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soveryanon · 5 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG178~!

- Notable thing this episode was the intensity of the sounds (understandable given where they were), almost covering Jon’s words at some point, and the fact that once again… we got statements-specific ones. It used to be a bit unclear whether the sounds we were hearing belonged to the scenery around Jon or if they were emanating from the statement itself: for example, the sounds of the war (MAG163) were surrounding Jon&Martin before the statement while they were immersed in the domain, same with the carousel (MAG165) or the burning building (MAG169); and likewise, the wailing of the worms (MAG166) was audible outside of the statement (surrounding Martin at the end of the episode, when he wasn’t even in earshot of Jon)… but the squelching we could hear during Jon’s statement was a manifestation of what was happening in Jon’s narration. The hooks attacking Francis (MAG172) were a bit more ambiguous: were they audible outside of the statements, and Jon was commenting on them as they were happening? (Jon himself, after all, was described as present in the audience in the statement itself.) In The Extinction domain (MAG175), were the scuttling and hisses of the creature audible anyway around Jon? Or were these sounds created by Jon’s statement?

It’s been a bit clearer with these last three episodes that Jon’s statements seem to be creating/emanating these sounds, or allowing them to be heard: we could hear the sounds of running footsteps and pants while Jon was unmoving (MAG176); we heard the clock of the room, the chair creaking or scraping, the pills getting swallowed, the altercation, the distant wailing, the peeling of Doctor David’s face… and these sounds disappeared (including the clock!) when Jon got out of his statement, while the tinny muzak reappeared (MAG177). This time, Jon was stated to be in a closet: yet, we heard the factory gates opening, the grunts of the “things”, the tools they used, the sizzling of flesh, the cutting… and same thing, they faded once Jon was done with the statement.

(MAG176) ARCHIVIST: “Feet pound, silent whisper, silent blood on lips, blood on teeth, blood-scent of hated prey flows through veins and into feet pound silent in pursuit. [IN THE BACKGROUND, CONSTANT SOUND OF A CHASE IN THE FOREST: FEET RUNNING, PANTING, SHUFFLING OF LEAVES AND BRANCHES] Teeth smile. Ready to kill. [SHUFFLING OF BRANCHES]”

(MAG177) ARCHIVIST: [SIGHING] If you say so…! [INHALE] [STATIC RISES] [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] [FOOTSTEPS, A TELEPHONE RINGS IN THE BACKGROUND] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [STATIC FADES] ARCHIVIST: “Hi. How are we doing? You can call me Doctor David. […] Like I say: we have all the time in the world! [STATIC RISES] And good old Doctor David isn’t – going – anywhere.” [STATIC FADES] [SOUNDS FROM THE STATEMENT FADES] [THE TINNY MUZAK RESUMES]

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: “The only smell… is the smell of cleaning products. The door finally opens, [RUSTY DOOR OPENS] and another thing stands there. […] Finally, he is led over to a grate on the floor. [SWIFT METALLIC NOISE] He barely even has time to register the red-hot wire cutter [SLASHING SOUND] before it is in and out of his left arm with practiced, professional ease, neatly removing a small wedge of muscle. […] [SHUFFLING, CRACKING AND ELECTRIC SAWING SOUNDS] The last thing he sees before returning to the processing line… is everything going into the garbage. There wasn’t a single, suitable cut. [ANGRY FOOTSTEPS] “Useless,” one of the butchers says. And Tyler is gone.” [STATIC RISES] [SOUNDS FROM THE STATEMENT FADES] [STATIC FADES]

Is Jon “creating” them through dream-logic? Could Martin&Basira hear them, if they stayed around as Jon’s audience, or are these sounds only present on the tape we’re hearing? I’m keeping in mind that the tape recorder is not acting like an out-of-the-box machine: through Jon, it seems to be able to “interact” with the content of the domain/the stories Jon is describing, as affected as the characters…?

- Jon explaining how this domain worked was super interesting (and terrifying):

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: Uh… [EXHALE] Technically, a lot of them… actually aren’t people? BASIRA: … Come again? ARCHIVIST: A–a lot of them are created by this place as, uh… “set dressing”, I suppose? Th–this domain, the fear of it requires these… queues, these… this, uh, intricate hateful bureaucracy o–of hundreds of thousands of doomed souls, it needs far more than the number of people who actually ended up here. MARTIN: Wait–wait–wait, so… so it just… makes the rest of them up? ARCHIVIST: Er, maybe one in a hundred or so are actually real? The rest are there to make those people’s fears more acute. MARTIN: … That’s… Ugh, that’s somehow more disturbing.

… because it felt almost like some level of consciousness was at work? Or, well. Once again, a symbiosis between the Fear and its victims, the fact that the domains are literally their fears given enough autonomy to construct that reality and hurt them even more. (I’m thinking back to Jon’s “You want to talk about psychological projection, try viewing the metaphysical world through the lens of a being that is, by its very nature, a reflection of your own obsessions and fears.” from MAG175: he was, in context, talking about his own relationship to The Eye, but that… actually applies to every victim in the domains.)

Things getting me in the statement: the implicit rules/functioning of the domain being so unpredictable and odd that Tyler couldn’t expect them (“He looks around, unable to find a pen, a pencil, anything. The thing sat behind the desk does not respond to his questions. Finally, Tyler takes his fingernail, now long and ragged from his time in the queue, and painstakingly scores the words into the paper.”), the hurt and the pain never being factored by the creatures around him, the fact that his reactions were never timed exactly right (didn’t try to flee when he could have; would like to flee later but knew it was too late in the line), the fact that trying to find a meaning in his own sacrifice was utterly denied (“Is it not better, at least, to be useful? […] The last thing he sees before returning to the processing line… is everything going into the garbage. There wasn’t a single, suitable cut. ‘Useless,’ one of the butchers says.”). There were such a range of different fears in the whole statement: the anguish coming from limited options, the idea of suffering for nothing, of being evaluated and imprisoned into categories outside of one’s control, the crushing feeling of inadequacy, of accepting sacrifices and yet being labelled as a disappointment. Jon described it as an “intricate hateful bureaucracy of hundreds of thousands of doomed souls”, and there was indeed a big aspect of it evoking modern workplace environments (… unfortunately).

Even with the description and the beginning of the statement, I was surprised that this one was a Flesh domain! I do get the “Meat is Me” aspect (the idea of being reduced to meat and value, of being stuck in an abattoir), but I reaaaally felt a Vast vibe in it (being one amongst thousands, of time and space spreading, of being meaningless) with dots of Web (being absolutely dispossessed of agency, having the “choice” to rebel and being conscious enough of the decision not to) and maybe of Lonely (disconnected from the others, lost-in-the-crowd yet unable to reach anyone). One gigantic blob of terror, I know, but it’s a nice feeling when Jon labels a domain and I got a slightly different vibe, while seeing and understanding Jon’s logic!

(- Re: time, it was also very striking in this one that Jon is not exactly describing things as they are happening, but condensing them, since this one would spread through “years”:

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: “Time has no meaning in this place – but that does nothing to lessen the certainty that Tyler has been in this line for years.”

Or. Well. That time experienced in the domain is an absolutely subjective experience, to the point that it might be possible that, actually, Jon is still telling the story as it happens although there would be no way for his words to match the rhythm of the events he describes? It’s still dream-logic, so whatever can happen.)

- ;; Once again, domains affecting victims’ abilities to remember or be conscious of anything that happened to them before the Change (or creating memories to hurt them more efficiently):

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “Next to him, Charlie saw Ryan, who he’d known since childhood – though the other details were hazy. Ryan gave him a thumbs-up and an encouraging smile – before his face exploded inwards to a sniper’s bullet, peppering the boat with shards of bone and gore.”

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: “There was never a time before the disease, no matter what the old bastards tell you. It has always been in the village, always festered in the dark corners where nobody could stomach to check, where good neighbours wouldn’t dream to speculate.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: “Its pace remaining as it ever was, it does not care for coming pains as you are torn. Doesn’t it know who you are? No… And soon… neither will you. […] You will be someone again, someday. […] “I’m still Hannah!” you try to scream, but are you? No. Perhaps there’s some Veronica as fragments there, or Julian, or Anya, but… no. You feel the last of names and “who” you might have been be torn away and borne towards new bodies. New pages, blank; determined to be people.”

(MAG166) ARCHIVIST: “When had the crushing pressure in his chest become literal? When had the empty promise of the horizon finally vanished completely, replaced by the pitch darkness of this “forever wall of earth”? Sam did not know. Time had no meaning here. […] His existence was static, and eternal. Immutable. “Sleep” was only a memory, because even the prospect of unconsciousness might have made his present state slightly more bearable. Food as well, he knew, must be a thing, for he could feel the hunger, but his imagination failed to picture it. The only smell he knew was the damp, and the dirt.”

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “How long as she lived here? How long have these cramped, dingy rooms in the back of this sprawling rundown tenement been the place her heart calls home? She cannot recall, but long enough for her to grow into love for it, to cherish every rusted appliance, every crumbling piece of plasterboard, every – flickering – lightbulb. […] Sabina cannot… picture their faces, but knows that should they wake to see the state of the place… their anger would be blistering. […] What floor was her flat on again? Surely, it can’t be this high. […] Limping and desperate, she turns to see her furniture in flames, the bookshelves full of memories, that she can’t quite place [STATIC RISES] but knows are precious to her, curl and float away as ash. The photos on the wall of her family whose faces seem indistinct but she knows that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass pops out of the frame.”

(MAG170) MARTIN: … It’s sort of weird, isn’t it? [CREAKING] A smell can trigger memory so… powerfully. Like this one; it, it–it makes me think of… [INHALE] Hm. [INHALE] Hm. I, I don’t know. Is it a person? A place? No, no; people, people don’t smell like that. Besides, I’m all alone. … I’m, I’m all alone. [CREAKING] Why, why am I alone? I, I shouldn’t be alone! There should be people! It’s such a, such a big house, my house, there mu–, there must be other people! People who care. Unless…

(MAG174) ARCHIVIST: “When it had first covered her home, bathing the street beyond her window in unexpected shade, she had thought it an eclipse. There wasn’t supposed to be one then, she is… sure of that – although if pressed, she could not have told you what day it is today. Before the shadow fell, she is sure that the sun was shining brightly – although, if pressed, she could not have pictured it. And the humid heat of a lingering summer had left the world sleepy, and unprepared – although, if pressed, she remembers the heat, but not the season. […] Mehreen cannot quite make out their faces as she bundles them into the car, old and shuddering as it coughs into life. Does she remember having a child? A spouse? Does she remember her mother having such a cruel sneer? It doesn’t matter. They are here now, and she has to save them.”

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: “It’s faded now. He remembers aches and worries and, sometimes, something that might have been joy…! But it’s far away now, like something seen projected on a distant wall.

I still wonder if that situation will evolve, by MAG200… Jon said that the Fears would stay as long as there are people to fear them, and the current status quo is that victims are imprisoned in a loop – their fears made manifest, torturing them in turn, leading to more fear, their perceptions and memories biased to prevent them from feeling something else. We’ve seen how anchors could work as a point of focus to get out of their grasp; it’s not possible with how the world is shaped now, but if the victims could remember something else than their fears, maybe…?

- Oh! I hadn’t noticed/wondered if there was an echo of Beholding in the domain itself in a while, but:

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: “Even if he had the will to, Tyler could not have struggled: the movements of the things scrutinising him are as gently unstoppable as a piston.”

… that’s a big Eye mood.

- Same as in the Slaughter domain, it seems to be a loop of fear:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “There is a rumbling in the earth around him, as a tank speeds along its unstoppable path, and Charlie is immediately pulled under its tread. He has a moment of shocked horror, before being reduced to a smear in the mud. […] Next to his bleeding corpse, Charlie wakes from what passes for sleep in this place. A sergeant is yelling at him, screaming for him to take his gun and get into the waiting transport.”

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: “The tragedy of Francis. A comic puppet show, in all acts. Act 48067”. […] And so it will be until the curtain descends at last, and THE SPIDER resets the scene, its belly already beginning to swell once again with replacements for the creatures it so gorily birthed. AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LAUGHS] Pause, for laughter. AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LOUD CLAPS] And so the curtains descends.” AUDIENCE (BACKGROUND): [LOUD CLAPS AND CHEERING] [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: “The tragedy of Francis. A comic puppet show in all acts. Act 48068.”

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: “The last thing he sees before returning to the processing line… is everything going into the garbage. There wasn’t a single, suitable cut.”

(And I’m still dubious of Oliver’s claim that The End’s domain was better than the others and would deliver it for real! Though Jon mentioned dream-logic as the rule at work, to explain why Daisy wouldn’t be coming back if killed… so maybe enough belief in The End as an absolute ending makes it real in that world. Mm…)

- Back to Martin worrying over victims’ feelings, and being vocal about it!

(MAG163) MARTIN: … They’re not… real? [VOICES SHOUTING IN THE DISTANCE] ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLING] No…! They’re real; they were… normal people before the– … Before me. But now they’re here, meat for the grinder. I just mean there’s no point… talking to them. MARTIN: Don’t be a prick, Jon. Hey! I’m, I’m sorry about him. He’s–he’s going through a lot – well… we all are, I suppose, but well… “Hi”, I guess. [SILENCE] Hello? ARCHIVIST: They won’t hear you, Martin, they’re all… too busy waiting to die. MARTIN: Jon…

(MAG178) MARTIN: [HUSHED] Oh, would you both just keep it down, please? ARCHIVIST: They’re not aware of us, Martin, I keep telling you. MARTIN: Yeah, I know, but it’s not okay to talk as though they’re not there. They’re still people. […] [MARTIN JOSTLES A BODY] MARTIN: Excuse me. ARCHIVIST: [EXASPERATED] Martin, they can’t hear you. MARTIN: [SHARP] I know, Jon, that’s not the point. ARCHIVIST: … All right…!

He hadn’t been vocal about it in a long time! (And he had felt a bit disconnected about it, to me, with the worms and the carousels.)

In comparison, I do understand Jon’s pragmatism in the uselessness of trying to Know who is real and not:

(MAG178) MARTIN: Wait–wait–wait, so… so it just… makes the rest of them up? ARCHIVIST: Er, maybe one in a hundred or so are actually real? The rest are there to make those people’s fears more acute. MARTIN: … That’s… Ugh, that’s somehow more disturbing. BASIRA: … How do you tell which is which? ARCHIVIST: I mean, you could ask me, I suppose. B–but I don’t… really see the point. Would it help you to know whose suffering is real and… whose is just a… grim reflection? [SILENCE] BASIRA: No. ARCHIVIST: Well, there you go then.

… but still, a bit aouch about that logic – it’s true that people in the domains are not aware of them, so taking them into account doesn’t change anything, but it still means ignoring real people. (I wonder if they will end up in a domain where victims are aware and conscious and a potential threat to them, if it’s the point of the domain?)

- I’m glad, however, that Jon was trying to make them avoid the avatar of the place, because it was contrasting a lot with Jude:

(MAG169) MARTIN: That turn…! You, you took a hard turn after the roots back there. I knew that was a thing! Why are we here? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s just… [INHALE] When you said… [SIGH] MARTIN: Jon, why have you taken us here? ARCHIVIST: Jude Perry. … This is where Jude Perry rules.

(MAG178) BASIRA: So who’s in charge, here? ARCHIVIST: Not anyone you’re familiar with. We won’t be meeting them. MARTIN: You’re not going to… y’know? [MARTIN VOCALISES AN EXPLOSION] ARCHIVIST: No. Even if I wanted to, he’s in the, uh… Main Processing Room, and believe me when I say that’s… not somewhere you want to be. MARTIN: … Yeah. I guess.

(And even with Oliver: Jon had made the decision that he wouldn’t pursue Oliver, but it had been shown as a rare act of mercy in the face of Oliver’s actions. Here, it really sounded like he wanted to spare Martin and Basira more suffering, didn’t want to put them in an upsetting situation.)

… a bit worried that Martin still hasn’t let it sink in that Jon didn’t want to go Kill Bill anymore because he felt that it was detrimental to himself, but to be fair, Martin sounded like he had asked just to clear it up and wasn’t pressuring, just checking.

- OHOHOHOH about Martin’s frustration feeling extremely… meta (it’s something an audience would say):

(MAG178) MARTIN: [INHALE, EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] God, I hate all of these… loose ends…! ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry. MARTIN: It’s, it’s fine. [INHALE] We’ll just have to tie them all up in one go!

Both the thread imagery and the storytelling aspect are screaming a bit “Web?” (THIS IS HOW WEB!MARTIN CAN STILL W–)

- I’m still a puddle on the floor about the fact that:

(MAG178) MARTIN: … Yeah. I guess. [INHALE, EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] God, I hate all of these… loose ends…! ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry. MARTIN: It’s, it’s fine. [INHALE] We’ll just have to tie them all up in one go! ARCHIVIST: Hm? MARTIN: [SIGH] Around Elias’s neck. ARCHIVIST: … Ah.

MartinElias. The MartinElias in season 5 is so delightful *snif*. Strangulation? That’s such an intimate way of killing… It’s what Will described as what his preferred method for killing Hannibal would be… My MartinElias rights…

I love how. Martin. Just brings up Elias so much this season.

(MAG161) MARTIN: Elias won, and there were some tapes he’d kept for himself, and he wanted to gloat. So, he sent them! ARCHIVIST: He’s not… MARTIN: I–I don’t see– ARCHIVIST: … “Elias”. MARTIN: Jonah, then. I don’t know, I find it hard to think of him as… I don’t really like to think of him!

(MAG162) MARTIN: Do you think it’ll do anything? Confronting Elias?

(MAG164) MARTIN: What about Elias?

(MAG170) MARTIN: I mean, the interview was weird, I… I don’t really remember the man who talked to me. Just his eyes. They stared at me; th–through me, and… and, I–I knew that he knew what I’d done. God, I…! I was so scared, but… but then he smiled and shook my hand…! What was his name? [CREAKING] He said I “had the job”…! [CHUCKLE] That he “looked forward to working with me”! … I was still so scared I could barely move my arm…! I was so terrified I’d let him down…!

(MAG174) MARTIN: … Hang on, you’re still down to kill Elias, right? Uh, oh, Jonah, whatever.

(MAG177) BASIRA: … So what’s your plan? MARTIN: Long-term? Elias. He’s up in that that… “Panopticon” tower thing.

(MAG178) MARTIN: God, I hate all of these… loose ends…! ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry. MARTIN: It’s, it’s fine. [INHALE] We’ll just have to tie them all up in one go! ARCHIVIST: Hm? MARTIN: [SIGH] Around Elias’s neck.

* “I don’t really like to think of him!” said Martin Blackwood, before proceeding to mention Elias at every turn. (And still “Elias”! Jon and Martin seem to have completely given up on calling him “Jonah”. He’s still “Elias” for them, even though they know who he truly is.)

* Oh, Martin… He really seems to have decided that “killing Elias/getting revenge on Elias” was their goal, and that it would do anything good. Jon has already proven that killing avatars in domains didn’t free victims, didn’t improve their situations; that the domains just… kept going, even “unsupervised”. Even if Jonah is still around in some shape or form (in his old decaying body, in “Elias Bouchard”’s body, merged with the Panopticon, anything), and even if he is the ruler of the Panopticon (not a given, since Jon said that they were heading towards his own domain: unclear if it was the Archives, the Institute, the Panopticon, or all of them)… killing him would not fix the world. Is Martin absolutely in denial about this? Or does he need a small goal to keep going and process his feelings?

(;; And there is just a huge chance that… Martin is mostly feeling guilty about what happened, about the fact that he had the chance and opportunity to kill Elias but refused to do so, and that it led to Jon getting his last mark with The Lonely (with potential additions of not having checked the package they had received, and having chosen to leave Jon unsupervised while he would read a statement). The episode was about Basira knowing all along what was happening but trying to pretend she didn’t, and how this prevented her from reaching her goal (Daisy); I wonder if Martin will soon have to undergo the same process, to allow him and Jon to reach the Panopticon…)

- About Jon’s need for a stop:

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: Left. [INHALE] Just up ahead. [STATIC FADES] Although, uh… Hum… Actually, you might want to head through that door and… wait. BASIRA: Again? Already? ARCHIVIST: There’s a lot of fear in this place. […] MARTIN: New plan. We wait in the corridor; you go in the spike cupboard and tell your story to all the… hooks and stuff.

Once again, it’s definitely presented as Jon having to unload an excess, and I’m really interested in Martin’s lexicon. In MAG177, he called it a “statement”, and this time, presented it as “tell[ing] [his] story to all the hooks and stuff”: “story” had been how Fanshawe had described Albrecht von Closen pouring out his horrors, and Martin’s formulation took into consideration the need for an audience. Jon did introduce the tape recorder as a necessary audience in MAG163 while he was giving the domain’s statement (and he had mentioned how “pouring out” into them had helped him to understand what the cabin was doing, in MAG162), but really, I’m struck with how similar Jon sounds to how Fanshawe had described Albrecht?

(And what is happening with the tape recorder, what is Jon creating through them…)

- Uh! So it seems like Basira got Enough already, by listening to Jon last time. Not keen to reiterate the experience, uh. (Well: it’s mostly Jon who, first and foremost, took it as a given that Basira wouldn’t be listening either.)

- I’m fond of the fact that:

(MAG178) [DOOR OPENS AND METALLIC JANGLING IS HEARD] MARTIN: [EMPHATICALLY] Nope! BASIRA: … What the hell sort of tools are those? ARCHIVIST: “Flesh” factory, remember?

The tools weren’t described. Some things better left to imagination, nondescript but evoked through characters’ reactions, uh?

- ;w; Is Jon still worried about Martin potentially losing himself in a domain? He really almost lost Martin in the Lonely house, and Martin had wandered away too deep in the Web one:

(MAG170) ARCHIVIST: Oh, Martin! Thank god, I, I was… I–I thought you were behind me. [FABRIC RUSTLES] MARTIN: I thought you’d left me behind…! Gone on without me.

(MAG172) MARTIN: No, I… Not for most of it. I just thought I heard… something. Whatever. I went exploring, all right? I don’t know why; I shouldn’t have. ARCHIVIST: No, you–you shouldn’t have!

(MAG178) MARTIN: New plan. We wait in the corridor; you go in the spike cupboard and tell your story to all the… hooks and stuff. ARCHIVIST: … Fine. Just don’t wander off.

… I really wonder if, at some point, Jon will try to come back to Martin&Basira, and they’ll be just… gone, because of Helen, Annabelle, or the domain’s work. (… It might be how Daisy could appear? While Jon is focusing on a statement and unaware that she reached them first?)

- Martin has his Limits and will be vocal about it:

(MAG178) MARTIN: [EMPHATICALLY] Nope! […] New plan. We wait in the corridor; you go in the spike cupboard and tell your story to all the… hooks and stuff.

… but mostly, I’m snickering so hard, because. It was.

It was.

It was Martin refusing to go into the closet. I’ve been snickering about it for a week, alright.

- … I really wonder what Martin was talking about with Basira:

(MAG178) MARTIN: –I know, I know you find it hard whe– … Done already? ARCHIVIST: Yes. [INHALE] Talking about me? BASIRA: … I assume that’s a rhetorical question. ARCHIVIST: I am trying to keep my powers to myself. BASIRA: Sure! MARTIN: I was just… giving Basira some advice. ARCHIVIST: [GOOD-NATURED] Avatars are from Mars and humans are from Venus, that sort of thing? MARTIN: [TINY CHUCKLE] I mean… yeah? Sort of? ARCHIVIST: [BRIEF CHUCKLE] MARTIN: Well, w–we were pretty much done anyway.

… Jon’s shitty sense of humour… (Was that an allusion to the feared vs. the fearful, as Helen made the distinction? To the Jon/Martin relationship as avatar/human? x’))

Was Martin’s “advice” about how to not take what Jon was saying too badly, how to try to talk with him constructively since she and Jon had grown sour towards each other in season 4? … Or does Martin have a plan in the making, that requires Jon to not know about it? Because this episode and the previous one made a point to remind us…

(MAG177) BASIRA: … What’s it like? Being with someone who can see the inside of your head? MARTIN: Hm? Oh! Oh no, he doesn’t. I told him not to, and so he tries to… look away? BASIRA: And you trust him to do that. MARTIN: [DECISIVE] Yes. I do.

… that Jon doesn’t know what is happening in Martin’s head since Martin asked him not to “know” about him…

(I’m glaaad that Martin and Basira are talking outside of Jon!!)

- I like the contrast between Jon absolutely knowing what he was doing, where he was leading Basira and Martin… and the fact that Basira didn’t know about it.

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: Next one’s through here. BASIRA: Next one? ARCHIVIST: Her latest victim. [DOOR IS WRENCHED OPEN WITH A METALLIC CREAK] MARTIN: [REELS] Oh… [SOUNDS OF FLIES BUZZING]

Not exceptionally great from Jon, but typical from season 5 – it just highlights how much Jon knows how the world operate, what is around them, is indeed almost completely omniscient… and forgets how others aren’t.

- I really, really love how Daisy’s victims have been introduced for these past two episodes:

(MAG177) ARCHIVIST: We’re here. [DOOR CREAKS] MARTIN: … Oh! Jesus… [BAG JOSTLING] ARCHIVIST: Yes. Horrible way to go…! BASIRA: You’re sure this is Daisy’s handiwork? ARCHIVIST: Positive. […] I could tell you. BASIRA: [EXHALE] Don’t bother. I know who he is. MARTIN: What? BASIRA: [SIGH] Noah Thomson. That… nasty piece of work. Crossed him a few times when we weren’t doing sectioned work. Last I heard, he’d dodged a GBH charge Daisy brought him in on. Blinded a guy during a robbery. I guess she didn’t forget. MARTIN: Wait. Wait, so… so, she’s hunting down criminals? People who she… thinks got away with stuff? BASIRA: … Sure. ARCHIVIST: Really? As simple as that? BASIRA: What’s your point? ARCHIVIST: What, you think he ended up in Wonderland House at random? We’re just going to ignore it, and write him off as a “nasty piece of work”? BASIRA: We don’t have time for this. ARCHIVIST: Then we should make time. You want to hear how he ended up blinding that man? Because it wasn’t a robbery. He was running away from Daisy, lashing out in a panic. The court believed it. But you believed her…

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: Recognise her… BASIRA: … No… I don’t think I do. ARCHIVIST: That wasn’t a question. It was an instruction, we can’t… move on until you do. MARTIN: Jon, what are you getting at? ARCHIVIST: This isn’t just a journey through spaces. BASIRA: … Fine, I recognise her. I don’t know her name, though. [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Isabelle Moran. Shoplifter, drug addict. [STATIC FADES] Daisy was certain she was dealing as well, derailed her recovery twice.

Jon asking Basira to “recognise” the victims is such a significant move? It’s about giving them some dignity back: we’re given their names and last names (which… is more than what we’re getting in the domains’ statements; it feels more real); we’re being introduced to who they were through their identity, their history, what was done to them, the wrongs done to them… both as humans actions (the hurt Daisy caused as a police officer, although influenced by The Hunt) and as monstrous actions (Daisy butchered them as a beast). It feels very striking that most of the violence inflicted upon them is… not especially the fact that they’ve been murdered in these domains (Jon implied they should respawn?), but really, about what was done to them before, and how fundamentally Daisy’s behaviour had hurt them.

I really like how Jon is pushing Basira to acknowledge all of this, to process Daisy’s responsibility (and indirectly, hers, as someone who let it happen)? There is something very empathetic, very powerful in the fact that what needs to be done is about seeing the harm, understanding how it happened, before being able to proceed to the next step and take actions?

(- Basira, serial Sayer Of Fuck And Swears:

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] So, what, this was another waste of time? What, no Church, no Dark Sun? … I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch…!

(MAG148) BASIRA: You sent us to the North fucking Pole for no goddamn reason. ELIAS: A, a–hem… miscalculation.

(MAG177) ARCHIVIST: [DEEP EXHALATION] … Satisfied? BASIRA: Ff… Fuck.

(MAG178) BASIRA: Don’t give me that patronising, ominous-oracle bullshit, Jon. I’m not an idiot…! […] Of course I fucking care!

Now she’s on equal ground with Jon!)

- Basira broke my heart into tiny pieces this episode, because all her prickly behaviours were bad, as she was put in that uncomfortable situation and trying to flee (while Jon relentlessly pushed her to see)… and it felt so human in its own way?

(MAG155) BASIRA: I’m trying to convince her to go after them. To, er… “Hunt” them. ARCHIVIST: Why? BASIRA: Because I’m not going to lose her. ARCHIVIST: She goes Hunting again, you might anyway. BASIRA: And if she doesn’t, she might die. ARCHIVIST: Something you’re fine with in certain other cases. And something she’s made peace with. BASIRA: Because of the guilt she feels over the stuff The Hunt made her do…! It’s not her fault. ARCHIVIST: Earlier, when she was still out of it, I, uh… I “saw” some of the things she was talking about, some of the things she did, while she was police. I’m not convinced I disagree with her assessment. [PAUSE] Do you want me to tell you? BASIRA: No. No, I don’t. ARCHIVIST: … You knew, didn’t you? You knew the sort of things she did, and you let her. BASIRA: No, not exactly. I thought… [PAUSE] It’s not that simple. ARCHIVIST: It never is. But that doesn’t make it okay.[SILENCE] BASIRA: None of us are who we were, Jon.[SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: No. I suppose not. In many ways, it’s simpler now, isn’t it? At least now, our demons have names. BASIRA: Mm.

(MAG178) BASIRA: Fine. Noted. Can we just move on please? ARCHIVIST: I’m afraid not. BASIRA: Why not? ARCHIVIST: We aren’t finished here. BASIRA: Is that a threat? MARTIN: Guys, come on, don’t do this, not here. ARCHIVIST: I told you before, we can’t hunt a monster you refuse to see. BASIRA: Don’t give me that patronising, ominous-oracle bullshit, Jon. I’m not an idiot…! ARCHIVIST: I never said you were. MARTIN: Guys… BASIRA: [ANGRY] Look, I need you to lead the way. I don’t need your advice, and certainly don’t need you stood there judging me! MARTIN: [LOUDLY] Enough, enough! Someone has died! Show some respect. Or don’t you care? BASIRA: [INCENSED] Of course I fucking care! … [QUIETER] That’s the problem. MARTIN: I… I don’t understand. BASIRA: … I just… I don’t need him laying everything out for me like I’m some kind of idiot. I know, all right? Daisy is the only person I could ever rely on and… [GETTING QUIET AND SHAKY] And she… she did things, terrible things, and I… [SIGH] I refused to see it or… said it was my duty, or whatever. I don’t know. MARTIN: Basira…

Basira’s discomfort had to do with her feeling judged, criticised, leading her to get so defensive, all of which we’d already seen a lot in season 4! It’s a defence mechanism! And we finally could see what she was hiding, the feelings she didn’t want others to see! It was long due, and it was such an amazing pay-off!!!

I feel like it’s the equivalent of Melanie in MAG131, and Daisy in MAG132, when they explained themselves to Jon, gave him the keys to understand what was happening in their heads and why they behaved like they did, and, once again, it was such a precious, sensitive moment?

(MAG178) BASIRA: I care, I just… I don’t need to wallow in it. I need to end it. All of it. MARTIN: … We’re here for you. BASIRA: No. She was there for me. ARCHIVIST: … “Cops versus robbers and monsters”… BASIRA: I thought we were doing good. I really did…! I knew there was some bad shit, I knew Daisy was into a lot of it, but… I thought it balanced out. [WEAKLY] … I thought we were good. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I know how that feels. BASIRA: … I wanted to help people, you know? When I first joined. Protect people. But then I saw what some of those same people were capable of, and… something changed. I wanted to hurt them, the ones that deserved it, and it… it felt good, it felt… righteous. I thought I could feel the line, though, I really did. Eventually, though, it was… too much. [PAUSE] I was going to quit. I couldn’t… take what I saw myself becoming, but… then I got sectioned, and suddenly… suddenly it turned out there were real monsters out there, and… Well, that just made the power feel better. So things kept slipping. But… Daisy was always there for me. MARTIN: All those innocent people… BASIRA: Were they? Innocent? ARCHIVIST: Some. And if not? [INHALE] What crime warrants what was done to them? Theft? Violence? Disrespect?

* Honestly, the raw vulnerability, melancholia and sadness? It was my favourite performance from Frank ever.

* I really love how it tied in with what Basira had already said about her relationship to police, that she had never really felt extremely attached to the profession (MAG117: “I don’t want to be here. But by the end, I didn’t want to be police either, so… guess I don’t really know what I do want, which… maybe that’s just as well. My options… they’ve gotten a lot narrower over the last year.”). It’s just such a sad story because, in her case, she hadn’t gone there for the power (unlike Daisy); as she explained, she had good intentions… and the structure in place tends to sour and corrupt, encourages its agents to abuse their power, won’t make them become better persons (will only make them worse), and turns out to be a threat for the vulnerable instead of protecting them. It’s even sadder that Basira thought about quitting shortly before she got sectioned because, with the timeline in mind:

(MAG043) BASIRA: Okay, well, the first time I got hit with a Section 31 was five years ago, August 2011. I’d got my badge the year before that, and was still getting used to some of the more stressful bits of the job.

It happened barely a year after she joined the police. And she was already aware that she was becoming someone she didn’t like, that she was doing terrible things, and was considering quitting because of it…

* The “I wanted to hurt them, the ones that deserved it” reminded me a bit of Melanie explaining her anger in MAG131, and I’m sad in retrospect about how… Basira and Melanie could have understood each other much better in season 4 if the circumstances had been different…

* I also like how the existence of the supernatural goes hand in hand with Daisy’s side of things: the monsters and the avatars were a pretext for Hunters to unleash their violence. It was never about protecting the population from dangerous people; it was about having easily digestible targets, which allowed them to feel good about being violent (since, after all, they were only eradicating threats, right?). As both Basira and Jon pointed out:

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: … “Cops versus robbers and monsters”… BASIRA: I thought we were doing good. I really did…! I knew there was some bad shit, I knew Daisy was into a lot of it, but… I thought it balanced out. [WEAKLY] … I thought we were good.

It wasn’t a clear-cut situation – there were monsters out there. But we’ve also seen how so many of these monsters had initially been preyed upon by the entities, had initially been trying to survive, and how the line about their “badness”… wasn’t as easy to establish as characters would have liked. (And, in Daisy’s case: indeed, it wasn’t worth it anyway to… push struggling people deeper into misery, just because she had power over them, and Daisy, in season 4, was the first to remind people of it.)

* T__T I really love the… complexity of Basira’s situation? How would you react if the person there for you, representing a fixed point (your anchor?), turned out to be doing wrong things? In theory, it feels easy to answer that the good behaviour would be to turn your back on them, or to try to make them improve; and in practice, in Basira’s case, it meant allowing her whole system to collapse, and having to rebuild from there. I’m really fond of how she explained that she wasn’t stupid, that she was still aware of what was happening: that she still chose the pack mentality over a rejection of that system, but that she was already disillusioned with it. Basira had often felt a bit… emptier than the other characters; we only knew of a life-lesson given by her father, and the rest of her life seems to have been tied to the police force for the past few years, before she joined the Institute. It has really felt like Daisy was what brought her stability and peace. And yet: Daisy did awful things, Basira enabled her by trying to think it was for the greater good (MAG091: “But I… I always thought you just killed monsters.”), and Basira wasn’t even able to make the most of her return in season 4, when Daisy wanted to improve, since Basira was stuck on the idea that they needed a strong defence against threats… (And I wonder how much of Basira’s initial rejection of Daisy in season 4 had to do with the fact that… allowing herself to understand and hear the “new Daisy” would mean having to acknowledge that the old one had been bad and wrong; that Basira had allowed her to be monstrous, and that they both shared responsibility in those crimes.)

- Really loved Martin’s attempt, too:

(MAG178) MARTIN: … We’re here for you. BASIRA: No. She was there for me.

Because it said so much, that Martin used a present tense while Basira answered in the past (as if, after Daisy, there couldn’t be anyone else). It also put back in my mind how Basira had tried to be a bit softer on Martin at first, after his mother died (MAG127: “But I didn’t want to push it. He was in a… bad place, what with the attack and his mum and everything, so I didn’t press it.”) but didn’t provide comfort either; and how, even earlier, Basira and Martin had tried to be there for Melanie when they learned what Elias had done to her (MAG110). There’s still a lot of ice, but I’m glad that Martin offered, and that Basira didn’t attack him on it either – she’s mourning (that past tense in “she WAS there for me”…), but not… absolutely rejecting him either.

- In the moments of small understandings, Jon’s was also noteworthy:

(MAG178) BASIRA: I thought we were doing good. I really did…! I knew there was some bad shit, I knew Daisy was into a lot of it, but… I thought it balanced out. [WEAKLY] … I thought we were good. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I know how that feels.

Since he also had to face the reality that the Archives team hadn’t really been doing “good” either, although he had tried to cling to the idea:

(MAG150) MELANIE: Because this place is evil, Jon! And so… doing this job… ARCHIVE: [LOUD EXHALE] MELANIE: Helping it out… even in small ways, i–is in some way… evil too! Every time we try to use it to do good, it just seems to make everything worse, and… and I will not be a part of that anymore. ARCHIVIST: What about The Unknowing? We, we saved the world! MELANIE: Did we? I… I mean, I–I think it was the right thing to do, but how many people were killed to do it? We, we weren’t even a neutral party; we did it as agents of The Eye, because Elias told us to. ARCHIVIST: An–and then you put him in jail! MELANIE: Martin put him there. And, and–and he’s still doing harm.

(With the additional fact that Jon had indeed saved Melanie and Daisy, but had attacked five people during the season; that The Unknowing would have failed anyway; and that ultimately, a lot of Jon’s “good” actions had also marked him as a preparation to Jonah’s ritual.)

Re: Jon’s situation, it’s the same thing with Basira’s declaration about caring:

(MAG178) MARTIN: [LOUDLY] Enough, enough! Someone has died! Show some respect. Or don’t you care? BASIRA: [INCENSED] Of course I fucking care! … [QUIETER] That’s the problem. MARTIN: I… I don’t understand.

(MAG152) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … When does it stop? HELEN: What? ARCHIVIST: The guilt… The misery… All the others I’ve met, they’ve been… cold. Cruel. They’ve enjoyed what they do. When does The Eye… make me monstrous?

It had been Jon’s “problem”, too: how he was conscious and aware of the suffering he caused, and how he had to live with it, wasn’t okay with it. I really like how it feels like, finally, after season 4, Basira is able to participate in a conversation where they’re opening up, talking in good faith, trying to understand each other and… not hurt each other anymore? How they can relate, or just listen?

- I’m back to sobbing about Jon and Daisy’s relationship in season 4 because:

(MAG178) BASIRA: [SHAKY] … You knew her. She was trying to be better…! ARCHIVIST: She was. But she never asked me to forgive her. BASIRA: Forgive her? ARCHIVIST: … I’ve been scared, terrified for my life so many times these last few years, but I’ve never, not once, felt so horribly, abjectly powerless as when she… took me into that forest to kill me. I’ll never forget it. MARTIN: … You never said. ARCHIVIST: It’s not easy to talk about. MARTIN: Oh, Jon… BASIRA: … And would you have? Forgiven her? ARCHIVIST: No… But she never asked me. She knew she had no right. [SILENCE]

… It’s still “aouch”, but not surprising: Daisy had been terrifying in MAG091, absolutely hammering in that Jon’s life was in her hands, that she had decided who and what he was and what he deserved. It had been a very hard scene, cruel and violent, a demonstration of what Daisy could do (and had done)… and I really don’t feel like it negates the moments she and Jon shared in season 4, it mostly just casts another dimension on it? How Jon was a bit tense and awkward around her, and slowly mellowed down:

(MAG133) DAISY: You sure? ARCHIVIST: No, uh, it’s, hum. It’s fine. DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy. ARCHIVIST: I–I understand. Ho–honestly, er, I’d actually appreciate your insights, er, for this one, just… You know, keep quiet during the statement and that. DAISY: Sure. I, I can do quiet. ARCHIVIST: Right. Er, oh, do you want a chair? DAISY: No. ARCHIVIST: Oh. Okay.

(MAG136) MELANIE: W–well, I’ve kind of got to… uhm. I’ve got somewhere to be. Do you mind if, if… she hangs around, with… ARCHIVIST: Er… I suppose… Not at all. She’s very welcome. […] Are you alright? DAISY: Asked me that already. ARCHIVIST: Right. Sorry. DAISY: I didn’t ask her. To do that. ARCHIVIST: I–it–it’s fine. […] DAISY: Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices – we all made ours. Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming? ARCHIVIST: I d–… I… [SIGH] … yeah? Okay. DAISY: Melanie’s out, but I’ll go get Basira. ARCHIVIST: Is she… W–will she want to join us? DAISY: If she doesn’t, I’ll rip her throat out. ARCHIVIST: Uh… DAISY: It’s a joke, Jon. ARCHIVIST: … oh. Hahah…! Yes… Uh, I–I’ll get my coat.

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: The others are doing… better, I think. Basira’s busy doing research for something secretive, unsurprisingly. But she seems to be adjusting to, uh… the new Daisy. I actually like Daisy now, which is a… really weird feeling.

(MAG153) ARCHIVIST: Are you alright? DAISY: [BREATHLESS] Don’t touch me. ARCHIVIST: Christ, he was right, I, I didn’t… When did you get so thin? DAISY: I’m not, it’s fine. ARCHIVIST: … It’s The Hunt, isn’t it? Without it– DAISY: I’m fine. Just haven’t been hungry. I’m strong enough. ARCHIVIST: Clearly. […] Even so, if it’s having this much of an effect on you– DAISY: I’m not going back. I can’t let it in again. ARCHIVIST: But it– … What if it kills you? DAISY: [CHORTLE] Always said I was dedicated to justice…! ARCHIVIST: Daisy! It’s not… You can’t think like that. DAISY: Jon. Do you have any idea how much damage you can do if you’re a police officer who wants to hurt people? How much the system will protect you? ARCHIVIST: [SHARP INHALE] DAISY: I managed to keep most of it from Basira, but… ARCHIVIST: That wasn’t you, that was The Hunt! DAISY: … [SIGH] We were the same. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … You’d never known anything different. [SILENCE] DAISY: Because I never wanted to. All that time trapped was good for one thing: thinking. And I did a lot of it. I’ve made my choice.

I feel like… there is a form of deep respect from Jon, when he explained how Daisy didn’t ask for forgiveness – because it proved, in a way, that Daisy was very aware that the harm she had done was too huge to be forgiven, and that she couldn’t ask that from him (and that it might be a reason why Jon accepted to get closer with her in the first place: because she wasn’t lying when she said that she now understood how terrible she had been). We’ve seen, however, how Daisy was quick to apologise:

(MAG132) DAISY: [CRIES OF PAIN] I’m, I’m sorry… I’m sorry Jon… I’m sorry…

(MAG142) MARTIN: I know. [PAUSE] Not nice being interrogated, is it? DAISY: I… [EXHALE] Oh. MARTIN: Yeah. [SILENCE] DAISY: [INHALE] I’m sorry, Martin. MARTIN: It’s alright. Wasn’t you. [INHALE] Not really. DAISY: No, it was. I hate… a lot of what I did back then; doesn’t mean I’m not… responsible for it, doesn’t mean it… wasn’t me.

But indeed: never asked to be forgiven. And it might strike a very personal chord for Jon, since… he knows, first-hand, how it is to not be forgiven:

(MAG119) TIM: Jon, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can… ARCHIVIST: [FAINTLY AND FAR] Tim…? TIM: I don’t forgive you. But thank you for this.

(If I remember correctly, the only time Jon had asked to be forgiven had been to the assistants through the tape recorder, when threatened by the Not!Them and panicking. But, same as Daisy: afterwards, he said “sorry”, and didn’t ask for it.)

- There is another thing, not mentioned but hard to forget if we’re talking about Daisy’s victims, including Jon: what about Jon’s? What about the statement-givers who were plagued by the nightmares, and specifically the ones he attacked knowing the harm that he would do to them? We’re exploring the harm Daisy caused to her victims, I wonder if we’re heading towards what Jon did to these people, too… (Are they waiting at the Panopstitute or the Archives, since it’s “Jon’s domain”? He used to terrorise them through the nightmare zoo, and had claimed them for Beholding: but in this new world, he doesn’t sleep anymore. It would feel logical that… they’re still trapped and victimised by The Eye as of now.)

- Early season, Jon had really felt like Virgil leading Dante (Martin) through the circles of Hell, and there is a bit of that with Basira too! Except that it’s not a didactic exploration of divine retribution/punishment, but… precisely, it is about how the “punishments” were the problems, how nobody was inherently unsalvable (or even, how everyone was plain pushed towards misery because of a biased repressive system)? There is still that idea of guiding Basira, both physically and mentally, through a terrible and hard journey, to make her able to see the reality of the world and reach her goal… (and that makes Daisy “Beatrice”. Who is… already dead TT__TT)

- From MAG163 to MAG177 (excluding MAG167, which was Jon&Martin taking a break and Jon giving the statements about the Archives during Gertrude’s tenure), we crossed through all the Fears present in Jonah’s invocation, minus Beholding itself and plus Extinction. MAG178’s was explicitly labelled as The Flesh; although it was another aspect from Jared’s garden, it’s still a “repeat”. I would infer that, either Jon&Martin’s journey has been set aside and put on hold right now (since they’re focusing on finding Daisy), and they now will be able to reach the Panopticon as soon as they’re done with this current quest… either no, going through one domain of each Fear wasn’t the point of Jon&Martin’s journey to reach the Panopticon, and it is something else. Since they left the cabin, Jon had mentioned multiple times that their journey wasn’t a purely physical one, that there was a meaning underneath it:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: Geography doesn’t work anymore. Space… doesn’t work. MARTIN: … All right. So what does that mean? ARCHIVIST: It means the journey will be the journey, regardless of how we choose to make it. […] You see that tower, way off in the distance? MARTIN: Yeah. [PAUSE] [SIGH] It’s watching us, isn’t it? [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: The Panopticon and the Institute. Merged into something entirely new. MARTIN: Wha–, what? No, th–there’s, there’s no way we could see it from here. We, we must still be a hundred miles from the border, never mind London! ARCHIVIST: You could see that tower from anywhere on Earth. And it can see you. And if you walk towards it, eventually you’ll get there. But you have to go through everything in-between.

(MAG164) MARTIN: How much further do we still need to go? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: A long way. Through many dark and awful places… […] MARTIN: Are we safe, traveling like this? ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, sort of, we’re… I don’t know how to phrase it, we’re… something between a pilgrim and a moth. We can walk through these little worlds of terror, watching them; separate, and untouched.

(MAG165) MARTIN: But. You said we needed to go through these places. … Is that even going to work here? ARCHIVIST: Uh… [EXHALE] We need to go through them… metaphorically. MARTIN: Mm… ! ARCHIVIST: Psychologically, we need to… “experience” them.

(MAG177) ARCHIVIST: She was here, but the corridors of this place are… Rushing isn’t going to close the distance faster, it’s more about how we choose to move through these domains rather than our speed. BASIRA: What does that mean? MARTIN: I’ve been with him the whole way and I still don’t know. ARCHIVIST: It means we’ll reach her quicker if you stop tearing off, and let me concentrate on finding a proper path through this place. […] BASIRA: [ANGRY] I told you not to look in my head! ARCHIVIST: I didn’t. And I won’t. But you can’t hunt a monster that you refuse to see.

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: That wasn’t a question. It was an instruction, we can’t… move on until you do. MARTIN: Jon, what are you getting at? ARCHIVIST: This isn’t just a journey through spaces. […] We aren’t finished here. […] I told you before, we can’t hunt a monster you refuse to see.

What is Jon’s and/or Martin’s journey? Basira has to learn to see/acknowledge the monster in order to hunt it; what is the mental process that Jon and/or Martin have to go through in order to be able to reach the Panopticon again? Is it about guilt, about their active responsibility (vs. what wasn’t their fault)? Is it about the line between victims and culprits not being that simple to establish, and them being unequipped to judge? Is it about their own fears?

- It felt like Basira made a lot of progress in this episode. She finally opened up and admitted how turning a blind eye had made her complicit. She implied that she had indeed tried to flee the responsibility of having to kill Daisy:

(MAG178) BASIRA: [QUIET] … I really am going to have to kill her, aren’t I? ARCHIVIST: There’s no way to bring her back. Not any more. At this point, if I tried to take away her fear… it would destroy her anyway. BASIRA: Am I even going to be able to? ARCHIVIST: Yes. BASIRA: And she stays dead? ARCHIVIST: In this case… yes. MARTIN: What about the powers? ARCHIVIST: Dream logic remember? She won’t come back. Trust me. BASIRA: … Does she want me to kill her? ARCHIVIST: She asked you to, didn’t she? BASIRA: No, I mean, right now. Is she suffering? ARCHIVIST: … No. Right now, she’s… She’s happy. MARTIN: [DEJECTED SIGH]

* Before this episode, Basira would probably have been unable to do it. Jon’s certainty contrasts with what he used to say about it:

(MAG164) MARTIN: What’s Basira going to do? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: She… thinks she’s going to kill Daisy. Like she promised. [STATIC DECREASES] But she’s conflicted. MARTIN: And will she? ARCHIVIST: I–I don’t know, th–the future, th–that’s… that’s not something I can see.

So it feels like he, too, thinks that she’s now ready.

* I was wondering about whether or not Jon would be able to do anything to save Daisy with his powers: I was mostly waiting for him to explain whether he could or couldn’t help, I’m fine with this explanation (which makes sense in context). It also strikes me that… he had probably been mourning her for a while during that journey:

(MAG164) MARTIN: And Daisy? [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: Bestial. Brutal. [STATIC DECREASES] [INHALE] Carving her way through the domains of other Powers, following the scent of blood. … Oh, Daisy, I’m sorry…

(MAG175) ARCHIVIST: Basira and Daisy. We’re close. MARTIN: Wait, what? Wait, really? B– Th–that’s brilliant! What are we waiting for, let’s go! ARCHIVIST: Uh, y–yeah, i–it’s… It’s not… it’s not going to be easy, things aren’t… good.

The fact that, despite Daisy’s murder attempt and the fact that it deeply traumatised Jon, they were able to form that friendship, feels so fragile and precious at the same time? Jon didn’t want to lose her. He’s not allowing her or letting her die because it feels like a fair punishment or the only way to deal with Daisy; it really feels like… it’s to honour Daisy’s last wish, as a person who wanted to be better and who got caught up by The Hunt.

* I’m a bit more curious about Jon explaining that Daisy would stay dead because of “dream-logic”: is it because of Jon’s own feelings influencing the world (if he feels like she’s dead for real, then she is)? Is it because, as long as Basira goes through that inner journey, killing someone in these circumstances can grant a “permanent” death unlike the domains? Is it because of their connection to The Eye…?

* é_è Basira’s last questions about what Daisy currently wanted broke my heart… and Jon’s answers did, too. It really feels like “Daisy” truly died in MAG158, uh? That what matters is what Daisy wanted while she was still herself, even though the beast she turned into is “happy” in this state. (And it requires a bit of faith: who is the real Daisy, which wish should be respected? The beast happy to hunt or kill? Or the assistant who was sorry about the harm she caused, withering while trying to “listen to the quiet”?

* Martin’s dejected sigh said a lot… Until now, he was mostly optimistic about the possibility of finding their “friends” back, of helping them. I don’t think he had envisioned that… no, Jon couldn’t save Daisy, could only “help” her by helping Basira to respect her last wish. (Martin was mostly withdrawn from that last conversation, and… yeah, it might have been a lot to internalise for him, too. Jon seems to have borne that knowledge for a while; it might even have contributed to his perception that he couldn’t improve the general situation whatsoever? While Martin, who was lacking the keys, had kept hoping that they could… do something good. Killing avatars, saving the children, helping their friends, maybe getting Daisy back. I wonder if the current circumstances are making him more susceptible to reach for Annabelle or answer her call a next time, since she had offered her “help” and Martin has been realising, lately, how powerless they are…)

- This episode was a Lot of processing and of sadness, and that last note…

(MAG178) BASIRA: Killing her won’t undo any of it. But… that’s not the point. ARCHIVIST: No one gets what they deserve. Not in this place. They just get whatever hurts them the most! … Even me.

* Killing Daisy will be hard, and indeed. It won’t even change the harm she caused, won’t change the apocalypse. It won’t even be a matter of “retribution” or “justice”; but I’m glad that Basira is aware of that already, and that “the point” lies elsewhere. In this context, it’s really about respecting Daisy’s choice and what she wanted, to allow her to escape The Hunt one last time – even if it means killing her, and to prevent what she became to cause more harm. It’s about Daisy. (Which requires, to reach her, to go through what she had done: the person she had wronged and whose story had been hidden until now.)

* … I really loved Jon’s sad insight about this world. It is an unfair world, an unfair system, quite often echoing what the old world was: Daisy’s victims were, after all, already crushed and pressured by an unfair society, already pursued by their own fears (MAG177: “it’s the worry that everything is, is awful, and it’s actually… your fault. That, that you made it up […]. What, you think he ended up in Wonderland House at random? We’re just going to ignore it, and write him off as a ‘nasty piece of work’?”; and it’s meaningful, in the same way, that in this episode, Isabelle Moran was found in this factory, where people are pressured and pushed around and ultimately labelled as “useless”).

* I still really wonder what all this means about Jonah. He was initially afraid to die, or to be subjected to a different apocalypse, so is he also a victim of “whatever hurts him the most” in this new world…? (I still really wonder how Jon will behave in front of Elias. We’ve seen, again and again, how labelling someone/something as a “monster” doesn’t cover the whole reality of it: the “criminals” were mostly dragged down by society, the cruel “avatars” had often been preyed upon when they were vulnerable… I can still dig Jonah as TheWorstTM, the selfish asshole who doomed the world for his own benefit; but I also feel like it would be very in synch with this season to… mostly have Jon spitting to his face about how pitiful and afraid he had been, and how fear had motivated his actions way more than he thought?)

* What is “what hurts Basira the most”, then? Is it to have to kill Daisy? To see and acknowledge their past actions? I wonder what will happen to her next: will she be pulled back in into a domain? Will she be spared because of Jon’s presence, or because of her connection to The Eye because she’s still an assistant? (I’m thinking again about the possibility of Jon’s victims being in the Panopticon right now: the assistants were protected from the nightmares once they had signed the contract… but Martin, Basira, Melanie and Georgie had all given their statements to Jon. Would they happen to all be journeying towards his domains in a way, because they belong there because of the statements they gave…?)

* Big question being, of course… what is “what hurts Jon the most”. Is it the guilt of having launched the apocalypse and having to benefit from it despite his disgust (he’s not hungry anymore, he’s aware that it does feel good in a way that he hates)? Is it to have to be a passive voyeur in this new world? Is it to lose his friends, first with Daisy? Is it The Web dancing around Martin? Is it something he knows about their journey or about the Panopticon, and doesn’t want to tell Martin yet…?

- You could really see Basira’s progression through the episode, as she dealt with how Jon was leading the way:

(MAG178) BASIRA: … You’re sure she came through here? ARCHIVIST: Have I steered you wrong so far? BASIRA: I don’t know, do I? We haven’t actually found her yet. ARCHIVIST: We’re getting closer. BASIRA: Great. […] ARCHIVIST: Great. Well, in that case, shall we move on? BASIRA: After you. ARCHIVIST: … Right. […] BASIRA: … Can we move on, now? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Yes. I believe we can. This way.

From being distrustful of Jon to… being way more humble about it, and accepting that he knows what he’s doing and that it’s in her interest, too. From being suspicious and defensive, to cautious and strategic, to confiding and relying on him.

- Overall, I’m “!!” because this episode… managed to sell me on Daisy’s death, while I was really dubious about it?

I was pre-emptively a bit disappointed about the possibility of Daisy coming back as a Hunt beast just to get killed, because I felt that it was a bit pointless to make it drag for so long, while she… could have died on her terms in MAG158 instead. But here, where to reach Daisy, in order to fulfil her promise, Basira has to see, process and acknowledge the harm Daisy had caused and that she had herself enabled? It works for me! It finally unlocks Basira’s own development, that I was hoping for; it’s sad as hell; and it’s not portrayed as Daisy’s punishment or retribution. It’s about both acknowledging the harm and damage Daisy had caused (as the process to be able to catch up to her), and about respecting Daisy as an individual who was capable of growth, exercised it, was aware of the wrong she had done and firmly owned up to it, and didn’t want to return to that life – but was forced to by a power too big and crushing, and circumstances playing against her. It’s not done as an act of hate or revenge, or because Daisy’s crimes are too heavy for her to be allowed to live. It’s not a death sentence. It’s both about acknowledging Daisy’s crimes and how she had wrecked people’s lives, how she had been allowed and enabled to unleash her violence and unfairness, how Basira had willingly decided to ignore most of Daisy’s actions, and it’s because Daisy didn’t want to be a “sadistic predator” again, and asked Basira to stop her, respecting the fact that Daisy had improved as a person (to the point that she knew she couldn’t ask for “forgiveness”). So, I’m relieved about how things are heading: it’s sad as fuck, I’m going to be miserable, but so far, things sound incredibly satisfying, narratively?

(We know that The Eye might influence Jon to only see the worse or more painful side of things, so I’m not entirely ruling out that there could be a surprise, Martin doing something, or Annabelle, or Georgie&Melanie appearing with a solution? But I doubt it: I’m satisfied with the explanations given, how we’re prepared to say goodbye to Daisy, how respectful it is both of her victims and of her awareness of the harm she had caused, leading to her decision to be better… So, really, I’m fine. Crying in advance but FINE.)

MAG179’s title screams “Basira!” (but could technically apply to Annabelle or Helen, or Jon himself…). I’m not sure Daisy is getting killed this episode, but we might get a whiff of her? Or a cliff-hanger about her towards the end?

Domain-wise, mm… Could be a pause like MAG167, could be Hunt or Slaughter, Corruption? (It does feel like an anti-Lonely title, mostly!)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #tma season 5 #mag178 #tma liveblog #long post/#tma spoilers/#the magnus archives

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comicteaparty · 6 years ago

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June 15th-June 21st, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from June 15th, 2019 to June 21st, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

Describe your comic’s protagonist. Why should we as an audience care about them and their goals?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Technically I have five protagonists in Court of Roses http://courtofroses.thecomicseries.com/, but I can focus on the main one; Merlow is simply a wandering minstrel who, despite fighting some inner demons, just wants to bring laughter and song everywhere he goes. He is passionate and loves his line of work, and finds the beauty in all expressions in music, and, in turn, in life and in people. His friendly and sincere approach to everyone is what helps bring him and the other four main bards together. Without spoiling too much, once they begin to travel together, he'll be the unofficial leader and the glue between them all.

keii4ii

HoK is about heartbreaks that develop quietly, between people who do genuinely care about each other. The main example of such heartbreaks is feeling abandoned when you need their support more than ever. A lot of us have been through that, myself included. There are countless variations of that experience; the specific variations that I know firsthand, I've mixed them around and given to Ethan and Danbi. That's why their story speaks to my soul, the bruised part of it. And maybe it will speak to yours, too, for the same reasons.

deo101

Millennium's http://millennium.thecomicseries.com/ protagonist, Sage, is a kindhearted, southern farmer who has been thrown into a lot of bad situations he could never understand or prepare for, but always approaches with as much love as he can. I guess we root for him because we, too, want to see the best in things and have that kind of positivity work out.

Respheal

Conan of Galebound http://www.galebound.com/ is a pretty typical farmboy, except he just learned that he's a Hidden Backup Prince, that he has the power to command Magicians, that he's an assassination target, his kidnapper/protector is probably also an assassin, and the literal ocean called him "far worse"--whatever that means. He's had a rough couple of days. I like to think he's relatable and ultimately a good person. At first, his goal was just to get back home, but then he made a terrible mistake with his newly-discovered power. Immediately he takes responsibility for his actions, seeking to learn more about this power so he doesn't hurt anyone else and maybe even help against those using the same power for cruel reasons. Once he feels responsible for something, he tends to through his entire self into taking care of or fixing a problem--sometimes to the point of being a bit self-sacrificial about it. His overall arc, though, is really about following your heart, and recognizing what you really want to do versus what you're doing out of a sense of obligation--or sometimes discovering that your "obligations" and what you want are one and the same.

Desnik

My comic's protagonist (http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/) is actually not the warlock...it's a small bird named Margo who is an animate drawing. She hops out of an illuminated manuscript one day and discovers the real world is very brutal and harsh. Through a series of buddy adventures with a knight, and demonic crime-solving with a cleric, Margo does eventually choose to be part of the real world, because she belongs with her friends...although she secretly desires to be human, as well(edited)

Desnik

argh, I put in the wrong askawarlock...haha, well, updated my urlwith dashes

Mharz

The Angel with Black Wings http://blackwings.mharz.com/ or Big Sis as what me and my readers call her at this point is a sweet and very caring towards people. She's like a motherly figure of some sort. (The one who will tuck you in bed and bake you loads of cookies) However she's heavily plagued by mental illness (feeling extreme guilt and blaming herself on anything bad that happens around her, thinking she doesn't deserve anything good in life, and inner voices that seems to be getting stronger as time passes.) Even tho she thinks she doesn't deserve it, deep down there is a tiny glimmer of hope that one day, she'd be forgiven. Altho her mental issues are amplified, I think most of us can relate to have felt guilt about something we did/didn't do and dwelled and ruminated on it for so long, having uncontrollable thoughts and inner voices that tells us that we are worthless, we are horrible people, everyone hates us and we don't deserve anything. I personally on that boat and slowly working on getting better. So I wrote my comics in the hope whoever reads my comics can make them feel better in some way and find that glimmer of hope. wheeze (edited)

MJ Massey

Emily (http://welcometoblackball.com/) is pretty much a passive doormat. She starts out just doing whatever her parents say and taking the path of least resistence until she feels she can't, that she has to take action to solve her sister's murder. But she has no patience for the shenanigans and games of others, always taking the most direct path she can. Some would say this makes her a concise person, but in her mind she's just doing what's easiest. She ends becoming more assertive and independent over time until she can finally make her own life choices with confidence. A good bit of her insecurities come from being very ill with measles a few years ago, and having to have her hair shaved off. It never grew back quite the same as it was, and her parents are a little more on her case because they want her to marry well in society.

kayotics

I think on paper, Toivo (https://ingress-comic.com/) sounds awful. He’s a wizard professor, single father, serial romantic, and unlucky in his adventures. He’s anxious and a little mean and obnoxious. He’s snarky and kind of an asshole and makes mistakes and doesn’t consider other people’s emotions, so he makes things hard for other people. He orchestrates most of the problems he has to solve. But i think that’s why he’s fun? He’s a good person at heart but he isn’t perfect and that’s the type of character I like to read about.

Desnik

@kayotics He seems like a genuinely fun character to read about. I like characters with flaws that seem to make sense with the story being told

kayotics

@Desnik I like to think he is! One of my favorite comic series is Ranma 1/2, and I think that series fundamentally taught me that you can have characters who are objectively not great people and still likable.

MJ Massey

I've enjoyed reading his misadventures so far. I think that since he usually learns some sort of lesson from his misadventures it makes him really endearing to balance out his flaws

NeilKapit

Lamar Anderson, the current focus of We Are The Wyrecats (http://wyrecats.com/) is a superhero of unyielding principle, to the point of self-destructive fanaticism. He’s a mute genius with cerebral palsy, who has difficulty walking without his hero armor. The Wyrecats were the first and only time he felt like he had friends, and K.A. was his first crush (reciprocated, though neither of them acted on it). When she was put in a coma and the team disbanded, he basically started a one man war against the US government that secretly initiated the plot (long story). Five years later, with K.A. waking up, he’s been questioning his approach, which involved stockpiling weapons and hiring mercenaries to wage guerilla war upon his country’s intelligence agencies. Since K.A.’s hardly in the best mental health at the moment, Lamar’s trying to do his best by her to make a world she’d want to live in.

snuffysam

Mizuki Sato is the protagonist of Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R (http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/). She's a small woman from a small farm town, going on adventures through a strange world. Mizuki's main draw is that she's entertaining to watch. She constantly back-sasses & annoys the people she encounters on her journey (to be fair, some of those people are Taci Ramino) - and when action happens, Mizuki is ahead of the game, out-strategizing her enemies and pushing past her own limits. She may be a bit reckless with her own health, but to her it's worth it if she's helping other people in any way. Mizuki's main goal in life is to find love - someone she could get married to someday, specifically. But... that often doesn't work out for her. Every time Mizuki falls for someone, she loses them to someone else - or worse, she ends up in a short-lived relationship filled with endless put-downs. The people Mizuki encounters in her daily life enjoy the fact that she's around. They like the way she entertains them, the way she helps them out, the way she... makes them happy. But, at least from Mizuki's perspective, nobody she meets actually loves her in any meaningful way. anyway funney muscle lady shoot rainbow lasers woo

AntiBunny

My comic AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ has multiple protagonists depending on what angle we're seeing the world through, but the original protagonist Pooky Bunny can be best described as a gender ambiguous depressed mess who's trying to become a better person. Why should you care? When you first meet Pooky their depression is clearly in control. As the story unfolds in the past you start to see where that depression comes from, and as it unfolds in the present you'll see Pooky learning to let others in, slowly moving to become a better person. Pooky is not OK, and realizes that, but also sees a way forward. So if you want to see someone who is initially consumed by their flaws and who eventually realizes them and works to overcome them, then maybe you'll care about Pooky. What are their goals? Pooky has both what I'd call external goals, that is things they want to accomplish in the real world, and internal ones, that is how they'd like to change as a person. Externally Pooky is all about unraveling mysteries. Being a reporter Pooky often is chasing a story. Internally Pooky's goals change. Early on it's little more than subsistence. Struggling to get by from one day to the next. Though as the story progresses as Pooky says "I'm trying to be a better person." Pooky goes from being someone who's dead inside to coming alive again. You'll see that trauma in Nailbat that started this, and in The Gritty City Stories you'll see the recovery. It's all about the fall, bottoming out, and climbing back up. Essentially that's Pooky.

Attila Polyák

Anne is the protagonist and mostly the perspective character of Tales of Midgard: The Age of Magic https://talesofmidgard.com/comic/book-1-cover-page/. She's a knight and a mage and more or less she's a well established person with a generally (currently) good life. She's definitely not someone special. Magic is very common and accessible to basically everyone and being a knight in a world full of magic is also not really extraordinary. So why should you care about someone who's not special? That's exactly the point! Most fantasy stories are set in fantastic worlds yet the main cast, and the protagonists especially, are still special. Even compared to the world. Not here. This story is the story of the everyman. The true everyman, not a chosen one, not someone who is surrounded by prophecies left and right, just your regular normal person. Of course we're still in a fantasy world so what's regular to the characters is still fantastic for the readers, and these "everydays" are still adventures compared to the normal lives most of us live in real life. Plus... Just because she not special she and everyone else in the story can still, just like in real life, be swooped up into events that are larger than life and seeing normal people cope with the extraordinary is always more interesting than extraordinary people playing their own game.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #comic tea party #ctp #creator babble

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wickedbananas · 7 years ago

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The MozCon 2018 Final Agenda

Posted by Trevor-Klein

MozCon 2018 is just around the corner — just over six weeks away — and we're excited to share the final agenda with you today. There are some familiar faces, and some who'll be on the MozCon stage for the first time, with topics ranging from the evolution of searcher intent to the increasing importance of local SEO, and from navigating bureaucracy for buy-in to cutting the noise out of your reporting.

We're also thrilled to announce this year's winning pitches for our six MozCon Community Speaker slots! If you're not familiar, each year we hold several shorter speaking slots, asking you all to submit your best pitches for what you'd like to teach everyone at MozCon. The winners — all members of the Moz Community — are invited to the conference alongside all our other speakers, and are always some of the most impressive folks on the stage. Check out the details of their talks below, and congratulations to this year's roster!

Still need your tickets? We've got you covered, but act fast — they're over 70% sold!

Pick up your ticket to MozCon!

The Agenda

Monday, July 9

8:30–9:30 am

Breakfast and registration

Doors to the conference will open at 8:00 for those looking to avoid registration lines and grab a cup of coffee (or two) before breakfast, which will be available starting at 8:30.

9:30–9:45 am

Welcome to MozCon 2018! Sarah Bird

Moz CEO Sarah Bird will kick things off by sharing everything you need to know about your time at MozCon 2018, including conference logistics and evening events.

She'll also set the tone for the show with an update on the state of the SEO industry, illustrating the fact that there's more opportunity in it now than there's ever been before.

9:50–10:20 am

The Democratization of SEO Jono Alderson

How much time and money we collectively burn by fixing the same kinds of basic, "binary," well-defined things over and over again (e.g., meta tags, 404s, URLs, etc), when we could be teaching others throughout our organizations not to break them in the first place?

As long as we "own" technical SEO, there's no reason (for example) for the average developer to learn it or care — so they keep making the same mistakes. We proclaim that others are doing things wrong, but by doing so we only reinforce the line between our skills and theirs.

We need to start giving away bits of the SEO discipline, and technical SEO is probably the easiest thing for us to stop owning. We need more democratization, education, collaboration, and investment in open source projects so we can fix things once, rather than a million times.

10:20–10:50 am

Mobile-First Indexing or a Whole New Google Cindy Krum

The emergence of voice-search and Google Assistant is forcing Google to change its model in search, to favor their own entity understanding or the world, so that questions and queries can be answered in context. Many marketers are struggling to understand how their website and their job as an SEO or SEM will change, as searches focus more on entity-understanding, context and action-oriented interaction. This shift can either provide massive opportunities, or create massive threats to your company and your job — the main determining factor is how you choose to prepare for the change.

10:50–11:20 am

AM Break

11:30–11:50 am

It Takes a Village: 2x Your Paid Search Revenue by Smashing Silos Community speaker: Amy Hebdon

Your company's unfair advantage to skyrocketing paid search revenue is within your reach, but it's likely outside the control of your paid search team. Good keywords and ads are just a few cogs in the conversion machine. The truth is, the success of the entire channel depends on people who don't touch the campaigns, and may not even know how paid search works. We'll look at how design, analysis, UX, PM and other marketing roles can directly impact paid search performance, including the most common issues that arise, and how to immediately fix them to improve ROI and revenue growth.

11:50 am–12:10 pm

The #1 and Only Reason Your SEO Clients Keep Firing You Community speaker: Meredith Oliver

You have a kick-ass keyword strategy. Seriously, it could launch a NASA rocket; it's that good. You have the best 1099 local and international talent on your SEO team that working from home and an unlimited amount of free beard wax can buy. You have a super-cool animal inspired company name like Sloth or Chinchilla that no one understands, but the logo is AMAZING. You have all of this, yet, your client turnover rate is higher than Snoop Dogg's audience on an HBO comedy special. Why? You don't talk to your clients. As in really communicate, teach them what you know, help them get it, really get it, talk to them. How do I know? I was you. In my agency's first five years we churned and burned through clients faster than Kim Kardashian could take selfies. My mastermind group suggested we *proactively* set up and insist upon a monthly review meeting with every single client. It was a game-changer, and we immediately adopted the practice. Ten years later we have a 90% client retention rate and more than 30 SEO clients on retainer.

12:10–12:30 pm

Why "Blog" Is a Misnomer for Our 2018 Content Strategy Community speaker: Taylor Coil

At the end of 2017, we totally redesigned our company's blog. Why? Because it's not really a blog anymore - it's an evergreen collection of traffic and revenue-generating resources. The former design catered to a time-oriented strategy surfacing consistently new posts with short half-lives. That made sense when we started our blog in 2014. Today? Not so much. In her talk, Taylor will detail how to make the perspective shift from "blog" to "collection of resources," why that shift is relevant in 2018's content landscape, and what changes you can make to your blog's homepage, nav, and taxonomy that reflect this new perspective.

12:30–2:00 pm

Lunch

2:05–2:35 pm

Near Me or Far: How Google May Be Deciding Your Local Intent For You Rob Bucci

In August 2017, Google stated that local searches without the "near me" modifier had grown by 150% and that searchers were beginning to drop geo-modifiers — like zip code and neighborhood — from local queries altogether. But does Google still know what searchers are after?

For example: the query [best breakfast places] suggests that quality takes top priority; [breakfast places near me] indicates that close proximity is essential; and [breakfast places in Seattle] seems to cast a city-wide net; while [breakfast places] is largely ambiguous.

By comparing non-geo-modified keywords against those modified with the prepositional phrases "near me" and "in [city name]" and qualifiers like "best," we hope to understand how Google interprets different levels of local intent and uncover patterns in the types of SERPs produced.

With a better understanding of how local SERPs behave, SEOs can refine keyword lists, tailor content, and build targeted campaigns accordingly.

2:35–3:05 pm

None of Us Is as Smart as All of Us Lisa Myers

Success in SEO, or in any discipline, is frequently reliant on people's ability to work together. Lisa Myers started Verve Search in 2009, and from the very beginning was convinced of the importance of building a diverse team, then developing and empowering them to find their own solutions.

In this session she'll share her experiences and offer actionable advice on how to attract, develop, and retain the right people in order to build a truly world-class team.

3:05–3:35 pm

PM Break

3:45–4:15 pm

Search-Driven Content Strategy Stephanie Briggs

Google's improvements in understanding language and search intent have changed how and why content ranks. As a result, many SEOs are chasing rankings that Google has already decided are hopeless. Stephanie will cover how this should impact the way you write and optimize content for search, and will help you identify the right content opportunities. She'll teach you how to persuade organizations to invest in content, and will share examples of strategies and tactics she has used to grow content programs by millions of visits.

4:15–4:55 pm

Ranking Is a Promise: Can You Deliver? Dr. Pete Meyers

In our rush to rank, we put ourselves first, neglecting what searchers (and our future customers) want. Google wants to reward sites that deliver on searcher intent, and SERP features are a window into that intent. Find out how to map keywords to intent, understand how intent informs the buyer funnel, and deliver on the promise of ranking to drive results that attract clicks and customers.

7:00–10:00 pm

Kickoff Party

Networking the Mozzy way! Join us for an evening of fun on the first night of the conference (stay tuned for all the details!).

Tuesday, July 10

8:30–9:30 am

Breakfast

9:35–10:15 am

Content Marketing Is Broken and Only Your M.O.M. Can Save You Oli Gardner

Traditional content marketing focuses on educational value at the expense of product value, which is a broken and outdated way of thinking. We all need to sell a product, and our visitors all need a product to improve their lives, but we're so afraid of being seen as salesy that somehow we got lost, and we forgot why our content even exists. We need our M.O.M.s! No, not your actual mother. Your Marketing Optimization Map — your guide to exploring the nuances of optimized content marketing through a product-focused lens.

In this session you'll learn data and lessons from Oli's biggest ever content marketing experiment, and how those lessons have changed his approach to content; a context-to-content-to-conversion strategy for big content that converts; advanced methods for creating "choose your own adventure" navigational experiences to build event-based behavioral profiles of your visitors (using GTM and GA); and innovative ways to productize and market the technology you already have, with use cases your customers had never considered.

10:15–10:45 am

Lies, Damned Lies, and Analytics Russ Jones

Search engine optimization is a numbers game. We want some numbers to go up (links, rankings, traffic, and revenue), others to go down (bounce rate, load time, and budget). Underlying all these numbers are assumptions that can mislead, deceive, or downright ruin your campaigns. Russ will help uncover the hidden biases, distortions, and fabrications that underlie many of the metrics we have come to trust implicitly and from the ashes show you how to build metrics that make a difference.

10:45–11:15 am

AM Break

11:25–11:55 am

The Awkward State of Local Mike Ramsey

You know it exists. You know what a citation is, and have a sense for the importance of accurate listings. But with personalization and localization playing an increasing role in every SERP, local can no longer be seen in its own silo — every search and social marketer should be honing their understanding. For that matter, it's also time for local search marketers to broaden the scope of their work.

11:55 am–12:25 pm

The SEO Cyborg: Connecting Search Technology and Its Users Alexis Sanders

SEO requires a delicate balance of working for the humans you're hoping to reach, and the machines that'll help you reach them. To make a difference in today's SERPs, you need to understand the engines, site configurations, and even some machine learning, in addition to the emotional, raw, authentic connections with people and their experiences. In this talk, Alexis will help marketers of all stripes walk that line.

12:25–1:55 pm

Lunch

2:00–2:30 pm

Email Unto Others: The Golden Rules for Human-Centric Email Marketing Justine Jordan

With the arrival of GDPR and the ease with which consumers can unsubscribe and report spam, it's more important than ever to treat people like people instead of just leads. To understand how email marketing is changing and to identify opportunities for brands, Litmus surveyed more than 3,000 marketers worldwide. Justine will cover the biggest trends and challenges facing email today and help you put the human back in marketing’s most personal — and effective — marketing channel.

2:30–3:00 pm

Your Red-Tape Toolkit: How to Win Trust and Get Approval for Search Work Heather Physioc

Are your search recommendations overlooked and misunderstood? Do you feel like you hit roadblocks at every turn? Are you worried that people don't understand the value of your work? Learn how to navigate corporate bureaucracy and cut through red tape to help clients and colleagues understand your search work — and actually get it implemented. From diagnosing client maturity to communicating where search fits into the big picture, these tools will equip you to overcome obstacles to doing your best work.

3:00–3:30 pm

PM Break

3:40–4:10 pm

The Problem with Content & Other Things We Don't Want to Admit Casie Gillette

Everyone thinks they need content but they don't think about why they need it or what they actually need to create. As a result, we are overwhelmed with poor quality content and marketers are struggling to prove the value. In this session, we'll look at some of the key challenges facing marketers and how a data-driven strategy can help us make better decisions.

4:10–4:50 pm

Excel Is for Rookies: Why Every Search Marketer Needs to Get Strong in BI, ASAP Wil Reynolds

The analysts are coming for your job, not AI (at least not yet). Analysts stopped using Excel years ago; they use Tableau, Power BI, Looker! They see more data than you, and that is what is going to make them a threat to your job. They might not know search, but they know data. I'll document my obsession with Power BI and the insights I can glean in seconds which is helping every single client at Seer at the speed of light. Search marketers must run to this opportunity, as analysts miss out on the insights because more often than not they use these tools to report. We use them to find insights.

Wednesday, July 11

8:30–9:30 am

Breakfast

9:35–10:15 am

Machine Learning for SEOs Britney Muller

People generally react to machine learning in one of two ways: either with a combination of fascination and terror brought on by the possibilities that lie ahead, or with looks of utter confusion and slight embarrassment at not really knowing much about it. With the advent of RankBrain, not even higher-ups at Google can tell us exactly how some things rank above others, and the impact of machine learning on SEO is only going to increase from here. Fear not: Moz's own senior SEO scientist, Britney Muller, will talk you through what you need to know.

10:15–10:45 am

Shifting Toward Engagement and Reviews Darren Shaw

With search results adding features and functionality all the time, and users increasingly finding what they need without ever leaving the SERP, we need to focus more on the forest and less on the trees. Engagement and behavioral optimization are key. In this talk, Darren will offer new data to show you just how tight the proximity radius around searchers really is, and how reviews can be your key competitive advantage, detailing new strategies and tactics to take your reivews to the next level.

10:45–11:15 am

AM Break

11:25–11:45 am

Location-Free Local SEO Community speaker: Tom Capper

Let's talk about local SEO without physical premises. Not the Google My Business kind — the kind of local SEO that job boards, house listing sites, and national delivery services have to reckon with. Should they have landing pages, for example, for "flower delivery in London?"

This turns out to be a surprisingly nuanced issue: In some industries, businesses are ranking for local terms without a location-specific page, and in others local pages are absolutely essential. I've worked with clients across several industries on why these sorts of problems exist, and how to tackle them. How should you figure out whether you need these pages, how can you scale them and incorporate them in your site architecture, and how many should you have for what location types?

11:45 am–12:05 pm

SEO without Traffic: Community speaker: Hannah Thorpe

Answer boxes, voice search, and a reduction in the number of results displayed sometimes all result in users spending more time in the SERPs and less on our websites. But does that mean we should stop investing in SEO?

This talk will cover what metrics we should now care about, and how strategies need to change, covering everything from measuring more than just traffic and rankings to expanding your keyword research beyond just keyword volumes.

12:05–12:25 pm

Tools Change, People Don't: Empathy-Driven Online Marketing Community speaker: Ashley Greene

When everyone else zags, the winners zig. As winners, while your 101+ competitors are trying to automate 'til the cows come home and split test their way to greatness‚ you're zigging. Whether you're B2B or B2C, you're marketing to humans. Real people. Homo sapiens. But where is the human element in the game plan? Quite simply, it has gone missing, which provides a window of opportunity for the smartest marketers.

In this talk, Ashley will provide a framework of simple user interview and survey techniques to build customer empathy and your "voice of customer" playbook. Using real examples from companies like Slack, Pinterest, Intercom, and Airbnb, this talk will help you uncover your customers' biggest problems and pain points; know what, when, and how your customers research (and Google!) a need you solve; and find new sources of information and influencers so you can unearth distribution channels and partnerships.

12:25–1:55 pm

Lunch

2:00–2:30 pm

You Don't Know SEO Michael King

Or maybe, "SEO you don't know you don't know." We've all heard people throw jargon around in an effort to sound smart when they clearly don't know what it means, and our industry of SEO is no exception. There are aspects of search that are acknowledged as important, but seldom actually understood. Michael will save us from awkward moments, taking complex topics like the esoteric components of information retrieval and log-file analysis, pairing them with a detailed understanding of technical implementation of common SEO recommendations, and transforming them into tools and insights we wish we'd never neglected.

2:30–3:00 pm

What All Marketers Can Do about Site Speed Emily Grossman

At this point, we should all have some idea of how important site speed is to our performance in search. The recently announced "speed update" underscored that fact yet again. It isn't always easy for marketers to know where to start improving their site's speed, though, and a lot of folks mistakenly believe that site speed should only be a developer's problem. Emily will clear that up with an actionable tour of just how much impact our own work can have on getting our sites to load quickly enough for today's standards.

3:00–3:30 pm

PM Break

3:40–4:10 pm

Traffic vs. Signal Dana DiTomaso

With an ever-increasing slate of options in tools like Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio, marketers of all stripes are falling prey to the habit of "I'll collect this data because maybe I'll need it eventually," when in reality it's creating a lot of noise for zero signal.

We're still approaching our metrics from the organization's perspective, and not from the customer's perspective. Why, for example, are we not reporting on (or even thinking about, really) how quickly a customer can do what they need to do? Why are we still fixated on pageviews? In this talk, Dana will focus our attention on what really matters.

4:10–4:50 pm

Why Nine out of Ten Marketing Launches Suck (And How to Be the One that Doesn't) Rand Fishkin

More than ever before, marketers are launching things — content, tools, resources, products — and being held responsible for how/whether they resonate with customers and earn the amplification required to perform. But this is hard. Really, really hard. Most of the projects that launch, fail. What separates the wheat from the chaff isn't just the quality of what's built, but the process behind it. In this presentation, Rand will present examples of dismal failures and skyrocketing successes, and dive into what separates the two. You'll learn how anyone can make a launch perform better, and benefit from the power of being "new."

7:00–11:30 pm

MozCon Bash

Join us at Garage Billiards to wrap up the conference with an evening of networking, billiards, bowling, and karaoke with MozCon friends new and old. Don't forget to bring your MozCon badge and US ID or passport.

Grab your ticket today!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2s591vX via IFTTT

#The Moz Blog #Moz #seo

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ais-n · 7 years ago

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Hey Ais! I had a question for you (you’d probably be a millionaire if you had a dollar for every question you got, amirite?) throughout ICoS Boyd went on so many missions and had to do a lot of morally ambiguous things, and I want to know, what kind of mission would the Agency have had to assign him for him to be completely “I will NOT do that, NOPE” under any circumstance? I’ve always wondered that :c

Heyo! ahaha that’d be sweet. change.org petition to get paid per question! Then I’d get to do something fun AND get money to spoil my dog! heck yeah :D

You know, it probably would’ve been super fucked up. I feel like I should put this behind a cut in case of triggers or something, because some of the topics are pretty fucked up, so click below if you want more :) If you can’t see the link to click, go here.

Contains spoilers probably through Fade.

ANSWER BELOW:

So, I feel like rape is one he would refuse. I mean, I should certainly hope so, but then again there were people who worked there who may have let that sort of thing slide if they could come up with a justification for it. Boyd would never be able to justify that to himself, though, so if there was some sort of bizarre valentine mission that came up requiring him to rape someone else he would’ve been like full stop NOPE NO WAY. For him, though, because of his demographics and all that, it ended up being the case where he was the person who was way more likely to be raped for a mission than be expected to rape someone else. As super fucked up as that is.

Torture and then killing. He wouldn’t be able to do that, I don’t think. There’s a scene where he has to torture a guy in China, and it was something that I think everyone would’ve expected him to finish quickly. Hsin thought it would be over soon since the guy would probably give up info right away. In fact when we first talked about that scene, Sonny thought Boyd would probably be in and out given the guy’s personality. But I felt like it would probably take a long time, because Boyd would absolutely, completely and totally NOT want to do it. He would hate every second of it. It would probably make him feel sick to his stomach, it would greatly stretch his ability to feel nothing. He would want to find a way to make it stop, find a way to get the guy to talk so they could both go away safely. You’d think that would mean he’d be in a rush to end it quickly therefore might be harsher from the start but I figured it would have the opposite effect. He would be so hesitant to do something he felt forced to do that he would probably overthink it, overworry, and end up slowing everything down with long pauses in between doing anything in the hopes the psychological pressure would be enough to make the guy talk before he had to hurt him more. But for a guy expecting hardcore torture, that was probably more confusing and frightening than anything, thus probably the two of them ended up stretching out an unpleasant situation because they both hated being in it so severely that they didn’t really know how to interact.

So anyway he absolutely LOATHED doing that, the torture itself, the fact he had to hurt someone for information, and the fact it was all over something he didn’t even believe in. It was all for Di Zhi, not for the Agency even, not for Hsin, not for himself. He was just a pawn in someone else’s game, and so was the guy he tortured. You can see in the chapter how he is really upset by it all but from the moment he’s told he has to do it, to the moment he comes out and is talking to the others in public, he acts unaffected. But the second he’s alone with Hsin, it becomes clear up distraught he is. Then the next scene he finds out the guy was killed by someone else. It doesn’t really come up in narration around there, I don’t think (that I remember anyway), but in all honesty, I think Boyd was super relieved he was killed. Or rather, not relieved the guy died. But now he didn’t have to hurt him anymore, didn’t have to kill him, didn’t have to get more information. He’d steeled himself for another round but I really don’t think even he knew what he would have done. I don’t think he would have killed the guy, honestly. Especially after having just had a conversation with Hsin about retaining a sense of self. He probably would have gotten all the info from him and then told Xiaolian that if she wanted the guy dead that bad they could kill him themselves. But it would’ve been risky to say that, so not having to get stuck in that dilemma was a very small relief in a really stressful day.

I think that’s probably the only time he had to torture someone like that–to my memory, anyway. And I think after that, he would have tried everything to avoid ever having to do it again. The idea of torturing and then ALSO killing someone after torture would be so abhorrent to him he would never want to do it.

btw I don’t think he would’ve wanted to torture and kill animals either, or anything like that. I can’t think of a reason the Agency would have expected it but you never know.

He also would have refused to kill someone he loved or cared about. That would include also refusing to hurt them in some way like torturing them or something.

And after the Aleixo mission, he SUPER didn’t want anything to do with anything that reminded him of it, so he would have wanted to refuse anything to do with Aleixo or others. However, he still might have felt manipulated into doing something that terrified him like that, IF he felt that it was the only way to protect someone he cared about.

I think the main difference between the shitty things he ended up doing and the shitty things he would refuse to do, is primarily who will be hurt the most. If the person most in danger of being hurt is him, or if he feels like he can spare someone he cares about by doing something shitty, he’s more likely to do it. If the person most in danger of being hurt is someone he has to hurt for what he feels like is no reason, or if he’s asked to directly hurt someone he loves, he’s more likely to refuse to do it and take the punishment himself.

Generally speaking, he’d rather be hurt than be someone who hurts others.

Obviously, he did do a lot of things that hurt others in the course of his time as an agent, but after his emotions stopped being so fucked (and to an extent even during when they were), he’s always felt guilt for a lot of those things. There are some things he probably will always regret or wish had happened differently, especially if he feels in retrospect that his actions were unnecessarily hurtful or cruel or prolonged pain when not needed. But a lot of times, even if he had to do a shitty thing, he tried to find some way loophole to make it a little bit less shitty along the way.

Best example I can think of is Patrick Finley… He didn’t think Patrick Finley deserved to die, in fact I’m pretty sure he even thought about how he wished there’d been a Finley who had cared about his own trauma when he was younger. But when he felt pushed into a corner of him having to do it, or someone he cared about being forced to instead, he chose to do it so they wouldn’t have it on their conscience and because if he didn’t, everything else he’d endured until that point would have felt more meaningless. But in the process of killing him, he felt guilt over having to do this and taking away the parent of children, so he gave him time to write a goodbye note so there would be something tangible for his family that would give them some closure in what was staged as a suicide but was a homicide.

But you can also see in that scene that just making gestures like that doesn’t fix the fact this super shitty thing is happening. Finley doesn’t thank him for it. After all, Boyd is still killing him, even if he tried to find a loophole to make it a bit less cruel along the way. I think the more time passed, the more he was confronted by that dissonance, and the more he wanted to avoid it, so the more he decided there were some battles he would choose to fight no matter the consequences. Losing or hurting people he loved was probably the biggest battle he would fight, but also doing to others what he had particularly hated being done to him.

In the realm of the situations he might normally be more willing to cave – where he’s most likely to be hurt instead of someone else – probably the biggest deal breaker for him where he’d most likely be absolutely adamant in refusal would be anything related to drugs. If they asked him to start using Slide again on an undercover mission or if they tried injecting him with something unexpectedly, I think he would completely freak out. There would be no way in hell he would ever want to be under the control of a drug again after he finally got himself back together. Early Fade he would’ve welcomed it because he was still fucked up, but when he later was more stable, that was the thing he would have hated more than almost anything else. So that’s probably one place he would have made a stand for himself, because it was the one place that was too dangerous. He could justify to himself the idea that he could eventually get over all sorts of different trauma, but he knew damn well how vulnerable to Slide he would be.

I feel like Slide/drugs became something he probably ended up hating even more than being held/tied down. And that’s saying a lot, for him.

Maybe there are other circumstances I’m just not thinking of right now… totally possible, especially since I’m a bit sleepy at the moment.

But hopefully that unexpectedly long ass answer is interesting or helpful in some regard, at the very least ^^

#ask ais #icos #in the company of shadows #boyd beaulieu #long post #dude I really thought I'd answer this in like 3 lines #how did I make it so long???#Anonymous

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vacationsoup · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://vacationsoup.com/planning-your-vacation-book-direct-and-save/

Planning your Vacation...Book Direct & Save

Book Direct is simply cutting out the middlemen fees. Simple.

You, the guest, save money when you Book Direct

The Hospitality Owner saves money

You get better, local (not overseas) customer service

The Owner gets better information

You get personalized ideas and help with your vacation, plus support local businesses.

The Owners get to share their pride in their community with visitors

Hotel vs Vacation Rental? Still Book Direct?

Sometimes a hotel is the perfect way to go. Like a quick one night stopover on your way to somewhere else. But when you are coming to the Grand Circle to do the Parks and explore the endless red rock trails and all that Southwestern Utah has to offer, you are gonna need a few days.We are all about the beauty of the Vacation Rental experience.But even Hotels now are educating travelers to Book Direct. From small boutique hotels to large chains like Hilton and Marriot, from Vacation Rental owners to B&B associations, hospitality owners and managers are educating travelers about Book Direct.The Association of Independent Hospitality Professionals has asked travelers to Join The Movement

Hoteliers have joined forces with Vacation Rental owners for #BookDirectDay the first part of every February to help spread awareness through social media. Not just that one day, but every day.We understand when putting considerable $$ down on a vacation we all need assurances. Especially in this day of scammers everywhere we turn. I’m sure you have seen them on social media and the news. We all have cause for concern. So how do you plan your next vacation?

Booking Your Vacation

Most travel accommodation bookings happen in one of two ways.

- You the Traver, look online. The first 2-3 pages of Google will be one of the big OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) and their paid ads, such as VRBO, Airbnb, Homeaway, etc. You find a great place to stay and book through that middleman platform.

- You do a little more research and find a great place to stay and book directly with the owner of that VR (or Vacation Rental) Property. (Go to the bottom of this page to find ideas on how to do that "little more research"!)

Let’s talk about those two differences -

Why Book Direct?

Pricing and Payments - Let’s get the biggie$ out the door first!

Pricing

Straight up - the best price will always be when you book direct – no service fees or commission added on for the middle man!

So here is the deal on why the price varies - Airbnb and VRBO/Homeaway charges each guest a variable service fee on each booking.

- As owners, we can not even tell you what that service fee is going to be. They do not show us. All we know is they have “Algorithms” that determine your fee according to “the current dynamics”

From Airbnb Help Page: “This fee is typically under 13% of the booking subtotal. The fee varies based on a variety of booking factors and is displayed to guests during checkout before they book a reservation."

Great. So most folks can plan on somewhere under 13% in extra service fees from Airbnb.....?

As an owner, I also pay Airbnb an additional 3-5%.

In December 2016, VRBO and HomeAway were both purchased by Expedia for 4 BILLION dollars.Now, Expedia needs to earn back that money. Open your wallet, that commission is coming from you.Prior to 2017 Owners paid a flat rate to Vrbo for listing on their site. Now owners pay a flat rate or a Pay-Per-Booking rate AND our guests get to pay a fee. Don't know how much. From the Vrbo help page “How is the fee calculated? The service fee is a percentage of the total amount of the reservation, excluding taxes and refundable fees. The percentage rate may change from time to time. Generally, the higher the reservation amount, the lower the percentage of service fee.”

Great. So most folks can plan on between 6-12% in extra service fees from Vrbo.....?

As an owner, I also pay Vrbo an additional 8-9%.

Booking.com has no traveler fees, Yay! Oh wait, Booking.com charges owners a 15% commission. I promise you are paying that. Owners must add that commission to your price or they are not going to stay in business.

As an owner, I pay Booking.com 15%

Payments

- The large, OTAs will tell you that theirs is the ONLY safe way to rent a Vacation Rental.

Please rest assured, all of our Credit Card processing is safe and secure, done by Stripe or PayPal. You enter the info and submit on our easy, professional reservation software. We never see your number and only use the most secure portals.Would you rather send a check or Venmo and get a 3% discount? We can do that!Want to split your booking in two separate payments? We can do that.We have even been known to take cash at the door (gasp 😀). Whatever makes you the most comfortable. (After your initial deposit to secure your dates)

Owners do not receive your OTA payment until the day after you check in with Airbnb, and VRBO has recently changed to 3-7 days after you check-in instead of “at time of payment”!? (I promise this has owners on edge, yikes! What are they doing with your/my money all that time?)

Extra Fees

Most homeowners will try really hard to keep all those add-ons to a minimum. There are a few we may not have control over. Taxes or HOA resort fees are a couple. We may have some say over cleaning fees and pet fees, but for us remote hosts, we are in the hands of those good housekeepers that we want to keep.

- The price advertised on the OTAs is SELDOM the price you end up with. And we owners have no control over that! They love to give you an “average” price that often includes high season and low season rates. Plus those ambiguous “Service” fees that mysteriously go up and down….

- Most Short Term Vacation Rentals will charge a separate cleaning fee. Why do they do that and Hotels do not? Argh, a pain point for all of us!

Cleaning fees

Hoteliers have many rooms to keep up so can keep a full-time staff and often pay housekeeping extremely low wages and roll it into their rates. Vacation Rentals have far fewer turnovers, yet still need to keep good, reliable housekeepers.

Housekeepers in our area get $25 hr. for VRs. How long do you think it takes to REALLY clean a two-bedroom, two-bath house? I have done it many times and I promise it is NOT happening in less than four hours! My housekeeper and I pride ourselves on “Super Clean” and our reviews show it.

Can I negotiate?

If someone were to ask to negotiate the cleaning fee - as I recently saw recommended in a Washington Post article - I would just ask them which toilet they prefer not cleaned or which floor they would rather not have mopped or which sheets they don’t want washed…? It really does take that long. But still, I know how we all HATE added cleaning fees. I tried rolling it into the rate for a while, but it put my rate so much higher than all the other area properties I was not even in the competition. So I met guests halfway! My cleaner charges $100 for a turnover, I charge guests half and I pay half. Because I really do want you to have “all the way” clean! And a reasonable rate.

If you find a VR with no cleaning fee, then the owner is doing it themselves and not getting reimbursed, or have rolled into their nightly cost.

- Our tax rate includes sales tax and TRT or transient room tax. Taxes for the city, county and state. Ugh. Death and taxes…… What more can I say. The “added fee” that none of us can do anything about.

Communication

OTAs insist on all communication through their site, for your safety. I think it’s to make sure they don’t lose any of their cut of the proceeds. How does talking to me make you less safe??

What it does do, is keep me from calling you to let you know there is a real person here.It keeps you from calling me to see what are the best tours in our area, or what's my favorite hiking trail. Communication is essential for your perfect vacation!

If you send me your phone number or email address the OTA will redact/remove the number or email from the note you wrote.

- If you contact me on an OTA, I am bound to book you on the OTA. And I am fine with that. That is the bargain I have made with the OTA for advertising on their site. We made a deal. So please do not email me from their platform and ask to Book Direct once you see the fees. I cannot do that. I will get kicked off the platform🙁.

Guarantees

- Most of the listing sites will have some kind of “Booking guarantee”. You may want to do a little scrolling through business vetting sites such as https://www.consumeraffairs.com or https://www.sitejabber.com Check out the value of those "Guarantees".

Some good, some bad, just educate yourself on possible scenarios. Admittedly, there are some bad owners out there. Just remember there are two sides to every story. (Spoiler: Most of those 5-star reviews, are for great hosts with lovely homes, not the VRBO corporation 😀)

My Guarantees

- If you have a problem or a question with the home or area, It is myself, my husband or our housekeeper that will help you with every question and make sure you have everything you need. It will never be someone in a call center on the other side of the world, it will not even be someone in a nice corporate office (even if they did know the best restaurants in Exuma, and they don’t. )

we have a basic Short term Rental agreement we both sign. You promise to treat my home nice and I promise to have everything nice as promised.

- I will ask for a copy of your photo ID at the time you sign the rental agreement. That way I’m guaranteed you are who you say you are. And you are guaranteed someone didn’t just take your credit card and try and go on vacation with it!

My home is not “an Airbnb” or “a VRBO”. Even if I do advertise on their site. (But sometimes they like to act like they own it, when they dictate who I may or may not rent to and under what conditions…..sheesh. I wish they would pay their share of the mortgage then….. Sorry, I digress.)

So how do you know if WE are Guaranteed owners with your best interests at heart!?

Good question. Here are some ideas -

Go to https://www.visitsouthernutah.com/ The Kane county tourism website, you will find The Western Star Bungalow and The Star Garage Studio in their listings. Call and ask to speak to Josie if you would like to ask questions about us. 1-800-SEE-KANE

Call Kanab city offices 435-644-2534 ask them if John and Sherene McClellan have a current business license for My Star Vacation rentals.

Go into Honeys Marketplace (largest grocery store) in Kanab, Ask for Susan Honey the owner, ask her about The Western Star Bungalow or The Star Garage Studio. 260 E 300 S, Kanab

Call me, Sherene McClellan at 435-262-6119 or

My husband John McClellan at 435-262-1000

We would love to answer ANY questions you might have.

Help me find a "Book Direct" property. Or, how to do that "little more research" we talked about!

Look for LOCAL area rental sites. Search for "whatever my destination is", "vacation rentals" or "Book direct". Scroll down past the OTA paid ads.

Search on Fee Free sites such as VacationSoup.com or Houfy.com

Find a place you like on an OTA, then search the name of the property or owner in search engines and social media. Savvy owners can leave you clues, but direct info is banned from the listing sites. (I had a guest recently follow my breadcrumbs to my website and saved $500 on her family’s stay!)

Search Local area Tourist information sites

I have a small list of other trusted great owners from around the world. Might spark your next great adventure! https://mystarvr.com/stays-around-the-world/

So here is a break down of "Booking your Vacation Rental Direct” Pros -

Cheaper, it really is

More space than a hotel room for your group

Kitchens for meal prep if you want

Real owners, no middle man

Localized knowledge. We can recommend some AWESOME places

Flexible payments

Direct communication

Some of the nicest properties are not on the OTAs (Some of the great experienced hosts are fed up with OTA greed. Some of us little guys just can’t make it alone quite yet…)

You cannot replace an Owners passion with the Corporate process.

Cheers and Good luck when planning your next vacation, wherever you might stay! -Sherene and John

Don: "This report is so thorough and accurate that I left the dedication to Sherene and John who own "The Western Star Bungalow" intact. The same comments and money saving advise applies equally to our rental Harbour View in Exuma. So whether you want a vacation in Utah or Exuma or wherever, talk direct to the knowledgable, local owners to get peace of mind and savings....Book Direct and Save"

#Exuma #HarborViewExuma #Hartswell #HolidayInExuma #TheBahamas #VacationInExuma #VacationSoup

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beyondvapepage · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 277 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 277, where we talk about maybe some we have a drink. It’s almost five o'clock here. So now, we’ll maybe do that on one coming up. But Welcome, everybody. We’re going to say hi, real quick, we got a couple short announcements, and then we’re going to get into it. We’ve got a long list of questions. And just for those of us joining us for the first time, I want to let you know too, we really appreciate your questions. If you can keep it to one question, we understand some are multi part. But today we have like, somebody put in like six long questions. We’re not going to be able to get to all of those, but we will try to answer what we can we just want to make sure we give everyone a chance. So we’ll touch on that again. But again, we appreciate your questions. Please come and ask but you know, just be respectful of everyone else and make sure make room for them. So with that said, Bradley, how you doing today?

Bradley: I’m good, man. If we wouldn’t have been talking about beer I wouldn’t be so thirsty right now.

Yeah, this is good.

I’ll share with everyone since it’s topical. We were talking about it you know everything on everyone’s minds coronavirus, and then hearing the news reports that Corona you know, the beer is taking a sales hit, you know, it’s just kind of one of those like mind blowing things that that’s actually a result of this. So, yeah, how stupid can people be there? They’re concerned about drinking Corona beer. They’ve associated it with the corona virus and poor Corona.

Adam: Oh, let’s see next on here Hernan. How you doing man? It’s what coming up on winter time for you. I guess it’s fall now.

Hernan: Yeah, it’s actually fall. We’re getting too fall. But today’s like still in the past. It is been hot as hell outside. So it’s been good, man. And everything is good and excited to be here.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Marco, how about you? How’s the weather?

Marco: Groundhog Day you see it? I ain’t got to tell you about it. You see it. This is what it’s like, every day every morning, 365. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s always warm in Costa Rica. So stay away. I want you here. I don’t want your Corona. Only Corona one is in my fridge and I actually do have a couple of Corona in the fridge

Yeah, no it’s antibodies I’m building up yeah there you go I just clean or get drunk so that’s what you call an ambiguous to Corona entity, man. Chris, how are you doing man?

yeah then good still like cold here I mean like it’s not freezing but like you still need to pull over

yeah actually like it colder weather is like really hot summers always giving me brain fog and I’m really unproductive so not sure what to say to the others here for good you’re where you should be then so man I do get the same way when it gets hot just like yeah man that is not my jam. So

go guys real quick before we get into it, just wanted to say if you’re joining us here for the first time, that’s awesome. We really do appreciate it. Please ask your questions, you can always catch the replay on YouTube, which you can go head over and subscribe. You can find the link down below or just go to YouTube, or youtube.com slash see slash Semantic Mastery and subscribe. Stay up to date. Because we understand sometimes you can’t make it live. But all of these are recording go up on our YouTube channel. Also, if you’re an agency owner or a consultant, like us, and you want to get more clients, you want to grow your revenue and you’d like to scale your team then you should be are already into x your agency or Double Your Agency, you can go over and check that out at two extra agency.com. And we know a lot of people find us and they’re looking for and getting great advice for SEO. But if you want the step by step, Battle Plan, then guess where you should go battleplan.semanticmastery.com it’s step by step processes for everything from new websites, eighth websites, YouTube channels, so much more. So head over, grab that and you can find the links off to the right if you’re joining us live.

And real quick for anyone who is live. If you guys can do some typing for me, I saw that somebody on there said that there are some issues with redirects and using the chat on the hump day hangouts page, you guys can let me know if it’s working okay for you or not. We’d love some more feedback. So want to make sure that that’s working smoothly for free one chat box is not working again or something. I just had some issues somebody was saying they were having issues with redirects, but it’s working in incognito. So I just want to see if it’s one person or many.

And then last but not least, we’ve got some information coming out about some really cool updates with mg y b.co. Where you can get done for you services for syndication networks, hardware stacks, and of course SEO shield, which we had a killer deal going on last week. A lot of people took advantage of that, but there’s some new great stuff coming out with that and I believe Marco even with the link shortener, there’s some potential updates coming right.

Yeah, what we’re trying to because someone mentioned it last week. Having a custom domain, although people use Bitly people use rebranding people use all kinds of a t.co in Twitter, they use all kinds of shorteners. And it doesn’t really matter. And in fact, because of the strength of our shortener, it actually enhances everything that you’re doing to the point that the shortened link, right, whatever it short with, it can rank for that keyword and take up more real estate and inserts, which is actually what you’re looking for. You want people as much as to cover as much of the real estate as possible so that you have a greater chance of people clicking on whatever project it is that you’re doing.

And before we get to questions, I’d like to make a quick announcement because anyone who donated to the charity, got access to all of the webinars and everything. If you haven’t, then please send an email. Right, you got you guys. I’ll post it all on the page. And I’ll be doing an update webinar probably in May because I promise one, because I showed the land solutions that work and how it’s going and all of a sudden they just blew up and started appearing on the first page like everywhere.

Yeah, getting national attention we’re getting form fills from all over the US. So it’s pretty interesting what’s happening. And without really all of the power that I thought it would be necessary to get this to where it is right now where on the next push. I’m expecting it to land top three in for the top level category, which is the top market level that everyone wants. I’ll tell every cell and fast and then state Bradley just show me this morning where it’s appearing in Virginia. Yeah, you son of a bitch. It’s out of touch. I can’t control the monster man. Once it’s gone, guys. I can’t help it.

Yeah, well, I got the knowledge panel now which is pretty impressive considering I really haven’t done a lot of SEO work that has been just through exactly what we’ve been teaching which is that entity like guys I haven’t even been doing link building to the alpha land realty project I did one link building package when I first got the DR stack delivered month you know I’ll shit damn near a year ago now well at least nine months ago and I did one link building package that’s it other than that I’ve just published in press releases for properties that I have for sale haven’t done any other sort of SEO work whatsoever and I’ve got the knowledge panel now for sale down pat fast Virginia which means you know, my brand has been fully associated with that keyword which is super powerful. And again guys that’s doing nothing other than what we teach about solidifying, validating the entity period. Entity-based worry less SEO is what this is all about. That’s what my update in May or June. I don’t know when because I want to do press on the stack and then I want to do a link building. I’ll put do an embed stack and a link building one and see what happened. What kind of madness that gets us into.

So it’s coming, guys, if you donated, you’ll have all of the replays are available and you will have access to that the upcoming webinar. And if you haven’t donated it, there’s always a good time, right? This is no better time like now to go and donate and get access to everything and including the upcoming update webinar. So there you go.

Awesome. Awesome. Two more quick things. I’m gonna have Bradley, I got a question for you. And then from there, we can go to questions, but I want to remind everybody, we still got early access pricing for POFU Live tickets, I believe we have 19 spots, maybe 20 remaining, but the prices are going to go up for too long. So grab those if you want to come if you want to find out more about that you can find out at kofu live.com. But it’s basically finding out about all of this stuff. But doing it over two to three days. I highly recommend you grab the VIP ticket we’ve priced it to make it easily accessible from the main ticket. It’s not a big bump in price. We just want to cover the costs get you together with everyone else a day early.

We have a lot of fun last year we went go karting that was blast had a beer, some food and just get together and you know, in a kind of relaxed environment, have some fun you can get to know everyone and then go into the event. You know, and it’s a small group you already kind of know each other. You’re familiar with each other and go in there and really get the most out of that. So like I said, check it out at POFU Live if you’d like to join us can be last weekend in Boston, or last weekend in September in Boston. will have a bunch more details coming but go grab that pofulive.com. And then Bradley, you just updated the Double Your Agency training right if I know we’re going long here, can you in like 60 seconds just real quick. tell people what the training was about?

Yeah, well, this week it was about embeds and link building, which is how to power up the entity, the Semantic Mastery way, which is beautiful. And so what’s really important here is that we like I just mentioned about how all I’m doing all I’ve done for Alpha Realty. lt is entity based SEO and I haven’t even been doing the external stuff because I drive most traffic to it via direct mail, and Google ads and also organic rankings now. So because I’m doing well, I haven’t really done a lot of SEO to it. But it’s ranking. And what I discovered today was we’re in the 2xyour results section of the Double Your Agency training. So there’s three total parts – 2xyourr pipeline, 2xyour results, which that’s the section we’re in now. And then it’s 2xyour business which is what we’re going to be going to in two weeks.

And so the first three topics covered in this module, which is the 2xyour results was number one, the SEO shield. That was week one, which is the foundation of everything we do guys like it’s it’s absolutely the foundation now and that’s how you solidify the entity right? Number two is content marketing. It’s just how you start to build relevancy, both topical and or location, relevancy if it’s for a local project. So content marketing is how you start to fuel up the entity like power it up with content and build the relevancy and now three as external link building and embeds, like what we do to the SEO shield to power it up. And I’m telling you guys, it’s a three step process. There’s a lot of components to those three steps, but it’s a three step process. And the fourth step being pushing relevant traffic into the entity which kind of is like throwing jet fuel on the fire. And we’re going to talk about that next week. My whole point is I’ve got several projects I’m working on right now that all I’m doing it’s paint by numbers guys exactly what we’re teaching and to 2xyouragency for the 2xyourresults part of it. SEO shield, content marketing, power up the entity, run relevant traffic into it, you’ll get results period and the story. It’s paint by numbers. There’s not there is no competition out there that you cannot overcome with this method, Period. End of story. Marco, do you want to comment on that?

Marco: Dude, I don’t even take into account the competition. I don’t look at it. I don’t bother. I don’t care if we can go up against Amazon go up against anyone. And so I just don’t bother anybody I do. Mike I let them worry about me because this guy is the top guy in in nationwide for this is in trouble and he doesn’t even know it. Because it’s coming into it’s going to hit. You’re already seeing it with really that last power push that we usually do to get it in there. It hasn’t even been done. So it’s just gonna be mad. Simple and simple doesn’t mean easy, right? We try to make it simple, so that people can follow everything and get there and get the same results that we get. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of things involved. We have a whole team that works behind all this to accomplish all of this all of the different steps. But once it’s done, it’s just keeping it up and and doing your your link building cycles the way that you’re supposed to your press releases, and it’s done. It’s a done deal. It’s crazy how simple this is, and how people despite the proof that we can provide because I’m sharing results in our group.

Despite that there’s still sell it. That doesn’t work. Yeah. Don’t leave your lying eyes because it’s an optical illusion, the results that you’re seeing terps that’s not true either, right? So I will just leave it at that. Let’s go to the questions, guys. It doesn’t work. If you want to see how it doesn’t work, come and get our stuff and anything else guys, or can we get any question?

Let’s do it.

All right, there we go. Tell me when you see my screen. Got it? Okay. We can see it. Yeah. So that’s what I was talking about. If you look at selling and fast, Virginia, it’s popping knowledge panel now number one position. And you can see my brand is associated with that search term. It’s even showing up and suggesting related searches. Guys, that’s what you want, you know, powerful that is when somebody a prospect starts typing a generic keyword into search and a brand appears how powerful that is. So it’s incredible how much traffic I get from from that. It’s insane. And guys, I haven’t done anything other than what we teach. I have an SEO shield. I did one batch of link building to it and ever since then all I’ve done is run relevant traffic into the entity. And it just took time is just a matter of time and I’m already popping for knowledge panel now push this competitor out who had been number one for months. So it’s um, it’s impressive, guys. I can’t thank Marco and my team enough for making it so easy to repeat and get results. It’s just not fair. It’s just not fair.

Alright, so let’s get into question.

How To Make A Domain Mapping In Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Dustin. Hey, guys, how do you? Yeah, okay, that’s it. Hey, guys, how do you make a domain mapping with AWS Amazon cloud so my websites gets hosted on Amazon, just go to YouTube. You can do it with CloudFlare. Probably the easiest way to do it is through CloudFlare. But just go to YouTube and search not directly on our channel, because I don’t think we have any public training about that. And the training that I did on that was probably is probably three years old now. And it’s likely that it may, I don’t know, it might not have changed, but just go to YouTube and search domain mapping cloud, Amazon HTML site or something like that, right. And just playing around, you’ll find somebody that’s good with a tutorial for that. It’s, it’s fairly simple. I use CloudFlare to do that. But you can also use Amazon route 53, which is their DNS service inside of AWS console. You can do it with Amazon route 53. And what’s interesting about Amazon route 53, by the way, is when you set it up that way, it gives you what’s called a dynamic IP, the IP for your site will change. If Well, if you’re hosting if you’re hosting in Amazon, but if you’re just pointing How do you make a domain mapping so my website gets hosted on Amazon.

Yeah, if you’re using Amazon to host, then it’s a dynamic IP, which is it’s interesting because at the IP changes, years ago, we had talked about building a PB ends, well, kind of like PB ends, but essentially buffer sites using Amazon ht HTML pages hosted an s3 buckets, but using Amazon route 53, to set up subdomains for a particular domain, and you have just multiple, like, essentially, we create a bunch of pages and sub domains, but they would each have dynamic IPS. So it would, it wouldn’t look like all of them coming from like links from the same domain would be coming from different IPS, if that makes sense because they were different sub domains. And you’d go check them in an IP checker. And if you refresh the screen, it wouldn’t always be a new IP, but often when you would refresh the screen, it would be a whole new IP. And it was it was a great way when when we were still using a lot of pbn stuff to get IP diversity into your link building. But again, I don’t do that anymore. We don’t need to the SEO shield is all we need to do. And and that is link building, and it works. But yeah, just go check YouTube, you’ll find somebody to teach you how to do that. It’s not that difficult.

Why Do You SEO For Local And Not Focus On Ads Where You Have More Control Over Keywords?

jp says I don’t understand. Okay, this is a good question. I don’t understand the use of ranking websites for local. I run Google Ads with GMB location extension activated and Google ads for local plumbing clients, I ranked multiple websites organically number one and GMBs organically number one, I would guess that about 5% of traffic comes from my number one organically ranked websites and about 15 from organic GMB organic rankings and the rest come from ads and GMB linked to the ads. You can target so much more keywords with ads and organic you will never show in the three pack for the variety of keywords you can target in Google ads. Well that’s not necessarily true you can depending on how much work you put into it. You can write for variety of keywords and you can also rank for outside of your immediate area like you can with ads. I know what you mean when you run a location extension with the GMB. That’s how you can get beat that proximity filter right away. Right? There’s no question. If you have the top quality score, or a high quality score that Trumps your competitors, then that’s how you will typically get in the number one position in the ads, you know, the number one ads position in the maps three pack or in the expanded maps.

And there’s no question that that’s a great way to expand your service area very quickly and overcome that proximity issue. However, we do know a way of overcoming that proximity issue organically, which is the local GMB pro method. So it’s not that you can’t do it. It’s just it does require a lot more work than just paying Google to get placed there. That said, you say that you would guess that about 5% of your traffic comes from organic rankings and 15% from organic or maps rankings. But you said that you would guess you know, I would recommend you know, looking at your analytics deep diving in that to see if that is the case. And it may be for your particular industry, plumbing, I don’t do plumbing, SEO. I mean, it happened to pass. But I, you know, most of the industries that I work in I’ve proven time and again, that maps rankings produce the most leads for most of the services that I, you know, provide most of the industries that I provide services to. And organic rankings have recently for whatever reason started to produce more than they have in the past.

And I don’t know why that is because they’re pushed even further down on the page now than ever. But for some reason or another, I’m getting more traffic through organic rankings that I have in recent years. And I’m not sure exactly why that is, except for maybe the fact that the maps filter has you know, the proximity issue has reduced the maps footprint and your organic rankings are taking are kind of filling in where the maps used to produce results. Now, it’s organic, so maybe that’s why but I think it varies by any industry, you know, because there are a lot of statistics out there that state. And again, I’m sure it’s going to vary by industry. But there are a lot of statistics out there that state that organic rankings get organic listings, period maps or organic, get so much more click throughs than paid. And so just and I’m going to ask Marco and other others to comment on this in a minute, but I just pulled this up for organic first page search statistics on higher visibility calm, and this is stats for 2020. And it talks about right here 70. And this doesn’t mention local specifically, but it says 70 to 80% of all searches, searchers ignore paid ads and focus only on organic results. So again, I’m not disputing what you say is the result of your marketing campaigns. But what I’m telling you is by it probably varies by industry, and through my own projects. I’ve proven over and over and over again through data that we generate far many more leads for the like tree service industry.

For example, at far less cost than we do using, we generate far more leads at using SEO and maps SEO, that at far less cost than we do using Google ads. So again, I you know, I’m, I’m not trying to dispute what you’re saying. I’m just saying that I think there it’s going to vary depending on industry and project. Comments, guys. I absolutely agree that it’s going to depend entirely, not only on on the industry, and how people are used to seeing whatever it is or the results that they’re seeing. It also depends on how much effort you put into your your SEO and your maps versus how much effort you put into ads. So if you think that s that SEO and ads aren’t going to bring you the results, because you’re guessing that 20% is coming from that and all of your efforts actually know that 8020 rule 80% of your effort goes into ads, then that’s going to show in that presented. I’ve seen it differently also. And we have them especially in the plumbing niche, we had the DC plumber example, where once we trigger that map pack, the phone went, what they went nuts is map pack and it’s also organic he gets organic traffic, you have to remember the press releases also bring traffic to one will branded will also bring some traffic, right your social media and how much effort goes goes in there. So the idea here is that you don’t focus all of your energies on one source of traffic is one change can bring that 80% to half and then what do you do, but if you focus like you mentioned in other Hump Day Hangouts and holistic marketing when you take an overall approach to what this is a gang, you’re actually driving several traffic funnels, not concentrating all your efforts in one.

I think you’re going to see much better results. I’m also seeing it in the morning, by the way, I’m working California and in New York with attorney in those two places and it’s man, the map pack in those and it’s whatever we target, right because we could target in the GMB. Any keywords that we want or any keyword set or any we can silo it, it’s what we do. And we it’s how we link it together. It’s how we get that those keywords to pop up. And you know, you get into the thousands of keywords that way and not only in in GM, bn and insights, but it starts showing up in Search Console on what you’re getting impressions for, and the average position where you’re getting impressions where if you improve the average position, you start seeing crazy CTR and so all of these factors combined our matter.

He is seeing his numbers from his efforts, which is fine, that’s the way you want to do it. If you think that you can get the most bang for your buck out of it. And then by all means me I’d rather not go up against for example Amazon and pay for ads against Amazon I’d rather hit them organically and do my damage there because I I’m seeing crazy results from that case study also seeing results from the land solutions network, right the cell and fast case study. So all of these things that we do, what we give you is is is it’s like you’re giving us giving us data from from what your efforts are from what you’re getting. So we give you data from what we see and not to say the one or the other is wrong it’s just different approaches to the the different niches that we’re after.

Yeah, I just one more comment on that. Like for example, why I like SEO better than ads and I run ads guys for a lot of stuff. My alpha land Realty, for example, I generate a ton of traffic through ads, and I do it for clients too. But my my point is kind of like what Marco said like, let’s say you’ve got $1,000 a month budget period for any type of marketing, whether it’s Google ads or SEO or whatever. If you’re running $1,000 a month in Google ads and Google Ads only, that’s, that’s great. You can target you know, whatever your keywords are and your locations. But if you want to expand into new areas and target new keywords, you still only have that thousand dollar a month budget. So you’ve got to rob Peter to pay Paul. In other words, you’ve got to pull money from existing campaigns, or ad groups, whatever you’ve got running, to push into different areas, if that’s what you’re limited to is, let’s just say that that’s, you know, again, hypothetically, you’re limited to that, that thousand dollars a month, whereas with SEO, the thousand dollars a month can go towards content marketing, and link building and such and target, different keywords, different locations. And once the content is there, and it’s producing, it’s your ranking and you’re producing leads from that content. You can redirect those funds to the next location, the next set of keywords, because that’s already producing. And it’s just a matter of maintaining it then with through our methods, you can maintain organic rankings through just link building and such to the SEO shield and the entity. So my point is, you can take that same thousand dollars and continue to expand keywords and locations area, right. So service area and continually grow with that same thousand dollars per month. Whereas with Google ads, if you’re at full capacity for your budget, you can’t grow into other areas without spending more money or taking money from an already producing campaign to redirect to those areas. That makes sense. So that’s what I like, you know, when you stop paying Google, you stop generating leads. That’s the problem with Google Ads there. I mean, again, I guys, I love Google ads. I love them. But I don’t you know, I still always recommend to clients, that we start an SEO campaign and that we only use Google ads to supplement until the SEO is producing the results that we desire.

Okay. Anyways, good question. Or good? Great question.

This is a very long, like, it looks like it’s only six questions, but if you get into it, there’s like, eight questions in this one alone. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through the first number three numbers here, and then the rest of them will have to be, you know, come join the mastermind, if you want consultation, that’s what it’s for. Like, you know, you can ask these kind of questions and mastermind but this is a lot of damn questions. We’re not going to have time for all of these unless we get through everything else and then we’ll come back. We appreciate you coming and asking questions, though. I do appreciate that. So should I include the author and each post I publish? You can, it’s not necessary. My blogger, I tend to have her do it, because she’s a prolific blogger who’s been blogging for years for me now. So she’s got quite the author status. But you know, that’s not necessary. It’s just a matter of preference.

Which page in the silo structure should get the most backlinks? Well, if you understand silo structure doesn’t matter which page because if you have your interlinking done correctly, your internal linking throughout the silo, the anywhere you point links to at within that silo is going to benefit the entire silo. Right? That’s if you understand silo structure and how to interlink correctly properly within a silo, then there’s no one page that should get any more links than any other because it doesn’t matter. You could take the last post in in the silo and inject all your links there and it’s going to flow up through every post in the silo and up to the top level page. So, you know, it really doesn’t, it’s not important as to which page gets the most links. If you’ve got your silo structure and internal linking done properly. I can tell him which page gets the most length. None of the pages on your website should get linked. None. Absolutely not. You should not be link building to your money site. That’s what your SEO shield is for.

Now through your SEO shield, you can push into each one of your market level categories. Or you can push into the supporting post for your categories, which whichever way you decide to do it, and you can cycle that what I call a link building cycle, which will you change it up, sometimes you go into the pole sometimes into the category, maybe you’ll go somewhere else where you know, tier one, and push through there. But everything should take place through that dry stack and G site and maybe even tier one branded because they can handle it. But if you get caught building to your website, a lot of bad things can happen. That guy we stay away from the top level domain for that reason, because we don’t want to trigger any of those nasty little things that can pop up and get you in and kill everything that you’ve been trying to do so know the answer to that is none none on your website. Learn how to how to cycle your link building through the SEO shield how to add depth and breadth to that drive second Gsite and you’re going to get much better results with protection to be correct.

So the next question was, what do you think about? What do you think of this dummy silo for niche site? 1000 posts, for example, in the site all under the main domain, which is also the homepage, no categories, no tags, no sub folders, and the homepage links to all of the posts up to the last 1000 posts. Is this good for a silo? Now, for a couple reasons.

The number one is, well, if you were linking From the homepage, to all 1000 posts, first of all, that would be one hell of a menu, or one hell of a linked list. It would be kind of ugly for like user experience and everything. And number two is if any one of those individual posts link back to the homepage, which is really what you’d want to do anyways, that would be reciprocal link, it would kill the value of that silo. So my point is, I wouldn’t do that. If I were going to if I were going to do it, first of all, I you know, having a one category website is fine, that’s perfectly fine. But you don’t want to link to all of the posts on the homepage. That would be ridiculous in my opinion. And I think it would be hard for users to navigate and I don’t think it would be any good for SEO. So I think you’re better off adding some sort of structure to the site navigation structure. If you were going to do something like that. That would be logical, but you would also want to make sure again, you understand how to properly interlink within a silo, which we cover in the mastermind will also be covered in heavy hitters club I’m sure or heavy hitter club excuse me, when that’s available, which will be soon but we can’t share our exact silos linking technique here on a free Hump Day hangout apologize.

You want to comment on that? Anybody before I move on? I thought I think that was fine. Okay.

Yeah, there’s there’s good ways to do that. If you’re going to you can have a site all around one particular topic, but typically are one category. But typically, even with that one category, you’re talking about 1000 posts.

You’re you can probably segment those posts into subcategories right to make it a more easier to navigate and a more logical setup than to have 1000 posts all in one very, you know, I don’t know how you I mean, I’m sure it can be done, but I’m just saying I think you’d be better off even having, you know, subcategories and such to make it more logical. I think you’d be better off that way. We’ll come back to some of these other ones if we have time.

How Long Should You Wait After The New WordPress Page Is Published?

Yeah, okay. Hi, everyone. I’m using RSS syndication on my website. But my WordPress page has been disabled twice. So I think this is because my posting frequency is higher than normal blogs that can happen. So my question is, how long should I wait after the new WordPress page is published?

Well, it’s, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you publish relevant content to the WordPress site. wordpress. com site when you get it in let that sit for a week or two. And the way that we build it at our, you know, our builders build them at the store is we, we, we find relevant content on another wordpress.com blog and post that we republish that with attribution. So we link over to the original source because now that’s an internal link for WordPress. com. Does that make sense? That’s why we do that. And we and it’s a relevant article relevant to whatever the theme of that blog is now, right. And then we always recommend that you wait and give it like, you know, seven days, five to seven days, roughly before you start automating posts through RSS syndication. But then if you’re going to when you start syndicating posts, if it’s a high volume, frequency of publishing, then we always recommend that you start slow and you ramp up, which means like, you know, if you publish, let’s say you publish, you know, five blog posts per day. I don’t know what your frequency is, but we’ll just use that as an example. You don’t want to come out of the gate, publishing five blog posts a day to a day new WordPress site, even if it’s been, you know, kind of season for a week or so, what you want to do is maybe start doing one post per day for a week or two, and then maybe you can increase it to two posts per day and then three and then four. And you do that slowly you build up so that WordPress, kind of, you know, wordpress.com, or whatever other blog sites kind of gain an understanding of the business and a lot of the site excuse me, and and allows it to, it tends to get terminated a lot less. You know, we’ve had, we’ve had projects that are I’ve had projects that I’ve worked on that had a high volume of publishing, but as long as you gradually increase to whatever your normal posting frequency is, it typically will will remain. But that said, it also depends on the type of posts that you’re publishing. If the posts are spammy, if they contain a shit ton of outbound links, things like that, then you’re you it’s likely that they’re going to get terminated anyways. So you just got to be careful. It’s got be decent content, while my VA is for my the projects I work on, like we just use curated content because it’s very nicely done content. We’re linking to multiple sources, not just our own. So so for example, not all links on the blog, just come back to the money site. We use curated content. So every post has links to relevant third party content sources. And I think that makes a big difference too, which is why I have such a low suspension rate or termination rate for syndication network properties. So it’s a matter of quality of content, the number of outbound links where those outbound links are pointing to and also the frequency of publishing, you can gradually build it up over time. Okay, it’s a good question, though.

How long does it take to attain maturity? I can’t tell you that because I don’t know it. Like I said, if you just gradually increase, you should be okay. But your content does matter. Content matters, guys. You know, it does

Should You Use Similar Content In The GStacks As On The GSIte And The Money Site?

loft says a question about duplicate content, do I use the same content and the Gsite is in the G site as on the money site? So if I find the money site onto the G site, the content appears twice. And there is no problem with that. My question? Well, first of all, I’d love to get Marco’s opinion on this. I don’t, here’s the thing on the G site, why even put content on the pages if you’re going to embed the money site page, it will read the content of the embed, and that will become the content of the page. It’ll even show up in the meta description in search. So for my projects, I don’t put content on the pages.

Guys have to excuse me, I’ve got a call coming in. I don’t know how to silence that right now.

Okay, so yeah, so I don’t actually run, put content on the page as well. Sometimes I do. It just depends on the page. But for the most part, if I’m embedding pages, it’s going to be embedded pages. And that’s it. The content is produced through the embed. You want to comment on that, Marco? Yeah, I don’t understand that the iframe question. If you understand iframe, then what you’re doing through the iframe is you’re displaying your homepage on the G site. That’s all that is the me so it’s not a copy. And let’s get away from duplicate content. There’s no such thing as duplicate content. It’s bullshit. It’s a myth. It doesn’t happen if it if there were such a thing as duplicate content, we set a time and again press releases would be they’d be out of work. They wouldn’t they wouldn’t work the it’s it just doesn’t make sense to say that there is duplicate content that could be a duplicate content penalty and all these other things that people say, which we have shown time and again, are not true. We showed it in the mastermind as a matter of fact, I asked Marco.

Marco: anything webinar, we showed it, there is no such thing as duplicate content. And so with that in mind, you can do whatever you want on on that T site. This is going to be relevant. It’s relevant to whatever it is that you’re doing. We use other people’s content. Sometimes we use our own content, sometimes. It’s just it just depends on what it is that we’re trying to do.

Yeah. Okay, he says also, because the G site takes the schema from the iframe site, and now has the featured image of the iframe site in mobile search, even though that image does not appear anywhere on the G site, I thought you might like to know that and if you already do, maybe know a way to undo this. I, I don’t know why you would want to undo it. Look, I don’t care what you know, if something like that appeared happens, because my point is the search results are just more of my entity. Does that make sense? So like, and I’ve had, you know, people say, Well, you know, I don’t my client doesn’t like the G site appearing in the search results for you know, their keyword or for their brand name? Why would you rather a competitor’s website be ranked there and you know, we make them look really good, they’ll convert, I mean, you know, so anyway, my point is, as long as I’m taking up real estate on the first page with my entity assets, I don’t care, you know, because it’s pushing a competitor off the page period, end of story and if every one of those open those links open up to a branded entity asset that’s going to lead back to my company with a company that I’m promoting for the project then I really don’t care if something like that happens or which properties appear in search for example paper.li which is one of the the network properties in our syndication networks that for whatever reason is ranking super well right now for like brand searches. And when you click on it, it you know, if you’ve got your RSS feeding into the you know, newspaperly, a newspaper or whatever they call it, then you know, it’s branded content on the paper profile. So like, it’s not something I would typically push intentionally to the first page, but on a lot of projects I have right now, for whatever reason, paper dot Lee is ranking for the brand search, so I’m not going to go disable it or delete it because my client doesn’t want paper at least showing up for their brand search. I just tell them, hey, look, that could have been your competitor, you know what I mean? So my point is, I don’t know why that’s an issue. I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. But honestly, it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me to have that happen. Anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, no, no. I mean, it did. It doesn’t make sense not to want as much to not to want to take up as much real estate as possible. Take it up, take it to take up as much as you can, if you’re doing it through iframes. I mean, that’s fine. It’ll go to the to the client eventually. And if not, then it’s reinforcing the entity and he clicks on that image just reinforces the entity. Yeah.

That’s right. Its activity into the entity. That’s correct. All right. Lauren says I want to order a seo shield? Can you explain how it works? I’m having a hard time understanding how it protects my website.

Yeah, we did the SEO, she would explain just go to our YouTube channel. In fact, I’ll walk you through it. Let’s go to youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery. Okay, go to our YouTube channel. See that search icon that’s the search this channel feature. So we’re going to click that there and we’re going to type in SEO shield and right here is the holiday special Hump Day hangout Episode 267 where we went into the SEO shield right there. So just go use our channel search feature.

As I just showed you search for SEO shield holiday special Hump Day hangout SEO shield right there, 14 minutes 36 seconds long, all about specifically what the SEO shield is and how it works. Okay.

question though Thank you.

Baby says the chat works but if you don’t save the page link and bookmarks, it’s hard to find the chat page. Okay guys, the chat page has been the same redirect URL since we started which is was an over five years ago. Semantic Mastery. com slash HD questions for stands for Hump Day questions. bookmarklet. Remember it committed to memory, semanticmastery.com/hdquestions. It’s been the same URL for many many years. it redirects to this page right here but just remember HD questions, Hump Day questions, period Semantic mastery.com slash HD questions. It will always take you to this page right here. Okay. You don’t have to sign up an opt in every time.

If you are not then I’m sorry because that that sucks.

Alright, next Are there any up sales on your to extra agency course I plan I plan to buy all the upsells but I wanted to know if there are any before Bye bye.

Yes, there are upsells there are one time offers and that kind of stuff. We wouldn’t be a good we wouldn’t be worth our weight.

We wouldn’t be worth anything if we didn’t have upsells man, this is internet marketing guys. So anyways, all right, we do have some time left so we can go back to some of those other questions. Anybody have anything they want to comment on before we do?

Oh, yeah, I just I wrote the comment on there but basically what you said I was like yeah, there’s some awesome deals I was like that they you know, truly are one time offers we you know, want to make something cool. It’s like Bradley said, you know, we’re wouldn’t be worth our weight if we didn’t put in a good offer and funny but these are really really really really good ones. Anyways, that’s awesome. Yeah, because a lot of the stuff that’s offered throughout the sales funnel essentially is is also you know, we talk a lot about the in the two X ray agency course guys because they’re all, you know, here’s the thing and throughout the two extra agency course we point you to it

It’s conceptual training. In other words, it’s high level training, to point you in the right direction to do these things. If you want to learn more about the specific methods of how they work, go buy this training course points you to the correct training course. But the whole point of Double Your Agency guys, is not to encumber you or bog you down with more training in more shit you have to learn and then either do yourself, God forbid or hire somebody out and train them to do it for you, which is a better option. But if you want to Double Your Agency, it’s go by done for you services that are already set, the team is in place, the met the training, the management, the quality control, all of that is in place and then you just mark it up and sell right and manage projects for your your clients. That’s how you Double Your Agency, not by getting bogged down and training. And I’m not telling you don’t go by our training. That would be stupid. But I’m saying that if you really want to grow your agency, I would focus and I recommend focusing on using third party fulfillment providers like MGYB to do the work, and you need to focus on prospecting and sales and learning how to manage camp projects, essentially, project management, because then that’s how you can scale your agency without getting bogged down in the day to the daily grind and having to do all the work. And that’s so so that’s what we do. And to extra agency we talk about concepts at a high level, there’s a lot of actionable plans. But we tell you, if you want to learn more about the specific tactic or method, go by the training course. But the better option is just go buy it done for you at mg y B, and move on to the next module so that you can grow your business does that make sense? Any comments on that guys? Yeah, man, cuz. Right. So it’s, it’s what we do. If you guys want to know how I got results for the land solutions, network case study, I went and I got the prospects from MTV, and they were built out the tier one branded the ad ID, the drive second g site, you can go in and starts and start breaking it down and you can see it all there. I worked on the entity just like I recommend everything is that we guys, we don’t do anything different than what we give you. This is why it’s ridiculous. If you guys want and go and try other things, you want to change it up and you don’t want this to happen. You don’t want that to happen. You want to see results. This is how we do it. Exactly how we’re showing you the SEO power shield, which seems like it’s something new it isn’t. It’s simply bringing all of these different things that these pieces that we’ve been mentioned the syndication network, which I would never do anything without the the @ID now the and the drive seconds, guys, it’s my training by August of 2015. It was released, it’s working better today than it was when it was released. And so why wouldn’t I use my own training my own methods, methods that I use them to train VA that are now in MGYB working for us. Why wouldn’t I do it? Why would I go and try something else? I do tests right to see whether what other people say is is true, whether it’s working, how it works. And I just find that my stuff done the way that I do it works and works like crazy. It works.

I mean, I can’t say how well it works. You see, you’re seeing Bradley get results, you see mega results, Rob talks about the results that he gets. And if you’re in our mastermind, you know what results our mastermind members are getting. And so I don’t I don’t know what else to tell you, other than this thing that we call the SEO shield is what we use not only to protect ourselves from Google, but also to enhance our entity and to enhance our footprint. So Google, look, this is me, this is who I am. And all of these things are also extensions of my brand. And what’s happening right now in search engines is that brands are getting rewarded. Yes. If you’re not do if you’re not doing entity SEO, you’re already in trouble. So you even before you start, you’re in trouble. I agree with that. And I just want to show like, for example, this is, you know, I, because of the 2xyouragency training, I actually wasn’t doing a lot of marketing for prospecting for Tree Service clients for my own agency. Because I’ve been really focused a lot on the last several months on my my real estate business. However, some of the marketing that I had put, you know, content that I produced two years ago, for whatever reason is producing a lot of inbound leads for my agency. So Tree Service contractors contacting me and over the last couple of months, asking me to quote them, you know, for service, SEO services and lead generation and such. And so, as part of the two extra agency training, I said, you know, it’s silly for me to be doing this training and not also adding to my own agency marketing and stuff to bring clients in which I

Again, I wasn’t originally planning on growing my agency but I didn’t feel hypocritical not actively trying to grow my agency throughout the two extra agency training. So why not I’m going to grow my agency. So just a couple little things that I’ve been doing recently to get better results and so for example, Tree Service SEO, I haven’t even done any SEO to this except for one, press release one press release. And I had a page on my site right here that for the last two or three years or however long it might show what the publishing date was. Okay, so for the last year it was when I published this page this posting guys looked at so awful, I haven’t my websites, a one page website. And anyways, I haven’t added any images to this. haven’t done any outbound linking or any internal link. It’s a one page website. There’s nothing to link to but the homepage, but all I did was I had an article written I didn’t write this I had it written and I there was a this this post was nothing other than this infographic for the last year until last week.

When I had this article written, and I just went in and published this article, it’s about 1500 words about SEO. And that’s for Tree Search. It’s optimized for Tree Service SEO. And that was it. And I haven’t done anything to this page. There’s no theme mirroring. This has not been built into, by the way, I don’t even have a theme mirrored Dr. Stack and G site because there is no content. There’s no silo structure to my my agency website. It’s a single page other than this post. It’s literally a single page website. There’s no content, there’s no silos. There’s none of that. The Dr. stack that has been ranking since August or may Excuse me, may of 2015. So going on five years, the SEO Virginia, Virginia SEO SEO agency Virginia, it’s producing number one maps ranking for local IPS, number one Google Site ranking. And if I open that up, it’s interesting but when taking a look at my drive stack because I built this from scratch when I was first turned on to the RYS Academy methods by Marco and I built I only built one set of files. That’s it, like I was I was just in the account, the Google account where the owner account for this drive stack that I built, which was under different gmail account for whatever reason, I was just in there over the weekend. And all I’ve got guys are the files that are embedded right here. That’s it. There is nothing else to this drive stack. And it’s got me ranked number one for SEO, Virginia, Virginia, SEO, SEO agency, Virginia, blah, blah, blah, for five years, over and above all the other SEO agencies in the state of Virginia. And it’s just a matter of like six drive stack files. That’s it. There’s no folders, there’s no silo structure. My point in telling you all of this is because imagine and again, this page, this one page here, which was nothing other than an infographic for the last year, all I did was add content to it, which hasn’t even been optimized like I haven’t gone through and finished optimizing the content, adding images and all tags, all of that stuff.

Look at this guys, out of all the Tree Service SEO agencies out there who are paying for ads and everything else. on page one, what position seven with no SEO or just one, press release. So you can imagine if I go in and feed mirror that page onto this G site, build some drive stack files, a folder around Tree Service, SEO and files that are all pointing to that page, run a few links to it, guys. There’s no question I should be able to pop to the number one position for that keyword. Right? So anyways, I’m just showing work. You know, we don’t just tell you to do things because we tell you to do it. We practice what we preach and it works. So okay, any comments on that before I try to answer a few more of these? Anybody know?

norian says It can’t be that easy with all the different SEO tactics out there. Okay. You’re right. It doesn’t work. Laurens. Right. Yeah, we’re showing you it works, but you’re right. It doesn’t work. It can’t be that easy. Okay. Well, I like I mean, if you want to make overcomplicate it, that’s fine. You know, continue over complicated. But, uh, you know, It is that easy. It’s just a matter of how much you push into the entity. That’s, that’s what how you overcome competition right now. All right, so I understand it. No. I see you, Lawrence. And I hear you know, it’s not easy. It’s simple. We keep it so right. Yeah, we keep it simple. We’ve developed a method that has withstood the test of time, and every single update that has been thrown at the SEO world for the past five plus years. So no, it can’t be that easy. It isn’t easy. It doesn’t involve effort or work. It’s just easy. Simple is different because we focus on web principles that everyone that everyone has to follow, including Google. So focusing on those and focusing on the map is what allows us to simplify our tactics to the point where we can get results this way.

So easy as easy as and simple are different in this case. So one thing and I’ve got I know we can answer this number for right here. So I just want to say one more thing about this. So in the mastermind, guys, I have a couple of projects that I’m starting. We got a mastermind webinar tomorrow, my mat, the format has changed. We don’t talk about that enough at the beginning of Hump Day Hangouts, guys, we need to do that coming weeks. We recently changed the format to where each one of us now is producing our own mastermind webinar. So if you’re in the mastermind, that’s enormous amount of value because before it was mainly Marco and i doing the webinars every two weeks we would do a mastermind webinar, which would often go to two and a half, sometimes even three hours. But we it was heavily SEO based and it was mostly Marco and I are doing the training and answering questions. But we’ve we’ve changed it since the 2xyouragency juicy stuff. Now all of us have different skills, Semantic Mastery mastermind, partners, right? My partners, we all have different sets of skills, they all overlap for sure, we all have different sets of skills, we want to be able to provide you guys with as much actionable information as possible. So each one of us now are hosting our own separate webinars. So you can come and plug into the ones that are the most relevant to you and your business at what at any given time, or plug into all of them if you want. So one of the things that I’m going to be covering and I’m gonna announce this tomorrow, kind of like reveal the plan and everything is I’ve got a new a whole new tree service project that I’m starting. And part of the agreement I made with the contractor just this week, in fact was that I could use his project as a case study within my teach with as a training opportunity. And he agreed and I’m giving him a you know, a substantial discount on my my normal fees for a Tree Service contractor to be able to use this. So I’m going to be taking this exact thing that we’re talking about, right so, create the entity build the SEO shield, start the content marketing link building and embeds through ngi be driving relevant traffic into the entity using Google ads, very inexpensive display and or YouTube ads. That’s it. That’s the process. That’s it. And we’re going to take that project. And I’m going to make it a case study that I’m going to be sharing in the mastermind over the next month or a couple of months while I’m building it out to four service area business with a wide surface area to show how we can absolutely get results, no questions asked, by just doing exactly what we talked about. And to at your agency here and everywhere that you guys can hear us, right, which is that that simple. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of work involved. But the easiest way to make it. The way to make it easy, is don’t do the damn work. Just buy the components, put them manage the project, buy the components, stack them or put them in the you know, build them in the order that we tell you to do. And then just power them up and that and produce good content. That’s a big part of it. That’s it. You do that and then no question you will get results.

So, all right, we got about three minutes. I’m gonna roll through these last couple real quick.

What Is The Use Of The Multiple Tier 1 Rings?

He says what is the use of the multiple tier one rings? We don’t recommend multiple tier one rings except and only four YouTube channels. Okay. And I’ve said that a million times. I can’t assume that you’ve you’ve been now all of them. But yeah, I don’t I don’t one tier one ring for a blog syndication only branded tier one right? That’s it. Now you can use multiple tiers, right? So you can use two tier networks or three tier networks whatever we’ll we will build two tier networks for you at MGYB. But as we’ve said, and again, you can go to our YouTube channel and find this you can go to support dot Semantic Mastery. com and look at our knowledge base under syndication Academy and it’ll talk there’s several frequently asked questions there where I specifically go into depth into detail as to why if you’re going to use two tier or multi tier networks for blog syndication how to set it up correctly, which is to inject third relevant related RSS feeds into the second tier. Okay. And again just go to support.semanticmastery.com. Syndication Academy knowledge base articles and there’s several lessons in there about that. But um, so yeah, so only one branded syndication ring, tier one syndication ring for blogs, if you want to use multi tier networks you can, but you have to be aware of how to set that up correctly, which again, I just pointed you to the resources for that.

Also, if there could be more tier one rings, what should they be personas? No, they wouldn’t be tier one rings for blog syndication if you want to use multiple rings again, they should be second or second tier and beyond. And they should be persona-based or topical based like theme based but not branded. Does that make sense? also should you do multiple tier one on YouTube channel only or is it allowed websites? No, no. For YouTube channels, you can stack as many tier one networks as you want. They could be branded. Well, you should only have one branded ring period. But the rest of them can be persona based, theme based. You know, whatever you want, it’s fine for YouTube. It’s no issue. It’s only for blog, blog syndication.

I think we’re about done. How much money will be needed for a complete project like that? How much do you charge? I’m not sure what you’re asking who you’re asking about charging. But for a complete project. Again, you guys can just go to MGYB and price it out. Right? So like an SEO power shield, go look at the pricing. That’s component number one, right then component number two would be you know, content marketing and such which ipvanish to do that, but component number three would be the link building and embed gigs and determine what what size link building or embed package you need is going to depend on the competition. Competition is going to dictate the volume of links needed and the frequency with which you need to do that build them. Does that make sense?

So you can kind of go through and just kind of price it out that way. And, you know, I recommend 100% markup at the minimum for charging clients. So if you go to MGYB and kind of just map out what your costs are going to be, and then mark it up 100% minimum, that’s what you should charge your clients for setup. And if like, for example, for monthly ongoing monthly link building gigs, if you know, a medium competition package is going to be what you need for your particular industry might not be what I found for a lot of my projects is, I go heavy up front when I start the project with link building and embeds once I achieve the desired results that I typically cycle through the low competition, link building and embed gig packages, but they repeat like in other words, they recur on monthly basis and that’s just to maintain but it may be different for your niche. I can’t, I can’t tell you what to how to develop out your your plan. You need to do that depending on your project, yor market keywords competition level, that kind of thing. Okay.

All right. Anybody want to comment on that? I’m about to wrap it up.

No, it just be it’s all set up. It ends up being Everything is there SEO shield is there. That’s what you need to get started. That’s it. Go join 2x Your Agency go through the 2xyour results training. We’re in week three of four for that next week will be the last week of that and we’re going to get into two extra business which is going to be about how to scale your operations and grow. So we’ll see some of you and mastermind tomorrow. Bye, everybody. Thanks. Bye, everyone.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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angelagiles18 · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 277 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

Bradley: I’m good, man. If we wouldn’t have been talking about beer I wouldn’t be so thirsty right now.

Yeah, this is good.

Adam: Oh, let’s see next on here Hernan. How you doing man? It’s what coming up on winter time for you. I guess it’s fall now.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Marco, how about you? How’s the weather?

Yeah, no it’s antibodies I’m building up yeah there you go I just clean or get drunk so that’s what you call an ambiguous to Corona entity, man. Chris, how are you doing man?

yeah then good still like cold here I mean like it’s not freezing but like you still need to pull over

Let’s do it.

Alright, so let’s get into question.

How To Make A Domain Mapping In Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Why Do You SEO For Local And Not Focus On Ads Where You Have More Control Over Keywords?

Okay. Anyways, good question. Or good? Great question.

You want to comment on that? Anybody before I move on? I thought I think that was fine. Okay.

How Long Should You Wait After The New WordPress Page Is Published?

Should You Use Similar Content In The GStacks As On The GSIte And The Money Site?

Guys have to excuse me, I’ve got a call coming in. I don’t know how to silence that right now.

As I just showed you search for SEO shield holiday special Hump Day hangout SEO shield right there, 14 minutes 36 seconds long, all about specifically what the SEO shield is and how it works. Okay.

question though Thank you.

If you are not then I’m sorry because that that sucks.

Alright, next Are there any up sales on your to extra agency course I plan I plan to buy all the upsells but I wanted to know if there are any before Bye bye.

Yes, there are upsells there are one time offers and that kind of stuff. We wouldn’t be a good we wouldn’t be worth our weight.

So, all right, we got about three minutes. I’m gonna roll through these last couple real quick.

What Is The Use Of The Multiple Tier 1 Rings?

All right. Anybody want to comment on that? I’m about to wrap it up.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277 published first on your-t1-blog-url https://ift.tt/1WMpNvB March 12, 2020 at 02:54PM Semantic Mastery https://ift.tt/2YeHIxM

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localwebmgmt · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 277 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

Bradley: I’m good, man. If we wouldn’t have been talking about beer I wouldn’t be so thirsty right now.

Yeah, this is good.

Adam: Oh, let’s see next on here Hernan. How you doing man? It’s what coming up on winter time for you. I guess it’s fall now.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Marco, how about you? How’s the weather?

Yeah, no it’s antibodies I’m building up yeah there you go I just clean or get drunk so that’s what you call an ambiguous to Corona entity, man. Chris, how are you doing man?

yeah then good still like cold here I mean like it’s not freezing but like you still need to pull over

Let’s do it.

Alright, so let’s get into question.

How To Make A Domain Mapping In Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Why Do You SEO For Local And Not Focus On Ads Where You Have More Control Over Keywords?

Okay. Anyways, good question. Or good? Great question.

You want to comment on that? Anybody before I move on? I thought I think that was fine. Okay.

How Long Should You Wait After The New WordPress Page Is Published?

Should You Use Similar Content In The GStacks As On The GSIte And The Money Site?

Guys have to excuse me, I’ve got a call coming in. I don’t know how to silence that right now.

As I just showed you search for SEO shield holiday special Hump Day hangout SEO shield right there, 14 minutes 36 seconds long, all about specifically what the SEO shield is and how it works. Okay.

question though Thank you.

If you are not then I’m sorry because that that sucks.

Alright, next Are there any up sales on your to extra agency course I plan I plan to buy all the upsells but I wanted to know if there are any before Bye bye.

Yes, there are upsells there are one time offers and that kind of stuff. We wouldn’t be a good we wouldn’t be worth our weight.

So, all right, we got about three minutes. I’m gonna roll through these last couple real quick.

What Is The Use Of The Multiple Tier 1 Rings?

All right. Anybody want to comment on that? I’m about to wrap it up.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

pledje · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 277 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

Bradley: I’m good, man. If we wouldn’t have been talking about beer I wouldn’t be so thirsty right now.

Yeah, this is good.

Adam: Oh, let’s see next on here Hernan. How you doing man? It’s what coming up on winter time for you. I guess it’s fall now.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Marco, how about you? How’s the weather?

Yeah, no it’s antibodies I’m building up yeah there you go I just clean or get drunk so that’s what you call an ambiguous to Corona entity, man. Chris, how are you doing man?

yeah then good still like cold here I mean like it’s not freezing but like you still need to pull over

Let’s do it.

Alright, so let’s get into question.

How To Make A Domain Mapping In Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Why Do You SEO For Local And Not Focus On Ads Where You Have More Control Over Keywords?

Okay. Anyways, good question. Or good? Great question.

You want to comment on that? Anybody before I move on? I thought I think that was fine. Okay.

How Long Should You Wait After The New WordPress Page Is Published?

Should You Use Similar Content In The GStacks As On The GSIte And The Money Site?

Guys have to excuse me, I’ve got a call coming in. I don’t know how to silence that right now.

As I just showed you search for SEO shield holiday special Hump Day hangout SEO shield right there, 14 minutes 36 seconds long, all about specifically what the SEO shield is and how it works. Okay.

question though Thank you.

If you are not then I’m sorry because that that sucks.

Alright, next Are there any up sales on your to extra agency course I plan I plan to buy all the upsells but I wanted to know if there are any before Bye bye.

Yes, there are upsells there are one time offers and that kind of stuff. We wouldn’t be a good we wouldn’t be worth our weight.

So, all right, we got about three minutes. I’m gonna roll through these last couple real quick.

What Is The Use Of The Multiple Tier 1 Rings?

All right. Anybody want to comment on that? I’m about to wrap it up.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

daynamartinez22 · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 277 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

Bradley: I’m good, man. If we wouldn’t have been talking about beer I wouldn’t be so thirsty right now.

Yeah, this is good.

Adam: Oh, let’s see next on here Hernan. How you doing man? It’s what coming up on winter time for you. I guess it’s fall now.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Marco, how about you? How’s the weather?

Yeah, no it’s antibodies I’m building up yeah there you go I just clean or get drunk so that’s what you call an ambiguous to Corona entity, man. Chris, how are you doing man?

yeah then good still like cold here I mean like it’s not freezing but like you still need to pull over

Let’s do it.

Alright, so let’s get into question.

How To Make A Domain Mapping In Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Why Do You SEO For Local And Not Focus On Ads Where You Have More Control Over Keywords?

Okay. Anyways, good question. Or good? Great question.

You want to comment on that? Anybody before I move on? I thought I think that was fine. Okay.

How Long Should You Wait After The New WordPress Page Is Published?

Should You Use Similar Content In The GStacks As On The GSIte And The Money Site?

Guys have to excuse me, I’ve got a call coming in. I don’t know how to silence that right now.

As I just showed you search for SEO shield holiday special Hump Day hangout SEO shield right there, 14 minutes 36 seconds long, all about specifically what the SEO shield is and how it works. Okay.

question though Thank you.

If you are not then I’m sorry because that that sucks.

Alright, next Are there any up sales on your to extra agency course I plan I plan to buy all the upsells but I wanted to know if there are any before Bye bye.

Yes, there are upsells there are one time offers and that kind of stuff. We wouldn’t be a good we wouldn’t be worth our weight.

So, all right, we got about three minutes. I’m gonna roll through these last couple real quick.

What Is The Use Of The Multiple Tier 1 Rings?

All right. Anybody want to comment on that? I’m about to wrap it up.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277 published first on your-t1-blog-url

0 notes

semanticmastery · 5 years ago

Text

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 277 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 277, where we talk about maybe some we have a drink. It's almost five o'clock here. So now, we'll maybe do that on one coming up. But Welcome, everybody. We're going to say hi, real quick, we got a couple short announcements, and then we're going to get into it. We've got a long list of questions. And just for those of us joining us for the first time, I want to let you know too, we really appreciate your questions. If you can keep it to one question, we understand some are multi part. But today we have like, somebody put in like six long questions. We're not going to be able to get to all of those, but we will try to answer what we can we just want to make sure we give everyone a chance. So we'll touch on that again. But again, we appreciate your questions. Please come and ask but you know, just be respectful of everyone else and make sure make room for them. So with that said, Bradley, how you doing today?

Bradley: I'm good, man. If we wouldn't have been talking about beer I wouldn't be so thirsty right now.

Yeah, this is good.

I'll share with everyone since it's topical. We were talking about it you know everything on everyone's minds coronavirus, and then hearing the news reports that Corona you know, the beer is taking a sales hit, you know, it's just kind of one of those like mind blowing things that that's actually a result of this. So, yeah, how stupid can people be there? They're concerned about drinking Corona beer. They've associated it with the corona virus and poor Corona.

Adam: Oh, let's see next on here Hernan. How you doing man? It's what coming up on winter time for you. I guess it's fall now.

Hernan: Yeah, it's actually fall. We're getting too fall. But today's like still in the past. It is been hot as hell outside. So it's been good, man. And everything is good and excited to be here.

Adam: Nice. Nice. Marco, how about you? How's the weather?

Marco: Groundhog Day you see it? I ain't got to tell you about it. You see it. This is what it's like, every day every morning, 365. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't. But it's always warm in Costa Rica. So stay away. I want you here. I don't want your Corona. Only Corona one is in my fridge and I actually do have a couple of Corona in the fridge

Yeah, no it's antibodies I'm building up yeah there you go I just clean or get drunk so that's what you call an ambiguous to Corona entity, man. Chris, how are you doing man?

yeah then good still like cold here I mean like it's not freezing but like you still need to pull over

yeah actually like it colder weather is like really hot summers always giving me brain fog and I'm really unproductive so not sure what to say to the others here for good you're where you should be then so man I do get the same way when it gets hot just like yeah man that is not my jam. So

go guys real quick before we get into it, just wanted to say if you're joining us here for the first time, that's awesome. We really do appreciate it. Please ask your questions, you can always catch the replay on YouTube, which you can go head over and subscribe. You can find the link down below or just go to YouTube, or youtube.com slash see slash Semantic Mastery and subscribe. Stay up to date. Because we understand sometimes you can't make it live. But all of these are recording go up on our YouTube channel. Also, if you're an agency owner or a consultant, like us, and you want to get more clients, you want to grow your revenue and you'd like to scale your team then you should be are already into x your agency or Double Your Agency, you can go over and check that out at two extra agency.com. And we know a lot of people find us and they're looking for and getting great advice for SEO. But if you want the step by step, Battle Plan, then guess where you should go battleplan.semanticmastery.com it's step by step processes for everything from new websites, eighth websites, YouTube channels, so much more. So head over, grab that and you can find the links off to the right if you're joining us live.

And real quick for anyone who is live. If you guys can do some typing for me, I saw that somebody on there said that there are some issues with redirects and using the chat on the hump day hangouts page, you guys can let me know if it's working okay for you or not. We'd love some more feedback. So want to make sure that that's working smoothly for free one chat box is not working again or something. I just had some issues somebody was saying they were having issues with redirects, but it's working in incognito. So I just want to see if it's one person or many.

And then last but not least, we've got some information coming out about some really cool updates with mg y b.co. Where you can get done for you services for syndication networks, hardware stacks, and of course SEO shield, which we had a killer deal going on last week. A lot of people took advantage of that, but there's some new great stuff coming out with that and I believe Marco even with the link shortener, there's some potential updates coming right.

Yeah, what we're trying to because someone mentioned it last week. Having a custom domain, although people use Bitly people use rebranding people use all kinds of a t.co in Twitter, they use all kinds of shorteners. And it doesn't really matter. And in fact, because of the strength of our shortener, it actually enhances everything that you're doing to the point that the shortened link, right, whatever it short with, it can rank for that keyword and take up more real estate and inserts, which is actually what you're looking for. You want people as much as to cover as much of the real estate as possible so that you have a greater chance of people clicking on whatever project it is that you're doing.

And before we get to questions, I'd like to make a quick announcement because anyone who donated to the charity, got access to all of the webinars and everything. If you haven't, then please send an email. Right, you got you guys. I'll post it all on the page. And I'll be doing an update webinar probably in May because I promise one, because I showed the land solutions that work and how it's going and all of a sudden they just blew up and started appearing on the first page like everywhere.

Yeah, getting national attention we're getting form fills from all over the US. So it's pretty interesting what's happening. And without really all of the power that I thought it would be necessary to get this to where it is right now where on the next push. I'm expecting it to land top three in for the top level category, which is the top market level that everyone wants. I'll tell every cell and fast and then state Bradley just show me this morning where it's appearing in Virginia. Yeah, you son of a bitch. It's out of touch. I can't control the monster man. Once it's gone, guys. I can't help it.

Yeah, well, I got the knowledge panel now which is pretty impressive considering I really haven't done a lot of SEO work that has been just through exactly what we've been teaching which is that entity like guys I haven't even been doing link building to the alpha land realty project I did one link building package when I first got the DR stack delivered month you know I'll shit damn near a year ago now well at least nine months ago and I did one link building package that's it other than that I've just published in press releases for properties that I have for sale haven't done any other sort of SEO work whatsoever and I've got the knowledge panel now for sale down pat fast Virginia which means you know, my brand has been fully associated with that keyword which is super powerful. And again guys that's doing nothing other than what we teach about solidifying, validating the entity period. Entity-based worry less SEO is what this is all about. That's what my update in May or June. I don't know when because I want to do press on the stack and then I want to do a link building. I'll put do an embed stack and a link building one and see what happened. What kind of madness that gets us into.

So it's coming, guys, if you donated, you'll have all of the replays are available and you will have access to that the upcoming webinar. And if you haven't donated it, there's always a good time, right? This is no better time like now to go and donate and get access to everything and including the upcoming update webinar. So there you go.

Awesome. Awesome. Two more quick things. I'm gonna have Bradley, I got a question for you. And then from there, we can go to questions, but I want to remind everybody, we still got early access pricing for POFU Live tickets, I believe we have 19 spots, maybe 20 remaining, but the prices are going to go up for too long. So grab those if you want to come if you want to find out more about that you can find out at kofu live.com. But it's basically finding out about all of this stuff. But doing it over two to three days. I highly recommend you grab the VIP ticket we've priced it to make it easily accessible from the main ticket. It's not a big bump in price. We just want to cover the costs get you together with everyone else a day early.

We have a lot of fun last year we went go karting that was blast had a beer, some food and just get together and you know, in a kind of relaxed environment, have some fun you can get to know everyone and then go into the event. You know, and it's a small group you already kind of know each other. You're familiar with each other and go in there and really get the most out of that. So like I said, check it out at POFU Live if you'd like to join us can be last weekend in Boston, or last weekend in September in Boston. will have a bunch more details coming but go grab that pofulive.com. And then Bradley, you just updated the Double Your Agency training right if I know we're going long here, can you in like 60 seconds just real quick. tell people what the training was about?

Yeah, well, this week it was about embeds and link building, which is how to power up the entity, the Semantic Mastery way, which is beautiful. And so what's really important here is that we like I just mentioned about how all I'm doing all I've done for Alpha Realty. lt is entity based SEO and I haven't even been doing the external stuff because I drive most traffic to it via direct mail, and Google ads and also organic rankings now. So because I'm doing well, I haven't really done a lot of SEO to it. But it's ranking. And what I discovered today was we're in the 2xyour results section of the Double Your Agency training. So there's three total parts – 2xyourr pipeline, 2xyour results, which that's the section we're in now. And then it's 2xyour business which is what we're going to be going to in two weeks.

And so the first three topics covered in this module, which is the 2xyour results was number one, the SEO shield. That was week one, which is the foundation of everything we do guys like it's it's absolutely the foundation now and that's how you solidify the entity right? Number two is content marketing. It's just how you start to build relevancy, both topical and or location, relevancy if it's for a local project. So content marketing is how you start to fuel up the entity like power it up with content and build the relevancy and now three as external link building and embeds, like what we do to the SEO shield to power it up. And I'm telling you guys, it's a three step process. There's a lot of components to those three steps, but it's a three step process. And the fourth step being pushing relevant traffic into the entity which kind of is like throwing jet fuel on the fire. And we're going to talk about that next week. My whole point is I've got several projects I'm working on right now that all I'm doing it's paint by numbers guys exactly what we're teaching and to 2xyouragency for the 2xyourresults part of it. SEO shield, content marketing, power up the entity, run relevant traffic into it, you'll get results period and the story. It's paint by numbers. There's not there is no competition out there that you cannot overcome with this method, Period. End of story. Marco, do you want to comment on that?

Marco: Dude, I don't even take into account the competition. I don't look at it. I don't bother. I don't care if we can go up against Amazon go up against anyone. And so I just don't bother anybody I do. Mike I let them worry about me because this guy is the top guy in in nationwide for this is in trouble and he doesn't even know it. Because it's coming into it's going to hit. You're already seeing it with really that last power push that we usually do to get it in there. It hasn't even been done. So it's just gonna be mad. Simple and simple doesn't mean easy, right? We try to make it simple, so that people can follow everything and get there and get the same results that we get. It's not easy. It's a lot of work. There's a lot of things involved. We have a whole team that works behind all this to accomplish all of this all of the different steps. But once it's done, it's just keeping it up and and doing your your link building cycles the way that you're supposed to your press releases, and it's done. It's a done deal. It's crazy how simple this is, and how people despite the proof that we can provide because I'm sharing results in our group.

Despite that there's still sell it. That doesn't work. Yeah. Don't leave your lying eyes because it's an optical illusion, the results that you're seeing terps that's not true either, right? So I will just leave it at that. Let's go to the questions, guys. It doesn't work. If you want to see how it doesn't work, come and get our stuff and anything else guys, or can we get any question?

Let's do it.

All right, there we go. Tell me when you see my screen. Got it? Okay. We can see it. Yeah. So that's what I was talking about. If you look at selling and fast, Virginia, it's popping knowledge panel now number one position. And you can see my brand is associated with that search term. It's even showing up and suggesting related searches. Guys, that's what you want, you know, powerful that is when somebody a prospect starts typing a generic keyword into search and a brand appears how powerful that is. So it's incredible how much traffic I get from from that. It's insane. And guys, I haven't done anything other than what we teach. I have an SEO shield. I did one batch of link building to it and ever since then all I've done is run relevant traffic into the entity. And it just took time is just a matter of time and I'm already popping for knowledge panel now push this competitor out who had been number one for months. So it's um, it's impressive, guys. I can't thank Marco and my team enough for making it so easy to repeat and get results. It's just not fair. It's just not fair.

Alright, so let's get into question.

How To Make A Domain Mapping In Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

Dustin. Hey, guys, how do you? Yeah, okay, that's it. Hey, guys, how do you make a domain mapping with AWS Amazon cloud so my websites gets hosted on Amazon, just go to YouTube. You can do it with CloudFlare. Probably the easiest way to do it is through CloudFlare. But just go to YouTube and search not directly on our channel, because I don't think we have any public training about that. And the training that I did on that was probably is probably three years old now. And it's likely that it may, I don't know, it might not have changed, but just go to YouTube and search domain mapping cloud, Amazon HTML site or something like that, right. And just playing around, you'll find somebody that's good with a tutorial for that. It's, it's fairly simple. I use CloudFlare to do that. But you can also use Amazon route 53, which is their DNS service inside of AWS console. You can do it with Amazon route 53. And what's interesting about Amazon route 53, by the way, is when you set it up that way, it gives you what's called a dynamic IP, the IP for your site will change. If Well, if you're hosting if you're hosting in Amazon, but if you're just pointing How do you make a domain mapping so my website gets hosted on Amazon.

Yeah, if you're using Amazon to host, then it's a dynamic IP, which is it's interesting because at the IP changes, years ago, we had talked about building a PB ends, well, kind of like PB ends, but essentially buffer sites using Amazon ht HTML pages hosted an s3 buckets, but using Amazon route 53, to set up subdomains for a particular domain, and you have just multiple, like, essentially, we create a bunch of pages and sub domains, but they would each have dynamic IPS. So it would, it wouldn't look like all of them coming from like links from the same domain would be coming from different IPS, if that makes sense because they were different sub domains. And you'd go check them in an IP checker. And if you refresh the screen, it wouldn't always be a new IP, but often when you would refresh the screen, it would be a whole new IP. And it was it was a great way when when we were still using a lot of pbn stuff to get IP diversity into your link building. But again, I don't do that anymore. We don't need to the SEO shield is all we need to do. And and that is link building, and it works. But yeah, just go check YouTube, you'll find somebody to teach you how to do that. It's not that difficult.

Why Do You SEO For Local And Not Focus On Ads Where You Have More Control Over Keywords?

jp says I don't understand. Okay, this is a good question. I don't understand the use of ranking websites for local. I run Google Ads with GMB location extension activated and Google ads for local plumbing clients, I ranked multiple websites organically number one and GMBs organically number one, I would guess that about 5% of traffic comes from my number one organically ranked websites and about 15 from organic GMB organic rankings and the rest come from ads and GMB linked to the ads. You can target so much more keywords with ads and organic you will never show in the three pack for the variety of keywords you can target in Google ads. Well that's not necessarily true you can depending on how much work you put into it. You can write for variety of keywords and you can also rank for outside of your immediate area like you can with ads. I know what you mean when you run a location extension with the GMB. That's how you can get beat that proximity filter right away. Right? There's no question. If you have the top quality score, or a high quality score that Trumps your competitors, then that's how you will typically get in the number one position in the ads, you know, the number one ads position in the maps three pack or in the expanded maps.

And there's no question that that's a great way to expand your service area very quickly and overcome that proximity issue. However, we do know a way of overcoming that proximity issue organically, which is the local GMB pro method. So it's not that you can't do it. It's just it does require a lot more work than just paying Google to get placed there. That said, you say that you would guess that about 5% of your traffic comes from organic rankings and 15% from organic or maps rankings. But you said that you would guess you know, I would recommend you know, looking at your analytics deep diving in that to see if that is the case. And it may be for your particular industry, plumbing, I don't do plumbing, SEO. I mean, it happened to pass. But I, you know, most of the industries that I work in I've proven time and again, that maps rankings produce the most leads for most of the services that I, you know, provide most of the industries that I provide services to. And organic rankings have recently for whatever reason started to produce more than they have in the past.

And I don't know why that is because they're pushed even further down on the page now than ever. But for some reason or another, I'm getting more traffic through organic rankings that I have in recent years. And I'm not sure exactly why that is, except for maybe the fact that the maps filter has you know, the proximity issue has reduced the maps footprint and your organic rankings are taking are kind of filling in where the maps used to produce results. Now, it's organic, so maybe that's why but I think it varies by any industry, you know, because there are a lot of statistics out there that state. And again, I'm sure it's going to vary by industry. But there are a lot of statistics out there that state that organic rankings get organic listings, period maps or organic, get so much more click throughs than paid. And so just and I'm going to ask Marco and other others to comment on this in a minute, but I just pulled this up for organic first page search statistics on higher visibility calm, and this is stats for 2020. And it talks about right here 70. And this doesn't mention local specifically, but it says 70 to 80% of all searches, searchers ignore paid ads and focus only on organic results. So again, I'm not disputing what you say is the result of your marketing campaigns. But what I'm telling you is by it probably varies by industry, and through my own projects. I've proven over and over and over again through data that we generate far many more leads for the like tree service industry.

For example, at far less cost than we do using, we generate far more leads at using SEO and maps SEO, that at far less cost than we do using Google ads. So again, I you know, I'm, I'm not trying to dispute what you're saying. I'm just saying that I think there it's going to vary depending on industry and project. Comments, guys. I absolutely agree that it's going to depend entirely, not only on on the industry, and how people are used to seeing whatever it is or the results that they're seeing. It also depends on how much effort you put into your your SEO and your maps versus how much effort you put into ads. So if you think that s that SEO and ads aren't going to bring you the results, because you're guessing that 20% is coming from that and all of your efforts actually know that 8020 rule 80% of your effort goes into ads, then that's going to show in that presented. I've seen it differently also. And we have them especially in the plumbing niche, we had the DC plumber example, where once we trigger that map pack, the phone went, what they went nuts is map pack and it's also organic he gets organic traffic, you have to remember the press releases also bring traffic to one will branded will also bring some traffic, right your social media and how much effort goes goes in there. So the idea here is that you don't focus all of your energies on one source of traffic is one change can bring that 80% to half and then what do you do, but if you focus like you mentioned in other Hump Day Hangouts and holistic marketing when you take an overall approach to what this is a gang, you're actually driving several traffic funnels, not concentrating all your efforts in one.

I think you're going to see much better results. I'm also seeing it in the morning, by the way, I'm working California and in New York with attorney in those two places and it's man, the map pack in those and it's whatever we target, right because we could target in the GMB. Any keywords that we want or any keyword set or any we can silo it, it's what we do. And we it's how we link it together. It's how we get that those keywords to pop up. And you know, you get into the thousands of keywords that way and not only in in GM, bn and insights, but it starts showing up in Search Console on what you're getting impressions for, and the average position where you're getting impressions where if you improve the average position, you start seeing crazy CTR and so all of these factors combined our matter.

He is seeing his numbers from his efforts, which is fine, that's the way you want to do it. If you think that you can get the most bang for your buck out of it. And then by all means me I'd rather not go up against for example Amazon and pay for ads against Amazon I'd rather hit them organically and do my damage there because I I'm seeing crazy results from that case study also seeing results from the land solutions network, right the cell and fast case study. So all of these things that we do, what we give you is is is it's like you're giving us giving us data from from what your efforts are from what you're getting. So we give you data from what we see and not to say the one or the other is wrong it's just different approaches to the the different niches that we're after.

Yeah, I just one more comment on that. Like for example, why I like SEO better than ads and I run ads guys for a lot of stuff. My alpha land Realty, for example, I generate a ton of traffic through ads, and I do it for clients too. But my my point is kind of like what Marco said like, let's say you've got $1,000 a month budget period for any type of marketing, whether it's Google ads or SEO or whatever. If you're running $1,000 a month in Google ads and Google Ads only, that's, that's great. You can target you know, whatever your keywords are and your locations. But if you want to expand into new areas and target new keywords, you still only have that thousand dollar a month budget. So you've got to rob Peter to pay Paul. In other words, you've got to pull money from existing campaigns, or ad groups, whatever you've got running, to push into different areas, if that's what you're limited to is, let's just say that that's, you know, again, hypothetically, you're limited to that, that thousand dollars a month, whereas with SEO, the thousand dollars a month can go towards content marketing, and link building and such and target, different keywords, different locations. And once the content is there, and it's producing, it's your ranking and you're producing leads from that content. You can redirect those funds to the next location, the next set of keywords, because that's already producing. And it's just a matter of maintaining it then with through our methods, you can maintain organic rankings through just link building and such to the SEO shield and the entity. So my point is, you can take that same thousand dollars and continue to expand keywords and locations area, right. So service area and continually grow with that same thousand dollars per month. Whereas with Google ads, if you're at full capacity for your budget, you can't grow into other areas without spending more money or taking money from an already producing campaign to redirect to those areas. That makes sense. So that's what I like, you know, when you stop paying Google, you stop generating leads. That's the problem with Google Ads there. I mean, again, I guys, I love Google ads. I love them. But I don't you know, I still always recommend to clients, that we start an SEO campaign and that we only use Google ads to supplement until the SEO is producing the results that we desire.

Okay. Anyways, good question. Or good? Great question.

This is a very long, like, it looks like it's only six questions, but if you get into it, there's like, eight questions in this one alone. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the first number three numbers here, and then the rest of them will have to be, you know, come join the mastermind, if you want consultation, that's what it's for. Like, you know, you can ask these kind of questions and mastermind but this is a lot of damn questions. We're not going to have time for all of these unless we get through everything else and then we'll come back. We appreciate you coming and asking questions, though. I do appreciate that. So should I include the author and each post I publish? You can, it's not necessary. My blogger, I tend to have her do it, because she's a prolific blogger who's been blogging for years for me now. So she's got quite the author status. But you know, that's not necessary. It's just a matter of preference.

Which page in the silo structure should get the most backlinks? Well, if you understand silo structure doesn't matter which page because if you have your interlinking done correctly, your internal linking throughout the silo, the anywhere you point links to at within that silo is going to benefit the entire silo. Right? That's if you understand silo structure and how to interlink correctly properly within a silo, then there's no one page that should get any more links than any other because it doesn't matter. You could take the last post in in the silo and inject all your links there and it's going to flow up through every post in the silo and up to the top level page. So, you know, it really doesn't, it's not important as to which page gets the most links. If you've got your silo structure and internal linking done properly. I can tell him which page gets the most length. None of the pages on your website should get linked. None. Absolutely not. You should not be link building to your money site. That's what your SEO shield is for.

Now through your SEO shield, you can push into each one of your market level categories. Or you can push into the supporting post for your categories, which whichever way you decide to do it, and you can cycle that what I call a link building cycle, which will you change it up, sometimes you go into the pole sometimes into the category, maybe you'll go somewhere else where you know, tier one, and push through there. But everything should take place through that dry stack and G site and maybe even tier one branded because they can handle it. But if you get caught building to your website, a lot of bad things can happen. That guy we stay away from the top level domain for that reason, because we don't want to trigger any of those nasty little things that can pop up and get you in and kill everything that you've been trying to do so know the answer to that is none none on your website. Learn how to how to cycle your link building through the SEO shield how to add depth and breadth to that drive second Gsite and you're going to get much better results with protection to be correct.

The number one is, well, if you were linking From the homepage, to all 1000 posts, first of all, that would be one hell of a menu, or one hell of a linked list. It would be kind of ugly for like user experience and everything. And number two is if any one of those individual posts link back to the homepage, which is really what you'd want to do anyways, that would be reciprocal link, it would kill the value of that silo. So my point is, I wouldn't do that. If I were going to if I were going to do it, first of all, I you know, having a one category website is fine, that's perfectly fine. But you don't want to link to all of the posts on the homepage. That would be ridiculous in my opinion. And I think it would be hard for users to navigate and I don't think it would be any good for SEO. So I think you're better off adding some sort of structure to the site navigation structure. If you were going to do something like that. That would be logical, but you would also want to make sure again, you understand how to properly interlink within a silo, which we cover in the mastermind will also be covered in heavy hitters club I'm sure or heavy hitter club excuse me, when that's available, which will be soon but we can't share our exact silos linking technique here on a free Hump Day hangout apologize.

You want to comment on that? Anybody before I move on? I thought I think that was fine. Okay.

Yeah, there's there's good ways to do that. If you're going to you can have a site all around one particular topic, but typically are one category. But typically, even with that one category, you're talking about 1000 posts.

You're you can probably segment those posts into subcategories right to make it a more easier to navigate and a more logical setup than to have 1000 posts all in one very, you know, I don't know how you I mean, I'm sure it can be done, but I'm just saying I think you'd be better off even having, you know, subcategories and such to make it more logical. I think you'd be better off that way. We'll come back to some of these other ones if we have time.

How Long Should You Wait After The New WordPress Page Is Published?

Yeah, okay. Hi, everyone. I'm using RSS syndication on my website. But my WordPress page has been disabled twice. So I think this is because my posting frequency is higher than normal blogs that can happen. So my question is, how long should I wait after the new WordPress page is published?

Well, it's, the first thing you need to do is make sure that you publish relevant content to the WordPress site. wordpress. com site when you get it in let that sit for a week or two. And the way that we build it at our, you know, our builders build them at the store is we, we, we find relevant content on another wordpress.com blog and post that we republish that with attribution. So we link over to the original source because now that's an internal link for WordPress. com. Does that make sense? That's why we do that. And we and it's a relevant article relevant to whatever the theme of that blog is now, right. And then we always recommend that you wait and give it like, you know, seven days, five to seven days, roughly before you start automating posts through RSS syndication. But then if you're going to when you start syndicating posts, if it's a high volume, frequency of publishing, then we always recommend that you start slow and you ramp up, which means like, you know, if you publish, let's say you publish, you know, five blog posts per day. I don't know what your frequency is, but we'll just use that as an example. You don't want to come out of the gate, publishing five blog posts a day to a day new WordPress site, even if it's been, you know, kind of season for a week or so, what you want to do is maybe start doing one post per day for a week or two, and then maybe you can increase it to two posts per day and then three and then four. And you do that slowly you build up so that WordPress, kind of, you know, wordpress.com, or whatever other blog sites kind of gain an understanding of the business and a lot of the site excuse me, and and allows it to, it tends to get terminated a lot less. You know, we've had, we've had projects that are I've had projects that I've worked on that had a high volume of publishing, but as long as you gradually increase to whatever your normal posting frequency is, it typically will will remain. But that said, it also depends on the type of posts that you're publishing. If the posts are spammy, if they contain a shit ton of outbound links, things like that, then you're you it's likely that they're going to get terminated anyways. So you just got to be careful. It's got be decent content, while my VA is for my the projects I work on, like we just use curated content because it's very nicely done content. We're linking to multiple sources, not just our own. So so for example, not all links on the blog, just come back to the money site. We use curated content. So every post has links to relevant third party content sources. And I think that makes a big difference too, which is why I have such a low suspension rate or termination rate for syndication network properties. So it's a matter of quality of content, the number of outbound links where those outbound links are pointing to and also the frequency of publishing, you can gradually build it up over time. Okay, it's a good question, though.

How long does it take to attain maturity? I can't tell you that because I don't know it. Like I said, if you just gradually increase, you should be okay. But your content does matter. Content matters, guys. You know, it does

Should You Use Similar Content In The GStacks As On The GSIte And The Money Site?

loft says a question about duplicate content, do I use the same content and the Gsite is in the G site as on the money site? So if I find the money site onto the G site, the content appears twice. And there is no problem with that. My question? Well, first of all, I'd love to get Marco's opinion on this. I don't, here's the thing on the G site, why even put content on the pages if you're going to embed the money site page, it will read the content of the embed, and that will become the content of the page. It'll even show up in the meta description in search. So for my projects, I don't put content on the pages.

Guys have to excuse me, I've got a call coming in. I don't know how to silence that right now.

Okay, so yeah, so I don't actually run, put content on the page as well. Sometimes I do. It just depends on the page. But for the most part, if I'm embedding pages, it's going to be embedded pages. And that's it. The content is produced through the embed. You want to comment on that, Marco? Yeah, I don't understand that the iframe question. If you understand iframe, then what you're doing through the iframe is you're displaying your homepage on the G site. That's all that is the me so it's not a copy. And let's get away from duplicate content. There's no such thing as duplicate content. It's bullshit. It's a myth. It doesn't happen if it if there were such a thing as duplicate content, we set a time and again press releases would be they'd be out of work. They wouldn't they wouldn't work the it's it just doesn't make sense to say that there is duplicate content that could be a duplicate content penalty and all these other things that people say, which we have shown time and again, are not true. We showed it in the mastermind as a matter of fact, I asked Marco.

Marco: anything webinar, we showed it, there is no such thing as duplicate content. And so with that in mind, you can do whatever you want on on that T site. This is going to be relevant. It's relevant to whatever it is that you're doing. We use other people's content. Sometimes we use our own content, sometimes. It's just it just depends on what it is that we're trying to do.

Yeah. Okay, he says also, because the G site takes the schema from the iframe site, and now has the featured image of the iframe site in mobile search, even though that image does not appear anywhere on the G site, I thought you might like to know that and if you already do, maybe know a way to undo this. I, I don't know why you would want to undo it. Look, I don't care what you know, if something like that appeared happens, because my point is the search results are just more of my entity. Does that make sense? So like, and I've had, you know, people say, Well, you know, I don't my client doesn't like the G site appearing in the search results for you know, their keyword or for their brand name? Why would you rather a competitor's website be ranked there and you know, we make them look really good, they'll convert, I mean, you know, so anyway, my point is, as long as I'm taking up real estate on the first page with my entity assets, I don't care, you know, because it's pushing a competitor off the page period, end of story and if every one of those open those links open up to a branded entity asset that's going to lead back to my company with a company that I'm promoting for the project then I really don't care if something like that happens or which properties appear in search for example paper.li which is one of the the network properties in our syndication networks that for whatever reason is ranking super well right now for like brand searches. And when you click on it, it you know, if you've got your RSS feeding into the you know, newspaperly, a newspaper or whatever they call it, then you know, it's branded content on the paper profile. So like, it's not something I would typically push intentionally to the first page, but on a lot of projects I have right now, for whatever reason, paper dot Lee is ranking for the brand search, so I'm not going to go disable it or delete it because my client doesn't want paper at least showing up for their brand search. I just tell them, hey, look, that could have been your competitor, you know what I mean? So my point is, I don't know why that's an issue. I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. But honestly, it doesn't. It doesn't bother me to have that happen. Anybody want to comment on that?

Marco: No, no, no. I mean, it did. It doesn't make sense not to want as much to not to want to take up as much real estate as possible. Take it up, take it to take up as much as you can, if you're doing it through iframes. I mean, that's fine. It'll go to the to the client eventually. And if not, then it's reinforcing the entity and he clicks on that image just reinforces the entity. Yeah.

That's right. Its activity into the entity. That's correct. All right. Lauren says I want to order a seo shield? Can you explain how it works? I'm having a hard time understanding how it protects my website.

Yeah, we did the SEO, she would explain just go to our YouTube channel. In fact, I'll walk you through it. Let's go to youtube.com slash Semantic Mastery. Okay, go to our YouTube channel. See that search icon that's the search this channel feature. So we're going to click that there and we're going to type in SEO shield and right here is the holiday special Hump Day hangout Episode 267 where we went into the SEO shield right there. So just go use our channel search feature.

As I just showed you search for SEO shield holiday special Hump Day hangout SEO shield right there, 14 minutes 36 seconds long, all about specifically what the SEO shield is and how it works. Okay.

question though Thank you.

Baby says the chat works but if you don't save the page link and bookmarks, it's hard to find the chat page. Okay guys, the chat page has been the same redirect URL since we started which is was an over five years ago. Semantic Mastery. com slash HD questions for stands for Hump Day questions. bookmarklet. Remember it committed to memory, semanticmastery.com/hdquestions. It's been the same URL for many many years. it redirects to this page right here but just remember HD questions, Hump Day questions, period Semantic mastery.com slash HD questions. It will always take you to this page right here. Okay. You don't have to sign up an opt in every time.

If you are not then I'm sorry because that that sucks.

Alright, next Are there any up sales on your to extra agency course I plan I plan to buy all the upsells but I wanted to know if there are any before Bye bye.

Yes, there are upsells there are one time offers and that kind of stuff. We wouldn't be a good we wouldn't be worth our weight.

We wouldn't be worth anything if we didn't have upsells man, this is internet marketing guys. So anyways, all right, we do have some time left so we can go back to some of those other questions. Anybody have anything they want to comment on before we do?

Oh, yeah, I just I wrote the comment on there but basically what you said I was like yeah, there's some awesome deals I was like that they you know, truly are one time offers we you know, want to make something cool. It's like Bradley said, you know, we're wouldn't be worth our weight if we didn't put in a good offer and funny but these are really really really really good ones. Anyways, that's awesome. Yeah, because a lot of the stuff that's offered throughout the sales funnel essentially is is also you know, we talk a lot about the in the two X ray agency course guys because they're all, you know, here's the thing and throughout the two extra agency course we point you to it

It's conceptual training. In other words, it's high level training, to point you in the right direction to do these things. If you want to learn more about the specific methods of how they work, go buy this training course points you to the correct training course. But the whole point of Double Your Agency guys, is not to encumber you or bog you down with more training in more shit you have to learn and then either do yourself, God forbid or hire somebody out and train them to do it for you, which is a better option. But if you want to Double Your Agency, it's go by done for you services that are already set, the team is in place, the met the training, the management, the quality control, all of that is in place and then you just mark it up and sell right and manage projects for your your clients. That's how you Double Your Agency, not by getting bogged down and training. And I'm not telling you don't go by our training. That would be stupid. But I'm saying that if you really want to grow your agency, I would focus and I recommend focusing on using third party fulfillment providers like MGYB to do the work, and you need to focus on prospecting and sales and learning how to manage camp projects, essentially, project management, because then that's how you can scale your agency without getting bogged down in the day to the daily grind and having to do all the work. And that's so so that's what we do. And to extra agency we talk about concepts at a high level, there's a lot of actionable plans. But we tell you, if you want to learn more about the specific tactic or method, go by the training course. But the better option is just go buy it done for you at mg y B, and move on to the next module so that you can grow your business does that make sense? Any comments on that guys? Yeah, man, cuz. Right. So it's, it's what we do. If you guys want to know how I got results for the land solutions, network case study, I went and I got the prospects from MTV, and they were built out the tier one branded the ad ID, the drive second g site, you can go in and starts and start breaking it down and you can see it all there. I worked on the entity just like I recommend everything is that we guys, we don't do anything different than what we give you. This is why it's ridiculous. If you guys want and go and try other things, you want to change it up and you don't want this to happen. You don't want that to happen. You want to see results. This is how we do it. Exactly how we're showing you the SEO power shield, which seems like it's something new it isn't. It's simply bringing all of these different things that these pieces that we've been mentioned the syndication network, which I would never do anything without the the @ID now the and the drive seconds, guys, it's my training by August of 2015. It was released, it's working better today than it was when it was released. And so why wouldn't I use my own training my own methods, methods that I use them to train VA that are now in MGYB working for us. Why wouldn't I do it? Why would I go and try something else? I do tests right to see whether what other people say is is true, whether it's working, how it works. And I just find that my stuff done the way that I do it works and works like crazy. It works.

I mean, I can't say how well it works. You see, you're seeing Bradley get results, you see mega results, Rob talks about the results that he gets. And if you're in our mastermind, you know what results our mastermind members are getting. And so I don't I don't know what else to tell you, other than this thing that we call the SEO shield is what we use not only to protect ourselves from Google, but also to enhance our entity and to enhance our footprint. So Google, look, this is me, this is who I am. And all of these things are also extensions of my brand. And what's happening right now in search engines is that brands are getting rewarded. Yes. If you're not do if you're not doing entity SEO, you're already in trouble. So you even before you start, you're in trouble. I agree with that. And I just want to show like, for example, this is, you know, I, because of the 2xyouragency training, I actually wasn't doing a lot of marketing for prospecting for Tree Service clients for my own agency. Because I've been really focused a lot on the last several months on my my real estate business. However, some of the marketing that I had put, you know, content that I produced two years ago, for whatever reason is producing a lot of inbound leads for my agency. So Tree Service contractors contacting me and over the last couple of months, asking me to quote them, you know, for service, SEO services and lead generation and such. And so, as part of the two extra agency training, I said, you know, it's silly for me to be doing this training and not also adding to my own agency marketing and stuff to bring clients in which I

Again, I wasn't originally planning on growing my agency but I didn't feel hypocritical not actively trying to grow my agency throughout the two extra agency training. So why not I'm going to grow my agency. So just a couple little things that I've been doing recently to get better results and so for example, Tree Service SEO, I haven't even done any SEO to this except for one, press release one press release. And I had a page on my site right here that for the last two or three years or however long it might show what the publishing date was. Okay, so for the last year it was when I published this page this posting guys looked at so awful, I haven't my websites, a one page website. And anyways, I haven't added any images to this. haven't done any outbound linking or any internal link. It's a one page website. There's nothing to link to but the homepage, but all I did was I had an article written I didn't write this I had it written and I there was a this this post was nothing other than this infographic for the last year until last week.

When I had this article written, and I just went in and published this article, it's about 1500 words about SEO. And that's for Tree Search. It's optimized for Tree Service SEO. And that was it. And I haven't done anything to this page. There's no theme mirroring. This has not been built into, by the way, I don't even have a theme mirrored Dr. Stack and G site because there is no content. There's no silo structure to my my agency website. It's a single page other than this post. It's literally a single page website. There's no content, there's no silos. There's none of that. The Dr. stack that has been ranking since August or may Excuse me, may of 2015. So going on five years, the SEO Virginia, Virginia SEO SEO agency Virginia, it's producing number one maps ranking for local IPS, number one Google Site ranking. And if I open that up, it's interesting but when taking a look at my drive stack because I built this from scratch when I was first turned on to the RYS Academy methods by Marco and I built I only built one set of files. That's it, like I was I was just in the account, the Google account where the owner account for this drive stack that I built, which was under different gmail account for whatever reason, I was just in there over the weekend. And all I've got guys are the files that are embedded right here. That's it. There is nothing else to this drive stack. And it's got me ranked number one for SEO, Virginia, Virginia, SEO, SEO agency, Virginia, blah, blah, blah, for five years, over and above all the other SEO agencies in the state of Virginia. And it's just a matter of like six drive stack files. That's it. There's no folders, there's no silo structure. My point in telling you all of this is because imagine and again, this page, this one page here, which was nothing other than an infographic for the last year, all I did was add content to it, which hasn't even been optimized like I haven't gone through and finished optimizing the content, adding images and all tags, all of that stuff.

Look at this guys, out of all the Tree Service SEO agencies out there who are paying for ads and everything else. on page one, what position seven with no SEO or just one, press release. So you can imagine if I go in and feed mirror that page onto this G site, build some drive stack files, a folder around Tree Service, SEO and files that are all pointing to that page, run a few links to it, guys. There's no question I should be able to pop to the number one position for that keyword. Right? So anyways, I'm just showing work. You know, we don't just tell you to do things because we tell you to do it. We practice what we preach and it works. So okay, any comments on that before I try to answer a few more of these? Anybody know?

norian says It can't be that easy with all the different SEO tactics out there. Okay. You're right. It doesn't work. Laurens. Right. Yeah, we're showing you it works, but you're right. It doesn't work. It can't be that easy. Okay. Well, I like I mean, if you want to make overcomplicate it, that's fine. You know, continue over complicated. But, uh, you know, It is that easy. It's just a matter of how much you push into the entity. That's, that's what how you overcome competition right now. All right, so I understand it. No. I see you, Lawrence. And I hear you know, it's not easy. It's simple. We keep it so right. Yeah, we keep it simple. We've developed a method that has withstood the test of time, and every single update that has been thrown at the SEO world for the past five plus years. So no, it can't be that easy. It isn't easy. It doesn't involve effort or work. It's just easy. Simple is different because we focus on web principles that everyone that everyone has to follow, including Google. So focusing on those and focusing on the map is what allows us to simplify our tactics to the point where we can get results this way.

So easy as easy as and simple are different in this case. So one thing and I've got I know we can answer this number for right here. So I just want to say one more thing about this. So in the mastermind, guys, I have a couple of projects that I'm starting. We got a mastermind webinar tomorrow, my mat, the format has changed. We don't talk about that enough at the beginning of Hump Day Hangouts, guys, we need to do that coming weeks. We recently changed the format to where each one of us now is producing our own mastermind webinar. So if you're in the mastermind, that's enormous amount of value because before it was mainly Marco and i doing the webinars every two weeks we would do a mastermind webinar, which would often go to two and a half, sometimes even three hours. But we it was heavily SEO based and it was mostly Marco and I are doing the training and answering questions. But we've we've changed it since the 2xyouragency juicy stuff. Now all of us have different skills, Semantic Mastery mastermind, partners, right? My partners, we all have different sets of skills, they all overlap for sure, we all have different sets of skills, we want to be able to provide you guys with as much actionable information as possible. So each one of us now are hosting our own separate webinars. So you can come and plug into the ones that are the most relevant to you and your business at what at any given time, or plug into all of them if you want. So one of the things that I'm going to be covering and I'm gonna announce this tomorrow, kind of like reveal the plan and everything is I've got a new a whole new tree service project that I'm starting. And part of the agreement I made with the contractor just this week, in fact was that I could use his project as a case study within my teach with as a training opportunity. And he agreed and I'm giving him a you know, a substantial discount on my my normal fees for a Tree Service contractor to be able to use this. So I'm going to be taking this exact thing that we're talking about, right so, create the entity build the SEO shield, start the content marketing link building and embeds through ngi be driving relevant traffic into the entity using Google ads, very inexpensive display and or YouTube ads. That's it. That's the process. That's it. And we're going to take that project. And I'm going to make it a case study that I'm going to be sharing in the mastermind over the next month or a couple of months while I'm building it out to four service area business with a wide surface area to show how we can absolutely get results, no questions asked, by just doing exactly what we talked about. And to at your agency here and everywhere that you guys can hear us, right, which is that that simple. It's not easy. There's a lot of work involved. But the easiest way to make it. The way to make it easy, is don't do the damn work. Just buy the components, put them manage the project, buy the components, stack them or put them in the you know, build them in the order that we tell you to do. And then just power them up and that and produce good content. That's a big part of it. That's it. You do that and then no question you will get results.

So, all right, we got about three minutes. I'm gonna roll through these last couple real quick.

What Is The Use Of The Multiple Tier 1 Rings?

He says what is the use of the multiple tier one rings? We don't recommend multiple tier one rings except and only four YouTube channels. Okay. And I've said that a million times. I can't assume that you've you've been now all of them. But yeah, I don't I don't one tier one ring for a blog syndication only branded tier one right? That's it. Now you can use multiple tiers, right? So you can use two tier networks or three tier networks whatever we'll we will build two tier networks for you at MGYB. But as we've said, and again, you can go to our YouTube channel and find this you can go to support dot Semantic Mastery. com and look at our knowledge base under syndication Academy and it'll talk there's several frequently asked questions there where I specifically go into depth into detail as to why if you're going to use two tier or multi tier networks for blog syndication how to set it up correctly, which is to inject third relevant related RSS feeds into the second tier. Okay. And again just go to support.semanticmastery.com. Syndication Academy knowledge base articles and there's several lessons in there about that. But um, so yeah, so only one branded syndication ring, tier one syndication ring for blogs, if you want to use multi tier networks you can, but you have to be aware of how to set that up correctly, which again, I just pointed you to the resources for that.

Also, if there could be more tier one rings, what should they be personas? No, they wouldn't be tier one rings for blog syndication if you want to use multiple rings again, they should be second or second tier and beyond. And they should be persona-based or topical based like theme based but not branded. Does that make sense? also should you do multiple tier one on YouTube channel only or is it allowed websites? No, no. For YouTube channels, you can stack as many tier one networks as you want. They could be branded. Well, you should only have one branded ring period. But the rest of them can be persona based, theme based. You know, whatever you want, it's fine for YouTube. It's no issue. It's only for blog, blog syndication.

I think we're about done. How much money will be needed for a complete project like that? How much do you charge? I'm not sure what you're asking who you're asking about charging. But for a complete project. Again, you guys can just go to MGYB and price it out. Right? So like an SEO power shield, go look at the pricing. That's component number one, right then component number two would be you know, content marketing and such which ipvanish to do that, but component number three would be the link building and embed gigs and determine what what size link building or embed package you need is going to depend on the competition. Competition is going to dictate the volume of links needed and the frequency with which you need to do that build them. Does that make sense?

So you can kind of go through and just kind of price it out that way. And, you know, I recommend 100% markup at the minimum for charging clients. So if you go to MGYB and kind of just map out what your costs are going to be, and then mark it up 100% minimum, that's what you should charge your clients for setup. And if like, for example, for monthly ongoing monthly link building gigs, if you know, a medium competition package is going to be what you need for your particular industry might not be what I found for a lot of my projects is, I go heavy up front when I start the project with link building and embeds once I achieve the desired results that I typically cycle through the low competition, link building and embed gig packages, but they repeat like in other words, they recur on monthly basis and that's just to maintain but it may be different for your niche. I can't, I can't tell you what to how to develop out your your plan. You need to do that depending on your project, yor market keywords competition level, that kind of thing. Okay.

All right. Anybody want to comment on that? I'm about to wrap it up.

No, it just be it's all set up. It ends up being Everything is there SEO shield is there. That's what you need to get started. That's it. Go join 2x Your Agency go through the 2xyour results training. We're in week three of four for that next week will be the last week of that and we're going to get into two extra business which is going to be about how to scale your operations and grow. So we'll see some of you and mastermind tomorrow. Bye, everybody. Thanks. Bye, everyone.

#Semantic Mastery #Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 277

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oasisoptimization · 5 years ago