuable, I would encourage you guys to go check it out, it does come with a 14-day free trial. So once you see the webinar, you know, comes with some free or some, I think it’s free, or it’s like five bucks may be to pay for some of the training that Bruno had put together, what he calls the quick start training for that. And so you can get all of that. And your first 14 days determine if it’s for you or not, but I think once you see some of the potentials of this, it would be something if any of you are trying to grow. I think you should absolutely take a good hard look at it. Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t do generally local stuff. But I check this out. And like I’ve been looking at it and I talked to Brian about all the details and like I was starting to be like maybe I could find a way to you just like no stop it. But like for anyone out there who’s dealing with especially local clients or can find the right use case

Yeah, just blew me away from the number of services and automation that’s packed into that suite of tools and how seamless that is, is pretty amazing. So definitely worth checking it out. Real quick to this one came up today. So we constantly get questions about GMB verifications, right? You know, hey, where can you guys do GMB verifications work in MGYB, when is it going to be available? I’m going to cut to the chase GMB verifications are available right now. As always, we cannot tell you how long that is going to be the case. So if you are doing lead gen if you’re needing a verification for some other reason, this would be a very good time to put your order in because not only can you order now what you couldn’t have yesterday, you can get a 15% discount today while we’ve got it opened up. Also, it comes with a 30-day guarantee. And it’s about I believe, 14 day turnaround time. So pretty quick. I’ll post all of that in the chatbox for those who are live. If you’re not just head to mgyb.co, and head to the store, you can look for GMB verifications there you can also get syndication networks, Rs drive stacks, SEO shield, link building all that sort of good stuff.

And circling back around. I wanted to touch on this real quick for those of you who are watching us for the first time, thank you very much whether you’re watching live or catching the replay on YouTube. If you want to go to the right place, head to semantic mastery comm slash HD questions every week, we asked you to limit your questions just to one. Unless you’re live, you can ask some more. You know, we get down there. We just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions. So if you ask some questions, we may not get to all of them just before Warren. And then secondly, we encourage everyone to check out the battle plan and go to battle plan dot semantic mastery. If you want to get repeated repeatable SEO results that is for you. I’m not going to read the page to you you can go over there and check it out. But it is a fantastic tool that we recently just updated them released version four a month ago.

And then Bradley touched on this too if you’re an agency owner or a consultant that you want to get more clients, yes, you want to grow your revenue. Yes. And you want to scale your team, hopefully, yes. Then if you want to do that, head over 2xyouragency.com. There’s a ton of incredible training lets you crush it, whether you’re again, being a consultant, or if you want to build a true agency, and it doesn’t matter if that’s SEO, it’s other areas of digital marketing. It’s going to help you grow and make more money. That’s the bottom line.

All right, with that said, Guys, any other quick announcements before we dive into questions?

Good. All right. Let’s do it.

All right. Grab the screen.

You guys confirm when you see. See my screen.

Would You Recommend Ordering Another Drive Stack To A New Website Section Targeting Service Keywords In Different Locations?

So it looks like BB Now that might have been from last week. It looks like it was it will start with Bobby. Bobby says Hey guys, I got some questions. The first one was would you recommend ordering another drive stack to a completely new section of a website targeting a different service keyword in different locations on a large content site that would be perfect for the location sealed, am I right? Marco?

Yeah, that’s perfect for the extension. And it’s currently available and as a coupon sweep. So that’s what the drive stack expansion.

Yeah, we’re saying, Yeah, maybe if he already has the brand it because he’s saying another, right, a completely new section of the website. So we’re talking about the same website, money site. That’s how I’m seeing. I’m seeing something different.

He has a different service keyword, and a different location on a large content what so that’s, that’s just an inner page, I think what he’s describing the top of the silo. So you would aim the expansion on the current drive stack at that inner page, you’d get much more power going and extending that initial drive stack then you would be doing a completely different drive stack, g site. Sure, gotcha. Okay.

Would You Recommend RSS Masher To Drive Traffic To A Money Site And Lead Gen Assets?

The next question was  GMB.Thanks again, I’ve not used them for lead gen assets but I have in the past I haven’t built since the updated the new version of RSS master which is even better. But to create the kind of like Kwazii PBNs and when I say PBNs, they’re not like what we would traditionally think of a treat PBN, these are real sites to generate real traffic and that’s the differentiator, right? having real sites generate real traffic. With automated content posting to them right through all the RSS feeds that you splice together and RSS masher and all the really cool shit you can do. You can take a look at the most recent webinar we did with Damon Nelson, about the most current version of RSS masher and see some of the examples of the sites that he builds are 100% honest.

Major content sites using RSS masher. And they’re freaking beautiful sites. And he’s generating affiliate income and, you know, like AdSense income. And so such using those sites because they do generate traffic, they look beautiful. But from an SEO standpoint, I looked at it as like, hey, this could be really good to generate, you know, in related content type sites that could feed traffic back to a money site or a lead gen site or whatever. So, I mean, I think it’s certainly possible to use it for that I haven’t done it myself just to be honest because it’s not the strategy that I’ve been pursuing. I’ve wanted to in fact, I even talked about it with my partners here. I would love to have some time to play with that and set up some sights but I haven’t done it yet. I think Marco. Weren’t you guys gonna try playing with that a bit. I know it probably hasn’t been done but wasn’t that on the to-do list?

It is being done. What we are currently testing it and we won’t like there is anything. I’m not personally doing it but I got my mini mastermind, which is where all the evil takes place where we can go after everything. And there’s a couple of people in there who have a license. And then one of them is using our license as I gave her our license to go and try it out. So they got together. Three of the people in my seven-person mini mastermind got together. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing information on how to make make it work in the best way possible. And then they’re going to come back and report it to me and we’re either going to make it available through MGYB as a service, or I’m not sure how we’re going to offer that but there’s definitely something in the works with that RSS masher. It’s just you guys if you go get it just be prepared because there’s a high learning curve is that simple software that you’re just going to go and plug and play

You have to be prepared to go through the training to go through the process, gathering up the feeds making everything look right. And then you know that that’s when the magic happens and I can’t wait to blast that. Now get it, give it a companion g site and drive stack, expand it, and then blast it with link building and some embeds and see what happened. I can’t wait.

Yeah, it looks good. As I said, I wish I had more time to mess with it. Because I think there’s a lot of potentials there as well. So, so maybe next Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, we can give people a preview. But again, the first ones that’ll get a preview, it will be my mini mastermind, and then the semantic mastery mastermind, the heavy hitter club, and then we’ll go public with whatever we have. It’s still a few weeks away, it takes time. That’s all

Is It Possible To Get An Iframe For A Drive Folder?

so Frank’s up. He says it is it possible to get an iframe for a drive folder tried adding a link into iframe generator and it came back saying the page was blocked from being displayed? also. Well, first of all,

The first part of that is Yeah, you can use to be able to do that. But no, I haven’t tried since the updates recently. Marco, can you? Yeah. Not through the iframe January? That’s why I tell people to code their own code. Yeah, because you can’t do it that way. You have to separate the, I can’t go through the process that you have to get the folder ID to be able to iframe it. And what you have to insert in an iframe generator is the entire URL, and you can’t do it that way.

Okay.

Publish to the web would be a file setting in the drive used to say publish to the web, it would give you an embed code for the file or for the folder, but I think that has been taken away correct recently. Uh, no. I can check that right now. I mean, go on and let me take a folder that has nothing in it. And we’ll just move on while you’re looking that up.

Do You Have Any Link Building Services In MGYB For T1 Money Site?

He says also with MGYB, do you have any link building services that could be used for tier-one money site or only g sites? Yeah, that while the SEO shield can point back to your money site, right, which includes the drive stack files and folders as well as the G site. Also, press releases could be used for tier-one money site, right where your money site tier-one money site is. It’s redundant. That’s like the Department of redundancy department. You know what I mean? So, yeah, your money site, again, press releases and the SEO shield? Those are the two things that I would recommend. Am I missing something?

No, no, no, I don’t think so. And I can’t find it. I can’t find published on the web by the way. That’s what I thought had been removed since the recent update. But it used to be able to do it that way. So hopefully that was helpful.

What MGYB Service You Should Use To Rank For A City That Is Three Hours Away From The Dealership Location?

Mohammed’s up, it’s up mom and he says, Hey, guys, a client is asking me if I can rank his Volkswagen dealership for VW related keywords in a city. Three hours away from where the dealership actually is.

Actually, how would I go about this? I know I can get a GMB from MGYB for the New City and add a new city page to the money site. What else would I do?

Well, the problem that I see with that Mohammed is it’s a dealership right? So if you’re getting a GMB for a dealership which is a storefront business, right with the customers come to the business location, and you’ve got a spammed GMB listing, that’s three hours away from where the dealership actually exists, then, how is that going to play with potential car buyers? When they’re looking to go to a dealership in their local area and they’ve come to find out it’s a spam listing and instead they’ve got to go three hours away to buy a Volkswagen. To me, I don’t think that would be advisable for the reasons I just mentioned. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question. Anybody else interprets this another way?

No, that’s the way I’m I’m reading it unless the dealer is opening up a dealership in that city in which case, you would need spam. GMB. Right. Correct. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I am not willing to drive three hours to go look at a car, like my dealer has to be closed by where I can just jump in the car. 1015 minutes, I’m there and look at the car and decide if I’m gonna buy it. Because I’ll be people. Yes. I mean, the idea behind it is correct. People are going to first look online to find a car that they liked, and they’re going to find the dealer, then they’re going to go visit the dealer to see the cart. Who’s going to drive? Did you talk that to this dealership owner, by the way, and ask him Who do you know that’s going to drive three hours to buy a car when they can buy one mic in the city? I don’t understand the thinking behind that. Not only that, but don’t you think it would piss a potential customer off if they were misled to believe that a dealership was in their local area just to come to find out that it’s three hours away? I mean, it’s not just that like if he was promoting like ranked a page organically for the city that is three hours away, and says, Hey, we sell cars. Were our dealerships over here and they’re honest about where it is. It’s very likely most people are going to drive three hours away anyways, but at least they weren’t being dishonest about it. Whereas having a GMB for a storefront business where a store doesn’t actually exist, that I think in my view would piss me off if I put driving directions and go show up at this place to find out that it’s it doesn’t exist, and then I got to drive three hours away to go where I intended. What about other car dealers dealerships? wouldn’t they be pissed if you’re faking? A GMB and I just totally am in the area. I don’t think VW corporate would be too happy with that with you faking GMB.  I don’t know how much trouble I mean, you can get into a whole lot of trouble behind that. talk to this guy. talk some sense and then

yeah, just find out what his intent is really. And maybe you already know it, Mohammed and it just wasn’t conveyed in that message.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean like I said if I was going to do anything it would be to try to just rank organically for that and just be honest about where the dealership is and why they should drive three hours away to purchase a car at that particular dealership.

SEO Shield Question

Alright, moving on uh, next question is Hello everyone recently I purchased an SEO shield and since I got some discount for link building, I also bought that so I placed the order for SEO shield and link building altogether. What I found out that instead of building the links to my properties, they pointed all the direct all directly to your money site. Okay, you can edit the URLs to build links to an M GI Bill, Why be disregarded that and build all the links to your money site? No continue can find that hard to believe okay. When I inquired from support about it, they said since you had provided the URL file, we built all the links around that. But they also said that they don’t recommend it. I’m a new user purchasing SEO shield first time and also not aware of the internal tech now technicalities excuse me of SEO SEO. So I provide all the information including the URL file because I thought it might be required to build the SEO shield since I bought the SEO, SEO, and link building. So I believe that SM support will follow the best practice since I’ve gone blindly trust SM for SEO related stuff. So my question is Why were the links built directly in the money site even when it is not recommended? No one will pay for the money to I’m not sure what he says.

Now, he says that the links can’t be removed. This website is my six months old hard work. I don’t want to degrade my website by any means. So what should I do now? Should I disavow the links pointing in the Excel sheet? Please suggest, okay, um, the first part of that. I’m not sure if you came to us cold and you don’t know anything about our methodology, then then I could understand where that confusion may have come from.

Perhaps we need to have that clearly explicitly outlined on this on the order page or the order submit Details page. In other words, if it’s not already, but

As far as what you know, we didn’t build all the links to your money site URL. If your money site URL was listed in your submitted URLs list, then some links will have been built to your money site URL. But in all of our training, we always suggest we actually won’t build links to your money site URL if we know that it’s in there. So I don’t know what to tell you on that other than and as far as disavowing Marco doesn’t ever recommend that I’ve done it in the past haven’t done it for years.

I don’t think Have you seen anything negative happen? We don’t suggest it, but I don’t know that it is going to cause any problems. Marco, what do you say about this? I say I have a really big problem with this guy. Right? Because this was sent to support at mg y v.co. And I heard from Deadia and he said, hey, look, you know what, what can we do it with this? What can we do for this person? So we’re looking to do the right thing. Here. Look, I can remove all I think I can remove all the links

But it’s gonna take a while I so we aren’t talking about it, he doesn’t even give support a chance to respond and let him know what the answers are. He comes here to a public forum to air the laundry. And I understand that. I mean, in no way Is this a recommended practice. But I mean, he submitted the URLs for us to build links to if you give us a spreadsheet, how are we to know that there’s a money site included in the spreadsheet? I mean, he’s assuming that we’re supposed to assume and look these, the logic behind this evades me because I just don’t see it, how we’re supposed to know that he’s submitting his money site from now on. And so now we know that we need to make sure that we tell people explicitly on the order form do not submit your money site URL. So thank you for that. But I don’t appreciate

This being aired on a public forum, where we’re taking care of when we’re looking to do what’s best for you and for your website. Not that anything bad has happened. Not that anything bad will happen. We don’t know yet what would happen, but it’s still in the discussion stage and he doesn’t even give it an opportunity comes publicly as Hey, you guys, I thought you were supposed to follow best practice practices and whatever else he says. And I just don’t appreciate it. Give us at least a chance to do the right thing. And then if there’s a problem, if there’s no resolution, then you come here and you speak to us publicly. I thought about writing to you by the way. Because I saw this, I saw the way he called it the ticket, come through and I know I’m supposed to stay away from customer service. But I thought about writing to him because I don’t see the logic. If he submits the URLs to build links. That’s what we’re going to build links to because the customer as always, right? So if you want links built to your money site, in spite of the fact that we don’t recommend it, and then we say, Don’t ever do it, we don’t do it. If you submit the URL, and it’s by mistake, and I’m not saying that you did it on purpose, if by mistake you included in my site, or you didn’t know, it’s going to get links built to it. Now, yeah, we are going to try to do the right thing. That’s all I can say. We were trying to do the right thing before, even after having come on a public forum, and then like hitting on my last nerve, we’re still going to help you out.

Yeah and I don’t know that it’s going to cause any problem. We just, we don’t build links, the types of links that we sell at MGB directly the money site, we always in all of our training suggest not to do that because that’s the whole reason for the SEO shield right is because and that’s why it’s named the SEO shield because it shields your money site, from all the external threats.

SEO and link building that you can do because link building to your money site can, doesn’t always but can create a problem. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have problems because that happened, it might not cause any problems at all, we just don’t recommend it, we suggest not to do it, because there’s no need to because we push all the power to the SEO shield and use the SEO shield to launder basically clean any potential negative juice through Google properties and through high authority assets, that and push relevancy essentially, eventually to the money site. So again, we don’t know that it’s gonna cause a negative impact at all, we just don’t, we don’t test it. Because we don’t do that we always recommend building them directly to the SEO shield. Again, that’s the whole point of the SEO shield. So we have learned, we have now decided or just came to the realization that that needs to be very explicit on the order form, submit page, and that makes sense and we’ll make sure that we make that change and Marco and Dadea, our link builder, are going to do what they can for you. So hopefully that will suffice.

How Do You Use Press Release To Achieve Better Rankings?

Next question, SMS insurances total newbie here, I just ordered the press release. Not sure where to start. I’m clueless on what to do, and the advice would be great. This is awesome that you asked this question because I’m actually working on a little mini-course for press releases for people that want to order and not for SEOs. But for business owners. I mean, anybody can have access to it that they want, but it’s I’m doing a little mini-course for press releases.

For MGYB, in other words, a little mini-course on trying to teach a layman right or a business owner, somebody that’s not an SEO, how to get the most use in the best use the most traction from press releases that you order from MGYB. And I’ll have that done by next Tuesday for sure. Maybe even possibly will be available on by next Wednesday for people to go download as a Lead Magnet or whatever, we’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna have it ready by Tuesday. I don’t know if it’ll be ready on Wednesday for public consumption. That said, I can give you a brief rundown on it. Because I was actually working on that presentation earlier today. In fact, it’s over here. So I can show you that I’m not kidding, do it yourself press releases, leveraged PR marketing for your business. So this will be both a presentation as well as some of that stuff hasn’t been added yet. But it will be a presentation that will be available, as well as some videos. So it’ll be like a little mini training course, on how to get the best uses of press releases, and then what to do next as well. So really a quick rundown on that is, first have an understanding of what your keywords are that you want to promote, right? So your primary products and services, products and or services, or an event if you’re promoting an event, whatever, whatever you’re trying to promote. You want to have a set of keywords that you’re looking to promote. And you want to submit that as the primary keyword for each one of the press releases.

So the press release writers, the writers that they’re really good about creating brand plus keyword association. So if you submit the keyword that you want to be used as the primary keyword, they’re going to create that they’re going to use the brand name and the keyword in the title. Okay, which is very, very important. And then they’re going to write about whatever it is that you instruct them to write about. And you can be as descriptive about how to like, you can tell them the tone that you want, that you want them to write it in, you can tell them certain things that you want them to highlight within the press release. Or you can be vague, you can just say, here’s the URL that I want you to promote. And they’ll go look at the URL, also look at the brand and they’ll create a news angle story, that they’ll write a press release about so it makes it easy for you guys if you have something specific you want written about. add that in the writing description. If you don’t and you don’t know how to create a newsworthy angle, don’t worry about it because that’s what the press release riders do. So you can just submit a URL and say this is the primary

URL I want promoting, write a story about it right. And though they’ll figure out a way, which is why I love using it, because it takes the responsibility right off of us to come up with the angle all the time. They’re really good about that once the press release is published, or you want to also link back to whatever you’re primarily trying to promote. So for example, I like to, by the way, if you’re new SM, s and s insurance, you can go to our YouTube channel youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery and use the channel search feature. And you can even go to Google and search for a press release or PR silo stalking or press release, SEO, semantic mastery, something like that, and you can find a webinar it’s actually still on mg y v. If you go to the webinars tab on the MG y v.co. website, you can take a look, I think that was the last webinar that we did was PR silo stalking, and that’ll give you a really good description. It was almost an hour You know, I don’t know 40-minute webinar or whatever specifically about how to get the

Most uses out are the best use out of sight, press releases. So again, you’re going to want to have at least one URL that you’re going to promote, you can have up to three, I usually recommend only two URLs per the press release, unless you’re siloing press releases, in which case you’ll have three, three target URLs that you’re promoting within the press release because you’re going to be linking back to the previous press release within that silo. if all of this sounds foreign to you, just go check out that webinar that I just described. And then it will tell you exactly what we do to get really, really good results with press releases. And just an aside to kind of a point to kind of reinforce this is I was just talking in the mastermind two weeks ago when I did my last mastermind webinar, about how I have a GMB asset as a lead gen asset that I hadn’t done anything with it was published about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, but I never optimized it never did anything to rank it. And I did three press releases in one week to push that GMB asset and all it has is it’s a GMB location. You know, profile and it’s got a GMB website. It’s not connected to a money site. The money site is the GMB website. And I did three press releases in a week. And the son of a bitch disappeared from maps all together for about three weeks. But then it popped after three weeks of it like not even showing I thought it got it was doing a Google dance. But I’ve not seen one this drastic, or this is significant of a Google dance to where it like literally, the listing disappeared, it disappeared entirely from Google Maps. And then all of a sudden bounce it when it popped, it popped into number three, the C position in the maps three pack from just three press releases in a week. Now that’s those results aren’t typical, but I’m just sharing that because it does show you that and all I did was PR silo stacking method, the same one that I’m suggesting you go watch that webinar to learn the strategy. And it works guys. It really does work. So that’s what I would recommend is

Just first go look at that webinar. And then after you have published the press release, it’s always better to do like one press release isn’t going to move the needle much, if at all, but when you start to do the silo stacking with press releases, you can do significant damage with that, and in a good way, right, yeah. And then from there, the next thing you can do is do link building gigs to the press releases or to the organization page that we provide. When you order a press release. That’s something else and embed gigs. You can do embed gigs as well, but don’t link directly to your money site. Anyway, you want to comment on that anybody?

From dance is real man. Right? We tell people 21 days actually, it’s 20 days. But I tell people 21 days just to be sure they’re clear of it. And then that’s when you go and take a look at everything. You decide what to do, but it’s very real. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about that. They just see rankings drop and then they go try to fix it and they make things worse instead of trying to instead of the result being better.

You just supposed to leave it alone until like you said, it just comes back and then you decide.

Unknown Speaker 35:06 Yeah, what’s interesting is, like you said, for about three weeks, I haven’t seen something that drastic of a dance in quite some time to be honest with you. And so I was a little bit nervous. I was thinking like, What the fuck is going on with this, this listing? And all I did was a handful of GMB posts to that listing over the course of those three weeks that was it, nothing else. And like I said, it popped and when it did, it’s, it’s in the number. In fact, I just got a lead from that today for sure, for Tree Removal in that particular city. So it’s producing and all it took was three press releases, which again, is very, very powerful. So it used the exact same method I just mentioned was PR silo stacking, so just go watch that webinar. It’s done in the MGYB, webinar archive, and it’s PR silo stacking, and it works really, really well.

Okay, next question. DC SEO says, Hey guys, I received the ROI as part of my shield back and your wise keywords are the ones that gave your team they’re in the same niche, but very different to what I handed in Is this right? Mine didn’t have any location or mine, I guess he means mine didn’t have any location as per instructions and what I received that keyword plus locations from around the world. I’m in the UK as well as a ton of keywords that are irrelevant to my services. I don’t know how that could happen. Any, any suggestion? No, that doesn’t sound right. But this isn’t the forum for that is it support at MGYB.co. What happened? Give us the order number. We’ll go track it down. And if we have to do it over, we’ll do it over we’ll talk to the VA who built it. I mean, we take care of everything guys. We always do we always try to do right, by everyone. You have to do things in the proper forum.

Last week, end of last week or whatever, I think it was Friday, I announced that we had cracked the code that we were able to now extend the drugs tax because we had automated it. And then someone posted in all of our groups, well, what if I have a VA? How do I train them?

And so now, no matter where I respond, it’s going to look like I didn’t respond and all of the other I would have to go and respond in all of the other groups, the very same thing that I responded in the one group and it’s gonna make it look in the other in the groups where I don’t respond like I don’t care or it doesn’t matter or I didn’t want to respond or whatever. I don’t like guys do things in the right place. And at the right time, this first goes to support. If support doesn’t take care of you, then come to us and let us know. And then like, I know, one of the owners in MGB and I’ll have a talk with him and see what we can do about rectifying the situation, but it’s in here in a public forum. I can’t do anything for you.

Yeah, Fidel. If it was indeed a mistake on our end, then absolutely. We just kill that drive, stack, and build and one for you. So and it won’t, it won’t hurt you at all. So it’s not an issue if it was indeed our problem. If you submitted the wrong keyword file, that’s one thing, but if it was, somehow it got built with keywords that you didn’t submit, which is unlikely, but people are human things happen. So if that was the case, just bring it to supports attention, we’ll take a look at it and if that was indeed the case, it would just kill that stack and then go to a new one, and it won’t it won’t cause any problems. So that’s the beautiful thing about those guys and that’s also why we talked about using the SEO shield for clients and stuff like that because you get the accounts back and you could protect your work right? Because if something happens and you get fired or the client stops paying you I’ve had that happen where they just ghost on you, you know what I mean? The business still exists but they just won’t answer phone calls or emails when they owe you money that kind I’ve had that happen several times over my career. You can go in and just kill the drive stack, delete it. I don’t even set it to not public which is it’s changed now anyways and because it can still push power, even when it’s not indexable. But you can go in and just kill the damn thing or rework it to point somewhere else, you know, to meet to their competitor, that you can go land as a client. So that’s one of the beautiful things about it. So it can be remedied. That’s not a problem.

Can You Create A Subdomain, Rank, And Redirect All The Pages To Another Site While Maintaining Its Ranking?

The next question was, can you create a subdomain website and rank it and then redirect all the pages to another site? And the subdomain maintain its rankings? No, because the redirect will point to the new location and new locate the new location is going to replace the subdomain at some point, right? You can’t redirect a URL and have both the URLs still appear in search, or they might temporarily, and I don’t even know that that’s true. But Google will whatever the redirect is eventually that’s what will rank and the other one will fall out of the index entirely. Am I right in that, or am I missing something? I’m not I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t see how you can’t since you’re telling the bot through the 301 that the page or everything in that sub-domain moved permanently somewhere else. Yeah. You could use I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah, you could use a canonical. And it can both pages can rank. I’ve seen that many times, you’re telling Google with a canonical, like, hey, this page is similar to this page over here, give the credit to this page, right? And then Google sometimes disregards that and well, you know, both pages will index and they’ll both rank. And that happens. So I would suggest a canonical instead of a 301 if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, but remember that just because you canonicalize. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mean Google’s going to honor that. It also doesn’t mean that they won’t honor it. Right? It just kind of it’s kind of a crapshoot. So yeah, what, what that is canonical is when you have similar or the same, and it doesn’t have to be two. It could be two or more, however many copies of that document. There is there exists. You can tell Google which ones the master copy is and to rank that one, rather than all the other. Now, whether Google follows the directive, well, that’s up to Google. And they’re not telling what they’ll do is right.

Yeah, and just to, you know, kind of reinforce that I’m working on a tree care project. for it, you know, for new, a new lead gen service provider that I got. And it’s a case study that I’m doing in the mastermind, and I use tags, tags to create location silos anyways, a Google, it’s a new site, right? And my blogger just started blogging for the location posts on the site. And the way that we’re doing building it out with using tags to create the location silos. Google was ranking the tag pages, but not, but not the posts that I wanted to be ranked. And it indexed the tag pages first, right and the tag pages because some in some cases, they’re unique tags, which means that the tag page is a duplicate of post, that if you guys understand how tags work, that’s what happens if it’s a unique tag, it’s only in one post, then the tag page itself is essentially a duplicate of the post. And so for whatever reason, Google index the tag pages instead of the posts, and so the tag pages were ranking for the keywords, but not the post. And so and I even set the canonical in the tag setting with SEO ultimate Pro, you can do that because you can go to what’s called the Global canonical manager, or even the code inserter plus module, you can actually go in and add like a separate canonical for each tag and all that kind of stuff anyway. So I added the canonical URLs for the tag pages to canonicalize to the post, right, when it’s a unique tag, you can do that. And but Google wasn’t honoring it. And about two weeks went by and so finally I went just this week, I just went to search console, and forced Google to recrawl the posts or excuse me, the tag pages because they had the canonical URLs in the HTML header to point to the posts that I wanted to give the credit to. Right and that’s what I want to be ranked, and it only took about 24 hours, and lo and behold, now the tag pages aren’t indexed, but the posts are, which is what I wanted. So again, it, you know, that doesn’t mean that that’s always going to happen, because it could be that Google doesn’t honor the canonical or doesn’t, you know, doesn’t recognize it for whatever reason, they, By the way, you can also check that when you submit inspect URL in Search Console. And once it inspects the URL, it’s going to tell you whether it’s in Google or not. And there’s a drop-down setting that your menu that you can click on to expand, it shows you additional details, and it’ll tell you what the Google recognized canonical is for that page, or that post whatever URL it is that you’re inspecting. Right? And so you can clearly see what Google seeing. So you can force a canonical, and then go ask Google to request indexing. And then once it does, you know you can look at the code that it shows like the rendered page and it’ll tell you the details of that and it’ll show you if it if it saw the canonical or not. So anyway, hopefully, that was helpful. Do you see SEO

Is It Okay To Embed MyMap Via Tag Manager?

Is it? Is it okay to embed the mind map via Tag Manager? I’m not sure how you would do that.

I’m not sure how you would do that. Tag Manager creates container codes, right header code, and Body Code. And then you inject things into that like scripts and tracking codes and pixels and that kind of stuff. And I don’t know what embedding a my map would do, or if it would even read. Is that something you have any idea about? Marco?

Hello, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. I was talking intimidated might not I think you can. You can use iframes with Tag Manager not not only that, you can track them. Hmm. Am I giving away too much? Oh, nevermind.

I’ll have to play with that DC. I’m not sure. I’ve never done it. Don’t listen, go play with it. And then and then look at all the nice stuff that happens in there.

Okay.

Cool, well there you go.

Is It A Good Deal To Have A 1500 Monthly Retainer Plus Sale Percentage?

Unknown Speaker 45:03 Alright, so moving on next one is Josh says I am changing locations from my current office to a shared workspace and apparently with Google, this isn’t a verifiable address so they won’t verify my GMB profile with this type of address. With the MG y b GMB service will this help with this issue?

Is it a storefront or a service area business that would be my question. Can you get a listing right now a GMB listing through MGYB? Yes.

As we talked about with Mohammed’s question earlier, if it’s a storefront business, I don’t recommend using a spam GMB listing for any type of storefront business because you mislead potential customers because they think it’s in one location and you are indeed in another location. So the only time I would ever recommend using a spammed GMB listing, let’s call it what it is. As for a service area business where the actual physical location in the GMB profile is hidden from the public, so it makes sense. So again, if it’s a service area business, then yes, that would help you. If it’s a storefront business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Any comments, guys?

No, I think that’s absolutely right, man. It’s a myth. You got to know what you’re getting into. Especially if you’re, if you’re going to spam it, right?

Yeah.

I’ve gotten away from doing spam, GMB listings just because the how much volatility there’s been in the last, you know, many months. Um, so I’m working more heavily on the organic side. Now, again, which has been years since I really pushed that. So it’s interesting, and that’s what the tree care project that I’m working on is, in part is a case study for the mastermind, is working on mostly organic rankings. I do have some GMB locations that are going to be incorporated into the project most of the organic rankings. And I’m also doing a lot of call ads call-only ads for Google ads. They are

If you’re very specific with Google call-only ads with your what I call Bullseye keywords, then you can get some pretty good results with that. It’s a lot less expensive than actual clicks to like, you know, regular PPC pay per Click type ads, pay per call ads are a little bit less expensive if you have very, very targeted keywords with location modifiers and such. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

What MGYB Service Should You Use Get More SEO Clients?

Lonnie says I landed my first client concrete company 1500 dollars per month plus percentage of sales. This is a good deal fucking a man. Congratulations, Lonnie. That’s all that looks like it looks like a really good deal. Absolutely. That’s a cherry deal for sure. So congratulations, man. I’m gonna hop in real quick and say it’s all relative, right? One congrats on getting that. Especially the percentage of sales and revenue. That’s a big one that I think a lot of people miss out on. But keep in mind too, this is totally dependent on what he’s doing for that. 1500 That’s true. You’d be getting worked to the fucking ground for 1500 but you know

It’s up to you, you You are the person who can determine whether or not that’s worthwhile. Yeah, that’s a great point, Adam.

And just know this, if it’s your first client, you probably are going to be work to death anyways. Because it’s your first client and you will learn over time, how to set boundaries with clients. Just talk to Mohammed who’s always here asking questions every single week. Mohammed’s been following us for a long, long time, and we’ve watched him grow considerably over the last couple of years. And he’s experienced a lot of growing pains and come here and ask for advice. And that’s what this forum is for Lonnie. So feel free to come back and ask questions every week. concerning how to handle certain situations doesn’t always have to be SEO related either. It could just be about how to handle particular clients, business operations, management, outsourcing, all that kind of stuff. Guys, we’re here to help grow your business as much as possible. Yes, we talk a lot about SEO. But there’s a lot of other things that we’ve all learned with our experience over the years on how to, you know, help you to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve all made.

But just know that it is your first client there, it’s likely you’re going to be work to death for that client. And that’s okay. Because you’re going to learn a lot from that. And you’ll begin to learn how to start to set boundaries. And remember, you know, one thing I want to recommend is, you do need to also set like communication boundaries, I don’t know that your new client is is somebody that might message you outside of business hours or over the weekend and that kind of stuff. But I’ve got a lot of clients that still to this day do, but I’ve trained them that I don’t reply to messages after hours or on weekends. Unless it’s an emergency like I have a preschool client that had a site go down on over a weekend and I had my daughter and I did actually help him because he’s a really good client and me, you know, I felt for him and I wanted to help him but very rarely do I ever reply to anything outside of ours, because once you set that precedent, people will take advantage of it. I don’t know that they mean to be malicious, but they just think that hey, I messaged him at night and he answered me, so, therefore, it’s okay for me to ask questions at any time, I would recommend that you know, as your first client, you need to start to learn how to set boundaries right upfront.

Anyways, let’s get back to the question. Sorry, I’m glad that Adam put that into perspective, because I immediately saw that percentage. And my mind went to the mat, my mind always goes to the numbers, where I normally get this company to 100-200k a month recurring for you know, out of if it’s like Costa Rica, where they work around, like, it’s killer money, it’s killer money, but even if it’s seasonal, right, you can’t work in the winter, if what if they’re doing driveways or whatever it is that they’re paving. If they’re laying a concrete slab, you’re talking about 100 k easy and if you charge 10 to 15% of that recurring, then I’m seeing that as a really good deal. If you’re going to be worked to the bone and the client can’t close. Then you got a problem. So thanks for putting that into perspective.

Yeah, not to downplay it. Yeah, definitely just wanted to tell because the way he phrased it that’s what gave me the hesitation. It’s like, Is this good? Like, man, there’s no way for us to know you’re the one who’s got to do that. But you know, congratulations on doing that. That’s good to see. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, Just remember, as your first client, you will make mistakes, there’s no question, you will work harder than you probably should. And that’s okay. Like I said, you’re going to learn from that. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Remember, come back here and ask questions often and we’ll try to provide you as much advice as we can. He says, also, I’m looking for simple services I can use to get me in on getting clients and suggestions. By the way, I love the video lead gen 2xyoruagency. Well, there, there you go. You have the video lead gen system and 2xyoruagency which is great for prospecting and generating prospects, right? Don’t build that pipeline first. Right? And that’s super, super important in through having a full pipeline of prospects and making presentations sending proposals, right so pitching prospects, you will get better, you’re gonna lose money upfront, and that’s okay. But you will get better you’ll be able to polish your presentation and your pitch and your message and all of that. And so just that’s why it’s so important guys to fill that pipeline full of prospects so that you can make those mistakes. And not every prospect that you talk to is going like you depend on them to be able to put food on your table. If because if that’s the case, desperation comes through and everything that you do, and they can smell that from a mile away. And so I think it’s better to have a pipeline full of prospects because then it’s okay, you don’t need anyone of them because you have more behind them. Right, that makes sense. As far as simple services, I recommend getting the most updated version of the battle plan if you don’t already have that. A lot of that was covered in 2xyoruagency anyways, but the battle plan is a very succinct version of what we recommend to get results and timelines for doing so and all of that and it’s very inexpensive. So I’d recommend you pick that up if you don’t have it already.

I’d also say mgyb.co, I mean everything there for you to offer your clients, whatever it is that they want. Everything is their press releases, liquidity and anything and everything that you need to do to produce results for your clients in MGYB.co. And if it doesn’t mean you have a good idea of a product that let us know.

What Is A Money Site?

This is a great question from Josh, he says, And see, guys, this is the thing you know, I think we often forget. Because we’ve been in this industry so long that not everybody understands the terminology. He says one more quick question, what exactly do you mean by money site that means your primary digital asset so like, whatever your primary domain is that you host your, your website for your business on? That’s what we call a money site. Why? Because it’s the site that generates you money, right? A lot of the other stuff that you know, we talked about is tier-one branded entity assets. Again, big terminology for basically meaning like social profiles and stuff that you can build a branded profile or presence on that you’re going to link back to your money site, your money site is your Epicenter, right? It’s your point of origin, it’s the golden frame, you always want to drive, all traffic all leads as much as possible back to your money site, because you have control over that’s an asset that you own and control, having ancillary profiles on social media properties and, you know, web to Dotto properties, and all that kind of stuff is great. And that’s what we do with the SEO shoot as we build all that stuff out. But ultimately, you don’t own those platforms. They could be taken away from you by Google, by YouTube, by Facebook, whatever, at any time. So they’re great to have. They’re great to use. But it’s best to try to use those to push people push traffic back to your money site because you do have control over that. And there’s so much more than you can do that. So your money site is again it’s your self hosted primary domain asset for your business, your company, your project, whatever it may be. Anybody else wants to take a stab at that? Yeah.

It could be your Google My Business website. It could be that it could be your your G site. It could be, you know, a free WordPress blog or blogger, Tumblr, or wherever it is that you choose to blog from, like, you don’t have to have something that’s self hosted. WordPress, are a self hosted domain for you to have a money site. This is like you said, it’s the place where you plan to send people to in order to make money and edit in order to sell your product service or whatever it is that you want people to see or buy. That’s your money site. Why? Because it makes you money. Not to say that there are other places that could make you money like social media, but it’s the primary source of what it is that you’re planning to do. Yeah, that’s a great point because as we talked about a lot of lead gen assets that I have don’t have a self-hosted money site. They are just GMB website.

In other words, the website, the Google My Business provides you which is free. And ultimately you don’t have full control over that Google does. Right. So I, you know, I’m glad Marco brought that up. Because I just mentioned self-hosted website, it doesn’t have to be that recommend that was possible. But there are times where it makes sense to not build a self-hosted website, for example, spammed GMB listings, it might not be wise to go through the trouble of building out a, you know, a self-hosted site because of all the work that goes into it. Whereas, you know, in case it was to get suspended, you lose all of them, the work that you did, essentially. So in that case, you know, the GMB website becomes the primary website for that location. Or another option would be like Marco said, you know, Google Site g site, right, so sites.google.com, that they, Marco and Rob have done several projects using those as the money site, and it works. It works really, really well. So the money site is exactly what Marco described, which is whatever it is that you’re using to make money.

If you’re going to build a brand, I think it’s important to build a self-hosted website with the brand name as the domain name, because you can really grow the authority of that brand and you benefit from that in so many ways. So, it’s a great question though. Alright, so the last question and we’ve only got three minutes left, we’re gonna wrap it up.

What SEO And Lead Gen Contract Do You Recommend?

He says, Lonnie says I’m having trouble with putting an SEO and lead with I’m sorry, with put an SEO and lead gen contract. Do you have any recommended contract forms? No, I don’t, you know, you could probably just go online and find some templates that you could use. I personally don’t like to use contracts I, I mean, I have in the past, but typically, it’s only for bigger companies that, you know, they want the contract. I like to do everything on a verbal agreement. So that and I always say this to potential prospects or customers look, you know, if I’m doing my job, you’re gonna want to continue paying me if I’m not, you’re not gonna want to continue paying me and that’s okay. I also want to be able to part ways from that client if we don’t dive well, we don’t agree on things if it’s just not a good fit, and I don’t want to be locked into a contract either. So I don’t expect my clients to want to be locked into a contract. And sometimes that burns me, for example, I had a home inspector client, that, you know, I very clearly stated what the timeline was going to be on results.

I typically asked for, hey, give me this much time. And before that time had passed before I reached that certain level of time that I mentioned, he canceled services. And I you know, And to me, that’s really unfair for both of us because he wasn’t able to get the results that he wanted, because it wasn’t, you know, fast enough for him even though I clearly stated all of that before we agreed to work together. But at the same time, I put a lot of work into that and it wasn’t able to fully realize the efforts you know, for him or for myself for my own satisfaction because he stopped paying me before all the work had been completed, if that makes sense. Sometimes I wish I did have a contract in place. But for the most part, I like the ability to be able to walk away from a client. And I also like them to know that they don’t, they’re not locked into a contract that kind of eases that.

That low and lowers the barrier to entry, so to speak. However, that said, there might be a difference of opinion here for some of the other guys. And you guys have a suggestion for him.

Now, you know me, I don’t do contracts. I hate him. I hate him. He locks me into everything. And what if I want to go out and maybe the client doesn’t want to go well, what if I want to go? What if I can’t stand the client? I want to go and then I’m bound by a contract for a year with this guy that I can’t stand that knows more or supposedly knows more than I do, which sometimes happens.

If you know how to produce results, then always go, “Look, I’ll give you results.” But record the quality I always record the call that that call. We talk

Bradley, what is going to take this long? I always have that recorded even though there’s no contract and I let the guy know Look, I’m gonna record the call. And then you can always refer revert back to that’s a contract, believe it or not, that’s a contract. Right? And it’ll hold up in most courts. I believe in the US. It’ll hold up, it’ll hold up in Costa Rica.

That’s a good idea. And yeah, if you disclose that right up front, and then get it on the recording, you do agree that this is being recorded, and that’s okay, right.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’m going to be recording this, I’m just gonna point this way. This way, we can refer back to the conversation, you know exactly what took place. I know exactly what to put in you walk them through, you know that this is going to take about 90 days for results. thereabouts. Because if you don’t, then you go into the process because I have to set everything up. And then we get everything going. I’m probably going to get two results before but I can’t guarantee any Google experience tells me that within 90 days, we should be able to see something, and then we can work from there but I need 90 days from you.

Are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re gonna get that nine out of 10. So now you have a binding contract now, at the end of it you tell at the end of those 90 days when we meet again, then we’ll decide if we continue.

Now real quick, I know Adam is if you’re still paying attention, I know we’re a little bit over, but I think you have a little bit of a different methodology. Is there any way you can comment on this? Um, yeah, I just I’m trying to think like, I don’t have too much of a difference it’s kind of constantly evolving. But yeah, I mean, as far as contracts go like I stay out of that I’ve never done anything. Okay. Yeah. And then, if he’s looking for actual he may just mean, he’s looking for an outline for like a proposal or an engagement proposal. If that’s the case, just contact support at semantic mastery comm will point you in the right direction. I know Hernan put one out there we had as a free opt-in that you could get as an outline. And that can be really helpful. I mean, I’ve used other people’s as a starting point when I’m changing services.

Adding something in just so that I have a good starting point then you tailor it kind of to your specifics.

Very good. Thank you. Alright guys, thanks everybody for being here is Chris were you gonna says something? I’m sorry. I mean like he is like a lead gen contract. I mean, like why not sell on a per lead basis? I don’t see there’s an issue you can do like a contract that states the price of the elite.

Yeah. So you should be fine that way. It should be super easy.

Sweet. Well, thanks for your input, guys. And thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289

Click on the video above to watch Episode 289 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

Welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 289 to one where Hernan looks continuously shocked for some reason.

Hi, how’s it going? Hernan Is everything okay. It’s great, man. I’m feeling like shit, but here we are. All right, good, good stuff. Well, keep going here. Like I said it’s Episode 289. Today’s the 27th of May 2020. I can see we got a lot of really good questions already today. But if you haven’t yet and you got a question, please put it on the page. First come first serve. And then I’m going to get into a few announcements. We’ve got some cool stuff that happened earlier this week. And then some last-minute announcements, things that we just found out about today that I want to touch on But first, let’s say hi to the guys real quick and see how everyone’s doing so

I’ll start to my top left here Bradley. How are you doing today?

Good. I’m good. I just edited the video description in YouTube because still had some stuff from the webinar we did yesterday. So anyway, but I’m good. Things are good. I’m back from taking a week off, and it sucked cuz I went away for a week camping and ATV riding, thinking that I was going to get away and get to enjoy it and it rained the entire week, all day every day and it was awful. It was fucking miserable. So I wish I would have stayed home and worked.

Yeah, man, speaking of weird weather that so I’m in the Bay Area. So we just hit 95 the last three days, which is like 34 Celsius. It’s just like, Okay, well guess I’ll go out in the morning, go for a walk and then come hunker in here, shut the blinds and turn the air just thinking. So that’s been my life for the past couple of days. So let’s head go with the happier weather report. Marco. How are you doing?

The sun’s out again. It’s the rainy season and he’s like the sun’s out. It’s rainy season man. Look, I live in paradise. All right, I can’t help that. Make some money. Right? First of all, go get the battle. You follow the Battle Plan.

make some money. Hire someone who will help you. Train, apply, and make money. lather, rinse, repeat. And then you can go find your own Fortress of Solitude where you can just watch the world go by and you don’t give up. Push your mouth but other than the outstanding weather

How are you doing marking things are going good. Things are good here man. Things are good. Yeah, I’m still like things are opening up a little bit here. Essential businesses and all that and all this other stuff, but I’m still self-parenting. I got three kids. They got to think about it and I’m not a spring chicken so that there’s another person that I had to think about right because I can go out or like one but I have to think about my family. Yeah. And what I might bring, bring home and closer to home to make somebody.

I knew personally died of this. It’s not as if it’s totally foreign to me like I don’t know anyone who is affected by this. I like what I do know. And so having it that cloth is not any longer six degrees of separation. it’s like I know and so no, it ain’t happening and we’re gonna see how this plays out and I’ll let everybody you guys can all go and enjoy yourselves you know to do whatever the hell you want and then let me know how that turns out and then I’ll decide after that second one what it is that we’re going to do but for now we’re cool we take it easy and that’s it, man. We did we just but my personal choice, right, my personal choice to do that. It’s not as if someone is forcing me to do it. I’m choosing that this is the best way for myself and my family. Enough. All right. Well, Hernan How about you man, things are like you’re moving into wintertime right? I always get

Yeah, it’s hot summer-like wait a second I was wearing a sweatshirt what hell’s going on? Yeah, actually actually all of you guys are well Marco Marco is like, you know, he’s in a good spot 20% but all of you guys are you know getting the nice season. I’m getting the shooting season. Yeah now so now but yeah man it’s good today was a good day.

Like warm-ish. But yeah, we’re getting into winter and all of that so see how that goes, could you? Oh, Chris How about yourself? Yeah, yeah can’t complain man sun’s out the sun is shining all day. I mean it’s dark right now and the best part of all Friday the gyms opening back up and stuff so things are really good standing. Well, I’m going to circle back around Bradley, you mentioned a webinar and I wanted to touch on that because we had Brian, a mastermind member, along with Bruno, and you all listening can get to know both of them better and see what Bradley has to say to about this go high-level system. And Bradley, you want to tell real quick, I’m gonna pop the link in where people can go and check out the replay. Do you want to tell them about the webinar a little bit?

Yeah, Brian, one of our mastermind members reached out and basically said that he was using a platform, an agency automation platform that consolidates a whole bunch of different services and such all under one roof. He reached out because he thought that it would fit really, really well with the 2xyoruagency training.

Because it does a lot of the stuff that I talked about in 2xyouragency about how to automate, delegate or eliminate because this platform consolidates a lot of services that you may have separate subscriptions for and I always call it duct taping them together using Zapier or some similar application. And basically these have integrated services that do all

All of the same things that many of these external services do that we put, you know, we connect via Zapier, and it’s all under one dashboard. And so it’s a lot more seamless. And there’s a lot of really cool features inside there, like one of the primary feature that was, is used to pitch this go high-level application or platform is what’s called database reactivation, which is a very easy way or a simple way for you to get your foot in the door as an agency owner with potential marketing clients because you can. So anyway, I can’t really go into depth right now about that, but it’s a really cool platform. I signed up my own agency on the agency level account level so that I can create a first of all, I’m gonna use it for my own agency, but second of all, so I could also create a case study for how I’m using it. I’ve got some really good ideas that I’m going to be sharing in that case study that I’m gonna be putting to the test and then sharing in the case study.

As well on how I’m using it and how to generate kind of exponential revenue growth from it, as opposed to just linear. And so anyway, I think it’s bad, it’s very valuable, I would encourage you guys to go check it out, it does come with a 14-day free trial. So once you see the webinar, you know, comes with some free or some, I think it’s free, or it’s like five bucks may be to pay for some of the training that Bruno had put together, what he calls the quick start training for that. And so you can get all of that. And your first 14 days determine if it’s for you or not, but I think once you see some of the potentials of this, it would be something if any of you are trying to grow. I think you should absolutely take a good hard look at it. Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t do generally local stuff. But I check this out. And like I’ve been looking at it and I talked to Brian about all the details and like I was starting to be like maybe I could find a way to you just like no stop it. But like for anyone out there who’s dealing with especially local clients or can find the right use case

Yeah, just blew me away from the number of services and automation that’s packed into that suite of tools and how seamless that is, is pretty amazing. So definitely worth checking it out. Real quick to this one came up today. So we constantly get questions about GMB verifications, right? You know, hey, where can you guys do GMB verifications work in MGYB, when is it going to be available? I’m going to cut to the chase GMB verifications are available right now. As always, we cannot tell you how long that is going to be the case. So if you are doing lead gen if you’re needing a verification for some other reason, this would be a very good time to put your order in because not only can you order now what you couldn’t have yesterday, you can get a 15% discount today while we’ve got it opened up. Also, it comes with a 30-day guarantee. And it’s about I believe, 14 day turnaround time. So pretty quick. I’ll post all of that in the chatbox for those who are live. If you’re not just head to mgyb.co, and head to the store, you can look for GMB verifications there you can also get syndication networks, Rs drive stacks, SEO shield, link building all that sort of good stuff.

And circling back around. I wanted to touch on this real quick for those of you who are watching us for the first time, thank you very much whether you’re watching live or catching the replay on YouTube. If you want to go to the right place, head to semantic mastery comm slash HD questions every week, we asked you to limit your questions just to one. Unless you’re live, you can ask some more. You know, we get down there. We just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions. So if you ask some questions, we may not get to all of them just before Warren. And then secondly, we encourage everyone to check out the battle plan and go to battle plan dot semantic mastery. If you want to get repeated repeatable SEO results that is for you. I’m not going to read the page to you you can go over there and check it out. But it is a fantastic tool that we recently just updated them released version four a month ago.

And then Bradley touched on this too if you’re an agency owner or a consultant that you want to get more clients, yes, you want to grow your revenue. Yes. And you want to scale your team, hopefully, yes. Then if you want to do that, head over 2xyouragency.com. There’s a ton of incredible training lets you crush it, whether you’re again, being a consultant, or if you want to build a true agency, and it doesn’t matter if that’s SEO, it’s other areas of digital marketing. It’s going to help you grow and make more money. That’s the bottom line.

All right, with that said, Guys, any other quick announcements before we dive into questions?

Good. All right. Let’s do it.

All right. Grab the screen.

You guys confirm when you see. See my screen.

Would You Recommend Ordering Another Drive Stack To A New Website Section Targeting Service Keywords In Different Locations?

So it looks like BB Now that might have been from last week. It looks like it was it will start with Bobby. Bobby says Hey guys, I got some questions. The first one was would you recommend ordering another drive stack to a completely new section of a website targeting a different service keyword in different locations on a large content site that would be perfect for the location sealed, am I right? Marco?

Yeah, that’s perfect for the extension. And it’s currently available and as a coupon sweep. So that’s what the drive stack expansion.

Yeah, we’re saying, Yeah, maybe if he already has the brand it because he’s saying another, right, a completely new section of the website. So we’re talking about the same website, money site. That’s how I’m seeing. I’m seeing something different.

He has a different service keyword, and a different location on a large content what so that’s, that’s just an inner page, I think what he’s describing the top of the silo. So you would aim the expansion on the current drive stack at that inner page, you’d get much more power going and extending that initial drive stack then you would be doing a completely different drive stack, g site. Sure, gotcha. Okay.

Would You Recommend RSS Masher To Drive Traffic To A Money Site And Lead Gen Assets?

The next question was  GMB.Thanks again, I’ve not used them for lead gen assets but I have in the past I haven’t built since the updated the new version of RSS master which is even better. But to create the kind of like Kwazii PBNs and when I say PBNs, they’re not like what we would traditionally think of a treat PBN, these are real sites to generate real traffic and that’s the differentiator, right? having real sites generate real traffic. With automated content posting to them right through all the RSS feeds that you splice together and RSS masher and all the really cool shit you can do. You can take a look at the most recent webinar we did with Damon Nelson, about the most current version of RSS masher and see some of the examples of the sites that he builds are 100% honest.

Major content sites using RSS masher. And they’re freaking beautiful sites. And he’s generating affiliate income and, you know, like AdSense income. And so such using those sites because they do generate traffic, they look beautiful. But from an SEO standpoint, I looked at it as like, hey, this could be really good to generate, you know, in related content type sites that could feed traffic back to a money site or a lead gen site or whatever. So, I mean, I think it’s certainly possible to use it for that I haven’t done it myself just to be honest because it’s not the strategy that I’ve been pursuing. I’ve wanted to in fact, I even talked about it with my partners here. I would love to have some time to play with that and set up some sights but I haven’t done it yet. I think Marco. Weren’t you guys gonna try playing with that a bit. I know it probably hasn’t been done but wasn’t that on the to-do list?

It is being done. What we are currently testing it and we won’t like there is anything. I’m not personally doing it but I got my mini mastermind, which is where all the evil takes place where we can go after everything. And there’s a couple of people in there who have a license. And then one of them is using our license as I gave her our license to go and try it out. So they got together. Three of the people in my seven-person mini mastermind got together. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing information on how to make make it work in the best way possible. And then they’re going to come back and report it to me and we’re either going to make it available through MGYB as a service, or I’m not sure how we’re going to offer that but there’s definitely something in the works with that RSS masher. It’s just you guys if you go get it just be prepared because there’s a high learning curve is that simple software that you’re just going to go and plug and play

You have to be prepared to go through the training to go through the process, gathering up the feeds making everything look right. And then you know that that’s when the magic happens and I can’t wait to blast that. Now get it, give it a companion g site and drive stack, expand it, and then blast it with link building and some embeds and see what happened. I can’t wait.

Yeah, it looks good. As I said, I wish I had more time to mess with it. Because I think there’s a lot of potentials there as well. So, so maybe next Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, we can give people a preview. But again, the first ones that’ll get a preview, it will be my mini mastermind, and then the semantic mastery mastermind, the heavy hitter club, and then we’ll go public with whatever we have. It’s still a few weeks away, it takes time. That’s all

Is It Possible To Get An Iframe For A Drive Folder?

so Frank’s up. He says it is it possible to get an iframe for a drive folder tried adding a link into iframe generator and it came back saying the page was blocked from being displayed? also. Well, first of all,

The first part of that is Yeah, you can use to be able to do that. But no, I haven’t tried since the updates recently. Marco, can you? Yeah. Not through the iframe January? That’s why I tell people to code their own code. Yeah, because you can’t do it that way. You have to separate the, I can’t go through the process that you have to get the folder ID to be able to iframe it. And what you have to insert in an iframe generator is the entire URL, and you can’t do it that way.

Okay.

Publish to the web would be a file setting in the drive used to say publish to the web, it would give you an embed code for the file or for the folder, but I think that has been taken away correct recently. Uh, no. I can check that right now. I mean, go on and let me take a folder that has nothing in it. And we’ll just move on while you’re looking that up.

Do You Have Any Link Building Services In MGYB For T1 Money Site?

He says also with MGYB, do you have any link building services that could be used for tier-one money site or only g sites? Yeah, that while the SEO shield can point back to your money site, right, which includes the drive stack files and folders as well as the G site. Also, press releases could be used for tier-one money site, right where your money site tier-one money site is. It’s redundant. That’s like the Department of redundancy department. You know what I mean? So, yeah, your money site, again, press releases and the SEO shield? Those are the two things that I would recommend. Am I missing something?

No, no, no, I don’t think so. And I can’t find it. I can’t find published on the web by the way. That’s what I thought had been removed since the recent update. But it used to be able to do it that way. So hopefully that was helpful.

What MGYB Service You Should Use To Rank For A City That Is Three Hours Away From The Dealership Location?

Mohammed’s up, it’s up mom and he says, Hey, guys, a client is asking me if I can rank his Volkswagen dealership for VW related keywords in a city. Three hours away from where the dealership actually is.

Actually, how would I go about this? I know I can get a GMB from MGYB for the New City and add a new city page to the money site. What else would I do?

Well, the problem that I see with that Mohammed is it’s a dealership right? So if you’re getting a GMB for a dealership which is a storefront business, right with the customers come to the business location, and you’ve got a spammed GMB listing, that’s three hours away from where the dealership actually exists, then, how is that going to play with potential car buyers? When they’re looking to go to a dealership in their local area and they’ve come to find out it’s a spam listing and instead they’ve got to go three hours away to buy a Volkswagen. To me, I don’t think that would be advisable for the reasons I just mentioned. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question. Anybody else interprets this another way?

No, that’s the way I’m I’m reading it unless the dealer is opening up a dealership in that city in which case, you would need spam. GMB. Right. Correct. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I am not willing to drive three hours to go look at a car, like my dealer has to be closed by where I can just jump in the car. 1015 minutes, I’m there and look at the car and decide if I’m gonna buy it. Because I’ll be people. Yes. I mean, the idea behind it is correct. People are going to first look online to find a car that they liked, and they’re going to find the dealer, then they’re going to go visit the dealer to see the cart. Who’s going to drive? Did you talk that to this dealership owner, by the way, and ask him Who do you know that’s going to drive three hours to buy a car when they can buy one mic in the city? I don’t understand the thinking behind that. Not only that, but don’t you think it would piss a potential customer off if they were misled to believe that a dealership was in their local area just to come to find out that it’s three hours away? I mean, it’s not just that like if he was promoting like ranked a page organically for the city that is three hours away, and says, Hey, we sell cars. Were our dealerships over here and they’re honest about where it is. It’s very likely most people are going to drive three hours away anyways, but at least they weren’t being dishonest about it. Whereas having a GMB for a storefront business where a store doesn’t actually exist, that I think in my view would piss me off if I put driving directions and go show up at this place to find out that it’s it doesn’t exist, and then I got to drive three hours away to go where I intended. What about other car dealers dealerships? wouldn’t they be pissed if you’re faking? A GMB and I just totally am in the area. I don’t think VW corporate would be too happy with that with you faking GMB.  I don’t know how much trouble I mean, you can get into a whole lot of trouble behind that. talk to this guy. talk some sense and then

yeah, just find out what his intent is really. And maybe you already know it, Mohammed and it just wasn’t conveyed in that message.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean like I said if I was going to do anything it would be to try to just rank organically for that and just be honest about where the dealership is and why they should drive three hours away to purchase a car at that particular dealership.

SEO Shield Question

Alright, moving on uh, next question is Hello everyone recently I purchased an SEO shield and since I got some discount for link building, I also bought that so I placed the order for SEO shield and link building altogether. What I found out that instead of building the links to my properties, they pointed all the direct all directly to your money site. Okay, you can edit the URLs to build links to an M GI Bill, Why be disregarded that and build all the links to your money site? No continue can find that hard to believe okay. When I inquired from support about it, they said since you had provided the URL file, we built all the links around that. But they also said that they don’t recommend it. I’m a new user purchasing SEO shield first time and also not aware of the internal tech now technicalities excuse me of SEO SEO. So I provide all the information including the URL file because I thought it might be required to build the SEO shield since I bought the SEO, SEO, and link building. So I believe that SM support will follow the best practice since I’ve gone blindly trust SM for SEO related stuff. So my question is Why were the links built directly in the money site even when it is not recommended? No one will pay for the money to I’m not sure what he says.

Now, he says that the links can’t be removed. This website is my six months old hard work. I don’t want to degrade my website by any means. So what should I do now? Should I disavow the links pointing in the Excel sheet? Please suggest, okay, um, the first part of that. I’m not sure if you came to us cold and you don’t know anything about our methodology, then then I could understand where that confusion may have come from.

Perhaps we need to have that clearly explicitly outlined on this on the order page or the order submit Details page. In other words, if it’s not already, but

As far as what you know, we didn’t build all the links to your money site URL. If your money site URL was listed in your submitted URLs list, then some links will have been built to your money site URL. But in all of our training, we always suggest we actually won’t build links to your money site URL if we know that it’s in there. So I don’t know what to tell you on that other than and as far as disavowing Marco doesn’t ever recommend that I’ve done it in the past haven’t done it for years.

I don’t think Have you seen anything negative happen? We don’t suggest it, but I don’t know that it is going to cause any problems. Marco, what do you say about this? I say I have a really big problem with this guy. Right? Because this was sent to support at mg y v.co. And I heard from Deadia and he said, hey, look, you know what, what can we do it with this? What can we do for this person? So we’re looking to do the right thing. Here. Look, I can remove all I think I can remove all the links

But it’s gonna take a while I so we aren’t talking about it, he doesn’t even give support a chance to respond and let him know what the answers are. He comes here to a public forum to air the laundry. And I understand that. I mean, in no way Is this a recommended practice. But I mean, he submitted the URLs for us to build links to if you give us a spreadsheet, how are we to know that there’s a money site included in the spreadsheet? I mean, he’s assuming that we’re supposed to assume and look these, the logic behind this evades me because I just don’t see it, how we’re supposed to know that he’s submitting his money site from now on. And so now we know that we need to make sure that we tell people explicitly on the order form do not submit your money site URL. So thank you for that. But I don’t appreciate

This being aired on a public forum, where we’re taking care of when we’re looking to do what’s best for you and for your website. Not that anything bad has happened. Not that anything bad will happen. We don’t know yet what would happen, but it’s still in the discussion stage and he doesn’t even give it an opportunity comes publicly as Hey, you guys, I thought you were supposed to follow best practice practices and whatever else he says. And I just don’t appreciate it. Give us at least a chance to do the right thing. And then if there’s a problem, if there’s no resolution, then you come here and you speak to us publicly. I thought about writing to you by the way. Because I saw this, I saw the way he called it the ticket, come through and I know I’m supposed to stay away from customer service. But I thought about writing to him because I don’t see the logic. If he submits the URLs to build links. That’s what we’re going to build links to because the customer as always, right? So if you want links built to your money site, in spite of the fact that we don’t recommend it, and then we say, Don’t ever do it, we don’t do it. If you submit the URL, and it’s by mistake, and I’m not saying that you did it on purpose, if by mistake you included in my site, or you didn’t know, it’s going to get links built to it. Now, yeah, we are going to try to do the right thing. That’s all I can say. We were trying to do the right thing before, even after having come on a public forum, and then like hitting on my last nerve, we’re still going to help you out.

Yeah and I don’t know that it’s going to cause any problem. We just, we don’t build links, the types of links that we sell at MGB directly the money site, we always in all of our training suggest not to do that because that’s the whole reason for the SEO shield right is because and that’s why it’s named the SEO shield because it shields your money site, from all the external threats.

SEO and link building that you can do because link building to your money site can, doesn’t always but can create a problem. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have problems because that happened, it might not cause any problems at all, we just don’t recommend it, we suggest not to do it, because there’s no need to because we push all the power to the SEO shield and use the SEO shield to launder basically clean any potential negative juice through Google properties and through high authority assets, that and push relevancy essentially, eventually to the money site. So again, we don’t know that it’s gonna cause a negative impact at all, we just don’t, we don’t test it. Because we don’t do that we always recommend building them directly to the SEO shield. Again, that’s the whole point of the SEO shield. So we have learned, we have now decided or just came to the realization that that needs to be very explicit on the order form, submit page, and that makes sense and we’ll make sure that we make that change and Marco and Dadea, our link builder, are going to do what they can for you. So hopefully that will suffice.

How Do You Use Press Release To Achieve Better Rankings?

Next question, SMS insurances total newbie here, I just ordered the press release. Not sure where to start. I’m clueless on what to do, and the advice would be great. This is awesome that you asked this question because I’m actually working on a little mini-course for press releases for people that want to order and not for SEOs. But for business owners. I mean, anybody can have access to it that they want, but it’s I’m doing a little mini-course for press releases.

For MGYB, in other words, a little mini-course on trying to teach a layman right or a business owner, somebody that’s not an SEO, how to get the most use in the best use the most traction from press releases that you order from MGYB. And I’ll have that done by next Tuesday for sure. Maybe even possibly will be available on by next Wednesday for people to go download as a Lead Magnet or whatever, we’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna have it ready by Tuesday. I don’t know if it’ll be ready on Wednesday for public consumption. That said, I can give you a brief rundown on it. Because I was actually working on that presentation earlier today. In fact, it’s over here. So I can show you that I’m not kidding, do it yourself press releases, leveraged PR marketing for your business. So this will be both a presentation as well as some of that stuff hasn’t been added yet. But it will be a presentation that will be available, as well as some videos. So it’ll be like a little mini training course, on how to get the best uses of press releases, and then what to do next as well. So really a quick rundown on that is, first have an understanding of what your keywords are that you want to promote, right? So your primary products and services, products and or services, or an event if you’re promoting an event, whatever, whatever you’re trying to promote. You want to have a set of keywords that you’re looking to promote. And you want to submit that as the primary keyword for each one of the press releases.

So the press release writers, the writers that they’re really good about creating brand plus keyword association. So if you submit the keyword that you want to be used as the primary keyword, they’re going to create that they’re going to use the brand name and the keyword in the title. Okay, which is very, very important. And then they’re going to write about whatever it is that you instruct them to write about. And you can be as descriptive about how to like, you can tell them the tone that you want, that you want them to write it in, you can tell them certain things that you want them to highlight within the press release. Or you can be vague, you can just say, here’s the URL that I want you to promote. And they’ll go look at the URL, also look at the brand and they’ll create a news angle story, that they’ll write a press release about so it makes it easy for you guys if you have something specific you want written about. add that in the writing description. If you don’t and you don’t know how to create a newsworthy angle, don’t worry about it because that’s what the press release riders do. So you can just submit a URL and say this is the primary

URL I want promoting, write a story about it right. And though they’ll figure out a way, which is why I love using it, because it takes the responsibility right off of us to come up with the angle all the time. They’re really good about that once the press release is published, or you want to also link back to whatever you’re primarily trying to promote. So for example, I like to, by the way, if you’re new SM, s and s insurance, you can go to our YouTube channel youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery and use the channel search feature. And you can even go to Google and search for a press release or PR silo stalking or press release, SEO, semantic mastery, something like that, and you can find a webinar it’s actually still on mg y v. If you go to the webinars tab on the MG y v.co. website, you can take a look, I think that was the last webinar that we did was PR silo stalking, and that’ll give you a really good description. It was almost an hour You know, I don’t know 40-minute webinar or whatever specifically about how to get the

Most uses out are the best use out of sight, press releases. So again, you’re going to want to have at least one URL that you’re going to promote, you can have up to three, I usually recommend only two URLs per the press release, unless you’re siloing press releases, in which case you’ll have three, three target URLs that you’re promoting within the press release because you’re going to be linking back to the previous press release within that silo. if all of this sounds foreign to you, just go check out that webinar that I just described. And then it will tell you exactly what we do to get really, really good results with press releases. And just an aside to kind of a point to kind of reinforce this is I was just talking in the mastermind two weeks ago when I did my last mastermind webinar, about how I have a GMB asset as a lead gen asset that I hadn’t done anything with it was published about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, but I never optimized it never did anything to rank it. And I did three press releases in one week to push that GMB asset and all it has is it’s a GMB location. You know, profile and it’s got a GMB website. It’s not connected to a money site. The money site is the GMB website. And I did three press releases in a week. And the son of a bitch disappeared from maps all together for about three weeks. But then it popped after three weeks of it like not even showing I thought it got it was doing a Google dance. But I’ve not seen one this drastic, or this is significant of a Google dance to where it like literally, the listing disappeared, it disappeared entirely from Google Maps. And then all of a sudden bounce it when it popped, it popped into number three, the C position in the maps three pack from just three press releases in a week. Now that’s those results aren’t typical, but I’m just sharing that because it does show you that and all I did was PR silo stacking method, the same one that I’m suggesting you go watch that webinar to learn the strategy. And it works guys. It really does work. So that’s what I would recommend is

Just first go look at that webinar. And then after you have published the press release, it’s always better to do like one press release isn’t going to move the needle much, if at all, but when you start to do the silo stacking with press releases, you can do significant damage with that, and in a good way, right, yeah. And then from there, the next thing you can do is do link building gigs to the press releases or to the organization page that we provide. When you order a press release. That’s something else and embed gigs. You can do embed gigs as well, but don’t link directly to your money site. Anyway, you want to comment on that anybody?

From dance is real man. Right? We tell people 21 days actually, it’s 20 days. But I tell people 21 days just to be sure they’re clear of it. And then that’s when you go and take a look at everything. You decide what to do, but it’s very real. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about that. They just see rankings drop and then they go try to fix it and they make things worse instead of trying to instead of the result being better.

You just supposed to leave it alone until like you said, it just comes back and then you decide.

Unknown Speaker 35:06 Yeah, what’s interesting is, like you said, for about three weeks, I haven’t seen something that drastic of a dance in quite some time to be honest with you. And so I was a little bit nervous. I was thinking like, What the fuck is going on with this, this listing? And all I did was a handful of GMB posts to that listing over the course of those three weeks that was it, nothing else. And like I said, it popped and when it did, it’s, it’s in the number. In fact, I just got a lead from that today for sure, for Tree Removal in that particular city. So it’s producing and all it took was three press releases, which again, is very, very powerful. So it used the exact same method I just mentioned was PR silo stacking, so just go watch that webinar. It’s done in the MGYB, webinar archive, and it’s PR silo stacking, and it works really, really well.

Okay, next question. DC SEO says, Hey guys, I received the ROI as part of my shield back and your wise keywords are the ones that gave your team they’re in the same niche, but very different to what I handed in Is this right? Mine didn’t have any location or mine, I guess he means mine didn’t have any location as per instructions and what I received that keyword plus locations from around the world. I’m in the UK as well as a ton of keywords that are irrelevant to my services. I don’t know how that could happen. Any, any suggestion? No, that doesn’t sound right. But this isn’t the forum for that is it support at MGYB.co. What happened? Give us the order number. We’ll go track it down. And if we have to do it over, we’ll do it over we’ll talk to the VA who built it. I mean, we take care of everything guys. We always do we always try to do right, by everyone. You have to do things in the proper forum.

Last week, end of last week or whatever, I think it was Friday, I announced that we had cracked the code that we were able to now extend the drugs tax because we had automated it. And then someone posted in all of our groups, well, what if I have a VA? How do I train them?

And so now, no matter where I respond, it’s going to look like I didn’t respond and all of the other I would have to go and respond in all of the other groups, the very same thing that I responded in the one group and it’s gonna make it look in the other in the groups where I don’t respond like I don’t care or it doesn’t matter or I didn’t want to respond or whatever. I don’t like guys do things in the right place. And at the right time, this first goes to support. If support doesn’t take care of you, then come to us and let us know. And then like, I know, one of the owners in MGB and I’ll have a talk with him and see what we can do about rectifying the situation, but it’s in here in a public forum. I can’t do anything for you.

Yeah, Fidel. If it was indeed a mistake on our end, then absolutely. We just kill that drive, stack, and build and one for you. So and it won’t, it won’t hurt you at all. So it’s not an issue if it was indeed our problem. If you submitted the wrong keyword file, that’s one thing, but if it was, somehow it got built with keywords that you didn’t submit, which is unlikely, but people are human things happen. So if that was the case, just bring it to supports attention, we’ll take a look at it and if that was indeed the case, it would just kill that stack and then go to a new one, and it won’t it won’t cause any problems. So that’s the beautiful thing about those guys and that’s also why we talked about using the SEO shield for clients and stuff like that because you get the accounts back and you could protect your work right? Because if something happens and you get fired or the client stops paying you I’ve had that happen where they just ghost on you, you know what I mean? The business still exists but they just won’t answer phone calls or emails when they owe you money that kind I’ve had that happen several times over my career. You can go in and just kill the drive stack, delete it. I don’t even set it to not public which is it’s changed now anyways and because it can still push power, even when it’s not indexable. But you can go in and just kill the damn thing or rework it to point somewhere else, you know, to meet to their competitor, that you can go land as a client. So that’s one of the beautiful things about it. So it can be remedied. That’s not a problem.

Can You Create A Subdomain, Rank, And Redirect All The Pages To Another Site While Maintaining Its Ranking?

The next question was, can you create a subdomain website and rank it and then redirect all the pages to another site? And the subdomain maintain its rankings? No, because the redirect will point to the new location and new locate the new location is going to replace the subdomain at some point, right? You can’t redirect a URL and have both the URLs still appear in search, or they might temporarily, and I don’t even know that that’s true. But Google will whatever the redirect is eventually that’s what will rank and the other one will fall out of the index entirely. Am I right in that, or am I missing something? I’m not I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t see how you can’t since you’re telling the bot through the 301 that the page or everything in that sub-domain moved permanently somewhere else. Yeah. You could use I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah, you could use a canonical. And it can both pages can rank. I’ve seen that many times, you’re telling Google with a canonical, like, hey, this page is similar to this page over here, give the credit to this page, right? And then Google sometimes disregards that and well, you know, both pages will index and they’ll both rank. And that happens. So I would suggest a canonical instead of a 301 if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, but remember that just because you canonicalize. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mean Google’s going to honor that. It also doesn’t mean that they won’t honor it. Right? It just kind of it’s kind of a crapshoot. So yeah, what, what that is canonical is when you have similar or the same, and it doesn’t have to be two. It could be two or more, however many copies of that document. There is there exists. You can tell Google which ones the master copy is and to rank that one, rather than all the other. Now, whether Google follows the directive, well, that’s up to Google. And they’re not telling what they’ll do is right.

Yeah, and just to, you know, kind of reinforce that I’m working on a tree care project. for it, you know, for new, a new lead gen service provider that I got. And it’s a case study that I’m doing in the mastermind, and I use tags, tags to create location silos anyways, a Google, it’s a new site, right? And my blogger just started blogging for the location posts on the site. And the way that we’re doing building it out with using tags to create the location silos. Google was ranking the tag pages, but not, but not the posts that I wanted to be ranked. And it indexed the tag pages first, right and the tag pages because some in some cases, they’re unique tags, which means that the tag page is a duplicate of post, that if you guys understand how tags work, that’s what happens if it’s a unique tag, it’s only in one post, then the tag page itself is essentially a duplicate of the post. And so for whatever reason, Google index the tag pages instead of the posts, and so the tag pages were ranking for the keywords, but not the post. And so and I even set the canonical in the tag setting with SEO ultimate Pro, you can do that because you can go to what’s called the Global canonical manager, or even the code inserter plus module, you can actually go in and add like a separate canonical for each tag and all that kind of stuff anyway. So I added the canonical URLs for the tag pages to canonicalize to the post, right, when it’s a unique tag, you can do that. And but Google wasn’t honoring it. And about two weeks went by and so finally I went just this week, I just went to search console, and forced Google to recrawl the posts or excuse me, the tag pages because they had the canonical URLs in the HTML header to point to the posts that I wanted to give the credit to. Right and that’s what I want to be ranked, and it only took about 24 hours, and lo and behold, now the tag pages aren’t indexed, but the posts are, which is what I wanted. So again, it, you know, that doesn’t mean that that’s always going to happen, because it could be that Google doesn’t honor the canonical or doesn’t, you know, doesn’t recognize it for whatever reason, they, By the way, you can also check that when you submit inspect URL in Search Console. And once it inspects the URL, it’s going to tell you whether it’s in Google or not. And there’s a drop-down setting that your menu that you can click on to expand, it shows you additional details, and it’ll tell you what the Google recognized canonical is for that page, or that post whatever URL it is that you’re inspecting. Right? And so you can clearly see what Google seeing. So you can force a canonical, and then go ask Google to request indexing. And then once it does, you know you can look at the code that it shows like the rendered page and it’ll tell you the details of that and it’ll show you if it if it saw the canonical or not. So anyway, hopefully, that was helpful. Do you see SEO

Is It Okay To Embed MyMap Via Tag Manager?

Is it? Is it okay to embed the mind map via Tag Manager? I’m not sure how you would do that.

I’m not sure how you would do that. Tag Manager creates container codes, right header code, and Body Code. And then you inject things into that like scripts and tracking codes and pixels and that kind of stuff. And I don’t know what embedding a my map would do, or if it would even read. Is that something you have any idea about? Marco?

Hello, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. I was talking intimidated might not I think you can. You can use iframes with Tag Manager not not only that, you can track them. Hmm. Am I giving away too much? Oh, nevermind.

I’ll have to play with that DC. I’m not sure. I’ve never done it. Don’t listen, go play with it. And then and then look at all the nice stuff that happens in there.

Okay.

Cool, well there you go.

Is It A Good Deal To Have A 1500 Monthly Retainer Plus Sale Percentage?

Unknown Speaker 45:03 Alright, so moving on next one is Josh says I am changing locations from my current office to a shared workspace and apparently with Google, this isn’t a verifiable address so they won’t verify my GMB profile with this type of address. With the MG y b GMB service will this help with this issue?

Is it a storefront or a service area business that would be my question. Can you get a listing right now a GMB listing through MGYB? Yes.

As we talked about with Mohammed’s question earlier, if it’s a storefront business, I don’t recommend using a spam GMB listing for any type of storefront business because you mislead potential customers because they think it’s in one location and you are indeed in another location. So the only time I would ever recommend using a spammed GMB listing, let’s call it what it is. As for a service area business where the actual physical location in the GMB profile is hidden from the public, so it makes sense. So again, if it’s a service area business, then yes, that would help you. If it’s a storefront business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Any comments, guys?

No, I think that’s absolutely right, man. It’s a myth. You got to know what you’re getting into. Especially if you’re, if you’re going to spam it, right?

Yeah.

I’ve gotten away from doing spam, GMB listings just because the how much volatility there’s been in the last, you know, many months. Um, so I’m working more heavily on the organic side. Now, again, which has been years since I really pushed that. So it’s interesting, and that’s what the tree care project that I’m working on is, in part is a case study for the mastermind, is working on mostly organic rankings. I do have some GMB locations that are going to be incorporated into the project most of the organic rankings. And I’m also doing a lot of call ads call-only ads for Google ads. They are

If you’re very specific with Google call-only ads with your what I call Bullseye keywords, then you can get some pretty good results with that. It’s a lot less expensive than actual clicks to like, you know, regular PPC pay per Click type ads, pay per call ads are a little bit less expensive if you have very, very targeted keywords with location modifiers and such. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

What MGYB Service Should You Use Get More SEO Clients?

Lonnie says I landed my first client concrete company 1500 dollars per month plus percentage of sales. This is a good deal fucking a man. Congratulations, Lonnie. That’s all that looks like it looks like a really good deal. Absolutely. That’s a cherry deal for sure. So congratulations, man. I’m gonna hop in real quick and say it’s all relative, right? One congrats on getting that. Especially the percentage of sales and revenue. That’s a big one that I think a lot of people miss out on. But keep in mind too, this is totally dependent on what he’s doing for that. 1500 That’s true. You’d be getting worked to the fucking ground for 1500 but you know

It’s up to you, you You are the person who can determine whether or not that’s worthwhile. Yeah, that’s a great point, Adam.

And just know this, if it’s your first client, you probably are going to be work to death anyways. Because it’s your first client and you will learn over time, how to set boundaries with clients. Just talk to Mohammed who’s always here asking questions every single week. Mohammed’s been following us for a long, long time, and we’ve watched him grow considerably over the last couple of years. And he’s experienced a lot of growing pains and come here and ask for advice. And that’s what this forum is for Lonnie. So feel free to come back and ask questions every week. concerning how to handle certain situations doesn’t always have to be SEO related either. It could just be about how to handle particular clients, business operations, management, outsourcing, all that kind of stuff. Guys, we’re here to help grow your business as much as possible. Yes, we talk a lot about SEO. But there’s a lot of other things that we’ve all learned with our experience over the years on how to, you know, help you to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve all made.

But just know that it is your first client there, it’s likely you’re going to be work to death for that client. And that’s okay. Because you’re going to learn a lot from that. And you’ll begin to learn how to start to set boundaries. And remember, you know, one thing I want to recommend is, you do need to also set like communication boundaries, I don’t know that your new client is is somebody that might message you outside of business hours or over the weekend and that kind of stuff. But I’ve got a lot of clients that still to this day do, but I’ve trained them that I don’t reply to messages after hours or on weekends. Unless it’s an emergency like I have a preschool client that had a site go down on over a weekend and I had my daughter and I did actually help him because he’s a really good client and me, you know, I felt for him and I wanted to help him but very rarely do I ever reply to anything outside of ours, because once you set that precedent, people will take advantage of it. I don’t know that they mean to be malicious, but they just think that hey, I messaged him at night and he answered me, so, therefore, it’s okay for me to ask questions at any time, I would recommend that you know, as your first client, you need to start to learn how to set boundaries right upfront.

Anyways, let’s get back to the question. Sorry, I’m glad that Adam put that into perspective, because I immediately saw that percentage. And my mind went to the mat, my mind always goes to the numbers, where I normally get this company to 100-200k a month recurring for you know, out of if it’s like Costa Rica, where they work around, like, it’s killer money, it’s killer money, but even if it’s seasonal, right, you can’t work in the winter, if what if they’re doing driveways or whatever it is that they’re paving. If they’re laying a concrete slab, you’re talking about 100 k easy and if you charge 10 to 15% of that recurring, then I’m seeing that as a really good deal. If you’re going to be worked to the bone and the client can’t close. Then you got a problem. So thanks for putting that into perspective.

Yeah, not to downplay it. Yeah, definitely just wanted to tell because the way he phrased it that’s what gave me the hesitation. It’s like, Is this good? Like, man, there’s no way for us to know you’re the one who’s got to do that. But you know, congratulations on doing that. That’s good to see. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, Just remember, as your first client, you will make mistakes, there’s no question, you will work harder than you probably should. And that’s okay. Like I said, you’re going to learn from that. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Remember, come back here and ask questions often and we’ll try to provide you as much advice as we can. He says, also, I’m looking for simple services I can use to get me in on getting clients and suggestions. By the way, I love the video lead gen 2xyoruagency. Well, there, there you go. You have the video lead gen system and 2xyoruagency which is great for prospecting and generating prospects, right? Don’t build that pipeline first. Right? And that’s super, super important in through having a full pipeline of prospects and making presentations sending proposals, right so pitching prospects, you will get better, you’re gonna lose money upfront, and that’s okay. But you will get better you’ll be able to polish your presentation and your pitch and your message and all of that. And so just that’s why it’s so important guys to fill that pipeline full of prospects so that you can make those mistakes. And not every prospect that you talk to is going like you depend on them to be able to put food on your table. If because if that’s the case, desperation comes through and everything that you do, and they can smell that from a mile away. And so I think it’s better to have a pipeline full of prospects because then it’s okay, you don’t need anyone of them because you have more behind them. Right, that makes sense. As far as simple services, I recommend getting the most updated version of the battle plan if you don’t already have that. A lot of that was covered in 2xyoruagency anyways, but the battle plan is a very succinct version of what we recommend to get results and timelines for doing so and all of that and it’s very inexpensive. So I’d recommend you pick that up if you don’t have it already.

I’d also say mgyb.co, I mean everything there for you to offer your clients, whatever it is that they want. Everything is their press releases, liquidity and anything and everything that you need to do to produce results for your clients in MGYB.co. And if it doesn’t mean you have a good idea of a product that let us know.

What Is A Money Site?

This is a great question from Josh, he says, And see, guys, this is the thing you know, I think we often forget. Because we’ve been in this industry so long that not everybody understands the terminology. He says one more quick question, what exactly do you mean by money site that means your primary digital asset so like, whatever your primary domain is that you host your, your website for your business on? That’s what we call a money site. Why? Because it’s the site that generates you money, right? A lot of the other stuff that you know, we talked about is tier-one branded entity assets. Again, big terminology for basically meaning like social profiles and stuff that you can build a branded profile or presence on that you’re going to link back to your money site, your money site is your Epicenter, right? It’s your point of origin, it’s the golden frame, you always want to drive, all traffic all leads as much as possible back to your money site, because you have control over that’s an asset that you own and control, having ancillary profiles on social media properties and, you know, web to Dotto properties, and all that kind of stuff is great. And that’s what we do with the SEO shoot as we build all that stuff out. But ultimately, you don’t own those platforms. They could be taken away from you by Google, by YouTube, by Facebook, whatever, at any time. So they’re great to have. They’re great to use. But it’s best to try to use those to push people push traffic back to your money site because you do have control over that. And there’s so much more than you can do that. So your money site is again it’s your self hosted primary domain asset for your business, your company, your project, whatever it may be. Anybody else wants to take a stab at that? Yeah.

It could be your Google My Business website. It could be that it could be your your G site. It could be, you know, a free WordPress blog or blogger, Tumblr, or wherever it is that you choose to blog from, like, you don’t have to have something that’s self hosted. WordPress, are a self hosted domain for you to have a money site. This is like you said, it’s the place where you plan to send people to in order to make money and edit in order to sell your product service or whatever it is that you want people to see or buy. That’s your money site. Why? Because it makes you money. Not to say that there are other places that could make you money like social media, but it’s the primary source of what it is that you’re planning to do. Yeah, that’s a great point because as we talked about a lot of lead gen assets that I have don’t have a self-hosted money site. They are just GMB website.

In other words, the website, the Google My Business provides you which is free. And ultimately you don’t have full control over that Google does. Right. So I, you know, I’m glad Marco brought that up. Because I just mentioned self-hosted website, it doesn’t have to be that recommend that was possible. But there are times where it makes sense to not build a self-hosted website, for example, spammed GMB listings, it might not be wise to go through the trouble of building out a, you know, a self-hosted site because of all the work that goes into it. Whereas, you know, in case it was to get suspended, you lose all of them, the work that you did, essentially. So in that case, you know, the GMB website becomes the primary website for that location. Or another option would be like Marco said, you know, Google Site g site, right, so sites.google.com, that they, Marco and Rob have done several projects using those as the money site, and it works. It works really, really well. So the money site is exactly what Marco described, which is whatever it is that you’re using to make money.

If you’re going to build a brand, I think it’s important to build a self-hosted website with the brand name as the domain name, because you can really grow the authority of that brand and you benefit from that in so many ways. So, it’s a great question though. Alright, so the last question and we’ve only got three minutes left, we’re gonna wrap it up.

What SEO And Lead Gen Contract Do You Recommend?

He says, Lonnie says I’m having trouble with putting an SEO and lead with I’m sorry, with put an SEO and lead gen contract. Do you have any recommended contract forms? No, I don’t, you know, you could probably just go online and find some templates that you could use. I personally don’t like to use contracts I, I mean, I have in the past, but typically, it’s only for bigger companies that, you know, they want the contract. I like to do everything on a verbal agreement. So that and I always say this to potential prospects or customers look, you know, if I’m doing my job, you’re gonna want to continue paying me if I’m not, you’re not gonna want to continue paying me and that’s okay. I also want to be able to part ways from that client if we don’t dive well, we don’t agree on things if it’s just not a good fit, and I don’t want to be locked into a contract either. So I don’t expect my clients to want to be locked into a contract. And sometimes that burns me, for example, I had a home inspector client, that, you know, I very clearly stated what the timeline was going to be on results.

I typically asked for, hey, give me this much time. And before that time had passed before I reached that certain level of time that I mentioned, he canceled services. And I you know, And to me, that’s really unfair for both of us because he wasn’t able to get the results that he wanted, because it wasn’t, you know, fast enough for him even though I clearly stated all of that before we agreed to work together. But at the same time, I put a lot of work into that and it wasn’t able to fully realize the efforts you know, for him or for myself for my own satisfaction because he stopped paying me before all the work had been completed, if that makes sense. Sometimes I wish I did have a contract in place. But for the most part, I like the ability to be able to walk away from a client. And I also like them to know that they don’t, they’re not locked into a contract that kind of eases that.

That low and lowers the barrier to entry, so to speak. However, that said, there might be a difference of opinion here for some of the other guys. And you guys have a suggestion for him.

Now, you know me, I don’t do contracts. I hate him. I hate him. He locks me into everything. And what if I want to go out and maybe the client doesn’t want to go well, what if I want to go? What if I can’t stand the client? I want to go and then I’m bound by a contract for a year with this guy that I can’t stand that knows more or supposedly knows more than I do, which sometimes happens.

If you know how to produce results, then always go, “Look, I’ll give you results.” But record the quality I always record the call that that call. We talk

Bradley, what is going to take this long? I always have that recorded even though there’s no contract and I let the guy know Look, I’m gonna record the call. And then you can always refer revert back to that’s a contract, believe it or not, that’s a contract. Right? And it’ll hold up in most courts. I believe in the US. It’ll hold up, it’ll hold up in Costa Rica.

That’s a good idea. And yeah, if you disclose that right up front, and then get it on the recording, you do agree that this is being recorded, and that’s okay, right.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’m going to be recording this, I’m just gonna point this way. This way, we can refer back to the conversation, you know exactly what took place. I know exactly what to put in you walk them through, you know that this is going to take about 90 days for results. thereabouts. Because if you don’t, then you go into the process because I have to set everything up. And then we get everything going. I’m probably going to get two results before but I can’t guarantee any Google experience tells me that within 90 days, we should be able to see something, and then we can work from there but I need 90 days from you.

Are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re gonna get that nine out of 10. So now you have a binding contract now, at the end of it you tell at the end of those 90 days when we meet again, then we’ll decide if we continue.

Now real quick, I know Adam is if you’re still paying attention, I know we’re a little bit over, but I think you have a little bit of a different methodology. Is there any way you can comment on this? Um, yeah, I just I’m trying to think like, I don’t have too much of a difference it’s kind of constantly evolving. But yeah, I mean, as far as contracts go like I stay out of that I’ve never done anything. Okay. Yeah. And then, if he’s looking for actual he may just mean, he’s looking for an outline for like a proposal or an engagement proposal. If that’s the case, just contact support at semantic mastery comm will point you in the right direction. I know Hernan put one out there we had as a free opt-in that you could get as an outline. And that can be really helpful. I mean, I’ve used other people’s as a starting point when I’m changing services.

Adding something in just so that I have a good starting point then you tailor it kind of to your specifics.

Very good. Thank you. Alright guys, thanks everybody for being here is Chris were you gonna says something? I’m sorry. I mean like he is like a lead gen contract. I mean, like why not sell on a per lead basis? I don’t see there’s an issue you can do like a contract that states the price of the elite.

Yeah. So you should be fine that way. It should be super easy.

Sweet. Well, thanks for your input, guys. And thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289

Click on the video above to watch Episode 289 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

Welcome to Hump Day hangouts Episode 289 to one where Hernan looks continuously shocked for some reason.

Hi, how’s it going? Hernan Is everything okay. It’s great, man. I’m feeling like shit, but here we are. All right, good, good stuff. Well, keep going here. Like I said it’s Episode 289. Today’s the 27th of May 2020. I can see we got a lot of really good questions already today. But if you haven’t yet and you got a question, please put it on the page. First come first serve. And then I’m going to get into a few announcements. We’ve got some cool stuff that happened earlier this week. And then some last-minute announcements, things that we just found out about today that I want to touch on But first, let’s say hi to the guys real quick and see how everyone’s doing so

I’ll start to my top left here Bradley. How are you doing today?

Good. I’m good. I just edited the video description in YouTube because still had some stuff from the webinar we did yesterday. So anyway, but I’m good. Things are good. I’m back from taking a week off, and it sucked cuz I went away for a week camping and ATV riding, thinking that I was going to get away and get to enjoy it and it rained the entire week, all day every day and it was awful. It was fucking miserable. So I wish I would have stayed home and worked.

Yeah, man, speaking of weird weather that so I’m in the Bay Area. So we just hit 95 the last three days, which is like 34 Celsius. It’s just like, Okay, well guess I’ll go out in the morning, go for a walk and then come hunker in here, shut the blinds and turn the air just thinking. So that’s been my life for the past couple of days. So let’s head go with the happier weather report. Marco. How are you doing?

The sun’s out again. It’s the rainy season and he’s like the sun’s out. It’s rainy season man. Look, I live in paradise. All right, I can’t help that. Make some money. Right? First of all, go get the battle. You follow the Battle Plan.

make some money. Hire someone who will help you. Train, apply, and make money. lather, rinse, repeat. And then you can go find your own Fortress of Solitude where you can just watch the world go by and you don’t give up. Push your mouth but other than the outstanding weather

How are you doing marking things are going good. Things are good here man. Things are good. Yeah, I’m still like things are opening up a little bit here. Essential businesses and all that and all this other stuff, but I’m still self-parenting. I got three kids. They got to think about it and I’m not a spring chicken so that there’s another person that I had to think about right because I can go out or like one but I have to think about my family. Yeah. And what I might bring, bring home and closer to home to make somebody.

I knew personally died of this. It’s not as if it’s totally foreign to me like I don’t know anyone who is affected by this. I like what I do know. And so having it that cloth is not any longer six degrees of separation. it’s like I know and so no, it ain’t happening and we’re gonna see how this plays out and I’ll let everybody you guys can all go and enjoy yourselves you know to do whatever the hell you want and then let me know how that turns out and then I’ll decide after that second one what it is that we’re going to do but for now we’re cool we take it easy and that’s it, man. We did we just but my personal choice, right, my personal choice to do that. It’s not as if someone is forcing me to do it. I’m choosing that this is the best way for myself and my family. Enough. All right. Well, Hernan How about you man, things are like you’re moving into wintertime right? I always get

Yeah, it’s hot summer-like wait a second I was wearing a sweatshirt what hell’s going on? Yeah, actually actually all of you guys are well Marco Marco is like, you know, he’s in a good spot 20% but all of you guys are you know getting the nice season. I’m getting the shooting season. Yeah now so now but yeah man it’s good today was a good day.

Like warm-ish. But yeah, we’re getting into winter and all of that so see how that goes, could you? Oh, Chris How about yourself? Yeah, yeah can’t complain man sun’s out the sun is shining all day. I mean it’s dark right now and the best part of all Friday the gyms opening back up and stuff so things are really good standing. Well, I’m going to circle back around Bradley, you mentioned a webinar and I wanted to touch on that because we had Brian, a mastermind member, along with Bruno, and you all listening can get to know both of them better and see what Bradley has to say to about this go high-level system. And Bradley, you want to tell real quick, I’m gonna pop the link in where people can go and check out the replay. Do you want to tell them about the webinar a little bit?

Yeah, Brian, one of our mastermind members reached out and basically said that he was using a platform, an agency automation platform that consolidates a whole bunch of different services and such all under one roof. He reached out because he thought that it would fit really, really well with the 2xyoruagency training.

Because it does a lot of the stuff that I talked about in 2xyouragency about how to automate, delegate or eliminate because this platform consolidates a lot of services that you may have separate subscriptions for and I always call it duct taping them together using Zapier or some similar application. And basically these have integrated services that do all

All of the same things that many of these external services do that we put, you know, we connect via Zapier, and it’s all under one dashboard. And so it’s a lot more seamless. And there’s a lot of really cool features inside there, like one of the primary feature that was, is used to pitch this go high-level application or platform is what’s called database reactivation, which is a very easy way or a simple way for you to get your foot in the door as an agency owner with potential marketing clients because you can. So anyway, I can’t really go into depth right now about that, but it’s a really cool platform. I signed up my own agency on the agency level account level so that I can create a first of all, I’m gonna use it for my own agency, but second of all, so I could also create a case study for how I’m using it. I’ve got some really good ideas that I’m going to be sharing in that case study that I’m gonna be putting to the test and then sharing in the case study.

As well on how I’m using it and how to generate kind of exponential revenue growth from it, as opposed to just linear. And so anyway, I think it’s bad, it’s very valuable, I would encourage you guys to go check it out, it does come with a 14-day free trial. So once you see the webinar, you know, comes with some free or some, I think it’s free, or it’s like five bucks may be to pay for some of the training that Bruno had put together, what he calls the quick start training for that. And so you can get all of that. And your first 14 days determine if it’s for you or not, but I think once you see some of the potentials of this, it would be something if any of you are trying to grow. I think you should absolutely take a good hard look at it. Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t do generally local stuff. But I check this out. And like I’ve been looking at it and I talked to Brian about all the details and like I was starting to be like maybe I could find a way to you just like no stop it. But like for anyone out there who’s dealing with especially local clients or can find the right use case

Yeah, just blew me away from the number of services and automation that’s packed into that suite of tools and how seamless that is, is pretty amazing. So definitely worth checking it out. Real quick to this one came up today. So we constantly get questions about GMB verifications, right? You know, hey, where can you guys do GMB verifications work in MGYB, when is it going to be available? I’m going to cut to the chase GMB verifications are available right now. As always, we cannot tell you how long that is going to be the case. So if you are doing lead gen if you’re needing a verification for some other reason, this would be a very good time to put your order in because not only can you order now what you couldn’t have yesterday, you can get a 15% discount today while we’ve got it opened up. Also, it comes with a 30-day guarantee. And it’s about I believe, 14 day turnaround time. So pretty quick. I’ll post all of that in the chatbox for those who are live. If you’re not just head to mgyb.co, and head to the store, you can look for GMB verifications there you can also get syndication networks, Rs drive stacks, SEO shield, link building all that sort of good stuff.

And circling back around. I wanted to touch on this real quick for those of you who are watching us for the first time, thank you very much whether you’re watching live or catching the replay on YouTube. If you want to go to the right place, head to semantic mastery comm slash HD questions every week, we asked you to limit your questions just to one. Unless you’re live, you can ask some more. You know, we get down there. We just want to make sure that everyone has a chance to ask their questions. So if you ask some questions, we may not get to all of them just before Warren. And then secondly, we encourage everyone to check out the battle plan and go to battle plan dot semantic mastery. If you want to get repeated repeatable SEO results that is for you. I’m not going to read the page to you you can go over there and check it out. But it is a fantastic tool that we recently just updated them released version four a month ago.

And then Bradley touched on this too if you’re an agency owner or a consultant that you want to get more clients, yes, you want to grow your revenue. Yes. And you want to scale your team, hopefully, yes. Then if you want to do that, head over 2xyouragency.com. There’s a ton of incredible training lets you crush it, whether you’re again, being a consultant, or if you want to build a true agency, and it doesn’t matter if that’s SEO, it’s other areas of digital marketing. It’s going to help you grow and make more money. That’s the bottom line.

All right, with that said, Guys, any other quick announcements before we dive into questions?

Good. All right. Let’s do it.

All right. Grab the screen.

You guys confirm when you see. See my screen.

Would You Recommend Ordering Another Drive Stack To A New Website Section Targeting Service Keywords In Different Locations?

So it looks like BB Now that might have been from last week. It looks like it was it will start with Bobby. Bobby says Hey guys, I got some questions. The first one was would you recommend ordering another drive stack to a completely new section of a website targeting a different service keyword in different locations on a large content site that would be perfect for the location sealed, am I right? Marco?

Yeah, that’s perfect for the extension. And it’s currently available and as a coupon sweep. So that’s what the drive stack expansion.

Yeah, we’re saying, Yeah, maybe if he already has the brand it because he’s saying another, right, a completely new section of the website. So we’re talking about the same website, money site. That’s how I’m seeing. I’m seeing something different.

He has a different service keyword, and a different location on a large content what so that’s, that’s just an inner page, I think what he’s describing the top of the silo. So you would aim the expansion on the current drive stack at that inner page, you’d get much more power going and extending that initial drive stack then you would be doing a completely different drive stack, g site. Sure, gotcha. Okay.

Would You Recommend RSS Masher To Drive Traffic To A Money Site And Lead Gen Assets?

The next question was  GMB.Thanks again, I’ve not used them for lead gen assets but I have in the past I haven’t built since the updated the new version of RSS master which is even better. But to create the kind of like Kwazii PBNs and when I say PBNs, they’re not like what we would traditionally think of a treat PBN, these are real sites to generate real traffic and that’s the differentiator, right? having real sites generate real traffic. With automated content posting to them right through all the RSS feeds that you splice together and RSS masher and all the really cool shit you can do. You can take a look at the most recent webinar we did with Damon Nelson, about the most current version of RSS masher and see some of the examples of the sites that he builds are 100% honest.

Major content sites using RSS masher. And they’re freaking beautiful sites. And he’s generating affiliate income and, you know, like AdSense income. And so such using those sites because they do generate traffic, they look beautiful. But from an SEO standpoint, I looked at it as like, hey, this could be really good to generate, you know, in related content type sites that could feed traffic back to a money site or a lead gen site or whatever. So, I mean, I think it’s certainly possible to use it for that I haven’t done it myself just to be honest because it’s not the strategy that I’ve been pursuing. I’ve wanted to in fact, I even talked about it with my partners here. I would love to have some time to play with that and set up some sights but I haven’t done it yet. I think Marco. Weren’t you guys gonna try playing with that a bit. I know it probably hasn’t been done but wasn’t that on the to-do list?

It is being done. What we are currently testing it and we won’t like there is anything. I’m not personally doing it but I got my mini mastermind, which is where all the evil takes place where we can go after everything. And there’s a couple of people in there who have a license. And then one of them is using our license as I gave her our license to go and try it out. So they got together. Three of the people in my seven-person mini mastermind got together. And what they’re doing is they’re sharing information on how to make make it work in the best way possible. And then they’re going to come back and report it to me and we’re either going to make it available through MGYB as a service, or I’m not sure how we’re going to offer that but there’s definitely something in the works with that RSS masher. It’s just you guys if you go get it just be prepared because there’s a high learning curve is that simple software that you’re just going to go and plug and play

You have to be prepared to go through the training to go through the process, gathering up the feeds making everything look right. And then you know that that’s when the magic happens and I can’t wait to blast that. Now get it, give it a companion g site and drive stack, expand it, and then blast it with link building and some embeds and see what happened. I can’t wait.

Yeah, it looks good. As I said, I wish I had more time to mess with it. Because I think there’s a lot of potentials there as well. So, so maybe next Wednesday, or the following Wednesday, we can give people a preview. But again, the first ones that’ll get a preview, it will be my mini mastermind, and then the semantic mastery mastermind, the heavy hitter club, and then we’ll go public with whatever we have. It’s still a few weeks away, it takes time. That’s all

Is It Possible To Get An Iframe For A Drive Folder?

so Frank’s up. He says it is it possible to get an iframe for a drive folder tried adding a link into iframe generator and it came back saying the page was blocked from being displayed? also. Well, first of all,

The first part of that is Yeah, you can use to be able to do that. But no, I haven’t tried since the updates recently. Marco, can you? Yeah. Not through the iframe January? That’s why I tell people to code their own code. Yeah, because you can’t do it that way. You have to separate the, I can’t go through the process that you have to get the folder ID to be able to iframe it. And what you have to insert in an iframe generator is the entire URL, and you can’t do it that way.

Okay.

Publish to the web would be a file setting in the drive used to say publish to the web, it would give you an embed code for the file or for the folder, but I think that has been taken away correct recently. Uh, no. I can check that right now. I mean, go on and let me take a folder that has nothing in it. And we’ll just move on while you’re looking that up.

Do You Have Any Link Building Services In MGYB For T1 Money Site?

He says also with MGYB, do you have any link building services that could be used for tier-one money site or only g sites? Yeah, that while the SEO shield can point back to your money site, right, which includes the drive stack files and folders as well as the G site. Also, press releases could be used for tier-one money site, right where your money site tier-one money site is. It’s redundant. That’s like the Department of redundancy department. You know what I mean? So, yeah, your money site, again, press releases and the SEO shield? Those are the two things that I would recommend. Am I missing something?

No, no, no, I don’t think so. And I can’t find it. I can’t find published on the web by the way. That’s what I thought had been removed since the recent update. But it used to be able to do it that way. So hopefully that was helpful.

What MGYB Service You Should Use To Rank For A City That Is Three Hours Away From The Dealership Location?

Mohammed’s up, it’s up mom and he says, Hey, guys, a client is asking me if I can rank his Volkswagen dealership for VW related keywords in a city. Three hours away from where the dealership actually is.

Actually, how would I go about this? I know I can get a GMB from MGYB for the New City and add a new city page to the money site. What else would I do?

Well, the problem that I see with that Mohammed is it’s a dealership right? So if you’re getting a GMB for a dealership which is a storefront business, right with the customers come to the business location, and you’ve got a spammed GMB listing, that’s three hours away from where the dealership actually exists, then, how is that going to play with potential car buyers? When they’re looking to go to a dealership in their local area and they’ve come to find out it’s a spam listing and instead they’ve got to go three hours away to buy a Volkswagen. To me, I don’t think that would be advisable for the reasons I just mentioned. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the question. Anybody else interprets this another way?

No, that’s the way I’m I’m reading it unless the dealer is opening up a dealership in that city in which case, you would need spam. GMB. Right. Correct. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I am not willing to drive three hours to go look at a car, like my dealer has to be closed by where I can just jump in the car. 1015 minutes, I’m there and look at the car and decide if I’m gonna buy it. Because I’ll be people. Yes. I mean, the idea behind it is correct. People are going to first look online to find a car that they liked, and they’re going to find the dealer, then they’re going to go visit the dealer to see the cart. Who’s going to drive? Did you talk that to this dealership owner, by the way, and ask him Who do you know that’s going to drive three hours to buy a car when they can buy one mic in the city? I don’t understand the thinking behind that. Not only that, but don’t you think it would piss a potential customer off if they were misled to believe that a dealership was in their local area just to come to find out that it’s three hours away? I mean, it’s not just that like if he was promoting like ranked a page organically for the city that is three hours away, and says, Hey, we sell cars. Were our dealerships over here and they’re honest about where it is. It’s very likely most people are going to drive three hours away anyways, but at least they weren’t being dishonest about it. Whereas having a GMB for a storefront business where a store doesn’t actually exist, that I think in my view would piss me off if I put driving directions and go show up at this place to find out that it’s it doesn’t exist, and then I got to drive three hours away to go where I intended. What about other car dealers dealerships? wouldn’t they be pissed if you’re faking? A GMB and I just totally am in the area. I don’t think VW corporate would be too happy with that with you faking GMB.  I don’t know how much trouble I mean, you can get into a whole lot of trouble behind that. talk to this guy. talk some sense and then

yeah, just find out what his intent is really. And maybe you already know it, Mohammed and it just wasn’t conveyed in that message.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean like I said if I was going to do anything it would be to try to just rank organically for that and just be honest about where the dealership is and why they should drive three hours away to purchase a car at that particular dealership.

SEO Shield Question

Alright, moving on uh, next question is Hello everyone recently I purchased an SEO shield and since I got some discount for link building, I also bought that so I placed the order for SEO shield and link building altogether. What I found out that instead of building the links to my properties, they pointed all the direct all directly to your money site. Okay, you can edit the URLs to build links to an M GI Bill, Why be disregarded that and build all the links to your money site? No continue can find that hard to believe okay. When I inquired from support about it, they said since you had provided the URL file, we built all the links around that. But they also said that they don’t recommend it. I’m a new user purchasing SEO shield first time and also not aware of the internal tech now technicalities excuse me of SEO SEO. So I provide all the information including the URL file because I thought it might be required to build the SEO shield since I bought the SEO, SEO, and link building. So I believe that SM support will follow the best practice since I’ve gone blindly trust SM for SEO related stuff. So my question is Why were the links built directly in the money site even when it is not recommended? No one will pay for the money to I’m not sure what he says.

Now, he says that the links can’t be removed. This website is my six months old hard work. I don’t want to degrade my website by any means. So what should I do now? Should I disavow the links pointing in the Excel sheet? Please suggest, okay, um, the first part of that. I’m not sure if you came to us cold and you don’t know anything about our methodology, then then I could understand where that confusion may have come from.

Perhaps we need to have that clearly explicitly outlined on this on the order page or the order submit Details page. In other words, if it’s not already, but

As far as what you know, we didn’t build all the links to your money site URL. If your money site URL was listed in your submitted URLs list, then some links will have been built to your money site URL. But in all of our training, we always suggest we actually won’t build links to your money site URL if we know that it’s in there. So I don’t know what to tell you on that other than and as far as disavowing Marco doesn’t ever recommend that I’ve done it in the past haven’t done it for years.

I don’t think Have you seen anything negative happen? We don’t suggest it, but I don’t know that it is going to cause any problems. Marco, what do you say about this? I say I have a really big problem with this guy. Right? Because this was sent to support at mg y v.co. And I heard from Deadia and he said, hey, look, you know what, what can we do it with this? What can we do for this person? So we’re looking to do the right thing. Here. Look, I can remove all I think I can remove all the links

But it’s gonna take a while I so we aren’t talking about it, he doesn’t even give support a chance to respond and let him know what the answers are. He comes here to a public forum to air the laundry. And I understand that. I mean, in no way Is this a recommended practice. But I mean, he submitted the URLs for us to build links to if you give us a spreadsheet, how are we to know that there’s a money site included in the spreadsheet? I mean, he’s assuming that we’re supposed to assume and look these, the logic behind this evades me because I just don’t see it, how we’re supposed to know that he’s submitting his money site from now on. And so now we know that we need to make sure that we tell people explicitly on the order form do not submit your money site URL. So thank you for that. But I don’t appreciate

This being aired on a public forum, where we’re taking care of when we’re looking to do what’s best for you and for your website. Not that anything bad has happened. Not that anything bad will happen. We don’t know yet what would happen, but it’s still in the discussion stage and he doesn’t even give it an opportunity comes publicly as Hey, you guys, I thought you were supposed to follow best practice practices and whatever else he says. And I just don’t appreciate it. Give us at least a chance to do the right thing. And then if there’s a problem, if there’s no resolution, then you come here and you speak to us publicly. I thought about writing to you by the way. Because I saw this, I saw the way he called it the ticket, come through and I know I’m supposed to stay away from customer service. But I thought about writing to him because I don’t see the logic. If he submits the URLs to build links. That’s what we’re going to build links to because the customer as always, right? So if you want links built to your money site, in spite of the fact that we don’t recommend it, and then we say, Don’t ever do it, we don’t do it. If you submit the URL, and it’s by mistake, and I’m not saying that you did it on purpose, if by mistake you included in my site, or you didn’t know, it’s going to get links built to it. Now, yeah, we are going to try to do the right thing. That’s all I can say. We were trying to do the right thing before, even after having come on a public forum, and then like hitting on my last nerve, we’re still going to help you out.

Yeah and I don’t know that it’s going to cause any problem. We just, we don’t build links, the types of links that we sell at MGB directly the money site, we always in all of our training suggest not to do that because that’s the whole reason for the SEO shield right is because and that’s why it’s named the SEO shield because it shields your money site, from all the external threats.

SEO and link building that you can do because link building to your money site can, doesn’t always but can create a problem. So it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to have problems because that happened, it might not cause any problems at all, we just don’t recommend it, we suggest not to do it, because there’s no need to because we push all the power to the SEO shield and use the SEO shield to launder basically clean any potential negative juice through Google properties and through high authority assets, that and push relevancy essentially, eventually to the money site. So again, we don’t know that it’s gonna cause a negative impact at all, we just don’t, we don’t test it. Because we don’t do that we always recommend building them directly to the SEO shield. Again, that’s the whole point of the SEO shield. So we have learned, we have now decided or just came to the realization that that needs to be very explicit on the order form, submit page, and that makes sense and we’ll make sure that we make that change and Marco and Dadea, our link builder, are going to do what they can for you. So hopefully that will suffice.

How Do You Use Press Release To Achieve Better Rankings?

Next question, SMS insurances total newbie here, I just ordered the press release. Not sure where to start. I’m clueless on what to do, and the advice would be great. This is awesome that you asked this question because I’m actually working on a little mini-course for press releases for people that want to order and not for SEOs. But for business owners. I mean, anybody can have access to it that they want, but it’s I’m doing a little mini-course for press releases.

For MGYB, in other words, a little mini-course on trying to teach a layman right or a business owner, somebody that’s not an SEO, how to get the most use in the best use the most traction from press releases that you order from MGYB. And I’ll have that done by next Tuesday for sure. Maybe even possibly will be available on by next Wednesday for people to go download as a Lead Magnet or whatever, we’ll see, I don’t know if I’m gonna have it ready by Tuesday. I don’t know if it’ll be ready on Wednesday for public consumption. That said, I can give you a brief rundown on it. Because I was actually working on that presentation earlier today. In fact, it’s over here. So I can show you that I’m not kidding, do it yourself press releases, leveraged PR marketing for your business. So this will be both a presentation as well as some of that stuff hasn’t been added yet. But it will be a presentation that will be available, as well as some videos. So it’ll be like a little mini training course, on how to get the best uses of press releases, and then what to do next as well. So really a quick rundown on that is, first have an understanding of what your keywords are that you want to promote, right? So your primary products and services, products and or services, or an event if you’re promoting an event, whatever, whatever you’re trying to promote. You want to have a set of keywords that you’re looking to promote. And you want to submit that as the primary keyword for each one of the press releases.

So the press release writers, the writers that they’re really good about creating brand plus keyword association. So if you submit the keyword that you want to be used as the primary keyword, they’re going to create that they’re going to use the brand name and the keyword in the title. Okay, which is very, very important. And then they’re going to write about whatever it is that you instruct them to write about. And you can be as descriptive about how to like, you can tell them the tone that you want, that you want them to write it in, you can tell them certain things that you want them to highlight within the press release. Or you can be vague, you can just say, here’s the URL that I want you to promote. And they’ll go look at the URL, also look at the brand and they’ll create a news angle story, that they’ll write a press release about so it makes it easy for you guys if you have something specific you want written about. add that in the writing description. If you don’t and you don’t know how to create a newsworthy angle, don’t worry about it because that’s what the press release riders do. So you can just submit a URL and say this is the primary

URL I want promoting, write a story about it right. And though they’ll figure out a way, which is why I love using it, because it takes the responsibility right off of us to come up with the angle all the time. They’re really good about that once the press release is published, or you want to also link back to whatever you’re primarily trying to promote. So for example, I like to, by the way, if you’re new SM, s and s insurance, you can go to our YouTube channel youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery and use the channel search feature. And you can even go to Google and search for a press release or PR silo stalking or press release, SEO, semantic mastery, something like that, and you can find a webinar it’s actually still on mg y v. If you go to the webinars tab on the MG y v.co. website, you can take a look, I think that was the last webinar that we did was PR silo stalking, and that’ll give you a really good description. It was almost an hour You know, I don’t know 40-minute webinar or whatever specifically about how to get the

Most uses out are the best use out of sight, press releases. So again, you’re going to want to have at least one URL that you’re going to promote, you can have up to three, I usually recommend only two URLs per the press release, unless you’re siloing press releases, in which case you’ll have three, three target URLs that you’re promoting within the press release because you’re going to be linking back to the previous press release within that silo. if all of this sounds foreign to you, just go check out that webinar that I just described. And then it will tell you exactly what we do to get really, really good results with press releases. And just an aside to kind of a point to kind of reinforce this is I was just talking in the mastermind two weeks ago when I did my last mastermind webinar, about how I have a GMB asset as a lead gen asset that I hadn’t done anything with it was published about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, but I never optimized it never did anything to rank it. And I did three press releases in one week to push that GMB asset and all it has is it’s a GMB location. You know, profile and it’s got a GMB website. It’s not connected to a money site. The money site is the GMB website. And I did three press releases in a week. And the son of a bitch disappeared from maps all together for about three weeks. But then it popped after three weeks of it like not even showing I thought it got it was doing a Google dance. But I’ve not seen one this drastic, or this is significant of a Google dance to where it like literally, the listing disappeared, it disappeared entirely from Google Maps. And then all of a sudden bounce it when it popped, it popped into number three, the C position in the maps three pack from just three press releases in a week. Now that’s those results aren’t typical, but I’m just sharing that because it does show you that and all I did was PR silo stacking method, the same one that I’m suggesting you go watch that webinar to learn the strategy. And it works guys. It really does work. So that’s what I would recommend is

Just first go look at that webinar. And then after you have published the press release, it’s always better to do like one press release isn’t going to move the needle much, if at all, but when you start to do the silo stacking with press releases, you can do significant damage with that, and in a good way, right, yeah. And then from there, the next thing you can do is do link building gigs to the press releases or to the organization page that we provide. When you order a press release. That’s something else and embed gigs. You can do embed gigs as well, but don’t link directly to your money site. Anyway, you want to comment on that anybody?

From dance is real man. Right? We tell people 21 days actually, it’s 20 days. But I tell people 21 days just to be sure they’re clear of it. And then that’s when you go and take a look at everything. You decide what to do, but it’s very real. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about that. They just see rankings drop and then they go try to fix it and they make things worse instead of trying to instead of the result being better.

You just supposed to leave it alone until like you said, it just comes back and then you decide.

Unknown Speaker 35:06 Yeah, what’s interesting is, like you said, for about three weeks, I haven’t seen something that drastic of a dance in quite some time to be honest with you. And so I was a little bit nervous. I was thinking like, What the fuck is going on with this, this listing? And all I did was a handful of GMB posts to that listing over the course of those three weeks that was it, nothing else. And like I said, it popped and when it did, it’s, it’s in the number. In fact, I just got a lead from that today for sure, for Tree Removal in that particular city. So it’s producing and all it took was three press releases, which again, is very, very powerful. So it used the exact same method I just mentioned was PR silo stacking, so just go watch that webinar. It’s done in the MGYB, webinar archive, and it’s PR silo stacking, and it works really, really well.

Okay, next question. DC SEO says, Hey guys, I received the ROI as part of my shield back and your wise keywords are the ones that gave your team they’re in the same niche, but very different to what I handed in Is this right? Mine didn’t have any location or mine, I guess he means mine didn’t have any location as per instructions and what I received that keyword plus locations from around the world. I’m in the UK as well as a ton of keywords that are irrelevant to my services. I don’t know how that could happen. Any, any suggestion? No, that doesn’t sound right. But this isn’t the forum for that is it support at MGYB.co. What happened? Give us the order number. We’ll go track it down. And if we have to do it over, we’ll do it over we’ll talk to the VA who built it. I mean, we take care of everything guys. We always do we always try to do right, by everyone. You have to do things in the proper forum.

Last week, end of last week or whatever, I think it was Friday, I announced that we had cracked the code that we were able to now extend the drugs tax because we had automated it. And then someone posted in all of our groups, well, what if I have a VA? How do I train them?

And so now, no matter where I respond, it’s going to look like I didn’t respond and all of the other I would have to go and respond in all of the other groups, the very same thing that I responded in the one group and it’s gonna make it look in the other in the groups where I don’t respond like I don’t care or it doesn’t matter or I didn’t want to respond or whatever. I don’t like guys do things in the right place. And at the right time, this first goes to support. If support doesn’t take care of you, then come to us and let us know. And then like, I know, one of the owners in MGB and I’ll have a talk with him and see what we can do about rectifying the situation, but it’s in here in a public forum. I can’t do anything for you.

Yeah, Fidel. If it was indeed a mistake on our end, then absolutely. We just kill that drive, stack, and build and one for you. So and it won’t, it won’t hurt you at all. So it’s not an issue if it was indeed our problem. If you submitted the wrong keyword file, that’s one thing, but if it was, somehow it got built with keywords that you didn’t submit, which is unlikely, but people are human things happen. So if that was the case, just bring it to supports attention, we’ll take a look at it and if that was indeed the case, it would just kill that stack and then go to a new one, and it won’t it won’t cause any problems. So that’s the beautiful thing about those guys and that’s also why we talked about using the SEO shield for clients and stuff like that because you get the accounts back and you could protect your work right? Because if something happens and you get fired or the client stops paying you I’ve had that happen where they just ghost on you, you know what I mean? The business still exists but they just won’t answer phone calls or emails when they owe you money that kind I’ve had that happen several times over my career. You can go in and just kill the drive stack, delete it. I don’t even set it to not public which is it’s changed now anyways and because it can still push power, even when it’s not indexable. But you can go in and just kill the damn thing or rework it to point somewhere else, you know, to meet to their competitor, that you can go land as a client. So that’s one of the beautiful things about it. So it can be remedied. That’s not a problem.

Can You Create A Subdomain, Rank, And Redirect All The Pages To Another Site While Maintaining Its Ranking?

The next question was, can you create a subdomain website and rank it and then redirect all the pages to another site? And the subdomain maintain its rankings? No, because the redirect will point to the new location and new locate the new location is going to replace the subdomain at some point, right? You can’t redirect a URL and have both the URLs still appear in search, or they might temporarily, and I don’t even know that that’s true. But Google will whatever the redirect is eventually that’s what will rank and the other one will fall out of the index entirely. Am I right in that, or am I missing something? I’m not I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t see how you can’t since you’re telling the bot through the 301 that the page or everything in that sub-domain moved permanently somewhere else. Yeah. You could use I mean, that’s what it is. Yeah, you could use a canonical. And it can both pages can rank. I’ve seen that many times, you’re telling Google with a canonical, like, hey, this page is similar to this page over here, give the credit to this page, right? And then Google sometimes disregards that and well, you know, both pages will index and they’ll both rank. And that happens. So I would suggest a canonical instead of a 301 if that’s what you’re trying to accomplish, but remember that just because you canonicalize. It doesn’t, you know, doesn’t mean Google’s going to honor that. It also doesn’t mean that they won’t honor it. Right? It just kind of it’s kind of a crapshoot. So yeah, what, what that is canonical is when you have similar or the same, and it doesn’t have to be two. It could be two or more, however many copies of that document. There is there exists. You can tell Google which ones the master copy is and to rank that one, rather than all the other. Now, whether Google follows the directive, well, that’s up to Google. And they’re not telling what they’ll do is right.

Yeah, and just to, you know, kind of reinforce that I’m working on a tree care project. for it, you know, for new, a new lead gen service provider that I got. And it’s a case study that I’m doing in the mastermind, and I use tags, tags to create location silos anyways, a Google, it’s a new site, right? And my blogger just started blogging for the location posts on the site. And the way that we’re doing building it out with using tags to create the location silos. Google was ranking the tag pages, but not, but not the posts that I wanted to be ranked. And it indexed the tag pages first, right and the tag pages because some in some cases, they’re unique tags, which means that the tag page is a duplicate of post, that if you guys understand how tags work, that’s what happens if it’s a unique tag, it’s only in one post, then the tag page itself is essentially a duplicate of the post. And so for whatever reason, Google index the tag pages instead of the posts, and so the tag pages were ranking for the keywords, but not the post. And so and I even set the canonical in the tag setting with SEO ultimate Pro, you can do that because you can go to what’s called the Global canonical manager, or even the code inserter plus module, you can actually go in and add like a separate canonical for each tag and all that kind of stuff anyway. So I added the canonical URLs for the tag pages to canonicalize to the post, right, when it’s a unique tag, you can do that. And but Google wasn’t honoring it. And about two weeks went by and so finally I went just this week, I just went to search console, and forced Google to recrawl the posts or excuse me, the tag pages because they had the canonical URLs in the HTML header to point to the posts that I wanted to give the credit to. Right and that’s what I want to be ranked, and it only took about 24 hours, and lo and behold, now the tag pages aren’t indexed, but the posts are, which is what I wanted. So again, it, you know, that doesn’t mean that that’s always going to happen, because it could be that Google doesn’t honor the canonical or doesn’t, you know, doesn’t recognize it for whatever reason, they, By the way, you can also check that when you submit inspect URL in Search Console. And once it inspects the URL, it’s going to tell you whether it’s in Google or not. And there’s a drop-down setting that your menu that you can click on to expand, it shows you additional details, and it’ll tell you what the Google recognized canonical is for that page, or that post whatever URL it is that you’re inspecting. Right? And so you can clearly see what Google seeing. So you can force a canonical, and then go ask Google to request indexing. And then once it does, you know you can look at the code that it shows like the rendered page and it’ll tell you the details of that and it’ll show you if it if it saw the canonical or not. So anyway, hopefully, that was helpful. Do you see SEO

Is It Okay To Embed MyMap Via Tag Manager?

Is it? Is it okay to embed the mind map via Tag Manager? I’m not sure how you would do that.

I’m not sure how you would do that. Tag Manager creates container codes, right header code, and Body Code. And then you inject things into that like scripts and tracking codes and pixels and that kind of stuff. And I don’t know what embedding a my map would do, or if it would even read. Is that something you have any idea about? Marco?

Hello, sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. I was talking intimidated might not I think you can. You can use iframes with Tag Manager not not only that, you can track them. Hmm. Am I giving away too much? Oh, nevermind.

I’ll have to play with that DC. I’m not sure. I’ve never done it. Don’t listen, go play with it. And then and then look at all the nice stuff that happens in there.

Okay.

Cool, well there you go.

Is It A Good Deal To Have A 1500 Monthly Retainer Plus Sale Percentage?

Unknown Speaker 45:03 Alright, so moving on next one is Josh says I am changing locations from my current office to a shared workspace and apparently with Google, this isn’t a verifiable address so they won’t verify my GMB profile with this type of address. With the MG y b GMB service will this help with this issue?

Is it a storefront or a service area business that would be my question. Can you get a listing right now a GMB listing through MGYB? Yes.

As we talked about with Mohammed’s question earlier, if it’s a storefront business, I don’t recommend using a spam GMB listing for any type of storefront business because you mislead potential customers because they think it’s in one location and you are indeed in another location. So the only time I would ever recommend using a spammed GMB listing, let’s call it what it is. As for a service area business where the actual physical location in the GMB profile is hidden from the public, so it makes sense. So again, if it’s a service area business, then yes, that would help you. If it’s a storefront business, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Any comments, guys?

No, I think that’s absolutely right, man. It’s a myth. You got to know what you’re getting into. Especially if you’re, if you’re going to spam it, right?

Yeah.

I’ve gotten away from doing spam, GMB listings just because the how much volatility there’s been in the last, you know, many months. Um, so I’m working more heavily on the organic side. Now, again, which has been years since I really pushed that. So it’s interesting, and that’s what the tree care project that I’m working on is, in part is a case study for the mastermind, is working on mostly organic rankings. I do have some GMB locations that are going to be incorporated into the project most of the organic rankings. And I’m also doing a lot of call ads call-only ads for Google ads. They are

If you’re very specific with Google call-only ads with your what I call Bullseye keywords, then you can get some pretty good results with that. It’s a lot less expensive than actual clicks to like, you know, regular PPC pay per Click type ads, pay per call ads are a little bit less expensive if you have very, very targeted keywords with location modifiers and such. So that’s what I’m working on right now.

What MGYB Service Should You Use Get More SEO Clients?

Lonnie says I landed my first client concrete company 1500 dollars per month plus percentage of sales. This is a good deal fucking a man. Congratulations, Lonnie. That’s all that looks like it looks like a really good deal. Absolutely. That’s a cherry deal for sure. So congratulations, man. I’m gonna hop in real quick and say it’s all relative, right? One congrats on getting that. Especially the percentage of sales and revenue. That’s a big one that I think a lot of people miss out on. But keep in mind too, this is totally dependent on what he’s doing for that. 1500 That’s true. You’d be getting worked to the fucking ground for 1500 but you know

It’s up to you, you You are the person who can determine whether or not that’s worthwhile. Yeah, that’s a great point, Adam.

And just know this, if it’s your first client, you probably are going to be work to death anyways. Because it’s your first client and you will learn over time, how to set boundaries with clients. Just talk to Mohammed who’s always here asking questions every single week. Mohammed’s been following us for a long, long time, and we’ve watched him grow considerably over the last couple of years. And he’s experienced a lot of growing pains and come here and ask for advice. And that’s what this forum is for Lonnie. So feel free to come back and ask questions every week. concerning how to handle certain situations doesn’t always have to be SEO related either. It could just be about how to handle particular clients, business operations, management, outsourcing, all that kind of stuff. Guys, we’re here to help grow your business as much as possible. Yes, we talk a lot about SEO. But there’s a lot of other things that we’ve all learned with our experience over the years on how to, you know, help you to avoid some of the mistakes that we’ve all made.

But just know that it is your first client there, it’s likely you’re going to be work to death for that client. And that’s okay. Because you’re going to learn a lot from that. And you’ll begin to learn how to start to set boundaries. And remember, you know, one thing I want to recommend is, you do need to also set like communication boundaries, I don’t know that your new client is is somebody that might message you outside of business hours or over the weekend and that kind of stuff. But I’ve got a lot of clients that still to this day do, but I’ve trained them that I don’t reply to messages after hours or on weekends. Unless it’s an emergency like I have a preschool client that had a site go down on over a weekend and I had my daughter and I did actually help him because he’s a really good client and me, you know, I felt for him and I wanted to help him but very rarely do I ever reply to anything outside of ours, because once you set that precedent, people will take advantage of it. I don’t know that they mean to be malicious, but they just think that hey, I messaged him at night and he answered me, so, therefore, it’s okay for me to ask questions at any time, I would recommend that you know, as your first client, you need to start to learn how to set boundaries right upfront.

Anyways, let’s get back to the question. Sorry, I’m glad that Adam put that into perspective, because I immediately saw that percentage. And my mind went to the mat, my mind always goes to the numbers, where I normally get this company to 100-200k a month recurring for you know, out of if it’s like Costa Rica, where they work around, like, it’s killer money, it’s killer money, but even if it’s seasonal, right, you can’t work in the winter, if what if they’re doing driveways or whatever it is that they’re paving. If they’re laying a concrete slab, you’re talking about 100 k easy and if you charge 10 to 15% of that recurring, then I’m seeing that as a really good deal. If you’re going to be worked to the bone and the client can’t close. Then you got a problem. So thanks for putting that into perspective.

Yeah, not to downplay it. Yeah, definitely just wanted to tell because the way he phrased it that’s what gave me the hesitation. It’s like, Is this good? Like, man, there’s no way for us to know you’re the one who’s got to do that. But you know, congratulations on doing that. That’s good to see. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, Just remember, as your first client, you will make mistakes, there’s no question, you will work harder than you probably should. And that’s okay. Like I said, you’re going to learn from that. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Remember, come back here and ask questions often and we’ll try to provide you as much advice as we can. He says, also, I’m looking for simple services I can use to get me in on getting clients and suggestions. By the way, I love the video lead gen 2xyoruagency. Well, there, there you go. You have the video lead gen system and 2xyoruagency which is great for prospecting and generating prospects, right? Don’t build that pipeline first. Right? And that’s super, super important in through having a full pipeline of prospects and making presentations sending proposals, right so pitching prospects, you will get better, you’re gonna lose money upfront, and that’s okay. But you will get better you’ll be able to polish your presentation and your pitch and your message and all of that. And so just that’s why it’s so important guys to fill that pipeline full of prospects so that you can make those mistakes. And not every prospect that you talk to is going like you depend on them to be able to put food on your table. If because if that’s the case, desperation comes through and everything that you do, and they can smell that from a mile away. And so I think it’s better to have a pipeline full of prospects because then it’s okay, you don’t need anyone of them because you have more behind them. Right, that makes sense. As far as simple services, I recommend getting the most updated version of the battle plan if you don’t already have that. A lot of that was covered in 2xyoruagency anyways, but the battle plan is a very succinct version of what we recommend to get results and timelines for doing so and all of that and it’s very inexpensive. So I’d recommend you pick that up if you don’t have it already.

I’d also say mgyb.co, I mean everything there for you to offer your clients, whatever it is that they want. Everything is their press releases, liquidity and anything and everything that you need to do to produce results for your clients in MGYB.co. And if it doesn’t mean you have a good idea of a product that let us know.

What Is A Money Site?

This is a great question from Josh, he says, And see, guys, this is the thing you know, I think we often forget. Because we’ve been in this industry so long that not everybody understands the terminology. He says one more quick question, what exactly do you mean by money site that means your primary digital asset so like, whatever your primary domain is that you host your, your website for your business on? That’s what we call a money site. Why? Because it’s the site that generates you money, right? A lot of the other stuff that you know, we talked about is tier-one branded entity assets. Again, big terminology for basically meaning like social profiles and stuff that you can build a branded profile or presence on that you’re going to link back to your money site, your money site is your Epicenter, right? It’s your point of origin, it’s the golden frame, you always want to drive, all traffic all leads as much as possible back to your money site, because you have control over that’s an asset that you own and control, having ancillary profiles on social media properties and, you know, web to Dotto properties, and all that kind of stuff is great. And that’s what we do with the SEO shoot as we build all that stuff out. But ultimately, you don’t own those platforms. They could be taken away from you by Google, by YouTube, by Facebook, whatever, at any time. So they’re great to have. They’re great to use. But it’s best to try to use those to push people push traffic back to your money site because you do have control over that. And there’s so much more than you can do that. So your money site is again it’s your self hosted primary domain asset for your business, your company, your project, whatever it may be. Anybody else wants to take a stab at that? Yeah.

It could be your Google My Business website. It could be that it could be your your G site. It could be, you know, a free WordPress blog or blogger, Tumblr, or wherever it is that you choose to blog from, like, you don’t have to have something that’s self hosted. WordPress, are a self hosted domain for you to have a money site. This is like you said, it’s the place where you plan to send people to in order to make money and edit in order to sell your product service or whatever it is that you want people to see or buy. That’s your money site. Why? Because it makes you money. Not to say that there are other places that could make you money like social media, but it’s the primary source of what it is that you’re planning to do. Yeah, that’s a great point because as we talked about a lot of lead gen assets that I have don’t have a self-hosted money site. They are just GMB website.

In other words, the website, the Google My Business provides you which is free. And ultimately you don’t have full control over that Google does. Right. So I, you know, I’m glad Marco brought that up. Because I just mentioned self-hosted website, it doesn’t have to be that recommend that was possible. But there are times where it makes sense to not build a self-hosted website, for example, spammed GMB listings, it might not be wise to go through the trouble of building out a, you know, a self-hosted site because of all the work that goes into it. Whereas, you know, in case it was to get suspended, you lose all of them, the work that you did, essentially. So in that case, you know, the GMB website becomes the primary website for that location. Or another option would be like Marco said, you know, Google Site g site, right, so sites.google.com, that they, Marco and Rob have done several projects using those as the money site, and it works. It works really, really well. So the money site is exactly what Marco described, which is whatever it is that you’re using to make money.

If you’re going to build a brand, I think it’s important to build a self-hosted website with the brand name as the domain name, because you can really grow the authority of that brand and you benefit from that in so many ways. So, it’s a great question though. Alright, so the last question and we’ve only got three minutes left, we’re gonna wrap it up.

What SEO And Lead Gen Contract Do You Recommend?

He says, Lonnie says I’m having trouble with putting an SEO and lead with I’m sorry, with put an SEO and lead gen contract. Do you have any recommended contract forms? No, I don’t, you know, you could probably just go online and find some templates that you could use. I personally don’t like to use contracts I, I mean, I have in the past, but typically, it’s only for bigger companies that, you know, they want the contract. I like to do everything on a verbal agreement. So that and I always say this to potential prospects or customers look, you know, if I’m doing my job, you’re gonna want to continue paying me if I’m not, you’re not gonna want to continue paying me and that’s okay. I also want to be able to part ways from that client if we don’t dive well, we don’t agree on things if it’s just not a good fit, and I don’t want to be locked into a contract either. So I don’t expect my clients to want to be locked into a contract. And sometimes that burns me, for example, I had a home inspector client, that, you know, I very clearly stated what the timeline was going to be on results.

I typically asked for, hey, give me this much time. And before that time had passed before I reached that certain level of time that I mentioned, he canceled services. And I you know, And to me, that’s really unfair for both of us because he wasn’t able to get the results that he wanted, because it wasn’t, you know, fast enough for him even though I clearly stated all of that before we agreed to work together. But at the same time, I put a lot of work into that and it wasn’t able to fully realize the efforts you know, for him or for myself for my own satisfaction because he stopped paying me before all the work had been completed, if that makes sense. Sometimes I wish I did have a contract in place. But for the most part, I like the ability to be able to walk away from a client. And I also like them to know that they don’t, they’re not locked into a contract that kind of eases that.

That low and lowers the barrier to entry, so to speak. However, that said, there might be a difference of opinion here for some of the other guys. And you guys have a suggestion for him.

Now, you know me, I don’t do contracts. I hate him. I hate him. He locks me into everything. And what if I want to go out and maybe the client doesn’t want to go well, what if I want to go? What if I can’t stand the client? I want to go and then I’m bound by a contract for a year with this guy that I can’t stand that knows more or supposedly knows more than I do, which sometimes happens.

If you know how to produce results, then always go, “Look, I’ll give you results.” But record the quality I always record the call that that call. We talk

Bradley, what is going to take this long? I always have that recorded even though there’s no contract and I let the guy know Look, I’m gonna record the call. And then you can always refer revert back to that’s a contract, believe it or not, that’s a contract. Right? And it’ll hold up in most courts. I believe in the US. It’ll hold up, it’ll hold up in Costa Rica.

That’s a good idea. And yeah, if you disclose that right up front, and then get it on the recording, you do agree that this is being recorded, and that’s okay, right.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’m going to be recording this, I’m just gonna point this way. This way, we can refer back to the conversation, you know exactly what took place. I know exactly what to put in you walk them through, you know that this is going to take about 90 days for results. thereabouts. Because if you don’t, then you go into the process because I have to set everything up. And then we get everything going. I’m probably going to get two results before but I can’t guarantee any Google experience tells me that within 90 days, we should be able to see something, and then we can work from there but I need 90 days from you.

Are you okay with that? Yeah, yeah, sure, you’re gonna get that nine out of 10. So now you have a binding contract now, at the end of it you tell at the end of those 90 days when we meet again, then we’ll decide if we continue.

Now real quick, I know Adam is if you’re still paying attention, I know we’re a little bit over, but I think you have a little bit of a different methodology. Is there any way you can comment on this? Um, yeah, I just I’m trying to think like, I don’t have too much of a difference it’s kind of constantly evolving. But yeah, I mean, as far as contracts go like I stay out of that I’ve never done anything. Okay. Yeah. And then, if he’s looking for actual he may just mean, he’s looking for an outline for like a proposal or an engagement proposal. If that’s the case, just contact support at semantic mastery comm will point you in the right direction. I know Hernan put one out there we had as a free opt-in that you could get as an outline. And that can be really helpful. I mean, I’ve used other people’s as a starting point when I’m changing services.

Adding something in just so that I have a good starting point then you tailor it kind of to your specifics.

Very good. Thank you. Alright guys, thanks everybody for being here is Chris were you gonna says something? I’m sorry. I mean like he is like a lead gen contract. I mean, like why not sell on a per lead basis? I don’t see there’s an issue you can do like a contract that states the price of the elite.

Yeah. So you should be fine that way. It should be super easy.

Sweet. Well, thanks for your input, guys. And thanks, everybody for being here. We will see you guys next week. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 289 published first on your-t1-blog-url

[junker-town]

The 5 most fireable NFL coaches of this season

Jason Garrett’s days with the Cowboys are likely numbered after a disappointing 2019 season.

Whose seats are hottest after disappointing seasons? The answers ... probably won’t surprise you.

The NFL’s most embattled head coaches have just one week left to state their cases. Dec. 30 will be the last day of employment for most of the playcallers who wind up fired.

This year’s Black Monday may be a slower day than usual. While last year’s preferred firing day claimed six head coaches, some of this season’s least promising sideline generals have already earned support from team ownership. The Jets will keep Adam Gase around for year two. Matt Patricia’s done enough in his 3-11-1 season to oversee a third year in Detroit. Even Doug Marrone, now free from Tom Coughlin’s tyranny, could get another chance to restore the Jaguars to “not bad.”

Before we get to the list, let’s deviate from the way we’ve sorted these coaches in the past few weeks. Typically, “fireable” doesn’t mean a coach is necessarily going to be fired. It refers to how poorly those coaches performed in a given week and any recent trends working against them. For example, Frank Reich made last week’s list after the Colts allowed Drew Brees to have the most accurate game in NFL passing history. He’s not getting canned, but Reich’s team has failed to live up to its potential while coming off its fourth straight loss.

This time, in honor of the upcoming season finale, we’re looking at all-around resumes on top of what happened in Week 16. Let’s zero in on the five guys most likely to be looking for employment. That means coaches who probably deserve to be fired, but won’t (Gase, Patricia), escaped the final rankings. Secure coaches who brain farted their way to a loss on Sunday are safe as well ... until we come back to these rankings next fall.

So who’s on the chopping block after a trying 2019?

5. Dan Quinn, Falcons

Atlanta was 1-7 after Week 9, good enough to give Quinn the shortest odds of a midseason firing in the NFL. Since then, he’s gone 5-2, including wins over two of the NFC’s top teams (the Saints and 49ers). That hot streak added another victim Sunday when the Falcons dispatched a sputtering Jaguars squad.

It’s been a significant turnaround on both sides of the ball. The Falcons’ offense has become more efficient, while their defense has tightened up to create opportunities over the last seven weeks.

So what will team owner Arthur Blank do about his head coach? No one’s really quite sure!

Quinn has three factors working in his favor; the recent surge that shows off his ability to adapt, the continuity that comes with standing by a five-year veteran at the helm, and a locker room that, per a former Falcons’ public relations executive, still listens to, believes in, and respects him.

On a plane back to LA and just wrote this. I’m gonna share it bc a couple years back @ZachKleinWSB did something similar and this is my 2019 version to everyone who’s followed me over the years. I’m sure I’m gonna get a lot of great comments but I hope it gives you perspective pic.twitter.com/iCJ1zT3Et9

— Brian Cearns (@BKCearns) December 23, 2019

Quinn’s put in the work to keep his job over the back half of the season, even if 2019 will be remembers as a letdown for a talent roster. The question is whether his late-season progress will be too little, too late.

4. Doug Marrone, Jaguars

Will Marrone be held accountable for his team’s continued collapse from 2017’s lofty perch? Or will Tom Coughlin’s firing give him the leeway needed to earn another year in Jacksonville?

That’s the question owner Shad Khan will have to ask himself this week. Marrone got the Jags closer to the Super Bowl than all but one other coach in franchise history ... and that was Coughlin. The old-school disciplinarian oversaw a franchise that was responsible for one-quarter of the grievances filed by the NFL Players Association in the past year. He chased away talent like Jalen Ramsey (traded for two first-round picks) and had issues with Jaguars both former and current.

This limited what Marrone could do as a head coach, but Jacksonville’s issues go beyond mismanagement at the top. This year’s team has only been marginally more efficient through the air than it was in 2018 when Blake Bortles was playing his way out of Florida. Leonard Fournette’s stellar start to the season (791 yards, 4.9 yards per carry in his first eight games) has ground down to mediocrity without the threat of a high-impact passing game (361 yards, 3.5 YPC in the seven games since). A defense that had been a top-10 staple now ranks 29th in defensive efficiency, per DVOA.

Khan was mum on Marrone’s future after Week 15. That non-endorsement gave way to reports he’d be retained for one last go-round to see what he can do free of Coughlin’s influence.

From @NFLGameDay: There is a "good chance" #Jaguars coach Doug Marrone and GM Dave Caldwell return in 2020 following the firing of EVP Tom Coughlin, sources say... and Tony Khan could take on an increased role. pic.twitter.com/85Jw7YE4MX

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 22, 2019

Marrone led the Jaguars within one quarter of Super Bowl 52. That bought him a redo after a disappointing 2018. Now he may get one more if Coughlin truly is the scapegoat he’s made out to be.

3. Pat Shurmur, Giants

Shurmur got what he needed from Daniel Jones Sunday: a historical five-touchdown performance and a win over Washington. Under his guidance, Saquon Barkley had the best day of his career and one of the most productive games of 2019 (279 total yards). So why is Shurmur back on the list despite a two-game winning streak?

Because ...

a) it came against Washington and

b) the Giants’ issues outside of their inconsistent offense may be too much for him to overcome.

New York gave up a 14-point fourth-quarter lead, allowing Case Keenum to go 99 yards on Washington’s final drive of regulation to tie the game at 35. While Jones was able to rectify that problem by leading his team to a game-winning touchdown, Week 16 failed to dispel the fatal flaws that could lead to Shurmur’s ousting after two years.

The Giants let Keenum and Dwayne Haskins — who left the game with an ankle injury — throw for three touchdowns and nearly eight yards per pass (a 125.1 passer rating). That undermanned defense has given up more points than all but three other teams. It also ranks 29th when it comes to opponent passing efficiency.

That’s all led to a 4-11 record lowlighted by a nine-game losing streak in the middle of the season. New York’s only wins have come against 3-12 Washington (twice), the 4-11 Dolphins, and the 7-8 Buccaneers.

On the plus side, Shurmur’s built camaraderie within the Giants’ locker room — he’s even got Jones and Eli Manning partying together in the dorkiest way possible — and appears to be every bit a players’ coach.

Shurmur on the Giants night of flip cup celebrations: “they’re grown men and they look after each other and they were celebrating a victory, they should have invited me!” *laughs*

— Madelyn Burke (@MadelynBurke) December 23, 2019

Though the team’s dream of adding Chase Young to its pass rush probably died with Week 16’s win, defensive help is still likely on the way. If the Giants believe they can patch up the blocking and secondary issues that have plagued them, Shurmur may get one more chance to prove he can turn Jones into a legitimate franchise quarterback.

Of course, owner John Mara could just look at his 9-22 record over the past two seasons and decide to gamble on a different quarterback whisperer instead.

2. Freddie Kitchens, Browns

Cleveland had the ball and a 6-0 lead at the two-minute warning in the second quarter against the Ravens. Kitchens found a way to turn that into a 14-6 halftime deficit.

Granted, some of that collapse was thanks to Lamar Jackson’s otherworldly play, but Kitchens did his offense few favors with too-cute playcalling and some regrettable clock management. His halfback pass on third-and-1 fooled nobody, and the fact it went for an 8-yard loss may have been the only thing that kept him from going for it on fourth down from his own 28.

Freddie Kitchens on the sequence at the end of the first half, throwing on third-and-10. (He also confirmed that the Hunt third-and-1 play the drive before was a halfback pass, and that they would’ve gone for it on fourth-and-short) pic.twitter.com/aiQ87JLdcm

— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) December 22, 2019

The Ravens, out of timeouts, scored on the following drive. And they scored on the drive after that because three straight incompletions only ate up 18 seconds of game clock, effectively daring Jackson to burn them once more. It was another brutal gut-punch in a season full of them for the erstwhile AFC North favorites.

Confusing clock management is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Kitchens’ problems. The first-year head coach’s promotion was predicated on his ability to turn Cleveland’s turgid offense into one of the league’s most dangerous units. He made Baker Mayfield look like a borderline MVP candidate after taking over as interim offensive coordinator. Then he took that team and added All-Pros Odell Beckham Jr. and Kareem Hunt (for half a season).

And the Browns have gone from ranking 12th in the league in weighed DVOA in 2018 to 23rd in 2019.

Beckham, still fiercely committed to the team that freed him from New York last spring, took notice — one week after Jarvis Landry had a similarly public discussion with his head coach over playcalling.

I'm sure OBJ is fine pic.twitter.com/o7t8hywE0l

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) December 22, 2019

Kitchens is losing on the field and potentially losing in his own locker room. That all spells disaster for his hopes of returning for a year two. But maybe team owner John Dorsey will chalk this all up to rookie mistakes and give him the runway to learn from and fix those issues.

1 Jason Garrett, Cowboys

Garrett may have seen his last shot to keep his job march off the turf as the Eagles celebrated the 17-9 win that moved them to the top of the NFC East. The underachieving Cowboys, stuck in a feedback loop of botched calls and big, meaningless performances, dropped to 7-8 and out of the playoff picture.

That may signal the end of the Garrett era in Dallas. The 10-year veteran is staring down what could be only his second losing season as the Cowboys’ head coach, but the lingering sense he always could have done more will ultimately be his undoing. None of his teams embody that more than the 2019 edition.

Even though the Cowboys have all the talent of a contender, the combination of a tough schedule and a crippling inability to step up a big stage has dropped them to the periphery of the playoff race. By most metrics, Dallas should have clinched its division in a down year for the NFC East. It ranks first in the NFL in total yards, eighth in scoring, and eighth in yards allowed per play.

Advanced stats love the Cowboys. Not just DVOA. They're a top-ten team by DVOA, by @pfref SRS, by EPA. But the point of the game isn't to do well in advanced metrics. It's to win. And they didn't do that enough.

— Aaron Schatz (@FO_ASchatz) December 23, 2019

Instead, Jerry Jones’ team needs to beat Washington and hope the Giants upset the Eagles in Week 17 just to sneak into the postseason. Sunday’s loss in Philly dropped Garrett to 2-6 against teams with winning records in 2019.

Dak Prescott’s breakthrough season — he ranks among the NFL’s top five in passing yards, passing touchdowns, and QBR — is about to go to waste on the worst team, by record, of his career. A defense that got its best-case scenario in terms of injury (only Leighton Vander Esch has missed more than four games this season among the team’s starters) held the Saints, Patriots, and Eagles to 17 points or fewer this season and lost all three of those games. It hasn’t been all roses for that unit, which ranks 20th in defensive efficiency, per DVOA, but it still has given the ‘Boys several opportunities to win big games.

The gap between potential and production in Dallas is sizable. There’s one man who’ll shoulder the blame for that disparity, and it’s the same guy who has come under fire each time the Cowboys make an early playoff exit or struggle down the stretch. Garrett can still save his job by carrying Dallas to a surprising postseason run, though he’ll need the stars to align.

And if he does, all signs point to the Cowboys blowing it. That’s what they’ve done throughout 2019.