#he watched two episodes in 2019 and always meant to pick it back up anyway

[pretendygood]

So my husband was just like, "I was thinking for our anniversary we could go eat somewhere early, then you could make me watch one of your shows the rest of the day if you want"

It's finally fucking go time

[ghostcat3000]

SKAM season 3 talkback series: episode 7, “Er du homo?”

The SKAM season 3 rewatch talkback series was done in conjunction with a first-time watch for a small group of newbies. I talked to a cross-section of fans about each episode so our newbies could get a varied taste of what the SKAM fandom was about.

Talk back with the excellent @etal-late​ (aka etal on AO3)

SKAM 3.7: Er du homo? conducted on 24, November 2019

@ghostcat3000​: Hello, hello, welcome everyone to our very small, very casual chat about SKAM season 3 episode 7, Er du homo? I'd like to welcome the wonderful @etal-late​, who is an excellent writer and amuses me on the regular. I just made myself a cup of tea and am settling into my couch. I planned this very poorly because I forgot that I have to run about five thousand errands for Thanksgiving today. The supermarket is going to be...awful beyond measure. There are pies to be picked up. WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF?

etal: Right, tea is here, I am here. But do you have pies to see to?

Ghostcat: I do, but ignore me.

etal: Let's go hard and then you go and get your pies when you need to except I'm the worst at typing fast.

Ghostcat: Let's start!

etal: Before we begin, may I check something?

Ghostcat: Yes?

etal: Does the fact that I'm here, answering your questions mean...

Ghostcat: ...

etal: That I'm your...

Ghostcat: ...

etal: Episode 7 Guru?

Ghostcat: Where is my “Isak sez fuck it” gif when I need it?

etal: It's ok, we'll take it as read. Anyway, did you have a question?

Ghostcat: Thank you so much for joining us. I would like to kick things off with a question from last week's talk back guest, @delongpaw​: “Who is a better Guru?  Eskild or Jonas?  And why.”

etal: Good question, Delongpaw. Eskild does well in the kitchen convo. He is kind.

Ghostcat: Yes.

etal: But also honest.

Ghostcat: Always kind. From experience, one gathers.

etal: Yes, and I like how he had forgiven Isak for his earlier gaucheness and had moved on.

Ghostcat: SKAM social media game is so strong. Offscreen, we see that Isak reaches out to Eskild to apologize again and to make sure Eskild isn't avoiding being home because of him.

etal: Yep, and they have their little pet name thing.

Ghostcat: It’s one of those nice character touches―Isak is capable of recognizing when he's wrong and makes amends. Eskild is receptive and understands where Isak's coming from.

etal: He and Jonas are different gurus...they can answer different parts of Isak's question.

Ghostcat: They are mom and dad.

etal: Ha ha, yes.

Ghostcat: Jonas is mom. Eskild is dad.

etal: "You're doing fine, son, but that's the way the world is."

Ghostcat: RIGHT. Eskild's advice is practical and comes from his own experience. Whereas Jonas knows Isak and is able to look him in the eye and say I THINK YOU'RE LETTING HIM PLAY YOU because he knows his friend isn't usually so passive.

etal: And deserves better.

Ghostcat: Yes, that too.

etal: I'm interested in how the boys' advice comes from watching how girls deal with their b.s.―like, this is how they boss us. We have observed and learned their ways.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha, meanwhile the girls seriously just want to know what the fuck is going on. So your answer to delongpaw’s question is BOTH, both are important, two sides of a whole.

etal: Yes, that's my answer. Your answer is my answer.

Ghostcat: A beautiful ending to an otherwise hellish week.

etal: I do want to scream about Jonas in this episode though because even after his bench/kebab heroics, he hits some new highs in this one.

Ghostcat: Those are some heroics. Absolutely. Well, now that Isak's let him in, he can act in the function he was meant to―our resident sage.

etal: Actually, back to Eskild for a sec, the first clip is him giving bad advice to Noora to go on tinder.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha, you don't think Noora should be on tinder? Can you imagine that profile?

etal: “Enjoys laundry and despairing because she 'always has to do the right thing." But back to Jonas. The pacing in both the boy scenes is really good, Jonas is doing his watchful thing, Isak is clenched in varying states of tension, and the boys are crashing about.

Ghostcat: Continuing the theme of communication...Isak had texted Jonas to tell him the news was spreading about his "thing" with Even and the topic of telling the boys comes up.

etal: So you're holding your breath waiting for the moment of revelation.

Ghostcat: When we go into this scene, with Magnus beatboxing and generally being...himself, those glances Jonas throws Isak's way are reassuring ones―you can do this. I've got your back. It's gonna be fine.

etal: Trust them (even though it's Magnus…)

Ghostcat: Because after all there's a pre-party at the end.

etal: ...who is hilarious in this one. Straight up.

Ghostcat: Magnus is hilarious. he's so stupid but so recognizable as that friend. the one that's super embarrassing and is always just blurting out the first thing in his head

etal: But genuinely curious. Like, pan or bi, please someone explain.

Ghostcat: While, at times, insensitive. It's never malicious. He genuinely doesn't know things and wants to.

etal: I like the way certain words really trip him up.

Ghostcat: He really gets caught up in them. Pan? Dominatrix? He just repeats them to himself. Like little boys who repeat the word ‘poop’ to themselves, over and over again.

etal: Incidentally, I genuinely had to look up 'excretion' to check if it was A or D.

Ghostcat: I had to ask! And I was told, rightly, that it's Isak's season―he would have the right answer in his subject.

etal: Of course! Do we think it is significant? Is 'separation of waste' a metaphor for getting your shit together? 

Ghostcat: Lol. I do think it's significant. As significant as Isak's subject. Which we'll get into at the end of this season.

etal: :thumbsup_tone2:

Ghostcat: This season is meticulously put together but it doesn't feel labored.

etal: Gosh, that's a big thumb.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha.

etal: Yes, not much is accidental.

Ghostcat: I enjoyed this peek at the deepening relationship between Isak and Sana. You know they're closer even though their interactions are about 100% bickering.

etal: Yes, it's lovely―their compromise: you're wrong, but you go ahead and own your wrong answer.

Ghostcat: Right before he gets that text from Vilde, Isak gives Sana a lovely smile. He's playing around with her.

etal: I'll initial my RIGHT ONE. "Iiiisak"

Ghostcat: “What's your name again?”

etal: He's already feeling lighter.

Ghostcat: And then there's Vilde's text which in typical Vilde fashion is wildly tone deaf. I love gay guys! Like she's going to get a new gay bff out of Isak Valtersen.

etal: :rainbow_flag: :heart:

Ghostcat: (Though my headcanon is that, like everyone else, Isak will eventually become close friends with Vilde.)

etal: Not spoilering, but I've forgotten whether Sana has heard the rumour yet?

Ghostcat: She sees the text and Isak sees that she sees but then class is over and she takes off. The news is spreading, has spread and all thanks it seems to Sonja telling Emma and Emma spreading it to everyone else. Luckily, Isak has told Jonas and then he tells his boys.

etal: Yes, so he has back-up now he's in this awful place of having everyone know, but Even awol...until-

Ghostcat: I'm proud of him though.

etal: Yes.

Ghostcat: There's a sense of Isak having already gone through the worst thing and that wasn't being outed or having everyone know―it was losing Even.

etal: Yep.

Ghostcat: That's a massive realization. That everything else pales in comparison and is manageable. But hope isn't entirely lost despite what Eskild says...because there's always those notes that Even is still leaving Isak and this week's note is an interesting one.

etal: He approaches that locker with such trepidation. What does it have in store for him now.

Ghostcat: His nemesis. Isak x Hell Locker. Slow burn, Enemies to Lovers.

etal: I didn't understand the note at first...

Ghostcat: It's a drawing of Isak's text to Even without an answer and one of the parallel universe where Even does answer and tells him he misses him. Of course, Even is telling him and so, for the first time, it's both worlds at once.

etal: Tok.

Ghostcat: And if that isn't hope. What is?

etal: (Tok is the sound of a spoon tapping an eggshell and making the first tiny crack, the eggshell is my heart) His expression when he looks at that note.

Ghostcat: It's with this interesting development that we go into the pre-party and Isak's sitting there in an echo of the previous pre-party, and wearing the same outfit, I think? Looking like he's in two worlds himself. The one where he's trying to figure out what is up with Even and the one where he really is so fucking done with the pre-party ritual.

etal: Poor fellow.

Ghostcat: But then, the save! Your boy.

etal: JONAS. JONAS.

Ghostcat: Jonas. He looks over at him...

etal: Jonas knows.

Ghostcat: ...and sees it all and asks and him asking brings in the rest of the squad with their questions.

etal: All their many questions.

Ghostcat: Including Magnus's cringe-y gay sex question.

etal: Isak in his new confidence can even deal with Magnus' doofustry.

Ghostcat: To be fair, he already did in the earlier conversation. I don't think anything could take away Isak's need to roast Magnus mercilessly.

etal: Haha, yes.

Ghostcat: But again, Magnus seriously doesn't know shit. I do love that he applies his new knowledge. Is he also...pan?

etal: A searcher after knowledge.

Ghostcat: He wants to know. This scene is so brilliantly done. and it's comedy! Shakespearean comedy! The character who doesn't know what to do and his crew of fools providing solutions (which wind up being pretty good).

etal: Speaking of which...

Ghostcat: Yes?

etal: Although, hang on- First, I enjoy Isak's sudden decisiveness.

Ghostcat: The text?

etal: Blasts that text out. He types faster than me.

Ghostcat: He types it and hits send, no editing.

etal: Phone down.

Ghostcat: I like how he makes fun of Jonas's first draft, like that's a thing I'd say? and Jonas doubles down―something like that but more YOU.

etal: And they're right!

Ghostcat: The text he sends is exactly what Jonas crafts-as-Isak. The response is near-immediate like Even's been staring at his phone.

etal: Yep.

Ghostcat: Jonas really warms to this counselor role.

etal: *Cracks his knuckles* Let's go. Got this.

Ghostcat: Utters the immortal lines: STRAIGHT UP. NO FEELINGS.

etal: Straiddup.

Ghostcat: N O   S M I L E Y.  He looks so annoyed that Isak doesn't get it. No fucking smiley, Isak.

etal: Imagine getting that text.

Ghostcat: Omg.

etal: Stone-cold.

Ghostcat: I know.

etal: Fuck, no smiley...grabs trainers.

Ghostcat: Chiller hjemme. I don't think Even lives near the Kollektiv. That bitch RAN.

etal: I have timed it.

Ghostcat: Or hopped on that fucked up bike of his.

etal: Or counted it out, you know. Fastest boy in Norway.

Ghostcat: I have to admit. They got me. Andem fully played me when the doorbell rang, I didn't actually think it was Even despite it being OBVIOUSLY him.

etal: Lol.

Ghostcat: I don't know why. I think it might have been the quality of the scene after that last text and how there was no answer. They all start talking about something else and kind of settle into the same energy as before.

etal: Brilliantly done, you're feeling so hard for Isak.

Ghostcat: And I fully expected things to end there, with Isak's sad face looking at his phone.

etal: Meanwhile, Even is fully sprinting. Knocking over old ladies.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha.

etal: Sparks coming off his tyres.

Ghostcat: Sliding across the hoods of cars. Bike going all E.T.

etal: Hair flowing in the wind.

Ghostcat: Crossing past a full moon though legit his hair looks great when he shows up but before that...

etal: Oh yes, it does.

Ghostcat: ...Isak has to have that moment of-

etal: Yes? Pain.

Ghostcat: Are you expecting someone? No, you guys are the only friends I have.

etal: Lol, great line.

Ghostcat: It's probably Eskild. He's always leaving his keys (which is brilliant because it's completely plausible).

etal: Eskiiild, says Magnus, helpfully.

Ghostcat: But there's Even. and guys, it's Even and Magnus goes WE'RE GONNA MEET EVEN while Jonas, one step ahead of everyone else, starts grabbing the beers.

etal: Now here I have A Point To Make.

Ghostcat: HIT IT.

etal: Where is Even? Down on the pavement.

Ghostcat: He is buzzing from downstairs. At the front entrance, on the street.

etal: Correct. Where is Isak?

Ghostcat: And Isak is at the balcony.

etal: BALCONY.

Ghostcat: You got it. Even is a lazy hoe. He should have climbed up like a proper Romeo.

etal: This is a Romeo and Juliet moment and that is TRUE. He does climb up.

Ghostcat: It is absolutely a Romeo and Juliet moment.

etal: The stairs. Less romantic, but still.

Ghostcat: It's handy for Isak that his apartment has a separate servant's stairwell/exit. SERVANTS!

etal: Lol, out you go, boys.

Ghostcat: Again, Shakespeare. With Magnus as the classic fool, down to the bursts of song.

etal: Yes, the Montague boys in full swing. I love that moment, it was one of the scenes that made me really love this series. Delightful.

Ghostcat: Moment to acknowledge Isak fully sliding into fury in this scene, his GTFO face is the best―NO, YOU CANNOT MEET EVEN, WHAT THE FUCK. *Angry squirrel face* and Jonas slipping beers into every pocket.

etal: Get out get out,  throwing shoes after them.

Ghostcat: The song from Luhrmann's Romeo +Juliet to underscore the moment. They exit and the music cuts out.

etal: “Local God.” [by Everclear]

Ghostcat: Isak has a moment to gather himself.

etal: (Wise Jonas, they'll need those beers later.)

Ghostcat: (“He feels like a local god when he's with his boys?” something like that...) Knock at the door, he opens it, and there is Even.

etal: Oh oh OH.

Ghostcat: Oh?

etal: Just oh-ing regarding Even generally. The ice-cream swirl of hair at its best. 

Ghostcat: Particularly for someone who just teleported over there. He looks pretty put together, Even is ready to impress.

etal: Breathing a little fast? Not really.

Ghostcat: Just laser beam eyes and an obnoxiously confident hello.

etal: And an eyebrow raise for the gods. THE GODS.

Ghostcat: With a tiny flicker then of insecurity because Isak isn't saying anything, just blinking at him. In soft, soft regard.

etal: So perfect, all in about 5 seconds.

Ghostcat: Well, mostly and then “Mister-you-have-to-play-hard-to-get” Isak Valtersen absolutely does not.

etal: Lol and lol.

Ghostcat: What did you think when you saw this moment for the first time? Where you concerned about this decision to not talk but just act?

etal: "etal is typing"

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha.

etal: So I think...

Ghostcat: I'll post giant gifs of them staring at each other in the meantime.

etal: I was surprised by how fast it went.

Ghostcat: It's very fast but not surprising...

etal: It's the logic of a romantic scene - run, grab, DO IT. And what Isak has earned-

Ghostcat: [post giant gif of Even staring at Isak in that doorway.]

etal: Oh crumbs, hello there, you…

Ghostcat: So Isak has earned this moment?

etal: -what Isak has earned through the episode. It's led up to this and they are done talking, for now. So I guess, I was...not concerned?

Ghostcat: [posts giant gif of Isak blinking back at Even] True, Isak has earned it. But so have we. We've been hanging with this poor kid through this challenging week so his gain is our gain.

etal: Indeed. Kiss the boy please.

Ghostcat: Kiss the boy.

etal: How fast does his top come off though? Pretty fast.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha, apparently there's some behind-the-scenes stuff we'll get to about this. The hat, the shirt, everything goes.

 etal: They are so good at the kissing.

Ghostcat: I like the part where they stop and look at each other for a moment. It might actually be the most romantic moment for me because they do it at the same time, together. A wordless check-in.

etal: Sweet, sweet. You know sometimes men doing passionate kissing can look very rough and like it would hurt? This doesn't.

Ghostcat: It doesn't, it's very intimate without being explicit. Which is one of the things I love about this season. It has a very believable heat without going too far and feeling exploitative of its young actors. I say that as a denizen of the land of going too far, i.e. fanfic.

etal: Heh heh.

Ghostcat: That's where I live. I acknowledge this. There is one more joke of course. Just like in the first episode, a person sinks to their knees in front of Isak and this time, he doesn't stop them. He finally gets that blow job he's been lying about for two seasons.

etal: LOL, go for it Isak. It is the East, and you are the sun.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha. Arise fair sun (for things have certainly arisen).

etal: And are also going down. It's an episode of ups and downs.

Ghostcat: Yes! Much like everything is this season. Highs and lows with humor and tenderness. SO before I leave to go get the pies TWO important things, if I may.

etal:  Yes?

Ghostcat: My questions: One) please share your story of when and how you started watching SKAM. Two) Any final thoughts on this episode that I haven't touched on? SIMPLE QUESTIONS, etal, and then you'll be free of me.

etal: Guru Etal, please.

Ghostcat: (Isak eye roll) Fine. Guru Etal.

etal: OK. For 1. I have something I prepared earlier  (like your pies). This is how I started watching SKAM:

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha How I torment thee.

etal: (Some time later):

My origin story.

Ghostcat: Wheezing

etal: But, seriously, once I had been looking at it on tumblr, watched seasons 1 and 2 and really enjoyed the style, which is so fresh and interesting. I love the way the kids talk, the mix of languages and then series 3 is just beautiful really. I'm a sucker for the R&J references and I love the screen time the boys get to talk and―someone said this on  an earlier chat,  I'm sorry, I forget who it was―to show a side of teenage boys we don't get to see very much in film and tv. I remember talking with you @Ghostcat about how the actors flicker between being really beautiful to a bit scuzzy like real teens...I was properly into it. Watching again, I still get excited by sound of the theme music.

Ghostcat: Beautifully put. Me too. 

etal: Final thoughts on this ep: Jonas' IKEA question; Jonas is great; Even's 2 minute dash of pash; Even's hair; Montague boys forever.

Ghostcat: “Dash of pash” :skull: Thank you so much for chatting with me today. And for bearing with my technical difficulties.

etal: My pleasure. Go buy your pies! Run! Run! Raise your eyebrow at them, they're waiting for you.

itsallnoncents: Thank you both! And thank you Jonas for being the bestest best bro.

Ghostcat: To Jonas! [posts gif of Jonas saying *straight up*]

*

Join us next week to read our talkback with @odeto-psyche​ about my personal fave SKAM episode, 3.8 Mannen i mitt liv aka Even, Even, Even, and the bundle of clothes.

[selfcareparker]

(lovely anon) i'm so happy to finally be answering this oh my goodness hi gorgeous human being i feel that it has been too long 🥲 SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED SINCE THE LAST TIME I'VE WRITTEN ONE OF THESE HOW HAVE YOU BEEN

to answer the things you have said most recently- i'm so mad that spring break is over bc now i have to go back to life??? like dancing and school and shit that feels so unnessacry 😭 and like i can't just do nothing anymore? i was so used to it and now...... ugh. i STILL haven't played sims (i think it's because ✨depression✨ be hitting sometimes) lol but MWAHAH IM SO HAPPY FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR!AU AND THAT THEY HAD LITTLE BABY LEO!! i feel the name thing.. i just come up with something that sounds nice? i think leo is a nice name, it makes me think about lea michele and the fact that her son's name is Ever Leo but anyway. i don't name my sims after what i want to name my children irl either... idk why though. (i don't know why i'm telling you this but for boy names i love Liam🥰 and if i had twin boys i think i would do Liam and Peter though i am not married to the name Peter.... anywho)

LMAOOO the therpaist coming made me laugh thank you :)) i hope it's helpful? this may be tmi but i've only really had negative thoughts recently and not many healthy outlets so i'm hoping crossing one thing off this sad list will make me feel better :') i think during spring break my anxiety and my depression really spiked? idk, it comes in episodes but yeah THIS GOT REALLY SAD

i think a lot of things when i read your posts but i never say them hahaha so imma say it now: i googled what bon appetit meant ( i also just had to google how to spell it ) but ur right, i feel like bone apple tea makes more sense than bone apple teeth.. the "th" is throwing me off bc how i say it bone appa (like app-a) teet (like you're saying tit but teet lol) so bone apple tea makes more sense to me lol

i never know really know the time difference for anything lmao but est to germany (that's not gmt is it?) is like 6 hours wOAH so it's like 9pm while it’s 3pm here? wowee

i feel mega weird after watching this show called hollywood (darren criss is in it, so is laura harrier and a bunch of other people) but i don't like it💀 i feel really icky rn and idk why but reading your last response to my ask (?) always makes me feel better :')

i am doing what you said btw, i'm typing this on my computer first then gonna transfer it to my phone's tumblr lol but when you said a digital detox, it's interesting cuz i feel like i've been having one since tom's new project was announced? gOD i don't wanna get into it bc i get so triggered but i've been off of instagram since then bc instagram stans literally stand by tom through whatever even when something ain't right- i’m just gonna leave it there bc i’ll continue the rant, but yeah so i took a break lol

also heard abt your driving lesson thing (?) was it that bad? i can't find the old post but someone asked if you hooked up with your lesson person and i was sOOO CONFUSED LMAOO LIKE OK ARIA GET SOME BUT UHH HUH?

now to address the actual response HAHA the way you touch my heart :') by :') bringing :') up :') halle :') being ariel :') (i honest to God don't remember if i brought this up first, forgive me if i did, it's been a minute lmao) i'm always talking about it and i'm pretty sure my family is so tired of me talking about it lmao, but YEAH when i found out they weren't twins i was so surprised but idk why i always thought they were twins? but YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE WITH THE DISNEY TALK- everyone is always like "tiana is my favorite princess" and yea she's strong and stuff but...... she was a frog. for almost the whole time. it's about time we got another one!! i do agree with some people on the fact that disney should just make another black princess but halle is adorable and i was ariel on stage so it's already really special to me :')

yeah lol there are good times with my brothers but they make me mad for a good portion of the time (there's the 12yo vincent and the 7yo daniel but vincent??? psshhh he is a piece of work and i'm not sure how much longer i can put up with him HAJAH AND YES VINCENT IS THE ONE WHO WAS 👁👄👁WHEN I CRIED AND THE ONE WHO DOESN'T LISTEN TO MUSIC- writing this now makes it sound like vincent is awful. which he isn't... we're working on him ig. not to add to the awfulness but no, he listens to obnoxious loud VIDEO GAME MUSIC and won't stop when we ask him to stop... he gets beat up a lot) anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌

yeah let me know if you end up watching it (wandavision)! i think it's great but if you like it lmk!! tfatws is sooo good like PHEW i am honestly loving it. sidenote: j*hn w*lker makes me wanna jump through the screen and choke him to the ground. i was thinking right, and the falcon and the winter soldier (THATS SO MUCH EASIER FAJHKDAH) would techinally be like a 10 hour movie right? because every episode is an hour long and there'll be 10 episodes? like wow. i get what you mean though, abt the racism in the show etc, like looking forward to it but not like..... no i get what you mean i will not try and give another example lol but you make me wanna learn more languages like really badly (bc of what you said about the german to american translation) & if you end up watching hamilton PLEASE LMK ABT THAT TOO HAHAHA i love it so much, same thing with lion king lmaoo

speaking of germany, i was at lunch on saturday with my mom and her friend and we were talking about my schooling and like-- she planted this idea in my head lol like what if i just got my GED and went around the world (to england probably) to get a theatre experience??? and i think it sounds so cool but no where near practical lol, it's just..... the dream haha and i would then try and learn a language 😉

uh yes we absolutely should order basically a resturant meal at a cinema, how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?

also about cherry (which i still haven't watched yet lol) i got the timestamps from tumblr😌 i couldn't find them anywhere else, but i agree, i probably wouldn't even look twice at cherry if tom wasn't in it? like i liked tdatt a lot, but it's not a movie i would be itching to see ya know?

HAHAHAHA THE 24 HOUR NOTIFICATION- i think i have around 1030 hours on sims? but i've had it since 2019 lmao (reading the screenshots, yes u are 100% a genuis, i take screenshots too but on anon you can't upload them so i just read them and retype what i wrote lmao) i think the university experience in the game is fun, but time consuming and it's all work imo. idk why i do it so often tho 😭😭😭

and agreed!! when you're making good money in the game you have to find other ways to make it interesting. my cousins who play it just continously do "motherlode" and i'm like.... then what do you do in your game?? it just sounds boring to me... my current sims household, i had a famous comedian sim, her name was dylan, aND SORRY IM LAUGHING SO HARD WHILE WRITING THIS BC ITS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF THE UNI THING UNLESS IM JUST DUMB, she went to college for communications when i wanted her to be a comedian and when she graduated i realized that degree did nothing for the career 🥲 so yeah, i think i'm just dumb. but she had a kid in college, guy didn't stick around and she was pretty broke HA but then she got married to this (great) guy named steve, made good bank, had 5 more kids (two sets of twins and one more lol) but then she passed. uhm... yeah that's still an open wound . lol i'm kidding, but when you get rich like that, you have to find a way to make the game interesting and i chose a million kids.

(this was one giant paragraph until i broke it up uhh yeah) i seriously don't pay attention to the sims prices and just end up spending way too much money and not being able to finish the rest of the house😭 but then again, i'm so used to having sims live in apartments... if i end up building a house FIRST OF ALL it'll look like what you explained before lmao but i'll tell you if i actually end up building a house HAHA & planning out your sims game is so fun to me lol, did enisa and michael take in his daughter yet? i may be thinking too far ahead lol and i love that they fucked woohooed (i say woo woo lol) in celebration HAHA but when i was playing with this one couple i had them woo woo every night hoping the dude would have horrible pull out game and they would concieve, but one night they were too tired and i was like why? get back in there man. if i was in college and lived with my partner we would be fucking every night homie. be grateful. i have been talking a lot about sims, and like you said: enough 💀 i just love this game a lot 😭😭

SORRY LAST THING i think the sims romantic and sexual stuff is so nice bc its what i want?? LMAO IDK like the whole hot tub thing you're talking about- puh lease ITS JUST NICE TO SEE OKAY

i'm reading the german section over again and i said aloud "my german friend is so cool" lol (i was saying that to my brothers & i know they don't care LMAO) (& i'm glad the uni zoom call went well!!) so on a form, in german, it could possibily say Einführungsveranstaltungsteilnehmer because you would be a participant to an introductory event? i swear german sounds so cool 😌 but i love reading your german lessons!! it's really interesting, most of the time my brain can't comprehend it tho?? like that word makes sense to you, but i need a translation. like to be able to look at that and know what it says.... its just appealing and seems so cool lol i kinda wanna write something out in german but i feel that google translate will fail me. während googeln "google übersetzen" mein Computer war so verdammt langsam und es fühlte sich einfach wie etwas Gutes auf Deutsch zu sagen. ich bin nicht sicher, welches Wort ist "fucking", aber ich mag es lmao (did it fail me like i thought it would??)

LMAOOO THANK YOU FOR BRINGING UP JUSTIN BC WHILE AT THE RESTURANT THEY PLAYED A JUSTIN SONG AND I IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT OF YOU AND THIS STORY😭 lol i was thinking it's depending on your age but not even that either... i really don't know.... but tom's fans are hollanders💀 i would consider myself one? he's the only person i'm really into like that (like a lot lol) so idk lmao (directioners 💔💔the pain is real)

LMAOOO (both of these paragraphs started off with “lmaooo” smh) "i like my men when they look like they are on the brink of death" PLEASE, i don't like pete's blonde hair... i just don't. i'm not sure if i wasn't watching the most recent snls but yea. my mom thinks he looks like trash, but i think he's okay? like he said staten island people just look like trash LMAO and I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN KING OF STATEN ISLAND GIRL I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THAT!! now i'm gonna make plans to watch it lmao, & yes agreed i find pete hot, don't ask why i really couldn't explain it to someone he's just .

my favorite songs from rex are from pony oh my goodness 🥺 anywho i'm gonna go eat cereal (i ended up eating bun and cheese instead) and listen to the Stormzy songs you recommended... aria. aria aria aria. i would like to thank you for introducing me to stormzy i- i don't have any words or any emojis to express HOW GOOD STORMZY IS. i hope he's popular in germany/the uk because i haven't heard of him but GURLLLL

one second - delicious i love it. it's really good. it’s not my favorite from the album, but its great.

superheroes - at first i played the non-explicit one (on accident) and wondered why the words weren't playing but i was reading them in the lyrics??? THIS ONE THOUGH??? IS THE BEST SONG I THINK I'VE EVER HEARD. i am so SO SO into black people empowering songs (like brown skin girl by beyonce) and this song???? PHEW I CRYYYYY ITS SO GOOD.... i was gonna quote some lyrics BUT THERS TOO MANY I LOVE, "i am young, black, beautiful, and brave" "black queen, you're immaculate, it's coming at the world, they ain't ready for your magic yet, and that was never your fault" THAT WAS NEVER YOUR FAULT- I ALMOST CRIED THIS SONG IS SO BEAUTIFUL (i played it twice lol)

lessons is another beautiful one, like its slow and it feels intimate and nurturing and just OO chefs kiss, beautiful . like you can feel the apology and the regret... it’s so good

own it - OWN IT OWN IT OWN IT IS AMAZING!! swear you would catch me dancing to this song, this song is so fucking good i cannot comprehend like this one might be my favorite for real... "it's the way you wind up your waist, i'm so in awe, you never have to worry abt nothing, you know its yours, you know you own it" 🥲 i played it two or three times honestly

rachael's little brother - YES I DID LISTEN TO IT LMAO AND YES I LIKE IT, its a very complex song and it's very layered in terms of emotions i think and i really like that about it. i probably won't listen to it that often, but its really good. i would recommend this song to my "older brother" bc he would just absolutely love this

shut up - i was taking this song seriously (also very good) until i heard him say shu-T up LMAO, this one is good, i probably wouldn't listen to it 24/7 like rachael's little brother but honestly its still fire

before listening to blinded by your grace and vossi bop, i know you brought up the religion bit, i definitely don't mind that, especially because i'm Christian lol and i actually liked that he brought up God in some of his songs like idk i just like it🥰🥰

(i then went to bed after that lol but first thing in the morning i listened to superheroes and... that song is probably my favorite tbh, i was gonna write MORE quotes that i loved from it but, yeah no there's too many. if you want i'll tell you lmao but this is already so long i would just be quoting the whole friggin song)

VOSSI BOP IS A BOP (lol) I CANT EVEN LIE, i love a song that hypes up a dude's girl so the line- i love that my phone decided to fail to load the lyrics, lemme google it, okay the lyric "looking at my girl like what a goddess" i was like AYEEE its honestly just really good. and no one in america says "sauce" like "i've got the sauce" but now i do (thanks to love island and Nas from last season) and now stormzy so (also im gonna watch the music video for superheroes bc it looks great so 😛)

(because this is already so long i feel like i shouldn't finish the rest but . no i'm gonna do it)

now for blinded by your grace pt2 idk why i’m nervous lmaoo PAUSE I'M NOT EVEN DONE WITH THE SONG GIRL THIS SONG IS *chefs kiss* no words, speechless PHEW y'all gon make me start jumping around. why did i not know about stormzy before, he is amazing i- ok yeah i finished the song, all i have to say is that Stormzy is immaclucate. period. i am literally sending his music to all my friends he is..... amazing

you want my song recommendations 🥺🥺 hmm uh okay lol i listen to a lot of old music, whitney houston, marvin gaye, queen, celine dion, i love "more than words" by extreme uhmm okay, but for actual music i listen to on the daily? (this is a lot of different music like.... they do not go together lmao so be prepared) a song about being sad by rex orange county, betty by taylor swift and lover by taylor swift and... most of that album lol, treasure by bruno mars lmao, OOOO and versace on the floor by bruno as well, lazybaby by dove cameron, creep by tlc has been on repeat lol, deja vu by olivia rodrigo (i saw what you said about drivers license and AGREED LMAO but i like deja vu a lot more haha) and two albums that i listen to in general, rare by selena gomez and ungodly hour by chloe x halle 🥰 you don't have to listen to all of them or any of them lol but that's a sense of what i'm into :) so basically everything haha, i'm into literally every single kind of music really so i wasn't too surprised that i enjoyed stormzy :’)

HAHASBSJHAHA your h20 story cracked me up,, like "wow these actors are so dedicated, learning german just for us" 😭 the beauty of overdubbing

once again, math and maths, in my mind maths makes sense because its mathmatics, but saying maths doesn't feel right to me lol, like if i said maths i feel like everyone would look at me like ??? and yea i was taught it as math so its just more natural for me. but yes math/maths is disgusting, easily one of my least favorite subjects so .

mkay. i- the first time i read this i could not contain my laughter when you said the only pollen you know is sex pollen LMAOKOOSHBABJFAJF STOPPP I'M EVEN LAUGHING WRITING THIS,, anyway. wow! that's interesting, my dad (<<< mostly anything else) gets migraines from the sun and the heat and stuff, yesterday (sunday, i was outside for like hours watching my brothers play football, the american kind lol) i was in the sun for like ever and i got a headache😔

summer clothes🥲 i need to go shopping fr fr. for my birthday my mom and dad got me a giftcard like dedicated to a shopping spree and we've yet to go so..... i should bring it up to my mom lol, but!! i went bra shopping (ended up returning literally all of them cuz they honestly didn't work for day to day work? its a long story) and if i could i would walk around in this new "summer bra" i got, i would. it's so fricking cute and its really light fabric (which isn't perfect for my nipples but still) so i don't get hot in it, but that bra and some shorts would be perfect. its the closest thing to being naked so

IS THE BIRD STILL BOTHERING U ARIA, TELL ME NOW ISTG, i laughed really hard that the bird isn't stupid and is really trying to torture you LMAOO like i was rolling, it wants you to suffer, badly

when you said "mensus" it was still close to mens!!! latin speaking queen 😌😌

okay STORYTIME i was reading back your response and started (fake) crying bc i love you lol and my youngest brother (daniel) gon say "oh man, catherine's crying about something we don't care about, again" I--- i swear when i tell you about them they sound awful, but they aren't that bad, just the stuff i say about them is sounds really mean LMAO

but the thing you said about being kind, same, what i always say is: don't be the person that makes people say "i hate people" ya know? like there's no reason to be a jerk or anything.... but its true 🥺🥺🥺🥺 you are really kind and every time i talk to you i would like to personally fly to germany and give you a hug 💖💕💞💗💓💝💖💘

& i'm gonna show my stretch marks some love bc of you 🥺😭 i really hate how men have basically everyone conditioned that you can't love your own body </3 fuck them, y'all beautiful :')

also thanks for what you said :')) you literally are the kindest, sweetest person i think i've ever spoken to and i love you 🥰🥺🥲💓💗

READING YOUR TAGS HAHAHHAHA the spelling errors makes everything so much funnier. once again, i like your german lessons & yea!! i'm gonna play sims after writing this hahah

#catherine's tags are back #i don't think i've told you my name before?? #anyway it's catherine🥰🥰🥰 #i'm typing this on my computer (without emojis) and if i didn't edit this you would be reading shit shite like #heartface and pout and cry LMAO #yeah abt the tattoos #some stuff with my parents i'm like deal with it??? lol #my mom tells me "if there's something you enjoy or you like but i don't have the same opinion on it... why would my (my mom's) opinion matter? #and i love that #like i'm not gonna go and do whatever i want #but if my mom doesn't like that i swear (which isn't true just an example) #its like okay.... #but whatever #and your tattoo ideas sound really cute!! #and yeah @ your parents, i mean you aren't getting something wild #and the tattoo album>>> #i'm gonna look up ariana's butterfly tattoos just so i know what you mean lol #but i'm guessing you don't want something so incredibily simple, but not super like over the top? #correct me if i'm wrong lol #LMAO the tags were in order don't worry ! #and yeah lol ily2 <33 #and once again, again, sorry for this post JSHJS ITS A MESS AND LONG AS HELL #and you don't need to go in order of my post its literally longer than your german compound words #u're fine #also !!! while writing this the birds were chirping outside and i was like 😳 #and one of your fics (i’ve read all of them, i don’t remember lol) that valentine’s day one where y/n had lingerie on (the pancake one lol) #inspired me to buy lingerie #like when i look back on me “growing up” #that fic & basically you lol really helped with that #that made no sense and i don’t know how to make it make sense... but... yeah. like ily

hiiiiiiiiiii <3333

Dear catherine, 😌

(you have said your name before, but it wasn‘t like an introduction or anything i think you were talking about .... was it possibly the incident at the cinema??? And you said something like ‘calm down catherine‘ like you were telling yourself to calm down idkd dkdkkdkd anyway i didn‘t mention it cause i wasn‘t sure if it was an accident or not dkdjd but now i know 😌❤️ Catherine is such a cute and lovely name btw omg and so are your brothers‘s names 🥰

Sorry that I‘m answering this so late, it‘s been an emotional rollercoaster for me since last week but i‘ll get to that in a second lol

Sksklssk girl i haven‘t played sims in like 2 weeks now ekejdkdlldld ok that‘s not that long at all actually but i keep wanting to play but then i end up not playing for whatever reason, so no news about my sims game 😔 but i love the names Liam and Peter and for twins!!! That sounds really nice actually

okay i‘m trying to answer your ask in chronological answer even though i wanted to wait for the depressing stuff and write it at the end or something OKAY so. i thought that i‘d feel so good when i start uni and that i‘ll like... have a purpose in life again and just be happy (cause in the last year i didn‘t do much and i was depressed like half of the time lol).... anyway i kind of feel even worse now? 😭 i think it‘s because in my brain it‘s like: university!!! that means your life will change and it‘ll all be so exciting. and don‘t get me wrong it is exciting butttt..... idk the online thing is so weird cause you‘re not meeting any new people (i‘m introverted anyway but still lol) and it doesn‘t feel like you‘re listening to/talking to actual people cause it feels the same as just watching a video?

also i thought i‘d be busy again but i only have one lecture (90mins) a day and theres one day where i dont have any lectures at all and just one day where i have 3 hours but.... idk i mean i shouldn‘t complain about having so much free time but i just don‘t know what to do all day and in a pandemic there really is nothing to do but i also can‘t relax bc it‘s like during the week and i know i have uni the next day and .... yeah.

There‘s also this one assignment i had to do that took me AT LEAST SIX HOURS AND IM NOT EVEN EXAGGERATING????? so that was the only thing i‘ve been doing besides “going to“ lectures. for this one course we have to read two (really really long) texts (like it literally took me 3 hours to read them) and we‘re supposed to post it on this website that all the professors in our uni use. So after 5 days of anxiety (✌🏼) i posted mine this morning bc last night i realised that i didn‘t even know why i was having anxiety so i just posted mine today. The deadline is tomorrow at 12 and no one except me has posted theirs yet........ so i have anxiety again 🥰 cause idk if i‘m the only one who did it or if i even did it correctly

Edit while i‘m rereading this: my anxiety about uni is a lot better and i‘m not as d*pressed anymore maybe it was just hormones? idk but i‘m better so that‘s good

(I started writing this like 5 hours ago and then i randomly completely forgot lol)

I‘m in a better mood now though so let‘s move on from that (oh wait also, i think i‘m gonna see if i can find a psychiatrist bc with my anxiety symptoms (long story) i need to go to a psychiatrist, and so far i‘ve only gone to like psycholgists and it didn‘t help but i think that‘s just bc i was meant to go to a psychiatrist and not a psychologist so dldjdjsj

n e ways but yes you‘re not alone, ily, things will get better and yes i love you (i‘m not good at this type of thing🥲 but i‘d hug you right now if i could <3)

Yess i think the time difference between est and me is 6hours but gmt is uk time i believe? i think mine is called.... cet? For central european time? I could be completely wrong though lmao

Oof i completely forgot about hollywood, i remember when laura kept posting about it on instagram but i never actually watched it and i definitely won‘t now lmaodkdksjsn

Okay my driving lesson LEBDJDKDK I DID NOT HOOK UP WITH ANYONE AKSJSKSMMLM especially not my 40 or 50 year old driving instructor lol i like her but NOT LIKE THAT, the lesson was really really really good actually and i think i‘ll have my driving test soon, but i don‘t even remember why the anon would have thought that??? Oh wait now i remember okay KEKSKDLDL so during the lesson my instructor was like do you mind if i turn on some music? AND THIS WOMAN TURNED ON ONE DIRECTION I LOVE HER so i made a post about it and i said something about the song up all night and i guess i phrased it in a .... idk in a dumb way 💀 so the anon made a joke that i stayed up with my driving instructor all night and NO. No.

Wait did i read that right? YOU WERE ARIEL ON STAGE? SIALDBDJDKSLMSBDKDMDMDKDJSLSMDJFJJEDMBFEKLEFBJDLDVSIDLESKSKWKDKDJDOWNYUEKWNDUWLNSUFLWVSUDLEHDOENSIDBEISBEHENJELBSIEMWUDNRIW KB WOBE JO ON SBEUU HIII S HWS LV W ICH US KB okay this keyboard smash is getting out of hand but uh please do elaborate on that 💘😌???? Like you can‘t just drop that information and not say more??? I forgot if you‘re in like your school‘s drama group (is that a thing? lol idk anything about acting) or in an independent group? Either way - ARIEL that is so fucking cool

Your brothers loooooool, no i get it though obviously you love them and stuff but esp at their age children are so annoying so good luck with them 😭😭😭lmao

Yeah “anyway i imagine being an only child is really calming.. like you have time to yourself and its just you and your parents 😌“ yeah just me and my parents who constantly fight 🥰 lmao no i like being an only child, like i cannot imagine having siblings but i feel like if i had siblings i would be saying that i can‘t imagine being an only child so? but i do think it‘s quite different like i‘m trying to imagine having siblings and WHAT that‘s just so different omg i‘ve never really thought about it like properly ???

I saw a tik tok the other day that was like “sometimes i forget that my siblings have a life of their own. like i see them as side characters in my life“ and even though i can‘t relate obviously i felt that. lol, like i can really imagine how it feels idk what i‘m talking about like shut the fuck up, daria

(also my actual name is daria not aria but i dont like it, and also i wanted to be more anonymous on tumblr so now i‘m aria lmao. pls don‘t mention it though cause no one knows except for you and mel (peterbenjiparker) dkdkdkdnkdnd. but i‘m starting to identify with the name cause everyone keeps calling me that looool😭😭😭 (but i like the name, more than daria anyway? well it also depends on the accent, cause the way germans say daria is okay. the was Americans say it is also okay, but some of my family in England are from the north of england and i don‘t like how they say my name 💀 no offence to them(?) but yeah pls don‘t mention the name in your ask cause the chance of people seeing it is higher then (or if you want to say something about it just send a separate ask and i just won‘t post it (IDK what you‘d want to say about my name but yeah just in case slsldlldmsndnsns)

I‘m loving falcon and winter soldier so much but when i was watching an episode the week before last week (?) my laptop broke😭😭😭😭 during the scene where the dora milaje came at the end my laptop just shut down? And it had these lines all over the screen and i had to bring it to the shop where i bought it and they said it‘ll take 6-8 weeks to repair 💔💔💔 but at least it‘ll be for free, cause if i brought it back to apple it would cost like 400€ (i think that‘s nearly 500$) so yeah. but it sucks cause now i‘m “going to uni“ on a really old rusty laptop and on my phone which kinda sucks. oh yeah and also i can‘t watch anything on there 😭 i definitely want to watch wandavision but it‘ll have to wait🤧

Yessss you should def get your GED! I googled and I‘m still not entirely sure what it is dldks but from how you described it- YES!!!!!!

Idk if you know this? Like no idea if I‘ve told you this already (hmmm wait i feel like we talked about it actually?) anyway i was originally gonna go study in England, but for loads of reasons I ended up staying in Germany and I‘m def happy with my decision, but I definitely want to go to England sometime even if it‘s just for six months or maybe for my masters or something? And (obviously everyone is different) but i think everyone should go abroad and live in a different country once in their life, no matter if it‘s for school or what, and even if it‘s just for a few weeks. But i think that‘s something that you‘d never ever forget! And combining that with your acting/theatre??? You really would be living the dream 💘💘😌

how about burgers, chips (fries), and a large drink? any time next week works for me, should i pick you up?— sounds good see you soon 🥰🥰🥰

i used to be one of the people who‘d just do motherlode motherlode motherlode and just... what did i do? Why did i do that??? But not anymore lol. Like I said i haven‘t played sims in a few weeks but i‘ve been watching a few legacy challenge let‘s plays and usually i play with the aging off. So my sims just don‘t age 💀 but i could (should) turn aging on so that it stays exciting and i have limited time and everything. and once i get bored with my current sims i can just make them have kids and continue playing as their children when they get older- like recently i remembered that i haven‘t played the acting career in ages? and i haven‘t had a shop in ages? and i think you can even become a vet right??? like those are definitely some things i want to do in the next weeks!!! Also yes sksksjs i have a few hundred hours on sims as well (if not thousands 😭) it was just that one household that i‘d been playing with for 24hrs

AND GIRL SSKSKJD THE UNIVERSITY THING HAPPENED TO ME TOO, it was a while ago so i don‘t remember what degree and what job it was about but i made my sim study something for aaaaaages so she‘d get a better job from the beginning (you know what i mean like get in at a higher level)...... and i apparently studied the wrong thing cause i didn‘t get any benefits from studying and still had to start at level 1 and shit 🥴🥲

Oh also (this was like 2 weeks ago) Enisa and Michael did take in Michael‘s daughter and i think Enisa currently even has a higher/better relationship with the daughter than Michael but um💀💀💀 also i was hoping (since michael and enisa married (in their back yard i think lol) that the daughter (i forget what her name is😭) would have enisa as her step mom? Like you know how you can see the relationship and it says daughter or son or sister.. and i was hoping that it would say step mom but it doesn‘t say anything 🥲 but in my mind (and if the sims had proper family relations) she is her step mom😌 also Leo is a teenager now???? I mean I aged him up lol dkdk he was being too annoying as a toddler but i don‘t like children so i aged him up twice in one day and now he‘s a teen, but that means he can look after his half sister when she becomes a toddler which is good (the game recognises them as siblings tho even if they‘re just half siblings? why can‘t they have step family members in the sims🥲) okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼

I‘ve been a bit sick these past few days and now i‘m getting a headache so i have to finish this response tomorrow 😭😭😭 </3

.

It‘s not tomorrow, it‘s 3 hours later but i‘m better lol

oooff when sims are ungrateful and won‘t woo woo (lol i like that) cause they‘re too tired like?? Be grateful that you‘re not living with your parents anymore 🙄 no okay dkdkdkdl idk if you play with mods (i don‘t) but i know there is a mod (or it‘s part of a mod idk maybe wicked whims?) where you can adjust the percentage of how risky a normal woo woo is, like you still click woo woo (3dksksks okay i‘ll say woohoo again— wait is that what’s it called? 😭) but there‘s like a 25% chance that your sim can still get pregnant just like in real life there‘s always a chance of getting pregnant even if you‘re using protection (just not 25% lmao) but yeah i personally don‘t play with mods sksk and you can always just click try for baby but it would be cool if you could add stuff like risky woohoo to the game without mods (i have no idea how to download mods and i play sims on a really really old laptop and sims is literally tje only thing that works on it anyway so—) i repeat my words from earlier: okay i‘ve annoyed you enough with sims ✋🏼

okay i‘m so sorry i‘m gonna watch fast & furious 1 now cause i need to watch f&f 1-5 until the 30th of april cause they‘re only on netflix til then (i mean i could watch them somewhere else but the quality is never as good) so i will finish this tomorrow after all😭

it is now 1 am, i finished the film, can feel a new obsession coming up again (i always have these f&f obsessions for six months before and after a new film comes out)

THE GOOGLE TRANSLATE wkekdjdj tbh it sounds like someone is speaking with some kind of foreign accent i guess that‘s probably because it just is a direct translation and so anyway slsjsj i don‘t know if you asked me what the word fucking is in german? like idk cause the translation is a bit weird but in case you asked lol sidjsjs theres not really a good translation like we just say fuck for fuck lmao, i don‘t know if you typed in fucking in google translate and it came out as verdammt? cause that means damn (or damned sksjjs) ummm yeah idek if/what you asked so imma move on🤧

I‘m not gonna comment on what you said about every stormzy song cause you already said all the important things but SKSKSJSJSKNSNDBDUDOENWBSLSKKHSULSLSKSBSJSKSK I WAS SMILING SO HARD WHEN I READ YOUR RESPONSE FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH finally i know someone who loves him as much as i do 💘💘💘 also since you brought it up, i‘m pretty sure he‘s considered the most successful UK rapper or if not then at least top 3 so he‘s defffffffffinitely big in the uk, in germany more and more people are listening to uk rap too but not as much stormzy cause theyre dumb apparently 🙄 but anywY i‘m sooooo sooo happy that you like him. i think hith came out end of 2019 (i could be wrong but i think it came out on the 13th of december so (in a european way) you‘d write the date: 13.12 and obviously i don‘t KNOW this but i can definitely imagine that he chose that date because ACAB and yes, Michael. Yes. But he hasn‘t made too much music since then so i hope he‘s working on some new stuff 🤞🏼

Also i ordered the stormzy poster😌 also a nicki minaj one bc i decided i‘m gonna have one wall with red-ish posters (i already have two kinda red ones) and one with blue/green-ish posters (already have two) and i can add stormzy to the blue one and nicki to the red one, but i think that‘s it cause if my walls are tooo full it could look cluttered? I‘m not sure how that type of thing works lmao but my room is generally untidy so i don‘t want the walls to look unorganised too so i think that‘s it for now

I really want to finish this now but my brain is getting kinda slow and i need to sleep soon so this will have to wait till later after all 🥺🥴 (not that it makes and difference to you bc you‘ll see this whenever i post it buttttt i wanted you to know that i want to talk to you again but with my slow brain i‘m just taking too long to do it in one day😭😭😭 and i‘m so busy tomorrow hmm but i‘m sure i‘ll have 30 minutes to finish this then <3)

Okay wait I‘m so dumb I didn‘t realise I‘d nearly answered everything i could have posted this yesterday 😭😭

Oooohh that summer bra sounds so nice like if i was confident enough i literally would just wear a top that resembles a bra (or really is a bra lol) cause my tiddies always be looking amazing i‘m just insecure about my stomach sometimes 🙄🙄🙄 but recently i‘ve been loving myself more and more tbh 😌

also i hope you can go shopping for some nice clothes soon ✨😌

I‘ll be honest I haven‘t listened to your song recs YET but only because i wanna take my time with them and i‘ve been so busy and slso AJ tracey‘s album came out last week and I haven‘t listened to that one yet either so ekdkdj (he‘s also a uk rapper like quite popular and successful as well, but i feel like i‘m not gonna like his album cause whenever i‘m looking forward to an album it ends up being really bad and the albums where you weren‘t expecting it turn out to be bangers.... so yeah but i‘ll let you know when i listen to your songs!!!! :)

Omg i keep having to scroll up all the way to see the next thing you said so sorry if I completely miss some of the things you said😭😭

So when you sent this the bird was still bothering me oh my FUCK DKDLDMMDMDMD but now i‘ve been going to bed at like 1-2am so the bird is probably still asleep lool

Okay and for the rest of your ask my response is: 💘💖❣️💚❣️💛❣️💛💕💞❤️💓💟💞💕💕💖💘💝💟💟🧡❤️🧡💞💛💚💓💚💚💚❣️🧡💖💘🧡💝🧡💕💘🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥺🥺🥺🥰🥺🥺💘💘💘💘💘 (okay that looked cuter in my head i don‘t really like the green hearts dldkkdksndnd)

[jamielea81]

Conversations

Chapter 5

Description: You accompany your friends on a day trip to Animal Kingdom Theme Park where you meet Scott Evans by chance. This one afternoon leads to a year long friendship with both Chris and Scott over text messages and phone calls.

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

Warning: Cursing and drinking.

Word Count: 5,200

A/N: See note at the end of the chapter. Italics are internal thoughts.

Catch up with Chapter 4

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport was packed for your five o’clock flight on the twenty seventh. Apparently, everyone else was also saying goodbye to the Christmas holiday besides yourself. Vacation time is always great, but you had a story due on December twenty ninth that really needed to be finished. Technically, the article could have been written while staying in the frozen tundra that you once called home. The assignment is a piece covering various places to celebrate New Year’s Eve. All the information for the story could be found online and any questions could easily be answered via phone call, but after a week with your family, you needed the peace and quiet. You had grown accustomed to living alone. Home centered you, even if it was just a rental. You also thrived in an office setting; the beat of the busy newsroom also matching the beat of your heart.

Y/N: Getting ready to board. Just wanted to say goodnight in case I crash when I get home.

Grabbing your purse and duffle bag off the floor, you joined the massive crowd waiting to board the plane. This was the part of travel that gave you anxiety. The takeoff, landing, and overall length of a flight never bothered you. Nope, it was the crowd that stood directly in front of the gate. As if being on the plane longer than need be and stuffed next to two other people was enjoyable. But because everyone else stood around the gate, your anxiety made you join them.

After twenty minutes of waiting for boarding sections to be called, why they even had family boarding on a flight to Orlando was beyond you, you were seated somewhat comfortably in your window seat. The flight was full, so you did have two seat mates. Sisters from what you could tell with the bickering. The one in the middle seat explained they retired to Florida but made the trip home to see their brother for Christmas. So, you were right, sisters.

Chris didn’t send a text back, so you quickly typed one out before shutting it off for the flight.

Y/N: There are rumors that the flight has a wealthy oil baron on it. I’m pretty sure I am seated next to him. If you don’t hear from me, you know why.

You made it through the flight easy enough. All the seats were equipped with monitors loaded with various movies and television shows. Plugging in your earbuds, you settled on Toy Story 4 since you hadn’t seen it yet. After that finished, you mindlessly watched a couple of episodes of the Big Bang Theory.

As much fun as you had with your family, it was good to be home. Between the time spent at your mom’s house and then at your dad’s, plus your brother dragging you out nightly, to quote Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, you were “getting too old for this shit.”

Walking in your house around ten that night, you were a little disappointed to see Chris hadn’t texted back. Knowing that him and Scott where in Boston to spend time with family and friends, you tried not to let it bother you too much. You were exhausted anyway. A long hot shower and your bed sounded like the ultimate plan. Emptying your suitcase into the washer could wait until tomorrow.

 With a one load of clothes in the washer, a second in the dryer, and your article half done, you were feeling pretty proud of yourself. You even woke up before your alarm this morning. Maybe a trip back home was all you needed for a boost. Usually post vacation, you needed another vacation to cope with life.

Your phone vibrated on your desk indicating you had a message. Picking it up, you saw it was Chris, so you swiped the message open.

Chris: Oil barons are so overrated. You better be home in Orlando.

You smirked at his response.

Chris: I was out late last night. Hope you had a good trip home sweetheart.

Y/N: I’m sorry, me and Spencer (the oil baron) are picking out rings. Can I call you later?

Chris: OK smartass. Don’t make me fly out there.

Oh boy, did you wish he would deliver on that threat. In actuality, you had only spent five, maybe ten minutes at the most with Chris. And even though you’ve spent hours upon hours over the last couple of months talking to him on the phone and through text messaging, you were really hoping for some in person time.

Y/N: Oh no, the baron wouldn’t like that. I might though.

You bit your lip as soon as you hit send. While Chris flirted with you often, it was rare for you to come back with a comment of your own. When a few minutes had passed without a response, you got back to work on your article. Hours later and he still hadn’t responded, you worried that maybe you had taken the game to far. You knew your comment was totally innocent, but you couldn’t help but worry. You overthink everything, that’s just who you are.

Ugh! Why am I like this?

 It wasn’t until the next day when you received a response from Chris where he completely ignored what you said.

Chris: Can you tell Scott that purple pants is not a good look.

Yep, you were not going to attempt to flirt again. You would leave all the flirting to him.

Y/N: I need context here.

Chris: For New Years Eve. He’s wearing purple pants.

Y/N: I stan Scott Evans. You can’t change my mind.

Chris: 😂

Chris: You do you sweetheart

 The end of 2019 was here and it was a year you were happy with. You didn’t make any bad haircut decisions. All your potted plants were still alive. You had written a few articles you were very proud of. You spent time with family. You made some new friends. Overall, it was a year that you had no regrets in. You only hoped 2020 would be the same.

After finishing up at the office a little earlier than usual, you joined a group of your co-workers for a long dinner, opting not to join them bar hoping as the night went on. You were keeping your word on that whole not drinking for quite some time promise you made to yourself. Well, at least not hard alcohol. Wine doesn’t count.

By eight you were home and already in your pajamas. Brooks and Jana always went to Brooks’ brother’s house on New Year’s Eve. It was their tradition. The last few years they had invited you to come along, but you had always declined. It was their family thing and even though you loved Brooks like a brother, it felt like an intrusion to join them.

Even though Christmas was over last week, you had a pile of Hallmark Christmas movies you had stored on your DVR that you needed to get through. Write Before Christmas was the first on your list. The movie starred Chad Michael Murray who you had a crush on since his One Tree Hill days. DVR was really the way to go. Being able to fast forward through commercials meant you could get in almost three movies before midnight.

After you had thoroughly swooned over Chad, you moved on to Holiday Date. It was the whole fake dating plot with a predictable outcome, but it was cute so far nonetheless.

You hit pause because your phone was buzzing out of control. You could see from the preview screen that you had six messages from Scott.

Scott: Happy New Year!

Scott: Hope you’re out finding someone to kiss at midnight

Scott: You better be out

Followed by a picture of Scott and his boyfriend embracing. A picture of a few women standing on top of a bar pouring shots directly from bottles into the mouths of who you assumed were some of Scott’s friends. And a group shot of about ten that included Chris. The were all sitting in in chairs in front of a few tables, a few people crouched down in front and a pretty blonde sitting on Chris’ lap. So, there’s that.

“You can’t get jealous about someone who isn’t yours,” you said to yourself.

It was the truth. And you had no idea who she was. How many sisters did the boys have? You looked at the picture again, deciding for sure she wasn’t a sister. Not in the way she was sitting nor the way he was holding her.

Sighing out loud, you set the phone down on the cushion next to you. You moved from your comfy place on the couch, stomping your feet until you noticed you were doing so. You steady yourself and then walked calmly into the kitchen. Grabbing a bottle of rosé from your refrigerator, you uncorked it and filled your large wine glass to the rim.

It’s New Year’s, I’m allowed a glass of wine. A large glass of wine.

You made your way back to your couch, inhaling a couple of large gulps before hitting the play button on the remote. Deciding you needed to formulate an appropriate response to Scott rather than saying something stupid, you delved back into the romance on the screen. Or at least you tried to.

When a half hour had passed, you picked up your phone, typing out a normal response to Scott. Normal meaning how a person who was not in any sort of relationship with Chris Evans should respond. Because you weren’t. In fact, you hoped he got laid. Well, maybe not that.

Y/N: Happy New Year!

Y/N: You and Zach look so cute! Have a great night.

There. That’s how a normal person who wasn’t living in a fantasy land would respond.

Your second movie ended but you honestly weren’t paying all that much attention. Rather than starting up a third movie, you switched it to cable, finding Ryan Seacrest hosting the annual countdown show.

Finishing your wine shortly before midnight, you washed out the glass and set it in the rack to dry. You found your way back to your couch, laying down to watch the ball drop. You fired off a text to Jana to tell her you loved her as that was your traditional greeting to each other. She sent one back almost right away asking for the two of you to get lunch on Friday. The ball dropped to a chorus of cheers followed by a rendition of Auld Lang Syne by the New York City crowd. The after show played on and you fell asleep while a band you hadn’t heard of played in the background.

In the too early hours of the morning, you woke from your place on the couch, neck aching from the odd angle you slept in. Deciding to leave your phone where it was, you crawled in to bed with no plans of waking any time soon.

Of course, you couldn’t sleep forever. You had to eat at some point as evident from your stomach loudly growling around eleven in the morning.

After eating, then showering, and getting dressed for the day, you finally took a peek at your phone. Nothing from Chris. Which is whatever because you didn’t reach out to him either. But of course, there was a message from Scott from around three in the morning.

Scott: How you doin’?

You could totally hear him saying it in a Joey Tribbiani accent.

Scott: Earth to Sassy

You typed out a reply, but you doubted he was out of bed if he was texting you so late.

Y/N: Sassy was sleeping, you late night partier you

Deciding that you didn’t want to be rude, you sent Chris a text. It was New Years after all, so it was only polite. Hopefully he was awake. And alone. No. That was none of your business. Keeping it simple was the way to go.

Y/N: Happy New Year

Almost immediately, Chris responded back.

Chris: Happy New Year

And that was it. He was probably hungover...or occupied.

 Friday found you at Champs for lunch with Jana. The two of you chatting about New Year’s Eve. Brooks’ brother and wife had a little boy almost a year ago, so the party was a little different than it had been in previous years. This apparently ignited a fatherhood desire for Brooks over the last couple of days.

“And I want to have a little one too, but I’m so close to making partner. It’s just not the right time,” Jana sighed out.

You reached across the table grabbing her hand, rubbing it soothingly. “When it’s right, it’s right,” you replied.

She nodded her head, giving your hand a squeeze before pulling it away. “The thing is, I don’t know if I’ll be any less busy after I make partner. I kind of wish we would have started a family right after we got married. Coulda, shoulda, I guess.”

“Is there ever a right time though?” you asked. “Then there’s me who hasn’t dated in how long?” You let out a chuckle, quickly sticking a chicken finger in your mouth. You really didn’t want the sympathy, you’re not even sure why you said it.

“Whose fault is that? I don’t see you putting yourself out there. Oh! Maybe you should ask Chris out,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Dude. No,” you replied. “Number one, we don’t live in the same state. The same region even. Number two, he’s so not interested. If he were, he probably would have made something happen. Number three, he barely knows me. Number four, he’s him and I’m me.”

Jana put her hand over your mouth, giving you a warning glare. When she didn’t immediately remove it, you licked it, causing her to cringe and grab a napkin to wipe the spot you licked. You chuckled quietly to yourself.

“You’re a brat. Do you know that?” she questioned. “But you’re also amazing and I don’t want to hear anything different. If not Chris, just put yourself out there. It’s a start of a brand new year. Make some changes.”

Numbly, you nodded your head. Maybe you had been hiding away, in a way. It wasn’t like you were staying home all the time. You went out. Sometimes. Okay fine. When you weren’t working or out with your married couple friends, you mostly kept to the office and your house. You’d think about adding something more social to your schedule.

 January dragged on as it usually did. You definitely were enjoying the cooler and sometimes cold temperatures, making use of the new sweaters you purchased around Christmas. Your relationship with Chris had started to fizzle. It was subtle at first. Texts not being responded to for hours. Phone calls not being answered from time to time. Okay, that one wasn’t a big deal. But most of those phone calls weren’t being returned. A lot less sweethearts being tossed your way. It was different. And because you had developed feelings or the at the very least, a crush on Chris, you were feeling down about it. Scott was still in your life and it felt like he would always be. Maybe it was safer that way. Maybe being close with both of the brothers would ruin the other friendship in the end. Especially if feelings weren’t returned.

It was near the end of January when you brought it up to Scott. You weren’t looking for drama or attention, so you just casually mentioned over the phone when he brought up Chris that you hadn’t been hearing from Chris quite as often.

“Did Chris tell you what he bought Shanna?” Scott chuckles out.

“No, he didn’t,” you said and then took a breath. “Actually, I haven’t really been hearing from Chris a whole lot lately.”

You hear Scott blow out a breath and then you hear him groan. “He does that sometimes. I’m sorry,” Scott sighs.

“Why are you sorry? Don’t be sorry. It’s fine. It’s totally fine. As long as we’re good,” you stifled out.

“Of course, you and I are good. Not even a question Sassy.”

The nickname instantly putting you at ease.

“Good.” You bit at your lip, wondering if you should push further. Why not, might as well make this a one and done conversation. “What did you mean by, he does this sometimes?” you asked.

“When he’s with someone, he kind of just gets wrapped up in that person. He’ll eventually gets better at talking to the outside world, it just takes him awhile.”

Welp. There it is. So, at least you can give up on this little crush. Definitely not feelings. Just a crush and you would be over it by tomorrow.

“Oh!” you exclaimed.

Get. It. Together.

“I didn’t know he was seeing anyone,” you said in a much calmer voice.

“Yeah…It’s with Courtney. And you have no idea who Courtney is, sorry. They’ve dated a bunch of times of the years. Just can never seem to make it work. She’s great and everyone loves her, they just never seem to work. And you better not tell him I told you that,” he warned.

“Geez, calm down Grumpy. Like I said, we aren’t exactly talking these days and I’m not exactly going to bring up a girlfriend I don’t know,” you replied.

Scott chuckled. “There’s the Sassy I know. Anyway, it’s still new again. They started to hangout right around Christmas.”

“Oh, is she that girl on his lap from the pictures you sent me on New Year’s?” you asked.

“Yeah, she was there that night. Long blonde hair?”

“Yep,” you replied.

“That would be Courtney. I wouldn’t worry, it won’t last. I mean, I want the best for him and if it’s her, the more power to them.”

Now you were confused.

“Wh-why would I worry?” you said and then promptly cleared your throat.

“Come on Y/N, it’s not hard to tell that you maybe have teeny-tiny crush on my brother. A little bit. Come on. Tell me I’m wrong,” he teased.

He couldn’t see you, but you were giving him the best bitch face you could muster. “Shuddup.”

 It was a week a way from Valentines Day. Even though you were single for it again this year, you were never one of those people who hated the holiday. If you were with someone and the two of you decided to make the day special, great. If not, that was fine too. When your co-workers got flowers delivered to their desk, you always thought it was sweet. Brooks always went over the top for all holidays and you loved hearing about the special thing he did for Jana. What you didn’t love was your father calling you to wish you a happy Valentines Day that was really just a phone call prying into your relationship status. You loved your dad, you really did, you just wished he wouldn’t get on your case as much as he did.

You were up earlier than normal. Being the great friend that you were, you were bringing Jana breakfast since she was apparently going into the office earlier and earlier, surviving only on coffee. You stopped at your favorite coffee house, picking up two coffees, two apple cinnamon muffins, and a small bowl of oatmeal for Jana. You figured she could have the oatmeal now and snack on the muffin later.

Because she wasn’t pissed at you for any reason, she was already in the lobby, ready to sign you in.

“Good morning princess. I come baring gifts of a nutritional breakfast,” you greeted her after saying hello to Phil at the security desk.

“Why, thank you, bestie. Where would I be without you?” She puts her hand over her heart. The two of you were both smartasses and you often felt bad for Brooks.

You pass her the tray of coffees and wave your goodbye to Phil with your now free hand.

Jana’s apparently hungry as she scarfs down the oatmeal, only stopping to thank you for adding cinnamon for her. You’re still picking at your muffin because you ate a bowl of cereal before leaving your house. If you’re up early, your body wants to eat right away. Waiting was not an option.

“So, what does Brooks have planned for next week?” you asked.

“You know he doesn’t tell me. I’d bet money that you know and are just messing with me.” She smirks at you before picking up her own muffin, peeling back the wrapper.

Honestly, you don’t know. Brooks knows you well enough to know that you will squeal, especially if it’s something good.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” you tease.

She sits up straight in her seat. “You know?! Tell me!”

You start to chuckle and shake your head. “I swear on your Chanel bag I don’t know. Just messing with you.”

After your short chat, Jana kicks you out of her office. The firm’s decision on who was making partner was going to be announced in a matter of days, so everyone was putting more time in. You checked your phone for any e-mails from the paper while you waited for the elevator. There were only two so far, just a couple of assignments for the week.

“Good morning, Y/N. What brings you here so early?” Ethan asks, bumping your shoulder slightly as he comes to stand next to you at the elevator. He’s dressed in another impeccable suit. Hair styled perfectly.

“Brought Jana a little breakfast. How are you Ethan?” you asked.

The elevator opens and a few people shuffle out. Ethan holds the elevator door for you to enter, and surprisingly he gets in. You press the button for the lobby, but he doesn’t push a button for any floor.

“I’m great. It’s going to be going to be a great week.”

He’s so sure of himself, but you can’t even fault him because he’s always so nice with a smile always present on his face. Jana’s said that he’s a bit of a know it all, but he’s a hard worker too.  

The elevator doors open, the two of you walking out with Ethan walking next to you. He walks a little ahead, grabbing the door for you.

“Thank you,” you muttered as the two of you start to make your way across the parking lot.

“So, Y/N, are you seeing anyone?” he asked.

You stop in your tracks, right in the path of cars circling the lot. Deciding that’s not safe, you walk to an empty parking spot, Ethan trailing behind. The fact that he’d ask such a question surprises, but at the same time, it’s Ethan, you’re surprised he hasn’t asked sooner.

“I put the siiiiing in single,” you kind of speak and sing at the same time. Ethan in turn stares at you blankly. Apparently, he’s not a fan of Lizzo. “Ethan, we need to get you listening to popular music. I’m single.”

He gets the biggest grin on his face. Your cross your arms across your chest and lean on one leg, slightly amused. You know what’s coming, but you don’t want him to be so sure of your answer.

“Can I take you out sometime?” he asks, forest green eyes looking directly into yours.

You let him wait for your answer. Ethan is nice enough, he’s also easy on the eyes, and your dating life has also been lacking for quite some time. You’re actually slightly surprised it’s taken him this long to ask. Chewing on your bottom lip to really sell your indecision, he finally starts to squirm. He starts to brush his fingers through his perfectly jelled hair and you almost feel bad. A smile starts to form on your face and he instantly drops his hand, realizing what he was doing.

“I’d like that. Just not on Valentines Day. Not for a first date,” you tell him.

“Okay. Not on Valentines Day. Great. Okay,” he replies.

He’s such a dork, but it’s sweet. Ethan just stands there grinning at you and you’re really itching to get in your car rather than standing in a parking lot of a law firm.

“Give me your phone, I’ll put my number in it so you can call me,” you tell him.

Ethan passes you his phone, smile still bright on his face. You shake your head slightly but smile back, entering your number and passing him back the phone.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“I look forward to it,” you reply, instantly cringing at your words.

I look forward to it? Who’s the dork now?

You offer him a slight wave before turning around and walking to your car. You’re kind of excited for the first time in a while. Getting in your car, you fire off a text to Jana.

Y/N: Ethan finally asked me out.

Jana: Oh, great. I’m going to have to see him even more now?

You chuckle at her response. You know she’s half teasing, but what a brat.

Y/N: You assume I said yes?

Y/N: OK, I said yes. But calm down, it’s one date. No one said anything about double dating.

 Ethan waited two days before texting you.  He asked to take you to dinner on Wednesday, which was two days before Valentines Day, so you said yes. The restaurant he chose was on the higher end, so wearing jeans was out of the question. Jana called you before you had the chance to call her. She was screaming in your ear and you could barely make out what she was saying.

“What? But say it slower with less yelling,” you said to her screeching.

“She made partner,” you hear Brooks shouting from the background.

“I made partner!” she yells, in a much lower tone than before.

“Oh my god, this is amazing! I knew you’d get it!”

“I can finally get some sleep,” she sighs out.

You know she’s exhausted, but all you want to do is go out and celebrate.

“Drinks tomorrow then?” you ask.

“Yeah. Yeah. But like, let’s go early,” she replied.

You chuckle at her response. “Early it is. I have news for your too. Ethan’s taking me to The Capital Grille on Wednesday.”

“Oh, fancy. Makes sense though since the two of us made partner,” she said.

“What?! I didn’t know that was even a thing.”

“Yeah, it happens. Rarely though. They couldn’t decide, so we both got it,” she said.

“Well, you get some rest, and call me tomorrow, love.”

“I will. Bye Y/N.”

 You texted Scott a day later to tell him about your date. He told you he was excited for you and glad you had said yes. You laughed at the excited part because while you had been in a dry spell, it hadn’t been that long. Maybe six months. Maybe you should be more excited. Once you assigned a number to it, it sounded bad.

Scott asked if you’d heard from Chris. You had, but it was four days earlier. It was just a text saying hi, asking how I’ve been, but then the conversation fizzled out. That seemed to be the new norm in your relationship. A text every four days or five days. He had a girlfriend; he probably shouldn’t be talking to another girl daily and calling her sweetheart. You wouldn’t like that if it were the other way around.

Two days before your date, you sent Scott three pictures of dresses you were deciding between for your date with Ethan. He called you a few minutes later, wanting to go over your options.

“So, what kind of place is this?”

“It’s an expensive steakhouse in Orlando,” you replied.

“Okay, then option two is out. That’s way too casual. You should probably just throw it away. I don’t want to see that dress again.”

“Scott! Jerk. Leave my dress alone. It’s not that bad,” you complain.

“Want my help or not?”

“Fine. But I’m not throwing it out. I wear that to work a lot,” you replied.

“My point exactly. You don’t wear a work dress on a date Sassy.” Scott said.

“You takin’ to Sassy?” Chris says in the background.

Shit. He’s with Chris?

You’re not sure why you don’t want Chris to know about your date. You feel weird about him being there while this conversation is taking place.

“What about the first dress. The black one?”

It’s your attempt to move the conversation along. The sooner you get off the phone, the better.

“How slutty do you want to be on this date?” Scott asks.

Instantly you cringe, slapping your free hand against your forehead.

“Scoooott,” you whine.

“Slutty?” you hear Chris ask.

Jesus.

“It’s an honest question. Like a little slutty or a lot slutty?” Scott asked.

“Give me the phone,” Chris said. You hear Scott object in the background, but it’s too late, Chris has the phone. “What is Scott goin’ on about? You got a date or somethin’ sweetheart?”

There’s that nickname again and damnit if you stomach doesn’t flip. You really hoped you were over that.

“Yeah. Yeah, I have a date,” you practically whisper out.

“And you didn’t tell me?” he asked.

A part of you thinks he’s joking or teasing, but his tone isn’t coming off that way and it’s rubbing you the wrong way.

“Tell you?” you question.

“Well, yeah. You tell Scott all about it, but don’t mention it to me,” he replied.

“Chris, you and I haven’t been exactly talking a whole lot lately. When would I have told you?”

He scoffs at your response. “We talk.”

You’re shaking your head but he can’t see you which is annoying.

“Besides, you didn’t tell me you were seeing someone, let a lone had a girlfriend,” you replied.

There. You said it. It was none of your business, but you didn’t like this whole conversation and the attitude that was coming with it.

You hear breathing from his end but apparently the cat had caught his tongue because he wasn’t responding.

“I gotta go,” you said.

“Y/N, wait,” you hear him say, but your pushing the end call button before you can even stop yourself.

This was not a conversation you wanted to have. You were simply seeking a guy’s opinion on what to wear for a date. Your first in six freaking months and Chris who barely speaks to you needs to complain about not knowing about said date. You groaned out loud, picking up the work dress and sticking it back in your closest. Sending pictures of the two remaining dresses to Jana to make the final decision, you walked into your kitchen, opting for tea rather than wine.

You phone buzzed while the water simmered in the pot.

Scott: Hey, it’s Scott. I’ll call you later.

Scott was your friend. You just hoped that if your friendship with Chris was over, it wouldn’t cause any drama or stress for Scott.

Chapter 6

A/N: If you’ve read any of my past stories, you will know that I love a happy ending. Please don’t worry. I will fix this. I want this to be as realistic as it can be, so I don’t believe that Chris would put his life on hold for someone he has a phone relationship with. But have faith and know I love you all.

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[edorazzi]

Well, here we are again! Twitter said yes to a review post for a Miraculous magazine that suddenly showed up in my local area. ‘Tis the season after all, and by that I mean someone bought it for me as a joke birthday gift and I was way too happy about that.

I’ve done previous reviews of the Miraculous Christmas calendar, Easter egg set, superhero fashion dolls and action figures, so let’s dive into the unknown world of merchandising yet again!

(As always, if you enjoy my posts, please consider checking out my Twitter page or supporting me on Patreon for lots of bonus content!)

4 FREE GIFTS! PACKED WITH ACTIVITIES! MEET THE KWAMIS! PRANKS & LOLS! CUT-OUT MEMES! FANGIRL ALERT! NAIL ART! 100% OFFICIAL! I’m overwhelmed! It feels like I’m having a seizure just from the packaging!!! 

I should preface this by saying I haven’t bought a magazine like this in years. Possibly ever. I read things like the Beano, Animals & You and the odd Disney Princess zine when I was a kid but I have no idea what to expect from a free-gift-packed kiddie magazine in 2019. If the outside is anything to go by we’re in for a wild ride.

I’m noticing that it says “Miraculous #20″ on the back. Does this mean I’ve missed 19 previous issues? I’m genuinely a little upset by that. My local area is a complete dry zone for Miraculous so I haven’t had the chance to pick these up.

First step: let’s separate everything out and get a look at these freeeee giftssss. Except they aren’t free, because this magazine was like £3.99. This does seem to be the current trend - it’s kinda rare to see any kids’ zines without the excess packaging crammed with ‘free’ stuff. Is it really too expensive to just produce the magazine? Probably, in this economy.

Chat Noir is revealed on the cover! He was on the back of the plastic jacket, but it’s still nice to see the kids as a front-cover duo. Apparently we’re going to learn to draw Pollen, too, which sounds fun. I’m actually liking the look of the gifts as well, but we’ll get into those in a minute.

This hairbrush............. is adorable. Oh my god. It’s pretty cheap and flimsy but it functions the way it’s supposed to, and the Ladybug design has been taken into account in a better way than “it’s red/black, that counts” (lest we forget the UTTER BULLSHIT of the Christmas calendar, and YES I’m still mad about that). I don’t know how well I expect the outer sticker to last, but if it can take a bit of wear and tear this would be an adorable little travel brush. Nicely done, lads!

These nail stickers? Also adorable. They remind me of the kiddie makeup sets I had when I was little, back in the early 00s when plastic stick-on nails and decals were all the rage. Are they still a thing? That’s nice to know.

There are 13 designs (that I can count) - a Queen Bee mask, Chat Noir pawprint cake, macaron, cupcake, heart-print cookie, Ladybug stud, flower, lightning bolt, love heart, Marinette heart, bee, fox tail and star. The majority are directly related to the show and that makes them feel special. No Carapace though? :(

I’ve put a little Marinette heart on my furthest finger. At the time of typing this up (about a day later) it’s still firmly in place. I haven’t really knocked it around, granted, but it’s not flimsy enough to fall off after five minutes either. It’s also really cute to look at. Guess I’m still a decal-loving 2004 girl at heart......

These stickers though!!! Wow! They’re those holographic and slightly-puffy kind and they feel like pretty good quality, and the designs are so cute! I can’t fault these, they’re absolutely adorable. I immediately want to stick them everywhere.

So I’ve stuck them everywhere. I’m especially proud of the light switch pun. My room looks GREAT.

I saved these “mystery stickers” for last because I’m weak for the thrill of mystery bags, and there wasn’t anything on the packaging to indicate what kind of designs to expect. And OH!!!! OH, IT’S MY BOY!!!! Look at him!!!! 

I made jokes with the Christmas calendar about all the Chat Noir items being stolen ahead of time, but that’s definitely NOT the case with this magazine. I have been SPOILED with the presence of my cat son.

These stickers are similar to the sticker sheet (and the Chillin’ Out design is reprinted), but they’re puffier and non-holographic. I’m deeply allured by the “decorate your phone or tablet” suggestion on the packet, but I’m going to see how the previous stickers withstand the wear-and-tear of my laptop lid before adding any more. If I damage these beautiful Adrien stickers I’ll be devastated.

Those are our free gifts! They’re actually very fun and cute, I’m really happy with them! I guess now it’s time to get into the magazine itself...........

I genuinely almost forgot the magazine was the main part of this package. I figured I was done, but we’ve barely even started! Here’s a splash page of the kwami. Kwami with a capital K? Kwamis? I still feel like it should be singular-lower-case-k-kwami. I’ve never been happy about this “miraculouses” business either.

But is that--

It IS!!!! It’s Nino!!! 

I guess this is the new flavour of Miraculous tie-ins. Now they’ve broadened out to a full team we’re seeing a lot more of Adrien alongside the girls, and Nino is the elusive hero who shows up once in a blue moon. At least this time his name isn’t in the title of the gotdam show.......

Anyway, I can see I’m supposed to draw my “fave Kwami”. Better get to it.

Felix just wants a break. Just one break. But not in this magazine.

Speaking of seeing more of Adrien (and, tragically, less of Nino), this is the kind of splash page I want to see! Both kids are here! The banner themed with Marinette’s signature flowers is a nice touch too; that’s associated with her arts ‘n’ crafts in the show already and it makes sense to apply it to the creative portion of this magazine too.

I LOVE the promotion of Chat Noir nails as something the little girls buying this magazine will definitely want to try. I’d expect them to do Marinette vs Ladybug nails, but instead we get a boyish option! Hell yeah!

I’m a little confused by the Queen Bee masks apparently going on the Chat Noir nails though. I guess they’re friends? Is this secret AdriChlo confirmation? Watch out, Marinette, Kagami’s not the one to be worried about.

SURE WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE SOME TURTLE STICKERS FOR AN ALL-BOYS THEME BUT I GUESS NOT HUH

Next up is a short merch catalogue (why would you put the big bold arrow pointing right to the underoos.....). Would those Chat Noir socks come in my size? Asking for me.

Then there’s......... this page. FANGIRL ALERT. God. It’s like the Ladyblog, if only the Ladyblog ever gave a heck about reporting what Chat Noir’s up to.

THE SPELL WAS BROKEN AND THE FANDOM IMPLODED WITH JOY.

I really have to wonder what age range this is meant for. Do kids know what a “fandom” is? Do little girls consider themselves “fangirls”? I guess most kids have enough internet access to figure it out these days (all the hashtags and LOLs and memes speak volumes), but I can’t imagine being young enough to fit the target range of this magazine while also knowing these terms. I dunno.

(Also, the definition of ‘implosion’ is ‘an instance of something collapsing violently inwards’, so I’m not sure that’s the word they’re looking for. Unless the return to the status quo in Dark Cupid and the continuing stagnation of the love square was enough to make people quit in frustration? Probably.)

I’m filling it in, of course. Because I must.

I gave up on the pre-approved ratings system pretty much right away, but I think this is an accurate rating of my LadyNoir opinions. 

I might be kinda cynical about it here, but I am actually pretty fond of how this magazine sells Ladybug and Chat Noir as a couple. The show’s portraying it as very onesided lately, with Chat pining over Ladybug who has absolutely no interest in him (Glaciator was a TERRIBLE episode and I’m still hurting from it), but reading this zine I’d guess they were already dating. It’s cheesy, but in a nice way.

I have to laugh at “the most amazing thing about this super duo is that they always look out for and protect each other” though. Chat’s usually pretty focused on LB, sure, but there are endless instances of LB using Chat as cannon fodder and just generally abandoning him to get mauled by akuma while she carries out her personal private plan to save the day. Maybe we’re just focusing on the better-written episodes, huh?

Moving ahead. I’ve been dreading this page since reading “Plaggs Pranks & LOLs” on the back of the packaging. I feel hatred in my very bones just looking at it.

I like that there’s ONE instance of the term “ladybird” in the joke column. This is a UK-based magazine and that IS the word we tend to use over here - “ladybug” is an Americanism - but it’s like they’re worried kids could have got to the middle of this magazine about a superhero named Ladybug and then not understand the bug jokes. Maybe whoever was writing this page slipped up?

OH NOOOOO. MARINETTE, NOOOOOOOOOO.

THIS IS WHY FELIX GOT RID OF YOU, PLAGG. THESE ARE ADRIEN’S PROBLEMS NOW.

(mmm whatcha saaaaay)

I mean........... YEAH, I guess, but we absolutely did see Plagg destroy Felix with an entire shelf of heavy books. I guess he’s nicer with Adrien. It’s all fun and games until someone has a nervous breakdown in the library.

I do love the concept of Tikki getting glitter-bombed by Plagg through the mail. She just curiously opens up the little letter which got slipped into Marinette’s purse, and-- WOOSH. One entire wall of Mari’s room is glittery except for a little Tikki-shaped silhouette. 

Next up is a two-page comic which is absolutely adorable! Look at those little chibis! The warm and soft colour palette! This is nicer than most of the official Miraculous comic book art I’ve seen, I hope they keep giving this artist work.

Nino’s here too (and he looks great!), and I like the touch of Marinette and Adrien playing as each other’s superhero characters. Adrien even wins the match, though I guess there’s something to be said about Ladybug beating Chat Noir (again)...... 

It does raise the question yet again of where this tie-in merchandise is coming from! They’ve had action figures, a movie, music video features, now an arcade game... Who’s getting the royalties here? Who’s profiting? Is this how Fu can afford to buy all those rare ingredients for the magic potions?

Over the page we have an activity to Design your Secret Lair! Right away I love the Marinette theme of the page, the soft pink and flowers, and the drawing space looking like a page in a binder with marker tabs and everything.

I have to design my secret lair, of course: 

What do you think? I’m very creative. I’ll need an adult to send in the drawing of my hideout but I think I’ve really got a shot at those unicorn headphones.

Now we’re on to puzzles and character pages. I don’t know what ol’ Gabe is doing trying to meet a 13 year old girl in the dead of night without telling anyone, you’d think if he’s got that much free time on his hands he could be spending it with his son.

I don’t know how those points in Ladybug’s power profile are awarded or what they mean, but you can tell this is a fan magazine. Official sources would have put her at a 10.

Standard House of Villains page! Most of these were good episodes but I’m deeply offended Riposte isn’t on here. Maybe her motives weren’t dramatic and cartoonish enough to be up in the ranks with Glaciator and Gorizilla?

“Cat Noir’s dad is also the evil Hawk Moth”, huh? I mean that’s not WRONG, but is it really something to put in his power profile when Adrien doesn’t even know yet??? Feels like we’re kinda jumping the gun on the poor boy. What if he picks up this magazine?

Apparently he’s one point weaker than Ladybug (seriously???), two points faster, equally as agile, one point less skilled and two points less cool. Despite all those lesses he still comes out at an equal 9, which is a relief! These kids are a team, putting either of them below the other would have been a big no.

I did the colouring page too, naturally. Je suis un artiste.

Now we’ve got a page fresh from the Ladyblog, a Miraculous quiz! Not a lot of excitement, but it’s nice to see Alya getting her own section.

I like that the qualifications of “you could be Ladybug herself!” are knowing what city Marinette lives in and what school she goes to. Well done, Mari! You’re doing your best!!!

TEACHER I AM SO HUNGRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I gotta say, I’m not so sure about decorating donuts with fondant. I’ve never tried it so I could be wrong, but it feels like rolled icing instead of frosting(?) would be too heavy for an entire donut. The texture is totally different.

I mean I guess if you’re going to load your kids up on sugar you might as well go all the way. They’re going to look like they’ve eaten something horrible with all that black fondant, but they’ll have fun. Adrien would love these.

WHERE’S NINO. THIS IS JUST UNFAIR. You’ll have four out of five heroes, then a double of Marinette and Tikki? Maybe this just goes to show how little memorable dialogue Carapace has.

Though if “Spots On!” is Marinette’s dialogue and not Ladybug’s, why are the other transformation phrases attributed to Rena Rouge and Queen Bee instead of Alya and Chloé? Surely they could have picked something better for Marinette to justify having her on this list twice instead of Nino.

The next page brings us one of those flowchart quizzes! And ouch, yet again the absence of the other heroes is obvious. I can understand not including Chloé here since she’s technically not a “friendly” character yet, but no Nino? Alya and Marinette are close friends, but Adrien doesn’t really hang out with them without Nino around. Having the three of them together just seems strange.

I do like the little fashion page! They’re all cute and affordable and easy to find on the high street here. I’d love to see how other issues of this magazine are structured; is there a different fashion spot every time? Styles to channel each individual hero would be adorable.

Moving on to a tutorial for a Ladybug notebook! I would have made this, but I didn’t have the time nor a notebook to stick it to.

Between this and the donuts, it seems weird that these designs are based on, like... an actual beetle, eyes and antennae and all. Shouldn’t it be Ladybug’s symbol? These come across more like “fun animals” arts ‘n’ crafts instead of themed after Miraculous specifically. I think if I made this (or decorated the donuts) I’d miss out the head and match the spot pattern to Ladybug’s symbol. 

The hidden message design is adorable though. I can see this being a craft kids are super proud of.

Another activity page! I didn’t have a go at these but they’re pretty standard. It’s cute that the coded message designs are the same as the stickers and nail decals!

Also, apparently Ladybug’s ‘secret’ is “LB mask + heart + CN mask”, which was (somehow) stolen by Volpina. Is that the secret Hawk Moth was talking about earlier in the magazine? Is he blackmailing Ladybug with revealing she has a crush on Chat Noir? How did Volpina ‘steal’ this secret? Is LadyNoir finally reciprocated???? THIS IS A WHOLE EPISODE IN ITSELF, I NEED ANSWERS--

Next page we have an ad for another girly magazine (Quizzes! LOLs! Celebs! Cringes! Puzzles!). I think I’ll pass, no matter how appealing that giant microphone pen is. 

And a “Miraculous Identity” quiz! Tikki’s apparently super fickle with her wielders, three seasons of relentlessly praising Marinette and now she’s telling us we’re the Chosen Ones. You can’t fool me with those big ol’ eyes.

My inner superhero is Marvellous Fox, by the way. Though yet again I’m noticing we don’t have turtle options...................

And on the back cover... the memes. Oh, sweet lord, the memes. They’re hashtag-SoRelatable! And I can cut them out to keep! Oh boy!!!

Is this what kids do when they have limited internet access? Cut fresh memes out of magazines and carry them around? I need to know.

That’s a very sinister Ladybug at the bottom of the page though. What’s-- What’s she going to do to me if I don’t cut out and keep these memes. Ladybug what are you going to do if I d--

Well that brings us to the end of the magazine! And yet again I’m surprised by how much time it takes to just put a bunch of photos together and write about them.

This is a neat little magazine all in all! The ‘free gifts’ are pretty nice, there’s a fair amount of content and the whole thing is pretty cute for young fans of the show. I could see myself buying this again - if it ever shows up on shelves, Miraculous is so scarce around here that I fully expect it to disappear again after this one issue - just for the free junk, but it would be interesting to see how they’d structure different issues too!

I notice we never did get that promised tutorial on how to draw Pollen; the one advertised on the cover. Was the “draw your favourite Kwami” activity supposed to cover that? I’m not sure that really counts.

If you got this far, thanks for joining me on this Miraculous journey! We’ll meet again whenever I get another piece of weird ML merch to cover. Bien joué!

[jq37]

well. that was it.

**spoilers for prompocalypse  part 2**

Y'all this is it. The end-end. The last recap, at least for Fantasy High.

I honestly could have gotten this up yesterday but I wanted to give myself a hot sec before it was really over. 

But, no way out but through. Let’s get to it. 

We start back up right where we left off with no break in between. Cast still freaking, Brennan still gaping. 

“What the Fuck.” –Brennan 2019

Anyway, Kristen once again appears in corn heaven and she’s very not chill about it. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. On the plus side, she runs into Doreen in heaven who is young and hot again (which I’m sure Fig would appreciate knowing) and also apologizes for her traumatizing speech to Adaine during her death.

Helio playing beer pong. I wonder if that was always a facet of his personality or if Brennan just decided to yes-and all of Ally’s suggestions of him being a frat bro.

The angels being like, “Please be nice to God. He’s our dad,” was kinda adorable. 

“Why are you dressed like a weird stripper?”/“It’s too hot in here. He’s the sun!”

So while the gang has been living out Breakfast Club + Stranger Things, Aguefort has been Weekend and Bernie’s-ing Heaven apparently. I want to say wild, but tbh that’s pretty on brand for him. The wild part is that he was able to knock out GOD. Like, how even?

Aguefort tells Kristen that Sol is one god of many and she says, “Cool, I always thought that,” as if this is new information but, living in a D&D world, shouldn’t she definitively know that already? Like, the gods in fantasy worlds are pretty blatant about letting their presence be known and there are clerics/paladins who aren’t Heleoic but still have powers. 

OK I have a bone to pick with Ms. Kristen Applebees. You get a chance to talk to the primordial source of all divine power and magic and you (1) ask who you’re allowed to bone and (2) create a TERRIBLE god. Just truly TRASH. She created a reaction gif god. It’s not even a physical representation of the concept. Like, I thought she meant something like Yass from Wreck it Ralph 2 but no. Just a literal Yes! Like, you can trash talk Helio when you come up with something better, girl. Also, wild that you can just…walk into a room and do that. Like you have to knock out Sol first but still. Wild.

“You’ve created a new deity and already you’re fed up with it. I would say that’s par for the course.”

I low key thought Kristen was going to get the option to deify herself. I think because I had just rewatched The Gamers: Dorkness Rising and that figures in to the plot. But, thinking about it, she wouldn’t have gone for that I don’t think.

Aguefort flipping out at Kristen saying that friendship is the greatest magic of all, and rightfully so. That’s BS.

Since when does Kristen have dog tags?

Anyway, as we all suspected, the chronomancy line from episode 1 wasn’t a random line of dialogue, it was a chekhov’s gun. 

I mentioned this in an earlier post. Brennan didn’t seem too concerned that the party was wiping and I think this is why. I think he had two paths for this fight to take. In one, Riz successfully rolled for police and like 6 helpful NPCs plus his mom show up. That’s enough to beat the dragon without dying and Aguefort shows up having Die Hard-ed his way out of heaven. In the other, Kristen dies, goes to heaven, and basically that same series of events happens. Chronomancy saves the day. I think he was shocked because the roll dovetailed so perfectly with the story beat. 

“Is Arthur Aguefort black? Hell yes. My brotha.” Gonna be honest, I basically had that same reaction when they showed his character portrait in ep 1.

Kristen and Arthur jump back into the battle and Arthur gets possessed by Mr. Gibbons. I guess he’s just been hanging around as a ghost this whole time? Because this seems to lend credence to the theory that that’s who possessed Fig in the arcade but didn’t we see him go to the afterlife (which, I have a question about that too later). But I feel like that must have been Brennan’s way of sidelining him for the fight so they didn’t have like a level 20 wizard making it too easy.

“Oh, and Jawbone!” Murph loses it. 

Jawbone stuck in Goldenhoard’s mouth like that meme of the dog smiling, stuck in a fence.

Gorthalax is like, “I don’t feel great sleeping next to this dude.” Fig meanwhile is all, “I wanna sleep between his legs.” She says this at least twice. 

So everyone just have a freaking picnic and takes a nap in the middle of this fight. Can’t say I saw that coming exactly.

Fabian tries to stab Dayne, who is already dead, during the time stop.

“What the fuck do they teach you at this school?”

“Are you talking about the time thing or–”/“Yeah Gorgug! The time thing!.”

“We’re gonna kill this motherfucker, sweetie.”

I love Sklonda so much.

Jawbone is a salad guy.

OK so I know people were shipping Sklonda and Gilear and it was like, “But how would that work with the height difference?” so Brennan, the absolute madman, decides to pair her with the GIANT DEMON???

Adaine about Gilear: Cucked again.

Everyone treating the DRAGON like a JUNGLE GYM.

“It’s basically Jeb Bush’s Campaign.” Ally, with the fury of 1000 suns: EXCUSE ME?

“I bless, [Riz], your mom, and [Fabian.] Are you the only ones with vendettas?”

“I think we’re all pretty blessed.” Gorgug/Zac is so good.

Adaine, who has all the wisdom and intelligence points of the entire party at the moment: You need to stay safe because the reason that we died is that you died. 

The shot that shows everyone on the giant dragon and then the foreground fuzzes out and shows Adaine a safe distance away in the background is hilarious. 

Ice guitar pick. Sweet.

Yeah, Siobhan really shoulda got healing potions out of her jacket, not the freaking wand. Hilarious. The only thing helpful about that was it hinted he was vulnerable to frost damage which they could have guessed. 

I wonder what Brennan had in his notes about the freaking city in Adaine’s jacket. It’s wild they weren’t more curious about that.

I low key loved Emily buffing Murph the whole fight.

“Hell yes Sklonda!”

Ragh: Giving a gay pride speech./Adaine, who doesn’t want to get knocked out again: STAB HIM IN THE DICK DUDE.

And, speaking of, OWWW.

Fig shapeshifting to Dayne. The hell Emily!

And another eye gouging.

Fabian is incapable of doing a single thing without doing some ridiculous parkour stunt first. 

Kristen,not twenty minutes after Riz said it would be crazy to go inside the dragon: Can I climb inside the dragon’s mouth? (Adaine: KRISTEN!)

Gorgug saving Skonda and Riz going, “Thanks for saving my mom!” from across the room.

Brennan is narrating the epic final battle and what cool thing everyone is doing and Kristen is just being digested. 

Riz was my second choice for the coup de grace until it turned out that Kal ate his dad and then he was my first choice. Riz!!!!

What a badass moment for him. The image of him casting a shadow on the wall is super dope.

Everyone flipping off Kal as he dies.

Riz and Sklonda are making dragon casserole bay-bee! 

MURPH FAILS WITH BARDIC INSPIRATION AND BLESS AT A 12 DC.

Aguefort. What a chaos monster.

“I fucked that bird! It is my paramour!”

Hold up, hold up, hold up. Did Kristen’s freaking Yes god kick Sol out of his own freaking heaven? WHAT?

I love that what Adaine got out of this experience was, “Wait, so my powers are bullshit?”

“Everything in this world is bullshit, Ms. Abernant.” Preach.

“So is the sun just a yes now?”/“Maybe.”

Literally 6 cop NPCs. Like they all seem like they’re morons but I’m sure it would have helped!

“Fuck it dude, it’s worth asking.”

“Are you my dad?”/“I was about to ask you the very same thing.”/“What?”

“TAKE HIS EYE. CUT OUT HIS EYE. YOU WANT ME TO BITE IT OUT FOR YOU?”

Brennan really likes the word bud.

Freak the fuck out all the time and just fuck things up. 

They got their ice cream later! And Adaine says thank you to Basrar, even though he’s not even there.

Adaine as the 7 freed maidens (way to go Sandra-Lynn) are re-killing Goldenhoard: Us and them are the only good students.

Gorgug’s nat20! What a WILD time for the dice to give that to him.

“You gotta ask. I ask everyone if they’re my dad.”

Gorgug’s dad (Gorbag) has just as low an intelligence score as his son. It’s hilarious but also sweet.

THE VULTURE

I thought that Digby and WIlma just found Gorgug in the woods? Maybe I’m not remembering right. I would guess that was their version of the stork story but they straight up told him what docking was so…

“Do any other federal agents want to step to Arthur Aguefort on the grounds of his school?”

The Aguefort way!

I wonder what Sam has to say about her former BFF selling her out like that and also getting murdered.

It seems like Gorgug was put on the guest list for hell by accident (his relieved reaction was adorable) but I thought that was orc heaven?

Interesting Gorthalax still has pull in hell when he’s a high school coach now.

BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL BILL

How did he watch the fight? Do they have pay per view in hell?

“I doubt Cathilda will end up here.”

Bill is just such a maniac. I love him so much. I wanna say I can’t believe that killing the devil dril tweet was serious but I can. It’s Bill.

Bill and Fabian having a casual convo in HELL.

Oh my God, Fabian’s mom stabbed Bill’s eye out and he proposed on the spot. No wonder Fabian is so into Aelwen. It’s in his DNA.

What a dope ship.

I can’t believe Emily tricked me into thinking that her end speech wasn’t in service to some nonsense. She held it together for so long but I should have known bc it’s EMILY.

“Young lady, I have no idea who that is and I’m telling you right now yes. I will make whoever that person is vice principal.”

Adaine: Uhhhh….we should find Zayn.

Aww, Zayn’s parents were also terrible elves. 

Unwanted Wingwoman Kristen Applebees

lol at Adaine casting Ray of Sickness on everyone suggesting she date ghost Zayne. Great callbacks to the early eps all around. 

Don’t @ me, but Adaine w/ a ghost boyfriend who also had terrible elf parents might be kinda sick.

“Tomorrow, we’re gonna start training you on how to actually swordfight.” Uhhh, I kinda love Fabian’s mom now?

She literally hasn’t been sober in 15 years. Icon.

“I didn’t know you spoke Tornado.”

Siobhan’s late season tendency to just flip things/people off is hilarious.

Wild that Adaine’s parents just legit DITCHED her that hard and she was like, f ‘em. Clean break.

“She’s helping me spread something.”

Gorgug has so many friends now!!!!!

Lol, Fabian’s whole journey has just been about becoming captain of the Owlbears.

Riz got his PI License. 

Lou and Fabian immediately being so mad at the idea of his mom (Hallariel?) getting with Gilear. Emily/Fig having an equal but opposite reaction. 

“Mama, I will kill this man.”/“I’ll kill you first, it’s not up to you.”

Sandra-Lynn gets with Jawbone. Did Brennan just roll to pair up everyone?

Also, the group is almost all related or quasi-related now. Gorthalax got with Sklonda which makes Fig and Riz sorta siblings. Gilear got with Hallariel making Fig and Fabian sorta siblings. Jawbone sorta adopted Adaine and he got with Sandra-Lynn, again making Adaine kinda siblings with Fig. Plus Fig claimed Gorgug as a sibling a lot of eps ago and if Kristen sticks with Tracker then she’ll marry into this mess. Crazy!

Fabian totally dipping on the sequel hook because he’s gonna be busy trying to break Aelwen out of jail.

I’ve been keeping up with the fanart but there was some in here I hadn’t seen and it was super dope!

I’m so glad we had the after epilogue-epilogue. It was a very nice send-off.

Adaine using her oracle authority to get Zayn back into school! She’s so good. 

Lol and she helped Basrar so he can grant other wishes. I love that this is the NPC that she decided she was going all in for.

Riz and Adaine join AV club! Idk why I love that detail.

Riz cutting off Adaine’s very good question about her jacket w/ his PI talk.

“They’re our rivals.”/“Into it.”

“Is ‘The Ball’ not your real name?” I love Fabian so much.

Zac doing Gorgug’s excited crack-y teenage voice when he’s just concentrating on that and not playing the game is so adorable. He’s just so sweet and enthusiastic and a good kid.

“Guess that tin flower worked, huh?” I cry.

I love that Gorgug’s happy ending is basically just that he has friends now. And that’s literally all he wanted starting out. 

“FIG! GO TO BARD CLASS!”

Aww, Ragh and Gorgug are friends now.

I knew it! I at some point pitched the idea of Ragh ending up with one of the AV guys so he would be w/ someone who had enough intelligence to keep him from dying and I’m 90% sure it’s somewhere on my blog but I can’t be bothered to find it right now. But anyway, he’s in the lgbt club w/ Ragh and Kristen so it’s def a possibility! 

“My bitch sister? Don’t you fucking dare.” (lol, if that happens then the group will be even more related)

Fabian considering recruiting the Cubbys for his rescue attempt of Aelwen.

“Gilear!” I love that Fig loves Gilear now but still calls him by his first name.

And that was Fantasy High! 

I have at least two more posts in the hopper: And epilogue retrospective type deal and also the official JQ37 ranking of all the adults in Fantasy High.

Thanks for sticking with me this far you guys. I can’t draw to save my life and I don’t really do fic so this is the one little way I can contribute to this thing I love so much. 

It’s been real and I’ll see you all soon for an epilogue because, no surprise, I have more things to say. 

[lhs3020b]

After Noon (1)

So here’s a surprise: somehow, I’m writing fiction again.

I somehow seem to have ended up with a sort of Chocky-meets-r/NoSleep story - it’s quite unlike anything I’ve ever put pen-to-paper on before. What I have so far is under the cut.

Synopsis: a very ordinary London family may or may not be dealing with unEarthly forces. Much confusion happens...

(NB: this is in the style of an r/NoSleep story, so it’s written as if it were real, and as if the viewpoint character were posting to an advice forum or some such thing.)

I'll be honest: Chris was a surprise. But, she's the best surprise we've ever had.

Let me back up and introduce myself. I've never posted here before. It feels really weird that I need to. How did this happen? Why did it happen, and why us? Anyway, I'm already digressing.

My name is Jenny. I'm in my early 30s. I live in London with my partner of eight years, Jo. Jo and I have a six-year old daughter called Christina. Christina wasn't planned and I'll be honest, when we found out, we were quite worried at first. But to my (and Jo’s!) considerable surprise, Chris has ended up being the best thing that's ever happened to us. Sure the sleepless nights were rough and there's all the new problems like childcare, finding a decent school and her amazing ability to wreck all the new clothes we buy her. But seeing her smile, or watching her take her first steps, or listening to the first words she said - absolutely nothing compared. When she spoke for the first time, I honestly thought my heart would melt. I just couldn't believe that someone as frankly-useless and flawed as myself had managed to co-create something as wonderful as this - and accidentally, as well!

Now, here is our problem. Either our beautiful precious daughter is extremely-disturbed, or our family has directly-witnessed an alien apocalypse. I don't like either option.

Yes, it sounds mad, doesn’t it? You’ve just read these words and you’re probably wondering what’s wrong with me. You’ll be thinking, who is this Jenny and why she is having her mental episode here, on our website? Believe me, I’ve asked myself all those questions. But some very weird stuff has been going down inside our normal little family home. Some of it could be coincidence, misunderstanding, whatever. But the rest of it? I genuinely-can’t account for some of what’s happened.

Why us? Why our daughter? What were we supposed to do? Could we have done anything? Should we have done anything? I don’t know. Frankly, I’m posting here because I’m near my wits end. My family is a mess, my daughter is in pieces. I’m not sleeping full nights anymore. I don’t know what to do, but I’m hoping maybe some of you might.

Basically, please hear me out. I’m desperate.

You’re probably feeling uneasy already. I don’t blame you. It's all a lot to take in. Let me start from the beginning. Perhaps some context will help make sense of all this.

Perhaps there was a subtle hint of what was to come when she started talking. Chris didn't start with individual words. Instead, the first thing we got from her was a full sentence. I was cooking in the kitchen and she was in her high chair. It was a mid-afternoon in December about four years ago - London being London, the Sun had almost set, so I had the lights on already. I was just about to start boiling an egg when Chris suddenly pointed, and said "It's an egg!"

(Well, actually, what she said sounded more like "Hitsa hegg!", but the meaning was clear enough.)

Needless to say I immediately went into squee mode. Jo got called in and went into squee mode too. Chris loved the attention, though it was another two days before she spoke again. After that, the floodgates opened. Our health visitor said she'd never seen linguistic development this fast. Chris, apparently was very smart. The news sent us over the moon with joy.

And this is where our tale goes into high gear, becuase I'm not so certain that she was as precocious as we were told. Don't get me wrong - our daughter is a special young lady, and a bright one too. But I've got some reason to believe that someone, or something, had helped her along the way a bit.

It was when she turned five that we first met Noon.

'Jenny, it's not unusual,' Jo told me. 'I had an imaginary friend when I was little.'

I blinked. 'You did?' I'd never heard this story. (And here's one unexpected side-effect of having Chris: I was getting to know my partner all over again, better than I did beforehand.)

He nodded. 'Yeah. I had a comfort blanket. I gave it a name and took it everywhere.' He looked a bit embarrassed. 'I think my parents hated it. In hindsight, can't completely blame them, really.'

'But you didn't think it was real ...' I prompted.

He shook his head. 'Not really, no. It was more about having someone to talk to.'

'She's got us to talk to,' I said, maybe a little defensive.

'True,' he said. 'But - look, I'm sure it will be fine. Once she's settled into the new class at primary school.'

I breathed out, feeling myself relax a little. Jo was right. I was being overprotective. Don't judge me too hard - I've never been a parent before, and I'm having to make it up as I go along! A few stumbles were probably inevitable. I'd been worrying too much. Doubtless Jo was right and the Noon business was just a reaction to the recent changes at her school.

Her class had been split up. One of the teachers abruptly quit halfway through the term, under murky circumstances. Plus the school's been having money problems, like too many others across the country. It's inevitable that all this adult-work-chaos stuff would have some impact on the children, as much as everyone tries to shield them from it. Contrary to what many people think, kids aren't stupid. In fact they sometimes see things more clearly then we do, because they don't yet have the layers of cotton-wool self-delusion we pad ourselves out with. When stuff is going down, they'll pick up on it.

But if that was the case, then there was good news too. Once the school situation settled down, we'd stop hearing about Chris's new imaginary friend all the time too.

My relief was to be short-lived. Later that very evening, there was a development.

I was sitting down with Chris in the living room. We'd had dinner. She'd been good and had used her little plastic knife and fork all through the meal. Normally I call it a win if I can even get her to pick them up, let alone neatly cut-and-skewer all her food. But of course we want to reinforce it if she does well, so I was allowing her an extra hour or so with her crayons and drawing stuff, before bed-time.

She was sat on the carpet, cross-legged, looking very serious in that way that small children do sometimes when they know an adult is watching. There was a sheet of paper in front of her. She picked up a red crayon. She then proceeded to draw a red ellipse on the paper. It might have been meant to be a circle, but to be brutally-honest, it looked more like a sort of obese beetroot.

'That's very pretty, dear,' I said.

Apparently I'd picked the right tone of voice (I still don't really have that skill, sadly). She beamed at me. Then she frowned and looked at the other crayons.

'I can't find it, Mummy,' she said.

'You can't find what?' I asked. Now, I almost with I hadn't.

She said, 'I need to draw the other sun, Mummy. But I need a white crayon.'

The other sun? What? I know I must have looked baffled, because suddenly Chris's lip trembled. She always reacts strongly to our moods. Learning to regulate my emotional expression - well, let's be honest, I still trip up on that one.

To cover my confusion, I reached over to her left. The white crayon had rolled over there when we tipped them out of their box. I think she must have missed it. 'Here it is, dear,' I said.

She beamed and took the crayon from me, grasping it in her pudgy little fingers. I breathed a private sigh of relief. Apparently my little slip a moment ago hadn't mattered too much.

Chris frowned at the page. 'It's very small,' she said. She drew a barely-visible white circle with the crayon. 'That's too big. But I can't make it smaller. Small sun.'

'It's lovely, dear,' I said. 'The Sun is usually yellow, though.' (I have a friend, Fiona, who's an astronomer. At this point she would be ranting about how the Sun can't be yellow because sunlight is white light by definition, so this must be yet another popular delusion reiterated uncritically by poor scientific comms, etc. etc. Perhaps it was just as well that Fiona wasn't here with us this evening.)

Chris scowled. 'Not ours,' she said. 'Where Noon is from. They have two suns there.'

Noon was from a place with two suns? That really did throw me for six. Where on earth could Chris have got that idea from? I mean, points for creativity. I wouldn't have thought of that when I was a child! But still, this was some left-field stuff.

'Noon says there are two suns?' I asked.

Chris nodded, enthusiastically. She liked talking about Noon. 'She was telling me about it earlier.'

Noon was a she? That was new too. So far, we'd had no idea about Noon's gender, or even if the concept could be applied. Like Brexit, Noon was Noon, but what that actually meant had been a mystery for none but the elect to know. (Late last night as we lay in bed, Jo had commented to me that you could tell it was 2019 because the cool kids had non-binary imaginary friends. I whacked him with a pillow, though I will admit I did also snigger, just for a moment.)

Chris added, 'And it's always daytime where Noon is.'

You have to cut Chris a little slack. She's very young, so her world-building still has some research errors here and there. But perhaps now was as good a time as any for a little bit of education. I said, 'That's very interesting. Here, we have day and night. Because the Earth spins. Which is why we see the Sun rise and set.'

Chris was apparently ready for this. 'Noon says it used to do that where she is.' The little girl frowned, puckering her lip. 'But Noon says that was a very long time ago. It doesn't do it anymore. It slowed down, and stopped. Now it's daylight on one side. And it's night on the other. All the time.'

There was a pause.

'Noon says that's why she calls herself that. Her breed-group - she says that like a family - live in the middle of the day. So it's always noon where she is.' Chris picked up a black crayon and drew a wobbly horizon-line, below the two suns. 'She says it's not that weird. Our Moon is the same.'

Then she said three words, deliberately, slowly and carefully. Like someone was reciting them to her. And they were three words you don't expect to hear from a small child. 'Tidally-locked rotation.' Then she beamed and laughed, actually bouncing a little. Like she was really pleased that she'd managed to get it all right.

Breed-group? Like the Moon? Tidally-locked? What the hell?

This was starting to get faintly-weird. Chris had clearly put a lot of work into this. Or, someone had primed her with it. I found myself thinking of her school, and all the stuff that was happening there. Perhaps someone had given a weird assembly. Dumped some stuff into the kids' heads, well-meaningly, but before the children were really ready to absorb it? Or - no, wait, I had it! It would have been during one of the gaps in teaching-hours, wouldn't it? It would be just like the school to park the kids in a room with a video somewhere while the adults faffed about. They'd been left watching some sort of sci-fi thing, hadn't they? That was where all this must be coming from!

Carefully, I said, 'It's very nice of Noon to share about her life. I hope she likes it where she is.'

I didn't expect what happened next. Suddenly, Chris burst into tears. And these were proper floods. These were the-neighbour-ran-over-our-dog-and-I-saw-it-all tears. These were serious-business tears. Something was badly wrong.

'Oh honey, what's the matter?' Quickly I gathered her into my arms. She was still clutching the crayons, weeping hysterically. I heard feet thumping along the corridor outside. Jo had heard, and was coming running.

I did my best to soothe the distraught child as her father joined us. He looked at me, questioningly. Quickly I shook my head, mouthing, No love, I have no idea what set this off. I don't know whether he fully-understood what I said, or whether this was just parent-telepathy time. But either way, Jo joined the group-effort that was calming our daughter.

Finally we got Chris settled a little. Her face was still red and puffy but the sobs had softened away and the waterworks had calmed down. I held her - she felt very warm, and very precious - and rocked her from side-to-side. I was verging between deep concern for my daughter and wanting to smack Noon for whatever she'd done - which was completely irrational, given that at that point, I didn't believe that Noon existed.

When we'd settled our little girl enough, I think Jo and I both decided that there'd been enough drawing for one night. She didn't protest as we put the crayons away. Jo fetched her a hot chocolate - her favourite drink - and I dug out the laptop. We have a carefully-curated YouTube cartoons list (believe me, I don't let Chris anywhere near the "something is wrong on the Internet" stuff!) and I put one of her favourites on. We watched it together. Between it, the hot chocolate and maybe a bit of Mum's own-brand cuddles, Chris finally calmed. Soon, she was very tired. It was evident that bedtime was near. The day's drama had exhausted her.

Shortly after, we were tucking her into bed. I sat with her, holding her hand, as she drifted off. I was feeling both worried and relieved. Worried because that eruption earlier had been terrifying. Relieved because at least it was over.

Then something new happened.

Just as she was about to fall asleep, Chris muttered something. 'Noon says the little white one will kill them all.'

[moistwithgender]

(Overdue) Media round-up (January 2019)

Feb’s almost over and I was gonna write about what I’ve processed when I realized I only posted about the anime I watched, I think? So this is a catch-up post for manga and games, before the end of this month in a few days. If you want to read the January anime round-up, it’s in my “curry watches anime” tag.

Games:

Puresabe’s 2019 New Year Rockman Hack (NES): Puresabe does one of these every year and they are always pretty hard! But I think the last few years have been much more balanced than their older projects. They are always just boss fights, but with complex patterns and sometimes multiple phases. Being just a boss fight (or two) means they are super short, but you will spend most of your time learning them. Also there are no checkpoints, so every death means you’re back to phase one. It’s very fun when it’s a good hack, and this was a good hack. I had a very rough start to the year and considered giving up, but went back and beat it, for good fortune in the new year. (Beaten 1/2/19)

The 2nd Super Robot Wars (NES): I decided 2019 would be the year I got into SRW, and so I started here, because the first game actually has no hard plot. I enjoyed it to a point, but the difficulty climbs to an absurd degree, and I wish I’d cut my losses and just youtubed it. The game allows you to save at any time during a turn, and resetting the console means it recycles the RNG and you can get different luck. This is...required. Most of the way into the game, I was having to reset twenty times in a row per unit action, just to make sure I could survive an enemy attack, or successfully hit an enemy. The funniest thing is that when I finally beat this, I almost immediately started up one of the later games, so clearly the kernel of value was visible to me through all that bullshit. (Beaten 1/13/19)

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: World of Light (Switch): I had been chomping at the bit for what felt like forever just to play this mode of this game, and not only was it good, it surpassed my expectations multiple times. This mode has a lot of twists for something that mostly implies narrative, or otherwise ignores it. I’m the rare person who mostly plays Smash Bros solo because I have NO FRIENDS, and this was worth the price of admission for me. I don’t consider Smash Ultimate itself beaten yet because I haven’t beaten Classic Mode on 9.9 difficulty yet. I have finished with 9.8, like, four times. Please kill me. (Beaten 1/18/19)

PaRappa the Rapper (PSP): While taking care of my cat, I found an opportunity to actually use my PSP for the first time since...2008 or 09? When I bought it secondhand? Jesus. Anyway, it turns out that PaRappa actually has absurd input detection and an equally hard to parse system for what counts as “freestyling”, which ultimately results in a final stage where you’re...required to play notes that are completely unrelated to what it says to do on-screen? I still beat the game (in a single sitting, too. it’s short), but I was pretty frustrated. Greenblat’s aesthetic is iconic, and the songs are very fun to listen to (this game has maybe the only potty humor I actually enjoyed), but the game part is actually the problem. (Beaten 1/25/19)

Patapon (PSP): I played PaRappa spontaneously, but I’ve actually meant to play the Patapon series for quite a while. This is less a song-performing rhythm game and more of an action/strategy type of rhythm game where you consistently keep a beat to keep morale up. It’s pretty good, but missions can be 3-6 minutes of consecutively hitting four notes and then waiting four notes, and while that itself sounds doable, I am just terrible at rhythm and messed up a lot of good opportunities. The difficulty curve in this is high in the beginning, lowers over time, before hitting a huge spike and then being a cakewalk for the last four or so missions. There’s also a lot of grinding, which means this rhythm game came out to almost a 16 hour run. A bit tiring. Not sure when I’ll jump on Patapon 2, but I hope it’s easier to play, since my impetus for picking up the series was the intro FMV for the third game. (Beaten 1/30/19)

Games beaten in January: 5 Games beaten in 2019 thus far: 5

Manga:

Getter Robo Vol 2 (Finished): I didn’t feel like plowing through 51 episodes of the old 70s anime, so I decided to just read the much shorter, and somewhat unrelated manga. In the show, the heroes are what they are, heroes. Likable mains for kids to watch on Saturday mornings. In the manga, as per Go Nagai’s influence (and the main author, Ken Ishikawa, who I LOVE and who was Nagai’s assistant), the heroes are violent asshole moron sociopath terrorists who gradually become more unhinged as they are exposed to the very radiation that powers the machine they use to fight dinosaurs (though said gradual descent is more of a thing in the later manga/OVAs). Also, the villains are dinosaurs. Turns out they had the original ancient civilization and Getter Rays chased them into the Earth’s core and they want to planet back. That’s Getter Robo! It’s very good.

Getter Robo G Vol 1-3 (Finished): This is kind of more of the same as the first, and again, I didn’t want to watch the 39 episodes, I wanted the primer so I could play SRW. As I’ve approached the later games, it turns out they prefer to take influence from the shows, not the manga. Oops! Whatever. In this sequel, it turns out the Dinosaur Empire was a pawn or something to It Was Aliens, the Hyakki Empire, and it’s...more of the same. In both the GR and GR G mangas, I found the occasional chapter with wildly different art, and I figured that those were Ishikawa’s gorgeous art, and the majority was Nagai’s. But, I’m not sure, and I wonder if those were revised or extra chapters done years later. Idk. Anyway, they are both very fun reads, even if they serve more as primers of the lore.

Shin Getter Robo Vol 1-2 (Finished): HERE’s where things start to get really good, and surreal, and bleak. This manga is not adapting a tv series (though later OVAs would reference it. This manga is actually I think where a lot of the inspiration for Gurren Lagann came from, and if you like that series, you should read this to see the connection. I can’t really explain without spoiling either (though if in 2019 you don’t know what happens in Gurren, you are super lucky and need to go watch it all asap). NOTE, this takes place after the 7 volume Getter Robo Go manga, which has a show but I think is unrelated, but more importantly is probably the BEST Getter Robo series. I read that before knowing a thing about Getter and still loved it (though I think having context will really benefit it). GR Go is the biggest justification for getting into the series. If any friends of mine want to look into this series, I’ll actually help give them a guide. Interestingly, the most modern Getter series (of which the most recent was in 2004 (please come back)) all take reference from the darker mangas, not the old 70s show.

Mazinger Z Vol 1-5 (Finished): I think Go Nagai’s works are weird, melodramatic, gross, and just kinda badly drawn. They are great experiences, if you go in with a grain of salt and also avoid the *most* transgressive ones. Don’t google Iron Virgin Jun. Just. Don’t do it. Devilman is probably his best work, but Mazinger Z is another series with a much more famous long-running 70s cartoon (92 episodes!!!) and burned itself into the nostalgia of Japan. Whereas Devilman eventually becomes traumatizing, Mazinger Z is pretty laid back and goofy, while also being Nagai’s brand of The Most Dramatic Thing Ever. If you follow me, you might’ve seen me post pages in my manga tag. It’s a LOT. Though, actually, I don’t think this manga is all that great. It can be *really* funny, but I don’t even remember if the series actually ends. If you read one or two volumes and want to put it down, I think you’re safe to. You got most of the lore. The biggest events seem to take place in later series that I haven’t delved into yet.

UFO Robo Grendizer Vol 1 (Finished): I actually haven’t been able to find anywhere to read Great Mazinger, the sequel series, so I skipped to Grendizer, which is the second sequel. It’s pretty unrelated continuity-wise, so it’s easy to pick up. This is only one volume and yeah they really just want you to watch the 74 episode show, but I’m good. Still, this is a fun book, and Nagai throws in his batshit ideas. The main character is an alien prince whose tragic backstory is literally that the villain kidnapped his younger siblings and all the country’s children and just! Dropped them all from the sky to their death in the middle of the city! And they don’t censor it! GO NAGAI! I really need to read the autobio manga Gekiman because of what snippets I’ve seen, Nagai is actually a super mild-mannered dude who doesn’t really get where his ideas cross lines. If you want to say “oh that’s just wacky Japan”, it’s really not, he was public enemy #1 with parents all over the country for a long time.

Super Robot Retsuden Vol 1 (Finished): This is a single volume crossover of Nagai super robot IPs including Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Great Mazinger, Grendizer, and Steel Jeeg (a guy who’s more Ultraman-adjacent than super robot), and there’s no real plot beyond “oh no new bad guy! buy the toys, kids!” It’s throwaway, and I mostly read it to see who Jeeg is without getting into his own series. Also, it was drawn by Ishikawa, so I felt a bit obligated. His art is just so pretty.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer Vol 1 (and maybe 2?): Satoshi Mizukami is a godly storyteller who uses the language of shonen to tell deeply mature and introspective stories for adults and if you follow my posts you might remember me gushing about Spirit Circle and Planet With. I actually haven’t touched this series since February started but I need to get back in because the first two volumes out of ten are amazing (warning, though: there’s a pet death and it’s real sudden and was hard for me to handle). Please read Mizukami’s works.

Manga volumes read in January: 14-15 Manga volumes read in 2019 thus far: 14-15

---

Okay that’s everything. I wrote a lot more than I expected to. If you read all that, thanks. If you are interested in any of the things I wrote about, great! If you decide to play through SRW2, don’t, stop, don’t do that. In a few days I’ll be writing about a much better SRW game.

[lovingtrance]

I got dumped

On December 21st my partner of 5 years, who I lived with for 2 and a half, told me he’s no longer attracted to me and only views me as a best friend. He said there’s more in store for him than “just a safe relationship.”

While we were together I was keeping a running list of all the reasons I loved him. But for my own well-being I’ve decided to start keeping a running list of annoying and toxic things about him. I’m posting it here for your viewing pleasures:

1. I had to constantly remind a grown man he had to brush his teeth. Often times having to convince him to not skip it bc he would sometimes go days without brushing. And this was NOT due to depression. Truly. It was just laziness and a lack of urgency to practice basic hygiene.

2. He would pick his nose and wipe it on just about anything. Furniture, his clothes, his side of the bed, my side of the bed, his car seat no matter whose car, etc.

3. He’d constantly ask “are you gay” as if it was a joke.

4. In general he reveled in pushing my buttons and saying things that I found boarderline offensive.

5. Near the end especially, but in general it was like pulling teeth to get him to spend time with me doing something he didn’t have a personal investment in. If it wasn’t an activity he enjoyed he didn’t want to do it with me.

6. When I would try to spend time with him 9/10 he’d say “I’d rather play call of duty.” His call of duty playing was a daily occueance. On weeknights it was from the time he got home from work until bed. He’d stop just to spend about 30 minutes with me for the dinner I made. This was EVERY NIGHT. And on weekends it would be about 3/4 of the weekend every time.

7. A few days before NYE of 2019 (to celebrate the start of 2020) he went out with a few of his friends to drink. Apparently someone said they didn’t like my plan for NYE and another person agreed. He took offense to that and came home drunk and angry. He ranted about how much he hates them, hates our home town, and how mad he was. I tried to calm him down and he got mad I wasn’t on his side and threw a chair across the room while yelling so loud it woke his parents and sister. He then went to his bedroom and I tried to calm him and he got mad I was “taking their side” and tried to physically kick me off the bed. As if he was a toddler.

8. When I said “no you will not treat me that way. I’m not your punching bag” and called a friend to pick me up he tried every manipulation tactic in the book. First he called to apologize. Then when that didn’t work he tried to plead and promised he didn’t mean it and he wasn’t trying to hurt me. Then he turned and said it was typical that I left bc everyone leaves him and I don’t care. I’ve never cared. After that tactic didn’t work he said he was going to kill himself. All while his sister was texting me saying he was just eating chicken strips on the couch watching TV.

9. The next day he gave me the silent treatment and treated me like I was the one who hurt him and I was the problem. He was trying to give me the cold shoulder so I’d break down, beg for his forgiveness, and beg him to open up and forgive me and talk to me. This was a typical thing for him in the past. If I ever told him he hurt me or tried to put up a boundary for my own mental and physical well being he’d flip it and put up a wall so I’d have to beg him to open up and I’d end up being the one apologizing.

10. He cheated on me in 2016 with women he’d meet up with from Craigslist for casual hook ups. He then insisted we were never exclusive even though we absolutely were and had already said I love you to each other.

11. On my 22nd birthday we went out to bars together. He had a list of bars he wanted to stop at. We’re from MO and were in San Francisco. The 3rd or 4th bar had a bouncer who saw his MO ID and insisted it was fake. I was using my passport since my ID expired on my birthday. When I told the bouncer I’m also from MO and the ID is legit they gave it back but turned us away. That made him mad so we went home and then he got upset I didn’t want sex. I sort of agreed anyway but then withdrew consent. He got SO mad about that. He started screaming and shouting about how I was jerking him around and he was upset and confused. He threw his fan at the wall and broke a hole in the wall. He started pacing around the room and then I called a friend and said I was leaving for my safety. That made him even more upset and he started pacing around the hallway of his apartment building while NAKED. I convinced him to cover up but the manic episode continued and he paced in the street as well. The cops were called by a neighbor. I was mortified. But we stayed together bc I couldn’t find my ID to be able to leave that night. Then we slept it off in separate buildings and came back together the next day to talk it out. We both apologized and stayed together.

12. About a year before that he got upset I couldn’t have Skype sex with him every night even though I was a full time student working a full time job. He frame it as though he was willing to make compromises for me but I refused to do the same for him. Even though I’d already forgiven him for the Craigslist cheating caused by his “sex addiction”

13. He said he was breaking up with me bc he wanted more “intimacy” and knew that he was meant to have a relationship that had more spark basically. He made it seem like yet again I was the problem for not having enough sex with him. Despite the fact I tried to initiate sex with him many times over the last few months and we would reject me almost every time. Often times saying he would rather play call of duty.

14. When we first moved in together I did some laundry. A few days later he realized a few random things were missing. A pair of underwear or two, a shirt. He accused me of losing them by forgetting them in the apartment laundry room. I swore I didn’t but he didn’t believe me and yelled at me. I told him they’re just clothes and I’ll replace them and he still yelled. I suggested maybe he forgot them back at his parents’ house but he swore he didn’t. A few days later a package arrived from his parents containing all the “lost” clothes. I did not receive an apology until I requested one.

15. We were long distance for the first few years of our relationship. I would go to visit him every spring break and fall break (my school had fall break). Once when I went to visit we went over to his frat house for a party for st. Patrick’s day. I was having a good time getting two know two foreign students (one girl and one guy). When we walked back to his place we were sitting outside the building while he smoked a cigarette and he got mad at me and asked me why I acted the way I did at the party. I was confused bc I didn’t think I was acting differently than usual. He said by making friends with those people I was basically being obnoxious and annoying- like I was trying too hard. It broke my heart. It was like he expected me to just be a wall flower or hang on his hip the whole night. It was so unfair bc obviously I didn’t know anyone there it’s not my school. So did he just expect me not to have a good time?

16. The one other time he had me go to a party at the house I went to the bathroom on my own. I remembered where it was and told him “I’m going to the bathroom” and got up from my seat. When I came back he was being weird to me and basically implied he thought I walked away to go cheat on him?... even though I was gone less than 5 minutes and I knew no one there!

17. Once in late 2017 early 2018 one of my close friends came over to hang out and drink wine in my living room. She mentioned she’d done this app called Cake where you live stream whatever and people pay you. We decided to just sit around in our underwear and drink wine to make her some extra money. I told him about it and he freaked out. He contacted her on FB and went off on her telling her she disrespected our relationship and manipulated me. He told me I was drunk and let my friend manipulate me. I told him that’s not true at all and everything I did I did bc I wanted to and was comfortable doing so. I never crossed a line. I never even interacted with a person. We just set up a camera and barely acknowledged the comments. He was acting like I was his child or property and I didn’t have agency of my own. He also told me I cheated and I needed to admit I cheated so we could move on. As if it’s not my body and my choice who I allow to see me wearing the equivalent of a bikini. And he definitely had no right to contact my friend and scold her and shame her. He acted like I was his to control and I was a toy my friend took and misused without his permission. It was disgusting and so painful to deal with. I felt awful about myself for days.

18. He was and is such a hypocrite. He even admitted to me before the Cake incident that he once did cam stuff but quit bc he was bothered by how many men tuned in and barely any women. He was also hypocritical about spending money. He would criticize me for spending $50 on new clothes at target or wanting to spend $30 every few weeks to splurge on eating out. But then he’d spend $100s-$1000s of dollars at a time on his hobbies like gaming, bowling, his guitar, etc.

19. In April of 2020 I told him I wanted us to be more romantic. I wanted us both to be better about making an effort to show each other we had a romantic attraction to one another. He told me “you expect too much. You ask for too much.” This is the same man who 8 months later told me he was leaving me bc there was no more “spark.” I EXPLICITLY asked him to work with me to keep the spark going and he said “you ask for too much.”

20. Also in April of 2020 he got upset the recycling bin was starting to smell. Over time some of the containers had leaked the small bit of contents they had left and created a film on the bottom of the bin. He blamed me because he “always rinses containers before recycling them.” I tried to explain “yeah but that’s just because you leave them sitting on the counter to be rinsed and then never rinse them. I too am bad about not rinsing, so I just put your pile and my stuff straight in the bin.” I explained that technically yes, I recycle more items, but only because he leaves me to do it. He told me I HAD to clean the bin. I said “I’m not your servant. I’m not at your beck and call and I don’t HAVE to do anything.” That made him angry so he said “maybe I should just pour milk all over your clothes then?” Shocked I of course asked “why would you do that?” I also wondered “what clothes? The clothes I have on the drying rack next to the kitchen? Or the clothes in the closet? The ones I’m wearing?” He said “you pour milk in the recycling bin. It’s the same thing.” Like truly- what a manipulative, illogical ASSHOLE.

21. When breaking up with me he told me “I’m sure you’ve noticed I haven’t wanted to have sex with you the past few months.” I said “yes I thought it was stress from work.” Then he said “no I’m just no longer physically attracted to you.” I asked what we could do. Should we spice things up? Should we go to a sex therapist? He said there was no point. But fear not reader- it’s not that he’s gay (yes he felt the need to clarify that) it’s just that he’s not attracted me specifically. He said honestly he just wasn’t happy because there was no spark. And there was this (apparently) indescribable element that had never really had been in all 6 years. There had always been something missing that he had in other relationships. I said THERE WAS ONLY ONE OTHER RELATIONSHIP WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! He had one other serious girlfriend before me and they were together between the ages of 15-18. Yes he’d had other flings and sexual partners obviously, but nothing that even came close to the level of commitment or sheer length of relationship we had. But sure- go ahead and compare what we have to a high school relationship and a handful of college hookups.

[sanabakkoushisanangel]

Heeey. Sorry if I disturb you by something or anything but could you maybe list some good shows? (It's not a must that LGBT couples are included) thanks a lot ❤️❤️💫

Hi, Anon! 

You’re not disturbing!

So I’m the type of person that watches a pretty random variety of shows so I’m not sure what your taste leans toward exactly. 

If you have any suggestions, make a comment or drop me a message with the show and why you like it! And if you want, make a suggestion on how to make this list better!

** Is for shows other people suggest to me. I’ll comment if I’ve heard of it or seen any of it. 

*I’ll try to put if it’s LGBT friendly. And also I want to put down if it’s diverse or not and a note if you suggest a show is diverse…I’m looking for either the main character that is a POC or more than 1-2 minor characters that show up often enough to make a difference to the plot. Don’t tell me a show is diverse if it’s 3 black characters are just window-dressing…👀

***UPDATE*** (8/11/2019)*** SO I'm finally getting around to updating this list. As always let me know if y'all have any suggestions! This thing is getting insanely long! I might try to make it a link on my page (which is in serious need of renovation lol). Oh Lord, I still have so many shows I didn't add. I might have a problem...

Enjoy!!

Derry Girls: Man I hope you all get to see my recommendation for this show!!! It's truly a gem! I can't say it's diverse but it's also based off a small town in Northern Ireland so not really faulting them. Very LGBT friendly!! Spot the tiny rainbow pins our main 5 wear in the entirety of the second season!! It's like the cutest, most wholesome unspoken way of showing support! I literally watched the second season, went back to rewatch the first season and then rewatched the second season again. They're so loveable!

Four Weddings and a Funeral: I surprisingly haven't watched the 1994 film that was one of the best movies of the 90s apparently. But Mindi Kaling is producing its remake that's now a TV show on Hulu. Features a much more diverse cast (TWO main characts being Black, the main love interest being Muslim, actually portraying Muslim character seamlessly without making it campy or oversimplified!). There's a lack of LGBT characters (Tony 1 and Tony 2 don't really count since that feels slightly degrading to me...). I'm hoping they'll get better at that in future episodes!

Dark: A German TV show that's like a mystery time travel thriller. Not really diverse? It does feature a deaf supporting character and some minor supporting characters are LGBT but other than that...It IS a good story that's really interesting and gripping to watch.  

3%: A sci-fi post-apocalyptic story based in Brazil that's Hunger Games ish in that young people fight for their right to live in the ideal land of plenty. But because it's a show, you get to explore the ethical aspect of it a little more. I have a beef with how this show treats its PoC character to be honest. But it does have a lot of PoC characters and there's I think an LGBT plotline in a later season. But, I feel like the first season may have been its peak. Definitely still a good show and y'all might enjoy the later seasons more than me. 

Patriot Act: Not really a story obviously but I have to plug this show because for once I'm seeing a nonproblematic Indian Muslim man (side-eyeing Kumal and Aziz) that's actually doing great episodes highlighting a lot of important issues that we're totally not getting informed about that we should really be paying attention to more.  

Kim's Convenience: A Canadian sitcom based on a Korean family's convenience story. Really cute wholesome show with a great cast that really tries to be diverse and thoughtful and respectful of its PoC. I don't think they have an LGBT main character but it's friendly to it!

-Shadowhunters: I love this trash show. It’s actually not all that great but it’s got some absolute gems of characters you end up watching it for anyway. I def recommend but S1 was watched with a ton of skip Clary/Jace scenes for me. This is LGBT friendly and diverse.  

-Eastsiders: One of my Netflix finds. So super LGBTQ friendly because it revolves around a gay couple. The revolving door of characters includes many people at different spectrums of sexuality. It’s unapologetic and fun to watch. Our main couple is self-labeled slutty mcsluttersons but they’re committed to each other. The diversity of race is meh but it does have the Constance Wu from Fresh off the Boat in it and she’s lovely. 

-Riverdale: I tried man, I used to read Archie comics when I was younger but um, this show…I think it’s supposed to be ironically pretentious? It just falls flat for me tbh. It’s popular though so you can check a couple of episodes out to see if it’s your thing. There’s an openly gay character in this that should get more story than he does. Also, kind of LGBT baits too at times so not sure if I trust them completely. 

-Narcos: One of my recent shows. Very very intense show. Just really well done. It’s male-centric in that most of its main characters are male and its portrayal of women isn’t varied or flattering or significant in any way so that definitely sucks. But I don’t watch all my shows through that lens. For a show about Pablo Escobar and the drug wars it’s a really gripping watch. Beware of heavy subtitles because it’s set in Columbia. 

-The Expanse: My sci-fi pick. I love this show. It’s a gorgeous, diverse, rich story, funny without trying too hard. I just get sucked into every character. It had one older married gay couple that was really minor characters but I don’t recall any current mains that are. But It’s an inclusive show so I don’t think it’s particularly averse to the idea. Based on books I haven’t read yet! 

-Veep: This is like a completely meant-to-be-offensive comedy show with the amazing Julia Louis-Dreyfus. While I wasn’t in love with the last 2 seasons, the first 4 are amazing. No clear-cut character you root for in particular but it’s so close to politics you can’t help but laugh/cry. Watch it for the absolutely unapologetic legendary burns. Also, has a lesbian couple in it although it’s offensive comedy so prepare for that.

-Archer: Also another meant-to-be-offensive show that’s hilarious but so terrible and inappropriate. I don’t usually like that kind of comedy but I binge-watched this when I was sick and got hooked. 

-Vikings: I love this show. If you like Game of Thrones, you’ll like this one only it’s got less nudity and more idgaf fight scenes. It’s got brilliant characters, beautiful battle scenes, really interesting storylines, and just good snarky humor. Watch it! Also, they’re not shy about same-sex couples even if they don’t explicitly say it. 

-Mr. Robot: Really good show, very different and…I actually don’t know how to describe it? The main has mental health issues. It’s a sociopolitical commentary type show. It’s about hacking and network security and corporation conglomerates in control of our everything and the fight against it. Also from @cherryrebel : Mr robot has a shit ton of diversity in both race and LGBT, the lead is mixed race but the actor is Egyptian, Tyrell is bisexual, Gideon is gay, Angela, Elliot, and Darlene are implied being lgbt+, I think I’m forgetting about someone but watch that show, it’s the shit 

-Legion: A superhero show that’s so incredibly NOT like the other superhero shows. You'll find yourself in a serious mind trip thinking you’re the one that’s crazy. But it’s really really good. Go watch. 

-Mozart in the Jungle: About a bunch of musicians and a crazy conductor you absolutely love. It’s really good. LGBT friendly! And diverse-ish.

-Luther: One of the best crime shows in my opinion. Idris Elba just does things and you will want to watch him do it. Anything he does is beautiful and brilliant. But the show actually IS brilliant and amazing and go watch!! 

-This is Us: one of those, where-the-hell-did-you-come-from?? shows. Really heartfelt stories that make you laugh, cry, and go aww a million times. 

-Killjoys: Another sci-fi show I love. It’s got diversity and great characters and great action and story. It's a complicated plot though and if you skip episodes you're really going to struggle with the story. But if you don't care, it's still fun to watch ladies being brilliant and kicking ass. Also LGBT friendly and diverse!!

-True Detective: Crime detective show. It’s great, very gritty and serious but good stories and character-driven. I actually really enjoyed the third season despite my reservations of this show. Definitely needed subtitles! Also, I got major unspoken LGBT vibes from the characters (3rd season) here but I feel like they didn't go the distance with it. 

-Humans: Sci-fi show about android robots that are part of normal life- they look human and are basically live in maids. Only five of these have consciousness. Really good UK show. Diverse AND LGBT friendly!

-Broadchurch: Another good UK crime show. David Tennant and Olivia Colman are brilliant and bicker in the most endearing way! And Jodie Whitaker is so amazing! Slow and gripping and bingeworthy. @iamacolor mentioned a lesbian character in this one too. Wouldn't say it's LGBT friendly but there is diversity in the characters. 

-The Americans: Russian sleeper spies in America that lead normal lives, have American children, and are like totally Russians carrying out secret missions. It's fantastical and exaggerated and sometimes I side-eye it like really?? But it's a fun casual watch. Not really diverse or LGBT friendly even if there might be some peppering in there. 

-The Get Down: Great show that was recently canceled :( has about 1 season out. I’m not sure how to describe it and do proper justice. It’s lovely though with amazing characters. Also, LGBT friendly and clearly diverse!

-Stranger Things: Great show sci-fi mystery thriller type show. Diverse cast, wholesome even with a dark and violent plot. LGBT friendly but it's got a list of problems in my opinion. But still a fun watch.

-Dear White People: Black college students from all kinds of backgrounds dropping truth bombs all around and being amazing. Go watch. It's definitely a smart show with a lot of humor. It’s balanced with amazing depth to its characters. LGBT friendly! *so while it's definitely diverse in that the entire main cast except one is Black- I do find it weird that in an ivy league college there aren't many Asian students? Like it seems like they tried to fix that in the third season but it could definitely stand to do more in terms of its recurring supporting characters*

-Brooklyn Nine-Nine: an Amazing funny cop show that manages to be winsome, hilarious, endearing, quirky, diverse, balanced, and just amazing all around. Very LGBT friendly and diverse! It's a consistent show. 

-Fresh Off the Boat: An Asian family comedy show that’s endearing and hilarious. (Also check out Jane the Virgin for crazy telenovela-esque antics that are hilarious and cute). 

-Orphan Black: Sci-fi show about clones. A really amazing show, LGBT friendly. Great story AMAZING characters…most of which is played by one woman. Diverse and LGBT friendly.

-Preacher: Great show based on the graphic novel…uhh not sure how to describe it but it’s good. Reth Negga is in it!! 

Also adding Sense8 for its LGBT and diversity. Good show but I’ve heard something about the directors/producers being racist? Not sure so I’m recommending with caution because the show itself esp s2 where the nonwhite characters got a better fleshed out plot is good. But since I don’t know what the producers/directors have done, I’m giving a heads up for someone else to fill me in.

Poldark: I just started this one 2 days ago. 2 episodes in I’m really enjoying it. It’s from PBS’s Masterpiece series. Aiden Turner as a Cornishman is delicious. So far I adore his wife and immensely enjoying yet another period show.  

Grantchester: Adding this to the list after I discovered it on my prime account. I’m only one season in and I love Sydney Chambers and his gruff buddy cop Geordie? This isn’t a show that is going to have you sitting on the edge of your seat. It’s totally a procedural type of show. But it’s characters are likable, its story feels comfortable, and honestly, if it’s a shitty day for you and you just want something that’s easy? This is it. @iamacolor  :)

Entourage: So I binged 8 seasons and a movie in a week so let’s just say I fell into this gaping manhole…So it has one very prominently gay character on this show that gets a fair amount of screentime and a plot considering he’s a side character. He’s a fairly loveable character you really enjoy watching develop and grow. However, I should warn people that this show has really colorful language that is quite frankly really sexist and homophobic. For those of you that don’t know, it’s essentially a show about a popular actor from Queens that makes it big in Hollywood and brings along his 2 best friends and older brother to live with him and share in his wealth. If you can get past the language and inherent sexism, it’s actually a decent show about 4 guys with an extremely tight unbreakable, ride or die friendship. Lots of cameos by famous actors and directors, etc. I admit I might have a thing for Kevin Connolly and Adrian Grenier…

Jane the Virgin: Okay firstly, I LOVE this show. I wasn’t caught up because I had too much on my plate but like this show is so tongue in cheek and has great Latino rep! Including a character that speaks like 98% in Spanish so it’s great. AND they have LGBT rep so there you go. Enjoy and thank me later!

Superstore: Almost disappointed no one reminded me to recommend this show?? It’s basically centered around a store much like Walmart where you have a colorful cast of employees. It’s funny, it’s cute, it’s very socially aware. A disabled character (of color!), a gay character, and a smattering of all sorts. PLUS America Ferrera whom I adore!

The Good Place: Great show, great diversity, really funny. I binged it aaaallllll. Seriously go watch this show!! 

Cable Girls: Netflix Original from Spain. Do yourself a favor, watch it in Spanish with subtitles. The dubs feel so off. So the music choices for this show are the biggest con. Like it’s modern English songs in a show set in the 20s. Whoever chooses the music really doesn’t read the tone of the scene because it always throws me off. BUT, it’s a show about women gaining their independence through working as operators. You don’t have a diverse cast (so another con) but it’s LGBT friendly. There’s an exploration of sexuality minus the harmful abuse of it. It’s got its own set of flaws for sure but there’s a lot of potentials for it to be a good watch. 

Atypical: Autistic boy on the cusp of adulthood that’s navigating how to grow into it and live as normally as possible despite his limitations. Diverse characters, funny stories, and most importantly, endearing af. I think it handles the touchy topic wonderfully and allows people in this show to both be good people and also make mistakes both big and small. What I really enjoyed about this show is that it feels unafraid to let it’s characters just be. It doesn’t fall into tropes and it just has really well-written characters. Can’t wait for Season 3. Also, def don’t want to spoil but LGBT friendly.  

Lovesick: If nothing else, watch this show for Antonia Thomas. I’m lowkey in love with her so I will watch anything she’s in. But it’s one of those shows that might not be for everyone. It’s about three great friends where two have been in love with each other at different parts of their lives and keep missing each other’s feelings. It plays via flashbacks quite a bit so your story isn’t quite linear but it doesn’t make it difficult to watch. I personally loved it but I’m biased because well Antonia Thomas…

Santa Clara Diet: So I confess I dropped this show mid first episode when I first watched it. Its pilot was so strange and bonkers I was just so incredibly confused. I think the projectile vomiting just turned me off. But boredom is a great motivator and I came back to it later. And man, I am so so so glad I did. It’s just such a lovely show. I love every character to bits. LGBT friendly for sure. It’s so incredibly far-fetched so you just go with it and enjoy the ride. 

On my Block: Four friends transitionally into high school and navigating changing dynamics in their lifelong relationships while also dealing with real life, high school, gangs, and growing up. It’s a good watch. Really hoping for a second season. 

Sisters: Aussie show about a woman caring for her ailing elderly father who finds out he used his own sperm in his fertility clinic in order to help parents struggling. Now she has new half-siblings all over the country and gets to navigate dealing with that shitshow. This is a good show. Flawed people being selfish, good people getting the short end of the stick, people being real, things getting ugly. It gets interesting and awkward but it’s a good watch.    LGBT friendly.

Homecoming: Really gripping show about soldiers that return stateside wanting to return to society, join a program to help them do so, turns out things aren’t as they seem. Check it out on Amazon Prime. Diverse…umm one of the main supporting characters is black?

Bodyguard: Richard Madden from GoT plays a completely different role in this show about a bodyguard that finds himself part of a bigger conspiracy plot that forces him to face his own demons. Overall the story is good. Intense, gripping, intriguing in all the right places. But the ending has you rolling your eyes at how cliche they made it out to be. My biggest gripe being romanticizing characters that really don’t deserve it without highlighting their problematic behavior. It sweeps a lot of questions under the rug and concludes what would have been a highly conflicting plot with some really shoddy tropey shortcuts. Still it’s definitely a bingeworthy show. Diversity is for shit though all things considered. 

Recommendations by Other Blogs:

-**Shameless: Based on the UK show I believe. Has an openly gay character in a really complicated loveline that’s one of the major draws of this show. Very good show but definitely not for everyone. Expect LOTS of cursing, nudity, etc. But it’s hilarious, weirdly heartwarming, really fun to watch. Adding based on an anon suggestion- I haven’t watched the seasons in full but I love popping in to catch up. LGBT friendly and also somewhat diverse. 

-**Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I have not watched this show myself but @blueberrysenpaii suggested this and said: Should add CEG. There’s a veeeery proud bi guy! So LGBT friendly! Someone tell me if it’s diverse?

-**Stitchers: Another show I haven’t watched but it’s been recommended a few times so it’s probably worth a watch. LGBT friendly! Someone tell me if it’s diverse? From Anon: There is a lesbian couple (Camanda) and they’re happy and healthy. It’s a great interesting storyline, it’s funny, super loveable characters, there’s some mystery and suspense in every episode, I love it so much, and it’s so underrated

**Black Sails: Have not watched this show either. LGBT friendly and diverse cast! But here’s @foolbrite ’s recommendation: black sails!! its an AMAZING  story plus there is such good lgbt rep in that show

**One Day At a Time: So I have watched a couple episodes of this. It’s so cute! Diverse and LGBT friendly! But here’s the recommendation from @jcarizma : One Day At a Time is really good. Has an LGBT main character and most of the characters are Hispanic as well and the show actually talks about topics that are importantes and it still manages to be hilarious. It’s on Netflix. and also @onyourleftbooob : one day at a time is INCREDIBLE and i loved how they dealt with their lgbt character

**Black Mirror: San Junipero: Again never watched this show but I have seen gifs of this episode?story arc? Diverse and LGBT friendly! Anywho another rec from @onyourleftbooob : black mirror’s san junipero is great  *Update: I did watch this myself so I can definitely say it was really nice!*

**How to Get Away With Murder: I actually was a little reluctant to recommend this show. Mainly because *spoiler* one of my favorite main characters got killed off in a way and point in the story where it was pure shock value and I’m forever upset. *end spoiler* I personally dropped the show at that point. However, it was great until that point and it does have an great LGBT rep and just as important a very diverse cast! Also recommended by @onyourleftbooob  

**The Bold Type: I have not yet seen this show personally but I have seen lots of mentions of it on my dash and it seems like it’s really good. Good diverse and LGBT friendly show! @im-the-trashqueen-of-my-fandoms recommends this: One of the 3 leads is black and discovers that she’s not really straight when she starts developing feelings for a lesbian Muslim photographer :)

So I think I got most of the ones I really enjoy. Not including like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones because those are hugely popular. I hope you enjoy! If I think of more, I’ll add them here.  

[unapologeticallybella]

The Tower

   The Tower card upright in most tarot readings is one that most people probably would like to avoid, you pull the tower in a reading and it’s kinda like “oh fuck.” In most tarot decks, this card is depicted with lightning setting ablaze to Tower causing obvious chaos and destruction. In the Rider Waite deck, you’ll see people leaping from the windows to escape the turmoil. I mean, that’s technically jumping to your death, which just goes to show how shitty that burning tower must be. If you want to be positive, it could be interpreted as a death to old ways that no longer serve you which is meant to be replaced with better things to take its place. But let’s be honest, if you Google the Tower card the three main words that pop up are Sudden Upheaval, Broken Pride, oh and my favorite, Disaster. We all have tower moments in our lives; they’re inevitable, which is definitely a hard pill to swallow if you’re a control freak like me. I am no stranger to tower moments, my whole life has been a steady pattern of doing okay, then; Bam here’s that disaster you were waiting for. Followed by a period of clean up after destruction and then attempting to create a somewhat stable foundation and rebuild all over again. And yes, it’s just as exhausting as it sounds. 

   On April 1st 2019, I had the mother of all tower moments; my two-and-a-half year relationship ended. Before I get into this, April fools was probably the worst day to get dumped because literally everyone around me thought I was kidding. Like I said, if this was a sitcom, the writers are doing an amazing job this season. When relationships end, typically you see it coming. You can feel someone being distant and cold; It comes to a point where you feel alone even though there’s a person right next to you. Normally, this is something that builds up for weeks and you can feel the love between you and this other person fading for some time before anything actually happens. This was not that. Looking back now, it freaks me out to think how quickly my entire life changed all within thirty minutes; that was all it took to end it all, literally the length of an episode of the Office. Even creepier, only one person cried (hint: it was me.)

   I want to preface all this by saying that I was under the impression that this relationship was “it.” I went into this relationship completely guarded, my ideas about men and their intentions were not positive ones. There were so many reasons for me to argue against ever feeling so strongly about someone; I have always been so inherently distrustful of commitments. I learned early in life that nothing is guaranteed, people’s feelings change, circumstances change, things just change. The concept of people getting married was absolutely wild to me. Aren’t you just scared for your life every day that everything could just change overnight? I made it very clear from day one that I was a skeptic. I mean look around there are so many people on this planet;How could someone possibly just want to pick one person? How could you even know that you met the person you could (happily) spend the rest of your life with? To which his answer was always, “when you know you just know.” Early in our relationship he made it clear that he was more than sure that it was me; I was it for him, period. This man reassured me day after day for roughly 950 continuous days, that I had no reason to be scared. “Why do you always feel like I’m going to pull the rug out from under you?” He made me feel stupid for thinking this had a chance of not working out so after a while that’s what I began to believe. Being able to look at other relationships fall apart and say with certainty, “That just would never be us.” is so powerful. It's cocky as fuck, but that’s what he made me believe. How he managed to turn the most skeptical sinister person into the most trusting believer, I’ll never understand. 

   Pinpointing where everything switched is tricky. We went on a dinner cruise the week prior; he paid for us to go to a baseball game a few days before and we worked together the day before; He brought me my coffee like normal. He annoyed me at work and when he had to leave to his other job; I refused to kiss him goodbye. I just wanted him to apologize and I would have hugged him, everything would have been fine but he never did. He left in a hurry, he said something like, “Bella, I just don’t have time for this today.” To put things into perspective, he was the type of person who couldn’t handle the feeling of someone being upset with him. One thing we said we’d never do is go to bed angry at each other. To the point where this kid would drive to my house after a seven hour closing shift at two in the morning just to say “sorry” and make sure I wasn’t upset before going to bed. I always admired him for that, he was big on keeping peace between us and for the longest time I always said it was those things about him that made our relationship so strong. I’ve always had this overwhelming fear that the people I love could die in a freak accident so for those reasons he always let me know when he made it to work or home safe. This was the first day he didn’t let me know he got to work. Eventually it was two in the morning and for the first time in two-and-a-half years I didn’t get a call to let me know he made it home. 

   I argued with him that night about how I felt like he was being distant during a time where I needed support. Here’s some backstory, my cousin had died early that week from a heart attack at twenty-three which didn’t really help my fears of people around me dying of freak accidents. So I was a tad bit emotionally drained and also anxious as fuck. Maybe I should have waited and let him get some sleep. I could’ve brought it up the next morning over breakfast; Mondays are our days anyway, I could have just waited. Morning came, this was the first time in the history of us that I didn’t get a “Good morning, baby. I’ll be there in a few hours.” I guess that’s when I felt it, that everything was about to change; that tower was definitely on the horizon. I got ready and did my makeup like normal;We were supposed to go look at cars and see a movie. I got a text letting me know he was ten minutes away. I said I wasn’t ready. He said it was okay. When he walked through my door, my Apple watch said my heart rate was at 145. His eyes looked vacant, emotionless, and just not himself. He was never someone I’d call cold, but he never did show much emotion. I knew when things hurt him; I’ve always been good at reading his emotions even when he tries to hide them, but this time I saw nothing. “I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship and I just don’t see this working out, you’re never happy and I don’t know what else to do.” Right off the bat, that is what he led with. I sat there and explained to this man how all I ever wanted was just to feel supported a fraction of the way I supported him. I tried so hard to convince him I was happy, this could be worked out, that I was just struggling; I asked him to be there for me and the answer was no. It became very clear to me after watching him try to answer my questions about his feelings that he just checked out. One thing I promised myself the first time someone broke my heart was that I would never again ask someone to love me and I sure as hell would never beg for someone to stay. So I told him to get out of my house, obviously a little harsher than that but you get it.

   He asked if he would still see me on Sunday (at the job; I convinced my parents to give him at my family’s restaurant) and I about flipped my room upside down. This kid just pulled the mother-fucking rug out from under me the way he said he would never and he wants to still work with me on Sunday. No sir, you don't get to continue to benefit from all the things I added to your life while simultaneously cutting me out of your life. I swear to God at that point I was like “Shit, maybe this is an April Fools joke.” The worst part is that it was all his doing; he spent everyday convincing me that this was it and I didn’t have to worry anymore. And I believed it. I would have stood by this man through anything, I would have given my life for someone who turns out would never have done the same; talk about a slap in the face, right? He stripped me of any peace of mind, peace of mind that I had worked so hard to have, in a matter of minutes. I was finally safe and at home. I felt for the first time in my life I could breathe like I didn’t have to worry about everything changing. I genuinely believed with my whole heart; Every part of me believed this was my person. I watched him say everything so effortlessly, he didn’t struggle at all watching me break in front of him. Not one fucking tear was shed for me. I swear there were moments where he tried not to smile. It almost makes you sick, well no, it definitely does make you sick. 

   So I said a few things to him that maybe I shouldn’t have, I was just so angry; more at myself for allowing someone to do this to me but nonetheless still angry as hell. “You should see a therapist” to which he agreed. I mean, I guess I’m glad we’re on the same page? When you watch a person you love completely morph into a different human right before your eyes, you tend to just word vomit. I said what I could to wake him up, but he never did. I told him to leave, so he did and never looked back. Less than thirty minutes, that’s all I got. I poured my entire soul and all of my energy into this person, years of my life I’ll never get back. Only to be proven right, it’s like every fear that I had that he laid to rest was now wide awake and pounding on my door. That was six months ago; I never heard from him again. He disappeared, poof, gone like the wind baby. I reached out three times. Once to say, “I miss you.” Second time, I showed up outside his house because everyone convinced me that was a good idea, turns out life is quite different from romantic comedies. I called him to let him know I was outside; I just wanted to say sorry for the things I said. To be honest, I think about dying all the time and what my last conversations will be with other people (callback to my irrational fear of everyone around me dying). It crushed me to think if anything happened to either of us, our last moment together was what it was. He never came outside. Last time I reached out was at the end of April for his birthday, I told him I loved him and how I wanted him to have a beautiful day. And that was that, I never reached out again. Like I said, I’m a firm believer in not asking others to love you, so I left it. 

   I never got any answers, I never got a fair goodbye, to be frank I never got what I deserved. These past six months have been me finding peace with that. Most of you would be shocked to learn that I actually have never looked up his name once on any social media. I don’t want to see anything; I have personally asked everyone around me to keep everything they know far away from me. I know there are things I don’t know; I know it would change the way I remember him and the time we had; I know that I would probably not be as friendly writing about him if I knew what’s out there and I have found peace with that. I don’t need to know the extent to how badly I was deceived nor do I want to. I’m the kind of person who likes to twist the knife in their wounds, fuck I’ll throw a little salt and lime on there too while I’m at it. This is the first time in my life that I stopped it before I even had the chance, some wounds are too big and I just don’t have the energy in me to make them bigger. Surrendering control for the first time in my life has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do but that’s what Tower moments are for. They’re meant to change everything for the better even if that means you go through absolute disaster; it’s the start of a whole new you. I lost my best friend that day; I lost my partner, every future memory I envisioned with him by my side, every plan I ever had was snatched right from under me with no explanation. I lost my routines, my comfort, my stability; everything I counted on to be there was long gone. God, I fucking hate change and it scares the shit out of me. There’s a kind of peace in having someone who knows you like no one else; I think losing that peace was the hardest part. I didn’t deserve a single fucking thing that was done to me; there’s nothing I could have done to prepare for that pain, I just had to go through it to get where I am now. 

   I drive over a bridge every day, multiple times a day to get home. That bridge is about 200 feet tall; I’ve crossed this bridge over a thousand times throughout my life and every single time I think about it collapsing. What would I do? What if I jump out and try running super fast, maybe I’ll make it to the end? Or my favorite; jumping on top of the roof of my car and try to ride down the fall, kind of like surfing a wave. I’ve never surfed in my life and I’m also a shitty runner. So no, there’s nothing I can do to prepare for that fall. Chances are, I’ll die if that bridge collapses. This Tower moment showed me you can’t run and you can’t prepare for things like this. You’ve gotta just make peace with the fall and pray there’s a soft landing and if there’s not hopefully, you’ll recover from all the broken bones, eventually. And if you die, well that sucks. But this fall didn’t kill me and that’s all that matters.

[beyondvapepage]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246

Click on the video above to watch Episode 246 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: Sweet, we’re live. Oh shit. That’s right. This is going to be the Hey guys, this might be the last hangout on air that we do. Because I’m keep getting notifications that Hangouts On Air is going away August 1. So wait a minute. Let’s see next week is the 31st. Alright, we get one more week. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop Hump Day Hangouts. That just means we’re going to change our streaming format, they won’t affect you guys at all. Just so you know, Hump Day hangouts will still go on, we’re probably going to use Zoom and Stream It directly into the YouTube channel. There’s a way to do that. And I’ve been meaning to try to play with that over the last couple weeks. That said, Hello, everybody. Something hangouts Episode 246. I think. Yes, do 46 it is July 24, 2019. Adam is not here today. That’s why I’m taking over announcing or you know, greetings and all that. And we’ve got Chris on and Marco on I don’t know where the hell Hernan is. He’s missing an action. Or just being tardy today. One of the two. So hey, Chris, how are you?

Chris: doing? Good. Like, super happy to be here as always?

Bradley: Very good. And Marco?

Marco: I’m good man knee-deep in the training. I’m studying man.

Bradley: Oh, yeah, we’re writing which training is at our VIP training.

Marco: It’s only for mastermind members. But, you know, you can get in the mastermind so you can find out what it’s all about.

Bradley: Well, that’s good. Uh, yeah, we can tell a little bit about what it’s about.

Marco: But I wouldn’t say shit. Well, it’s too good. It’s too good meant to give it away for free. It’s too damn good. Okay.

Bradley: I’ll follow your lead on this one. But it’s based around my new business. So I think that’s pretty much what you’re talking about. It’s a fun business. I was just talking to Chris about that. Two of the things that happened today that are pretty cool. So a lot of money to be made. Anyways, with that said, Enough teasing. So first of all, if this is your first time here, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, you can, I would suggest that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get notified of updates when we’re going live. Also, what we do a lot of times is take our you know, not a lot of times we have the question and answers from our Hump Day hangouts that get chopped up into individual q&a videos, and then uploaded to the channel, a separate Q&A video. So we’ve got a shit ton of content, literally thousands of videos on our YouTube channel about SEO and marketing, digital marketing, lead generation, client getting prospecting, you know, pretty much almost everything around digital marketing. So if you have any questions that you can typically find an answer by just going to our YouTube channel, and using the search this channel feature, right? So you just type in your question, and it will likely pull up an answer for you directly within our YouTube channel. But again, I recommend that you subscribe to our channel so that you stay notified of updates.

Also, if you’re just getting started, whether you have a new website that you’re trying to promote, be at local, affiliate, whatever. And it could even work for e-commerce. Or if you’re an established, have established websites you’re trying to promote pick up the Battle Plan. If you’re watching this on the Hump Day Hangouts page, where you can post questions, there are banners in the right sidebar that you can click on to take you over to the Battle Plan, which by the way, I put a POFU live banner on the page today that will take you over to our live event, which was going to be held in Denver, in October this year. And we have, we had a really good first live event last year. And so this year, it’s going to be POFU Live 2019. But those of you who don’t know what POFU Live or POFU means position to fuck you. Maybe we could talk about that in a minute. Maybe a little crude. But there’s a reason that we use that as kind of our slogan.

So with that said, Oh, yeah, Battle Plan. If you have any done need for done for you services, which come on guys, who doesn’t? You know, one of the things we teach a lot of times is not to do all the damn work yourself. Otherwise, you’re just you’re you’re your own boss if you’re doing your own work for generating money, but you’re still trading hours for dollars, essentially. And one of the best things that you can do for your businesses to unload the work, remove it from you. And you can do that either by delegating work, hiring virtual assistants, or employees and learning how to delegate work or finding third-party vendors that can do the work for you which we provide all of the methods that we teach, as done for you services in our store at MGYB.co, which stands for Make Google Your Bitch. So go to MGYB.co there’s a link or a banner in the right sidebar on this page as well, that will take you there so you can see the done for you services. And lastly, I think I’m doing pretty good fulfilling and for Adam. Lastly, join the mastermind. If you really want to take your business to the next level, the mastermind is what it sounds like we don’t just have a bunch of training in the mastermind, although there is a bunch of training in the mastermind. It’s a community of like-minded individuals that are all trying to grow their businesses primarily through digital marketing. And so that the real value in my opinion is not just all of the training, and all of the discounts and all of the first opportunities that new trainings and new products and all of that I think the real value is truly the actual masterminding with other successful and aspiring, you know, people that are ambitious, in other words, people that are trying to grow their businesses and get the most out of life that they can. And it’s I think it’s a great community. We have a Facebook group where we chat on a regular basis about all various types of topics, not just digital marketing, but all different kinds of things. So I would highly encourage you to come join the mastermind to how to do guys you guys want to add to that?

Marco: No, I can Awesome, man.

Bradley: Sweet

Chris: if you want to POFU Live ticket. People should better hurry up. You can get them at pofulive.com. Probably somebody can drop the link. Yeah. And you’re like, I’m super excited, especially for the VIP Plus package. Because like the live event that we’ve booked this special extra day. Oh, man,

Bradley: can we all get together? Did we tell what the live event is? I didn’t know if I was no,

Chris: no, no, no, keep it keep it that it like the one?

Marco: Let’s Let’s wait.

Bradley: So I can’t. So we can’t tell what the VIP event is not the admin. Oh, no, you know what? It’s on the damn sales page Or on the sales page, I can see it

Marco: loving that people go to the sales page. Okay, the live event is and go to Denver.

Bradley: It’s gonna be awesome. I think it’s gonna be awesome. So yeah, go to the sales page, pofulive.com. And you can see what it is. But the VIP event we booked the venue for that. And it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to that. So Denver’s supposed to be a fun city. I’ve never been but looking forward to going so. All right. Let’s do it. Uh, yeah, I guess let’s get into questions. Um, nothing else to announce guys, right.

Chris: I don’t think so. Okay, well, that’s the POFU Live sales page. Let me close that out. All right, here we go. I’ll zoom in a little bit. By the way, there is no storms brewing here. So I think I’ll make it this time. Last week. It’s suck because I got booted off like, within I think 20 minutes. And that was primarily because of the power going out but there are no black clouds outside today. So hopefully everything will go fine.

Bradley: Okay, I’ll take that as a note.

When Is The Availability Of The MGYB Service That Helps Hiring VAs?

Bradley: Okay, Fitz asked seven days ago. And I think that was because it looks like Marco had been commenting. So I’m just going to start after Mark was the last comment. He says, When will we get the service to help us hire VAs come back to MGYB? That’s a good question. That’s something that we probably we’ve talked about doing that reopening that up? I don’t know if when we’re going to do it, though. That’s a good question fits. I think we probably should, but it requires a lot on our end to find and screen VAs, you know, and put them through the interview process and all of that. So typically, we only offer that when we have to when we have a need to hire and we fire up the hiring funnel. And we end up screening, you know, and interviewing several at a time, virtual assistants or you know, a VA and then we end up hiring one or two usually and then all of the other candidates that were qualified, then that’s when we will open that up and say, hey, look, we’ve got some candidates that are available that have you know, passed all their all of our tests and interviews and such like that. And then we’ll make it available. But it’s not something that we have a steady stream of because we’re not constantly hiring. Fortunately, we’ve gotten to the point where we are pretty well, pretty well manned right now. So

Marco: even when we opened it up last time, it was only in in the internet, it was only offered in about in the mastermind. That’s true. And I also all we also offer to train VAs, but again, that was only in the mastermind, that that’s who gets it and I keep telling people the place to be is in our mastermind because you get the most benefits. I mean, from aside from everything that you mentioned, things like this where people are needing VA and we had some train vas and we just offered them to to our mastermind. I mean, it’s just a perk and that’s who gets it the list that we had that went pretty quick. But again, our mastermind is the ones who scooped it up.

Bradley: Yeah. So and I think that’s what cities he was going to try to come back to the mastermind anyway, so I haven’t seen you in there yet, man. Get back in.

What Are The Best Alternatives To Do Local SEO That Has Similar Results With GMB?

next to cinnamon I guess. Sounds like a stripper. So if you’re a stripper now the GMB is touching by Google, what are the best alternatives to do local SEO and get similar results? Well, I don’t know that you can get similar results with anything outside of you know, using GMB stuff. A, you know, I recommend doing what Marco says now, which is when you’re first setting up or trying to verify the listing. If you’re doing that on your own. Did you try to get the listing optimized as much as possible prior to verifying it receiving you know the postcard so that you don’t have to touch it once it’s verified. I have finally Google I’ve talked about this about three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now, one of my longtime clients, all I did was I was in there making a slight edit to their GMB. It’s in the pest control industry. But it’s a valid legit business. It was a real bonafide address, not even a PO Box or anything. It was like their actual business address. It’s a service area business. And it got terminated gets terminated for suspended the GMB did. And I appealed it. And I just got the bullshit reply back this morning from Google saying that it was suspended and that they will not reinstate it due to it not meeting their quality guidelines. And then they linked over to their quality guidelines. You know, doc or whatever, that is stupid, because there is nothing that we did on that page. And there’s nothing about that business that violates their quality guidelines, none whatsoever. And so I sent a reply back saying, you know, please explain there’s, you know, this is a valid, legit business that has not done anything that violates quality guidelines. Now I know I’m not going to get a response. So I already emailed my client to tell them we’re moving on, we got to move on to plan B, because it’s likely that it will never be reinstated. So Plan B is to go out and create a fake parking listing, you know, which sucks, but I’m going to get a listing created in the same or verified in the same damn zip code. So that then all I have to do is I mean, it’s going to suck because I’ve done it been doing SEO for that client for like seven years, I think. So we’ve got like literally over 600 and some citations or maybe even more than that that are going to need to be updated. And it’s going to be a really tedious process, but it’s the only thing that I think that can be done in order to get his GMB back which is just dumb. So as far as Is there anything else that you can do? No, I would recommend if you’re starting a new listing, try to get it set up and optimized as much as possible before it’s verified so that once it’s verified, you don’t have to touch it anymore. I have not seen any suspension to occur from doing GMB posts. But doing anything else on page can suck, can cause trigger suspension, okay can be uploading a photo as an owner or a manager. If you’re uploading a photo, you can upload photos to a GMB by the way as a Google user, not as a manager or an owner. In other words, especially if you’re a local guide, or if you have personas that you built out using something like BrowSEO, for example or Ghost Browser, and you have some, you know, Google profiles out there that have some history and that kind of that it seemed like they’re valid, they’re not, you know, then you can upload photos that way to an actual GMB listing. But I wouldn’t do much with the GMB website, I wouldn’t do much with changing information like the business description or hours of operation or anything service areas or anything, once you have the initial things set up, at least for now, eventually, maybe it’ll get to the point where you can we can do that kind of stuff again, but right now, it’s just google still on a on a rampage. And it’s a bloodbath, and it’s just not something I bed because you could lose it.

Bradley: I mean, the other things that you can do would be local SEO, obviously, you can do pay per click marketing, Google AdWords can be incredibly expensive. It can, it can also work very well. But it can be really expensive. You can set up the Bing Maps listing, but that’s not something I get a lot of traffic from or leads from. I’m sure you guys are aware of that. And then you can work on organic SEO, I don’t get a lot of really good results from organic SEO for local businesses. Because they typically, you know, they’re buried now, especially depending on what kind of business it is. But for most contractors, which is primarily what I work with, there’s almost every industry now has the verified or Google guaranteed, like Carousel of ads above, like at the very top, and then there are ads, and then there are maps. And then like, you know, you’ve got to scroll two-thirds of the way down to the page even get to the organic listings. So you know, Google’s trying to force more people into paying, which is why they have there are Google guarantee ads for service, you know, service type providers. And then there’s the ad section and now the map section, which, you know, I unfortunately that don’t probably end up going paid to I think, think that’s part of the ways that they’re going to end up getting rid of spam is forcing GMB to become a paid listing.

So, you know, I probably didn’t answer that as the way that you wanted to, I would just suggest that you do, you know, hope more of a holistic approach for marketing as opposed to just relying on GMB for leads for a business. Right. So that would include Pay Per Click marketing, not just in for the search, PPC, but also you can do PPC ads for Bing search, which also is the same platform as AOL. Believe it or not, some people still use that not many, and Yahoo. But you can also set up remarketing, you can set up Facebook ads, content marketing, press release marketing, which is called inbound PR marketing, right. So those are all different things that you can do to create more of a holistic marketing approach something that is more than just relying on maps SEO. Marco, you want to add to that,

Marco: I mean, you can still do local GMB. Right, it’s just that what you’ll have to do is you’ll have to work through your clients GMB with the understanding that if you get in there, and you do something, just whatever Google is really touchy that it might get suspended. So the client has to understand the risk and that it might not be recovered. Now, when I run into something like that, when a client suspends or what I recommend, when you have a client suspend the GMB is have the client, talk to Google. And if you’re going to go in and call Google and talk to them, act really stupid and ignorant and you don’t know what the fuck was going on. You hired this guy, he took your money, just do whatever you have to do to get that GMB recovered, because that’s somebody’s livelihood. Right. So that’s something that you have to understand in the local space. Most of the traffic, as Bradley just said, comes through that three-pack, it comes through those listings, it comes to those calls. Now, of course, it’s things that you could do organically, to push that up. And if you’re working on a local GMB level, local GMB Pro, those methods that are taught in that training, they still work. And if you push on that with an RYS stack, press release stack behind it and the link building behind that it’s going to push it up into the three pack. The question is, are you going to have that property to push up into the three-pack? It’s not likely you could have it I mean, the methods that Bradley taught prior to all this, it still works, go to the post office, yet a post, post, peel box with street address, push that up into the three-pack, those methods are still viable. The thing that we can’t do is verify businesses anymore. I mean, MGYB we did it for we can’t do that anymore. And the thing we can’t do is since they were Yeah, they have spammed addresses they were they were just totally fake addresses, sometimes empty fields, garbage cans, we would verify anything, it didn’t matter. You can’t get them back, you can’t recover those. And so what do you do? You’re stuck out there with nothing. So it depends on what you mean by local SEO, and get similar results.

Bradley: Yeah.

Will Google Penalize A Partial Matched Domain?

Yep. Okay. So next is Gordon Gordon. What’s up, buddy? He says, Hey, guys, thank you very much again, for the help you provide. You’re welcome. You said last week’s session was cut very short by storm. So I’m posting my question again. Okay. Thank you, because otherwise, it would have gotten Miss Gordon. He says, if you’ve already gone back and covered last week, missed questions, please just ignore this. No. And I have not. You mentioned previously, that was not a good idea to use a keyword match domain for a local business site. But if you use something like top local plumber, com or top local plumber is not a keyword you intend on targeting? Where you tend to target excuse me, will you still run the risk of a Google penalty when you optimize the site for targeted plumber related keywords and the specific geolocation just because you have plumber and the domain name now, because, you know, that seems that’s natural that what I was talking about was an exact match. So a lot of times, you know, you can use a partial match keyword, because a lot of times the service will be part of the brand name, right. Like, you know, Joe’s plumbing, for example, right plumbing is part of his name. But what I’m talking about is not using exact match keywords, if you want to rank for you know, I use this example all the time, but plumbing, Fairfax VA or plumber, Fairfax VA, like, if you had that exact match domain, that’s what’s real can cause the filters, right to be a bit more sensitive, that can cause Panda, Panda type penalties, really, over-optimization penalties. And that’s because it essentially you’ve already got you to know, you’re you’re putting up red flags, saying that you’re already a, you know, an SEO, in other words, you’re starting off with everything that the bots look at, from that point forward from the moment that they come to scan your domain, it’s through the lens of it’s like an SEO Slanted Lens, right? Because it knows that it’s an exact match keyword. And so it just makes running you you run the risk of all of the additional optimization that you’re doing of over-optimizing, right, but a partial match isn’t quite the same. Because like I said, a lot of times brand names will have a partial match keyword as part of the brand name. And that makes perfect sense to do. So whether you’re adding like city, like the location as a partial match or a product or service, especially for local, then it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re not just combining the two is my point. So, you know, again, now, if you already have plumber and the domain name, then, you know, just keep that in mind when you’re creating like your URL structures and things like that, especially if you’re siloed your site, which you probably should, you know, you I recommend going with the virtual silo now as opposed to the physical silo, we’ve talked about that in the past a physical silo is that category slash post name, permalink structure and WordPress where you visit, literally see the silo structure, the hierarchy of the categories within the URL, right? That’s really unnecessary. I used to build all of my sites that way because I liked seeing that hierarchy in the URL. But now you can actually, it’s better off, in my opinion, to have a shorter URL. So if you just go with the posting, permalink structure, then you can avoid having, you know, multiple occurrences of the keyword within the URL, which can cause issues too. So just keep all of that in mind. But no short answer is you’re at you should be fine if you’re just using a partial match keyword, or and I say keyword, but it could be like a location and the domain as opposed to actual keywords that make sense. You know, I’ve used this as an example. But like home pros could be a generic business name for general contractors or remodelers or deck builders or, you know, pretty much any sort of home service type contractor home pros could be a brand new, so you could put like the city name, like Fairfax home pros, right could be a potential name for any type of really any type of contractor that’s in the home service industry. And so that would have the location modifier as a partial match keyword. Right, but not the actual service. But you could have like, you know, plumbing pros could be a plumber, you know, so you could, in that case, you could say, you know, Fairfax plumbing pros. Now that case, I would say that’s a little bit too close to being over-optimized. You see it, I’m saying so just try to find something that would be maybe a bit more vague or a lesser, a less common type of term that is synonymous with what you’re trying to promote, to make it to where it’s not going to over-optimize or tripping over-optimization filter for everything else that you do on-site. That’s all I’m saying. Was that clear as mud or what?

Marco: No, that was clear. Okay. Be careful with over-optimization. That’s all.

Hernan: Bradley.

Bradley: There’s Hernan you’re tardy, man.

Hernan: I’m sorry, did I completely lost track of time launching Facebook ads campaigns? I was in the vortex. So I do apologize.

Bradley: So what you’re saying is if the Hangouts isn’t as important to, you know, no, no, I think

Marco: you’ll be I think he’s using code because Adam used to call it running in the woods running in the woods.

Hernan: Yeah, right. Right. For me, it’s launching campaigns. Right?

Bradley: That’s it.

What Is The Long Term Benefit Of Press Release For A Site And GMB Listing?

Alright, the next question from Gordon, he says, if you’ve already got, let’s say, since most sites that the press releases are destroyed, we will purge the PR in 30 days or so other than a short term bump of SEO juice or traffic, what is the purpose or long term benefit of press release? For a site or GMB listing since the benefit appears to go away after a month or so? Well, we’ve covered this in the Local PR Pro and in the mastermind and stuff like that, I’ll tell you kind of on a more conceptual or higher level. First of all, when you’re you should be stacking, we just covered this a neat little last MGYB webinar that we did last week, by the way, last Thursday. So if you go to the mgyb.co/store/webinar, you can see it, you can also go to our YouTube channel and search for PR stacking, or press release SEO, either one of those, and you’ll see the video that like Marco and I did an hour long webinar where we talk very specifically about how to get the best results with press releases. So if you’re doing the press release stack method, which is daisy chaining, press releases together, then the idea is to find the press releases that do not purge for example, like on Press Advantage, it would be the press releases that are published on that domain, or Digital Journals, another one and there are others. But find the ones that do not purge and use those as part of the stack, right so that you’re essentially daisy-chaining them together. Something else is press releases, I think should be an ongoing method, something that you continually do. You don’t have to do them, you know, all that often. But as I suggested in the webinar last week that I, for all of my clients, even my lowest paying clients, they’re getting now at least two a month or higher playing my most of my, my average client gets one press release per week. And I know that seems like a lot. But I do that because they’re really, really powerful. And, you know, we the way that especially that we talked last week in the webinar, which again, you guys can find that on our YouTube channel. It works really well to come to us to constantly publish press releases, right? You silo them together, or that you step we talked about the PR silo stack last week, which is something new. That’s working well, I’ve been testing that for several weeks now and it’s been working really well, then that’s how you won’t, you’ll end up preventing the juice, as you mentioned here from disappearing. It’s funny, but when we first came out with a local PR pro method, which is shit, that’s probably two years ago now.

I had done a whole lot of testing initially, and so did Rob. And it was funny, because once we had fully proven the process or the method that it worked, and we were able to duplicate it across many different properties. I tested it on 15. I know Rob tested it on many as well. It was funny, but I kind of kind of really stopped publishing press releases for a lot of the properties that I had used in proving that, you know, and testing and proving the method. And it was funny because about I taught originally to PR stack link to the top local PR that was published. So in other words, if you were to if you were targeting a local, and it was called local PR Pro, so if you were targeting a local keyword, a lot of times you would find a particular one of the media sites that it was republished on would rank really well for a local term. Right, so your press release would rank on one of those published domains. And in my case, for a lot of the sites that our clients that I have in Virginia and the lead gen sites and things like that, we had an NBC 12 or something was one it was Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate website. It was their affiliate website, that would it would publish on. So in other words, it was a local Richmond being the capital of Virginia, that one typically ranked very well for any sort of local Virginia business that I was trying to promote press releases. So originally, I would say we would link within a PR stack to whatever the top local ranked press release was in the stack. But then that’s when I found out a couple of months later that they purge. And how did I find that out? Well, because of all of a sudden for things that were kicking ass rankings, especially maps listings, that we that I had pushed with nothing other than press releases. After about three months or so I saw started seeing a lot of those dropping off or falling, you know, several positions in maps. And upon investigation, I found out that most of the press releases that we had been linking to within the stack had been purged from the sites. So that’s why I added some additional training to the PR pro method, which was to only link to PR is that don’t get purged. So find the publication sites that don’t get purged use those in the stack or setup redirect links within the press releases, like a domain. So you can do custom domain redirects or you know like you can use the pretty links plugin and your own domain or something like that. So that you can one day purge, you can go back in and change the target or destination URL within the redirect to another press release. That is still published. Now, I don’t recommend doing that. Because if you’re doing this as an ongoing thing, you’re going to constantly have to go back and edit redirect links. And think if you’re doing this on a regular basis that is going to compound they’re going to accumulate to where you’re going to have more and more and more redirects to edit as time goes on. And so that’s not an efficient way to run a business. So your best bet is to just find the press releases that don’t hurt. As I said, press advantage it would be you can link to the media page of the organization page, you could link to the press releases published on the press advantage domain, you could link to the digital journal. And you can also look through there are a few others in there as well that you could find, if you do any of the upgraded services as you know, Yahoo financial, or, you know, yahoo finance or whatever, or AP news or anything like that a lot of the times those won’t purge either you can link to those also. Okay. So once again, the short answer is continually posted PR hours, but use the date the silo stat or the stacking method, preferably the siloed stacking method again, go watch the webinar that we posted last week, and link to the other press releases that aren’t going to purge. Right. It’s a good question, though, Gordon,

Marco: I think that the great part of this is that you get that media room. Right? Yeah, and all of your releases get published, or that you get a blurb in that media room. And so when you when you’re doing link building, and you link build into your organization page, as they call it, in press advantage, all of the press releases that are in their benefit. And everything within that press release is linked to also benefits. And it ends up in whichever whatever syndication pages are still active, right? Because the other is are either up, there’ll be a forum for not found, or whatever area you’re going to get that because they’ve been they’ve probably, but the idea is that that the ones that haven’t parts, they keep benefiting just from that just from link building into that organization page or that media center.

Bradley: There you go. So there it is, by the way, just go to YouTube, you can go directly to our channel and search our channel and you’ll see it there. But you can also just go to YouTube and type in PR stacking. And it’s the first video or if you type in press release SEO. It’s the fourth or fifth video. So again, guys, just go check that video out. It’s it was an hour and one minute long. We just streamed it five days ago. And it’s very, very powerful method.

Hernan: And while you’re at it, you can also hit that subscribe button because damn

Bradley: right you can

Hernan: Oh, yeah.

Bradley: All right back at it.

How Would You Handle A Know-It-All SEO Client Prospect?

Muhammad’s up. I think we have answered this question in the past, but we’ll answer it again. We’ve got time. Hey, guys, I’m talking to a prospect is presenting a challenge. They’re interested in what I have to say. But at the same time, they’re annoying, you know, the kind of prospect that read an SEO blogger too, and thinks that they’re the bee’s knees. They think they know it all. And normally I would just to walk away way but this guy came to me and seems genuinely interested. What’s the best way to handle this? Do I just brute force my way through my showing how much more I know. Is there a smarter way?

Henan: Run like the wind!

Bradley: Yeah. Honestly, I, I know. Muhammad, you’ve kind of answered your own question. Do you know that? If they’re a pain in the ass now, no matter what you do, they’re always going to question it, because they’re always going to suggest that they know a better way or that they know more. Right? So no matter if you brute force your way through it now, as you mentioned, and kind of bludgeon them over the head with what you know how much smarter you are, or how much more SEO knowledge you have than them, then again, all that’s going to happen is it’s going to quiet them maybe for a moment, or two, or day or two a week or two, maybe a month or two. But they’re going to come back. And second guests are question what you’re doing, you know, going forward at some point in time, they’re going to think they’re going to read another SEO blog post or two, and come back and question. And it’s funny because this, you know, after the question about PR press releases, I was actually doing some searches on Google the other day about press releases. And I saw like an SEO Roundtable, a post that was just published in the last few months about that was specifically a post from the I guess the Google Hangout that they do with, you know, Robert molar, or whatever his name is Miller or whatever the hell His name is, and the Google Gods on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, whatever. And, you know, they republish those, like highlights from that on a lot of the SEO blogs. I think it was SEO roundtable specifically. And one of the questions that it was just a short clip from the webinar, but it was basically saying press releases don’t work for SEO. And it was Google, like Robert Miller, or whatever the hell his name is the one it was saying. And so they highlighted that in a blog post on SEO roundtable about our press releases don’t work for SEO. Yeah, well, that’s bullshit. I love it when Google says stuff doesn’t work because that usually means it does work. And they want you to stop doing it because it works. Right? That’s why they say, oh, it doesn’t work. So it’s funny because, you know, your, your client or prospective client here will go read it, especially like, for example, in all of my SEO strategy, like methods for all of my clients, press releases are a part of the strategy. Now. It’s, there’s no, it’s not an add on. I mean, it’s an add on service for existing clients that didn’t have it. But for all new proposals, it’s part of my SEO retainer package, right, because it’s just part of what I do. It’s a foundational method. And so if I had a client that came to me and said, Well, I see press releases, I saw on an SEO roundtable blog posts that Google said the press releases don’t work for SEO. You know, that would piss me off. Because I know for a fact that they do. And they do work, right. And so my point is, you’re no matter what it is that you say or do now, if that’s the type of a client, or business or person that’s going to, you know, continually brush up on SEO blogs and try to expand their you know, what they think is their SEO knowledge, they’re always going to come back and question what you’re doing. So personally, like, like, Ron said, I would tuck my tail between my legs and run away.

Hernan: Yeah, I think I think it’s like, I think that you’re totally right, Bradley, and, and this comes after working with several of these types of guys. Right? And I think it’s, it’s, it’s like a disposition, like, they’re, they’re already starting the conversation with that disposition with that attitude, if you would, right. So it’s gonna, I mean, you don’t need to prove your worth to anyone, like, the reality is that people need to be educated, your job is not to educate a client, or how awesome you are, it’s just like, you know, do your job, because otherwise, you’re like, that’s double the amount of energy investment that you need to put, you need to put energy into working and making things work. And you also need to put energy on explaining what you’re doing. And, you know, it’s just a waste of time, in my opinion, so you know, there’s, there’s a lot of clients out there. That’s, that’s the that’s at least the position that I take when something is not entirely right. And trust your gut feeling Mohammed, like, you’ve been doing this long enough, and you’ve been having great results. So I would trust your gut feeling on this one. Because from the perspective that there’s a lot of clients out there, so it’ll be my take on it. You know, my,

Marco: my answer to that goes until this guy, why the fuck is he wasting your time? If he thinks that you’re the expert, if he’s coming to you, as the expert in the matter? Why in the fuck is he giving you his opinion? The fuck you care? I mean, just Just tell him off, man, this is so ridiculous. You go to the doctor and tell Hey, during the operation, you might take me off the end. Just I can tell you what you need to do next. Who the fuck does that? No, Mohammed? No. I mean, you know, the fuck away from this guy. tell tell him No, no, go keep reading your blogs, and I’ll just go my way. And we’re good. That’s it?

Bradley: Yeah. And the best way, as I said, is just, you know, don’t argue just, I would run away from that, that prospect anyways. But the point is, is just you just show results, you don’t have to explain methods. You know what I mean? Like, you can just say, look, this is the kind of results I can get, show portfolios, you know, showcase how the type of results that you can get. And that’s it, that should be all the explaining you need. Right? And if somebody wants, you know, you don’t, like Marco said, you don’t go to the doctor and tell the doctor how to do their job, or you don’t go into an auto mechanic and tell them how to do their job, right? You just you go. And if they’ve got, if they’ve got a good reputation and for getting results and fixing cars, then you go and you give them your damn car, you know, I mean, so you gotta treat it the same way. So I totally agree with what both of them said.

Where Should You Focus Your SEO Resources If You Have A Wholesale Real Estate Business?

Ernest says, Hey, guys, thanks for the free live. I hope to join mastermind on my business to become self-sufficient. I’m following the battle plan for a new site. I boarded the press releases syndication network and backlinking in the last week I wholesale real estate in a media market. Okay, cool. So it’s good business. Any suggestions on where to devote most of my resources, I plan to finish a battle plan in the next two weeks. Thanks for everything. Yeah, drive stack? Absolutely, it’s going to be a part of that, in my opinion, that’s foundational, once again, so press release syndication net, like again, that just like the battle plan, says, syndication network is a great start, and in or press release. But as I just mentioned, a press release, great to announce when you’re starting a new website, or a new business, or whatever, it’s kind of announcing it to the world like, Hey, this is a new web property or a new business that’s being started or whatever the case, may new location, opening up whatever. But then, you know, you should start factoring in press releases as an ongoing strategy. Number one, backlinking to the syndication network, to the press release, or the organization page, preferably, is a good strategy, but also remember to, you know, maybe months to get a drive stack, right. And then also, you’re going to want to build backlinks to the drive stack. So those are some of the things that you can do now, you know, this is not SEO related, but I can tell you that I’m getting good results with pay per click marketing for in the real estate industry, you know, for for flipping properties, essentially, I’m getting good results with PPC marketing. And so I would, I would suggest you take a look into that as well, because it will, you know, SEO may take you a little bit of time, especially if you’re wholesaling houses, I mean, I’m assuming you’re wholesaling houses, but I don’t know that to be true. But that’s a little bit more competitive than perhaps the business that I’m in. So it may take you a little while to get some significant results with SEO. Whereas with the pay per click marketing, you can get results almost overnight. And also be sure to set up remarketing. You know, like a use Google Tag Manager. Go, there’s training for that that you can find on YouTube and all kinds of stuff on how to set up Google Tag Manager. Create a remarketing list, you know, you got to add the remarketing tag in Tag Manager. All of that but then set up some remarketing ads, the Google Display Network is much much easier to set up ads on now than it’s ever been. And once you start once you get over 100 people on your remarketing list, so 100 people that have visited your cell seller lead capture page, which is I know what you’re doing if you’re wholesaling properties, right. Then once 100 people have visited your page, you can start serving remarketing ads. And those tend to work really well too. Because if somebody lands on your page but doesn’t convert, let’s say that they don’t turn into you know, they don’t submit their information for their about their property, then you can follow them around the web for as much as 540 days with remarketing ads saying like you know, reminding them that you’re there and that you’re willing to buy their property. So it makes sense. So again, it’s a great way to get conversions out of people that have visited your site that didn’t convert then, but at a later date when time and circumstance have changed their situation. And they’re ready at that point to make that sale that you know, to sell their property possibly to you. You want to constantly remind them that you’re there. Does that make sense? So remarketing is really really important for that business model. I think it’s important for all local, all businesses period anymore, guys, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t be using remarketing. And Hernan can speak to the Facebook side of it. But specifically for Google and SEO and stuff like that I would recommend looking into PPC and certainly remarketing.

Hernan: Yeah, totally, totally 100% agree with, with what you should stay there because we’re trying to get as many touchpoints with the people that are coming to our websites as possible. I read the other day that I think it was for I think it was like for consumer electronics, which is a really hot niche, right that people like buy stuff online all the time. I think that there was a there was this calculation made that people need at something like 32 touching points at this point to make a purchase from the first point from the first starting point all the way up until they purchase something 32 touchpoint. That’s a long, that’s a long cycle. And we’re talking about consumer electronics when we’re talking about real estate in general specific wholesaling. The lead time is like, it could be six months, it could be a year, you know, so people are going into system right now. If you’re capturing leads, they might not be ready to pull the trigger a year from now. And that’s fine. You know, that’s the lay of the land. So yeah, I totally, totally agree with what you’re saying not only in terms of PPC and in terms of remarketing retargeting on Facebook, right? Like, you know, even if it’s if it’s like a low budget type of stuff, you know, you’re leveraging really qualified traffic from Google, which is usually really qualified if people are like, inputting their queries on search, and they are clicking on your website and visiting, they’re really qualified, and then you can follow them around with the GDN, the Google Display Network, and the, you know, Facebook as well. So it’s pretty cool.

Marco: I don’t see a drive stack on the list.

Bradley: Well, I did mention that I told him, You gotta drive stack.

Marco: Next Yeah. And then, but the order of progression is, for the rest of you guys. If you’re going to be ordering the battle plan and looking into it, if you want to, you want to verify that it’s we did the entity, a webinar, right, where we talk about this, it’s your syndication network, and drive stack, you order those and as soon as you get your syndication network back, you put that with your drive stack order. So that then you’re when you hit your drive stacking and G site with the press release, everything will benefit everything attached to that drive second, and G site will benefit from the press releases, the press releases should be a stack, and then behind that link building. So that’s I mean, that that’s really the order that the link building you should order, like at the very end when everything is set up, right, ready to go that first PR is ready. You hit it. And then once your PR stack is ready, right, four or five down the line that’s around three or four is when you get all that Google love starts coming in. You hit it again. So that everything it creates like a what that duty is to call it a slipstream, right. Yeah, Link link stream. I think it was Becker. I’m thinking, Alex Becker, but he’s a slipstream. So credit where credit is due he is the one he’s the one who used to mention that too when thinking of linking this way, so that you’re shooting a straight stream of link building juice into that drive stack and G site. And then everything that’s attached to it, right your money sites, your inner pages, even and even your Google site will benefit from everything that you’re doing. So hopefully, you’ll take this and try to work that in so that your next PR will benefit everything that you do or your next set of PR, and your link building will benefit everything in that stream.

What Schema Should You Use On City Pages That Do Not Have Separate GMBs?

Agreed. Austin says, Hey, would you What would I guess what type of schema would you recommend on city pages that do not have separate GM B’s, which actually create citations or profiles for the city pages? Well, I don’t know if it’s just a page that’s highlighting a city like for example if you’ve only got one location, but you’re and I’m just assuming that this what you’re talking about? Because you say you’re not you don’t have separate Jimmy’s, it’s probably a business that is targeting multiple locations, but it might only have one physical location, right? Well, that’s perfectly fine. You would want to use organization or corporation type markup schema markup, which that can go site wide or global. Right. And in that case, I you know, I, I don’t know that I would do individual. I don’t know that you can even do local schema unless it has its own physical location that’s corresponding with the location that you’re trying to mark up. That makes sense because I’ve never done that. But organization or corporation markup could be something that you put on the site sitewide for the brand, essentially, that’s branded markup, right? There are two different types. There’s the organization, there’s Corporation, just go figure out which one’s the better option for you. And then I would put that site-wide, as far as what you could do on the city pages, you know, with the different types of markup that are available now, like article markup, image markup video markup, there are all those things that you could do on the pages to try to get squeeze more power out of them. Without it requiring local business markup, which requires a physical location, right? Local Business markup has to have an address associated with it, right. And that’s so that so again, you don’t want to use local, you can’t really use local markup on individual city pages unless they have their own. And I’m using air quotes, but the physical location, that makes sense. So I would, you know, I would, I would just go stick with organization or corporation markup for the brand that could be site-wide like it could be a global type of schema markup. And then you could do content markup, with you know, different elements of the page could be marked up to help try to squeeze more power out of it. As far as citations, now at once again, you don’t want to create, you know, really create citations unless something has a physical location, right? At least not the way that we talk about citations when it comes to local stuff. When you can create co-citation that’s different, but we’re not going to get into that right now. But what I’m saying is, in he says, By the way, loving the press advantage, I’m unlimited plan, you all turned me on to last month. Well, that’s great. And so here’s the thing, you would only need one brand page, right? Let’s just say that. And again, I’m just making an assumption here that you’ve got a brand that you’re trying to promote. It has, let’s just say one physical location, but you’re trying to promote multiple locations or cities to where you’re getting traction in SEO for terms that are associated with those location modifiers, right. That’s what I’m assuming you’re trying to do. So what you can do is again, go back and watch the PR stacking webinar that Marco and I did last week. And you’ll see what I’m talking about when I talk about the PR silo stack. Right. And so you would want to silo your website correctly. And then you can start using your press advantage unlimited plan that you, you’re glad that you got and I’m glad you got it as well, to start using press releases in the same way that you would silo your website, it’s called theme mirroring, right, you mirror the silo structure from your website, you press releases, and also do it with a drive stack. Same thing with the folder folder and file structure within your drive stack and your Google site. Right, you want to mirror all of that together and then use press releases as a as a great strategy for link building to kind of help push the power of all that and you can string those together to where you can create PR silos when you only need one organization page, right? One brand page for that. So yeah, I wouldn’t try to create multiple brand pages that for different locations, because you don’t actually have a physical location for those. So you wouldn’t want like citations that because the citations would you know, mean that you’re going to have a physical address, or at least a city state zip. And I wouldn’t do that, I would just go with one brand page and then create silo structure and use that to kind of push into those other areas. Right.

Marco: As far as the schema, there is the city and place schema can get ridiculous when you start looking into it. But there’s also a when you do city and play schema, you could do service, you could do product and brand. You can do man, I was just looking at this the other day, you can do areas area, sir. If there are departments, you can do departments, you could do legal names, you could do a location schema, oh, no, sorry, you can’t do location. Because that that requires either a place or a postal address. So that’s what you have to be really careful with this. But there are tons of ways where you can mark up your city page without having to go with location. Yeah.

How Do You Create A Blog Content For A Lead Gen Site Targeted To Real Estate Photography And Videography?

Bradley: So next question is Hey, guys, I’m back with my photography lead gen side, I’ve decided to go after the real estate photography and videography niche, essentially making a promotional video for properties. My question is, how do I create blog content for this niche. I understand that you should make content that appeals to the people in your niche with the power to link to your articles, but it’s a bit of a stretch with local businesses sometimes, yeah, you just kind of get creative and try to think about, you know, how what what could be useful whole to people that are in that, you know, like, for example, people that are looking to buy or sell real estate, right, that’s what I would do, I would come up with content for people that are looking, you know, helpful content. So like how to stage homes, right how to prepare homes for fast to sell faster, to be more to have more curb appeal, right? How to, I don’t know how to maybe for by people interested in buying real estate, you could do content on you know how to improve credit scores, how to get the find the best loan rates, or mortgage rates, you know, different types of mortgages, you know, all those things that are related, and they would be useful information to somebody that would be buying or selling real estate. Does that make sense? If that’s what you’re doing, if your target market is realtors, then I would talk about marketing like that I would be blogging about marketing and marketing principles on how realtors could get better results using various types of formats, media, you know, that kind of stuff and combining all of them together. My point is, who is your audience, if your audience is a buyer or seller, of real estate, so like an end-user, or property owners or people that want to be property owners, right, which would-be buyers, then you want to talk about way, like in my opinion, you would want to have helpful content on how to get better and faster results at selling their properties. Like for somebody that is interested in listing a house for you know, putting their house up for sale or land up for sale, whatever the case may be, or and then likewise, for buyers, same thing, like what could you educate potential buyers on on how to get make the buying process easier, how to get the best deals, how to negotiate you know, all those kind of things. But again, if your target audience is like real estate professionals because you’re providing them with property listing, photo servicing or video videos for, you know, like virtual tours and stuff like that, then I would talk about marketing stuff and how to get better results. With with marketing for real estate stuff. Does that make sense? So that’s what I would do. Just think about who your audience is, and what would be helpful to them and create content around that. By the way, I don’t recommend that you do that. What I would recommend you doing is finding somebody that is good at that kind of stuff. Like if you’re doing blog content, find a good writer that has topic, you know, experience with that particular topic. Because they’re going to have that ability to find stuff that’s helpful to that industry. Go to up work. Look for people that are real estate writers, for example. You know, blog writers and article writers that are have experienced in the real estate industry, because then it takes the burden off of you to have to come up with all of those ideas and puts it on them and that’s what you pay them for. So it makes sense. Good question though.

How Do You Change A GMB Listing’s Name Without Compromising Its Current Rankings?

Brian says wondering how to handle this. My client is a local franchise store. Six months in business citations are messed up because I added a primary keyword to the company name and the GMB listing. But that keyword is not on any citations that GMB is listed as brand name plus city plus keyword plus city. Wow, that’s pretty spammy. I’m surprised it hasn’t been suspended yet. But anyways, his GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in a metro area. But the citations show his name only his brand name plus city without the keyword My concern is a big drop in GMB traffic if I take out the keyword from the GMB listing to make to match the citations. Not only that, but right now if you try editing your GMB name, it’s likely it will be suspended. Especially because it’s already spammy In my opinion because you do have too much stuff in there. And if you try to change anything on a listing that could potentially be flagged as spammy anyways, that could trigger the suspension. So I would recommend not taking it out, you know, six months ago, I would have said, Get rid of that extra keyword in there because it’s spammy. But you know, I right now, I would recommend not trying to edit it. That said, so add the keyword to the citation listings, you can. But you know, personally, I think you’re being a bit too spammy this way. Like in other words, I wouldn’t recommend ever doing those guys adding the keyword to a brand name just for the sake of SEO, because it’s not the actual brand name of the business. Right, if the business’s name is is whatever the company name is, then I would have never set up the GMB that way. Now I understand where you’re sweet, you know, you squeeze the keyword in there for a reason to get better results with the Google Map. But that’s not a really valid reflection of the company or the brand name, is it. And so what I’m saying is you’ve already got you’ve already done that you can’t take that back. I mean, you could but it’s very likely that the listing would be suspended if you tried to edit that right now. So you’re pretty much stuck with that right now. So you’re saying Should I go out and try to update the published citations on the web to now include that name? Well, no, because it’s not a true representation of the business right. And again, you have created invigoration or site NAP data issues, right? There are discrepancies there, which can cause problems. So you know, I don’t really have a good answer for you there. I would leave the citations the way that they are. Let’s see.

Is GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in the metro area? But yeah, so I would leave it as it is man. And actually what I would do is continue building citations with just the brand name the way that you should write and then at some point in the future, maybe the Jambi bloodbath will end. And you could go back and actually change the GMB name back to just the brand name, which is the way it should be really in my opinion, guys, I always recommend that don’t spam. You know, you want the brand name to be a reflection like the citations published on the web, including the maps listing as a reflection of the business name, in my opinion, because then it’s all congruent. That makes sense. So, you know, I hope that probably doesn’t give you the answer that you want. I you know, if it were that you were trying to update the citations to remove that that that name, then I would say absolutely go update the citations. Get rid of the spamminess. But now you’re saying Should I go out and make the citations more spammy? And I would say absolutely not. All right.

How Long Does Google Sandbox New Domains?

Don says, How long would you say we gotta wrap it up? In a couple of minutes? Guys? I’ve got an actual appointment phone appointment in a couple of minutes. How long would you say the Google sandbox in new domains websites for these days? That’s a good question. Marco. I haven’t tested anything recently. Do we have numbers is still 21 days? or What is it?

Marco: Yeah, it, it does. It’s not necessarily for a brand new website, right. It’s just the fact of how much activity you do on it. So that you do trigger that 21 day period, right where the website starts dancing. And then you trigger the seven What if you do anything within that, within that time, especially link building, it can go into a 70 day sandbox period. So now you’ve extended and if you do anything during that time, it can be permanently sandboxed, which means basically, you’ll never, or hardly ever be able to get that website into the first page. The Google dances real, don’t like that’s tested. We know we’ve seen it time after time, after time where we do something, you know, drive stack was link building, or maybe even just embed, right we do an embed run and you’ll see it starts fluctuating dancing, dropping on and off, in and out. But that’s just the algorithm trying to figure out what where this belongs. And however long it takes the algorithms to figure it out is how it’s how long your new website will take to rank I’ve seen them like ranking. And I’ve managed to rank them in less than 30 days. So it’s not safe. Okay, so 60 days, it’s 90 days. No, it is the Google dance. There is a period 21 days, three weeks it’s in, it’s in the patent, you’ll see the west side, if you do whatever it is even a change on the page, right? If you go in and start editing the page, or pages on a website, it’ll trigger it. And you’ll see that it will it sometimes it even drops off the index it looks like and then oftentimes it comes back even better than before. So that’s 21 days, 70 days, that you can extend it. And then you can actually literally sandbox yourself forever, where no matter how much you do to it, or what you do, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to get out of that. You might as well just take that page down and start a new one and try to rank that. That’s what I’ve seen and tested.

Unknown Speaker 59:42 I’m going to answer that it’s five o'clock and I literally have another call. I’ve got a handle but I want to answer the next two very, very quickly because I didn’t guys have got to wrap it up.

Do You Think Google Penalizes GMB Verified Listings That Are Very Close To Each Other?

Nolemkt says in June there was a Google update that knocked my GMB listing out of the three-pack. So I purchased the battle plan v3. A question is I have another verified GMB about five miles away from the same business. could this have triggered a filter and penalize mother GMB? Yes, actually, that could be what’s called a pigeon filter issue. I’ve experienced that, especially if it’s only five miles away, that can create a proximity-based penalty. Essentially, if there are two businesses that are two with locations too close to each other, unless you make them unique, more unique somehow or another like stuffing a keyword or a city name, a city name into the title of the brand name to make it more unique, but I don’t recommend doing that. So it could be that but without knowing a little bit more about it or researching and I couldn’t tell you but that could be part of it.

And I got the damn call coming in right now. I have to call him back in a moment.

What Permalink Structure Do You Recommend For A “We Buy Houses Investor” Niche?

Because the last thing I want to answer Austin’s question and he says I work mainly in the We Buy Houses investor niche, I’m an investor as well just recently picked up a new national client. I’m currently building out the new website, what permanent structure would you recommend? company state we buy houses city or company state city, the second one company state city. Again, you don’t want to get us especially with the partial match keyword in the domain itself, or the name the company name, which most likely in the domain. Also, I just again, guys, you don’t need to be spammy with your URL. You can accomplish the optimization through the title tags and the page content. Right. So like the SEO title, the title tags, essentially, the head is heading tags and in the content on the page. You don’t need to put it in the URL, I recommend going with a shorter more succinct URL structure. Okay. Alright, guys, I gotta wrap it up. Sorry about that. I got a call. I gotta now catch a recall. But thanks, Marco for hanging out. And we did our mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we’ll see you all then

  Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246 posted first on http://beyondvapepage.blogspot.com

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246

Click on the video above to watch Episode 246 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: Sweet, we’re live. Oh shit. That’s right. This is going to be the Hey guys, this might be the last hangout on air that we do. Because I’m keep getting notifications that Hangouts On Air is going away August 1. So wait a minute. Let’s see next week is the 31st. Alright, we get one more week. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop Hump Day Hangouts. That just means we’re going to change our streaming format, they won’t affect you guys at all. Just so you know, Hump Day hangouts will still go on, we’re probably going to use Zoom and Stream It directly into the YouTube channel. There’s a way to do that. And I’ve been meaning to try to play with that over the last couple weeks. That said, Hello, everybody. Something hangouts Episode 246. I think. Yes, do 46 it is July 24, 2019. Adam is not here today. That’s why I’m taking over announcing or you know, greetings and all that. And we’ve got Chris on and Marco on I don’t know where the hell Hernan is. He’s missing an action. Or just being tardy today. One of the two. So hey, Chris, how are you?

Chris: doing? Good. Like, super happy to be here as always?

Bradley: Very good. And Marco?

Marco: I’m good man knee-deep in the training. I’m studying man.

Bradley: Oh, yeah, we’re writing which training is at our VIP training.

Marco: It’s only for mastermind members. But, you know, you can get in the mastermind so you can find out what it’s all about.

Bradley: Well, that’s good. Uh, yeah, we can tell a little bit about what it’s about.

Marco: But I wouldn’t say shit. Well, it’s too good. It’s too good meant to give it away for free. It’s too damn good. Okay.

Bradley: I’ll follow your lead on this one. But it’s based around my new business. So I think that’s pretty much what you’re talking about. It’s a fun business. I was just talking to Chris about that. Two of the things that happened today that are pretty cool. So a lot of money to be made. Anyways, with that said, Enough teasing. So first of all, if this is your first time here, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, you can, I would suggest that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get notified of updates when we’re going live. Also, what we do a lot of times is take our you know, not a lot of times we have the question and answers from our Hump Day hangouts that get chopped up into individual q&a videos, and then uploaded to the channel, a separate Q&A video. So we’ve got a shit ton of content, literally thousands of videos on our YouTube channel about SEO and marketing, digital marketing, lead generation, client getting prospecting, you know, pretty much almost everything around digital marketing. So if you have any questions that you can typically find an answer by just going to our YouTube channel, and using the search this channel feature, right? So you just type in your question, and it will likely pull up an answer for you directly within our YouTube channel. But again, I recommend that you subscribe to our channel so that you stay notified of updates.

Also, if you’re just getting started, whether you have a new website that you’re trying to promote, be at local, affiliate, whatever. And it could even work for e-commerce. Or if you’re an established, have established websites you’re trying to promote pick up the Battle Plan. If you’re watching this on the Hump Day Hangouts page, where you can post questions, there are banners in the right sidebar that you can click on to take you over to the Battle Plan, which by the way, I put a POFU live banner on the page today that will take you over to our live event, which was going to be held in Denver, in October this year. And we have, we had a really good first live event last year. And so this year, it’s going to be POFU Live 2019. But those of you who don’t know what POFU Live or POFU means position to fuck you. Maybe we could talk about that in a minute. Maybe a little crude. But there’s a reason that we use that as kind of our slogan.

So with that said, Oh, yeah, Battle Plan. If you have any done need for done for you services, which come on guys, who doesn’t? You know, one of the things we teach a lot of times is not to do all the damn work yourself. Otherwise, you’re just you’re you’re your own boss if you’re doing your own work for generating money, but you’re still trading hours for dollars, essentially. And one of the best things that you can do for your businesses to unload the work, remove it from you. And you can do that either by delegating work, hiring virtual assistants, or employees and learning how to delegate work or finding third-party vendors that can do the work for you which we provide all of the methods that we teach, as done for you services in our store at MGYB.co, which stands for Make Google Your Bitch. So go to MGYB.co there’s a link or a banner in the right sidebar on this page as well, that will take you there so you can see the done for you services. And lastly, I think I’m doing pretty good fulfilling and for Adam. Lastly, join the mastermind. If you really want to take your business to the next level, the mastermind is what it sounds like we don’t just have a bunch of training in the mastermind, although there is a bunch of training in the mastermind. It’s a community of like-minded individuals that are all trying to grow their businesses primarily through digital marketing. And so that the real value in my opinion is not just all of the training, and all of the discounts and all of the first opportunities that new trainings and new products and all of that I think the real value is truly the actual masterminding with other successful and aspiring, you know, people that are ambitious, in other words, people that are trying to grow their businesses and get the most out of life that they can. And it’s I think it’s a great community. We have a Facebook group where we chat on a regular basis about all various types of topics, not just digital marketing, but all different kinds of things. So I would highly encourage you to come join the mastermind to how to do guys you guys want to add to that?

Marco: No, I can Awesome, man.

Bradley: Sweet

Chris: if you want to POFU Live ticket. People should better hurry up. You can get them at pofulive.com. Probably somebody can drop the link. Yeah. And you’re like, I’m super excited, especially for the VIP Plus package. Because like the live event that we’ve booked this special extra day. Oh, man,

Bradley: can we all get together? Did we tell what the live event is? I didn’t know if I was no,

Chris: no, no, no, keep it keep it that it like the one?

Marco: Let’s Let’s wait.

Bradley: So I can’t. So we can’t tell what the VIP event is not the admin. Oh, no, you know what? It’s on the damn sales page Or on the sales page, I can see it

Marco: loving that people go to the sales page. Okay, the live event is and go to Denver.

Bradley: It’s gonna be awesome. I think it’s gonna be awesome. So yeah, go to the sales page, pofulive.com. And you can see what it is. But the VIP event we booked the venue for that. And it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to that. So Denver’s supposed to be a fun city. I’ve never been but looking forward to going so. All right. Let’s do it. Uh, yeah, I guess let’s get into questions. Um, nothing else to announce guys, right.

Chris: I don’t think so. Okay, well, that’s the POFU Live sales page. Let me close that out. All right, here we go. I’ll zoom in a little bit. By the way, there is no storms brewing here. So I think I’ll make it this time. Last week. It’s suck because I got booted off like, within I think 20 minutes. And that was primarily because of the power going out but there are no black clouds outside today. So hopefully everything will go fine.

Bradley: Okay, I’ll take that as a note.

When Is The Availability Of The MGYB Service That Helps Hiring VAs?

Bradley: Okay, Fitz asked seven days ago. And I think that was because it looks like Marco had been commenting. So I’m just going to start after Mark was the last comment. He says, When will we get the service to help us hire VAs come back to MGYB? That’s a good question. That’s something that we probably we’ve talked about doing that reopening that up? I don’t know if when we’re going to do it, though. That’s a good question fits. I think we probably should, but it requires a lot on our end to find and screen VAs, you know, and put them through the interview process and all of that. So typically, we only offer that when we have to when we have a need to hire and we fire up the hiring funnel. And we end up screening, you know, and interviewing several at a time, virtual assistants or you know, a VA and then we end up hiring one or two usually and then all of the other candidates that were qualified, then that’s when we will open that up and say, hey, look, we’ve got some candidates that are available that have you know, passed all their all of our tests and interviews and such like that. And then we’ll make it available. But it’s not something that we have a steady stream of because we’re not constantly hiring. Fortunately, we’ve gotten to the point where we are pretty well, pretty well manned right now. So

Marco: even when we opened it up last time, it was only in in the internet, it was only offered in about in the mastermind. That’s true. And I also all we also offer to train VAs, but again, that was only in the mastermind, that that’s who gets it and I keep telling people the place to be is in our mastermind because you get the most benefits. I mean, from aside from everything that you mentioned, things like this where people are needing VA and we had some train vas and we just offered them to to our mastermind. I mean, it’s just a perk and that’s who gets it the list that we had that went pretty quick. But again, our mastermind is the ones who scooped it up.

Bradley: Yeah. So and I think that’s what cities he was going to try to come back to the mastermind anyway, so I haven’t seen you in there yet, man. Get back in.

What Are The Best Alternatives To Do Local SEO That Has Similar Results With GMB?

next to cinnamon I guess. Sounds like a stripper. So if you’re a stripper now the GMB is touching by Google, what are the best alternatives to do local SEO and get similar results? Well, I don’t know that you can get similar results with anything outside of you know, using GMB stuff. A, you know, I recommend doing what Marco says now, which is when you’re first setting up or trying to verify the listing. If you’re doing that on your own. Did you try to get the listing optimized as much as possible prior to verifying it receiving you know the postcard so that you don’t have to touch it once it’s verified. I have finally Google I’ve talked about this about three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now, one of my longtime clients, all I did was I was in there making a slight edit to their GMB. It’s in the pest control industry. But it’s a valid legit business. It was a real bonafide address, not even a PO Box or anything. It was like their actual business address. It’s a service area business. And it got terminated gets terminated for suspended the GMB did. And I appealed it. And I just got the bullshit reply back this morning from Google saying that it was suspended and that they will not reinstate it due to it not meeting their quality guidelines. And then they linked over to their quality guidelines. You know, doc or whatever, that is stupid, because there is nothing that we did on that page. And there’s nothing about that business that violates their quality guidelines, none whatsoever. And so I sent a reply back saying, you know, please explain there’s, you know, this is a valid, legit business that has not done anything that violates quality guidelines. Now I know I’m not going to get a response. So I already emailed my client to tell them we’re moving on, we got to move on to plan B, because it’s likely that it will never be reinstated. So Plan B is to go out and create a fake parking listing, you know, which sucks, but I’m going to get a listing created in the same or verified in the same damn zip code. So that then all I have to do is I mean, it’s going to suck because I’ve done it been doing SEO for that client for like seven years, I think. So we’ve got like literally over 600 and some citations or maybe even more than that that are going to need to be updated. And it’s going to be a really tedious process, but it’s the only thing that I think that can be done in order to get his GMB back which is just dumb. So as far as Is there anything else that you can do? No, I would recommend if you’re starting a new listing, try to get it set up and optimized as much as possible before it’s verified so that once it’s verified, you don’t have to touch it anymore. I have not seen any suspension to occur from doing GMB posts. But doing anything else on page can suck, can cause trigger suspension, okay can be uploading a photo as an owner or a manager. If you’re uploading a photo, you can upload photos to a GMB by the way as a Google user, not as a manager or an owner. In other words, especially if you’re a local guide, or if you have personas that you built out using something like BrowSEO, for example or Ghost Browser, and you have some, you know, Google profiles out there that have some history and that kind of that it seemed like they’re valid, they’re not, you know, then you can upload photos that way to an actual GMB listing. But I wouldn’t do much with the GMB website, I wouldn’t do much with changing information like the business description or hours of operation or anything service areas or anything, once you have the initial things set up, at least for now, eventually, maybe it’ll get to the point where you can we can do that kind of stuff again, but right now, it’s just google still on a on a rampage. And it’s a bloodbath, and it’s just not something I bed because you could lose it.

Bradley: I mean, the other things that you can do would be local SEO, obviously, you can do pay per click marketing, Google AdWords can be incredibly expensive. It can, it can also work very well. But it can be really expensive. You can set up the Bing Maps listing, but that’s not something I get a lot of traffic from or leads from. I’m sure you guys are aware of that. And then you can work on organic SEO, I don’t get a lot of really good results from organic SEO for local businesses. Because they typically, you know, they’re buried now, especially depending on what kind of business it is. But for most contractors, which is primarily what I work with, there’s almost every industry now has the verified or Google guaranteed, like Carousel of ads above, like at the very top, and then there are ads, and then there are maps. And then like, you know, you’ve got to scroll two-thirds of the way down to the page even get to the organic listings. So you know, Google’s trying to force more people into paying, which is why they have there are Google guarantee ads for service, you know, service type providers. And then there’s the ad section and now the map section, which, you know, I unfortunately that don’t probably end up going paid to I think, think that’s part of the ways that they’re going to end up getting rid of spam is forcing GMB to become a paid listing.

So, you know, I probably didn’t answer that as the way that you wanted to, I would just suggest that you do, you know, hope more of a holistic approach for marketing as opposed to just relying on GMB for leads for a business. Right. So that would include Pay Per Click marketing, not just in for the search, PPC, but also you can do PPC ads for Bing search, which also is the same platform as AOL. Believe it or not, some people still use that not many, and Yahoo. But you can also set up remarketing, you can set up Facebook ads, content marketing, press release marketing, which is called inbound PR marketing, right. So those are all different things that you can do to create more of a holistic marketing approach something that is more than just relying on maps SEO. Marco, you want to add to that,

Marco: I mean, you can still do local GMB. Right, it’s just that what you’ll have to do is you’ll have to work through your clients GMB with the understanding that if you get in there, and you do something, just whatever Google is really touchy that it might get suspended. So the client has to understand the risk and that it might not be recovered. Now, when I run into something like that, when a client suspends or what I recommend, when you have a client suspend the GMB is have the client, talk to Google. And if you’re going to go in and call Google and talk to them, act really stupid and ignorant and you don’t know what the fuck was going on. You hired this guy, he took your money, just do whatever you have to do to get that GMB recovered, because that’s somebody’s livelihood. Right. So that’s something that you have to understand in the local space. Most of the traffic, as Bradley just said, comes through that three-pack, it comes through those listings, it comes to those calls. Now, of course, it’s things that you could do organically, to push that up. And if you’re working on a local GMB level, local GMB Pro, those methods that are taught in that training, they still work. And if you push on that with an RYS stack, press release stack behind it and the link building behind that it’s going to push it up into the three pack. The question is, are you going to have that property to push up into the three-pack? It’s not likely you could have it I mean, the methods that Bradley taught prior to all this, it still works, go to the post office, yet a post, post, peel box with street address, push that up into the three-pack, those methods are still viable. The thing that we can’t do is verify businesses anymore. I mean, MGYB we did it for we can’t do that anymore. And the thing we can’t do is since they were Yeah, they have spammed addresses they were they were just totally fake addresses, sometimes empty fields, garbage cans, we would verify anything, it didn’t matter. You can’t get them back, you can’t recover those. And so what do you do? You’re stuck out there with nothing. So it depends on what you mean by local SEO, and get similar results.

Bradley: Yeah.

Will Google Penalize A Partial Matched Domain?

Yep. Okay. So next is Gordon Gordon. What’s up, buddy? He says, Hey, guys, thank you very much again, for the help you provide. You’re welcome. You said last week’s session was cut very short by storm. So I’m posting my question again. Okay. Thank you, because otherwise, it would have gotten Miss Gordon. He says, if you’ve already gone back and covered last week, missed questions, please just ignore this. No. And I have not. You mentioned previously, that was not a good idea to use a keyword match domain for a local business site. But if you use something like top local plumber, com or top local plumber is not a keyword you intend on targeting? Where you tend to target excuse me, will you still run the risk of a Google penalty when you optimize the site for targeted plumber related keywords and the specific geolocation just because you have plumber and the domain name now, because, you know, that seems that’s natural that what I was talking about was an exact match. So a lot of times, you know, you can use a partial match keyword, because a lot of times the service will be part of the brand name, right. Like, you know, Joe’s plumbing, for example, right plumbing is part of his name. But what I’m talking about is not using exact match keywords, if you want to rank for you know, I use this example all the time, but plumbing, Fairfax VA or plumber, Fairfax VA, like, if you had that exact match domain, that’s what’s real can cause the filters, right to be a bit more sensitive, that can cause Panda, Panda type penalties, really, over-optimization penalties. And that’s because it essentially you’ve already got you to know, you’re you’re putting up red flags, saying that you’re already a, you know, an SEO, in other words, you’re starting off with everything that the bots look at, from that point forward from the moment that they come to scan your domain, it’s through the lens of it’s like an SEO Slanted Lens, right? Because it knows that it’s an exact match keyword. And so it just makes running you you run the risk of all of the additional optimization that you’re doing of over-optimizing, right, but a partial match isn’t quite the same. Because like I said, a lot of times brand names will have a partial match keyword as part of the brand name. And that makes perfect sense to do. So whether you’re adding like city, like the location as a partial match or a product or service, especially for local, then it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re not just combining the two is my point. So, you know, again, now, if you already have plumber and the domain name, then, you know, just keep that in mind when you’re creating like your URL structures and things like that, especially if you’re siloed your site, which you probably should, you know, you I recommend going with the virtual silo now as opposed to the physical silo, we’ve talked about that in the past a physical silo is that category slash post name, permalink structure and WordPress where you visit, literally see the silo structure, the hierarchy of the categories within the URL, right? That’s really unnecessary. I used to build all of my sites that way because I liked seeing that hierarchy in the URL. But now you can actually, it’s better off, in my opinion, to have a shorter URL. So if you just go with the posting, permalink structure, then you can avoid having, you know, multiple occurrences of the keyword within the URL, which can cause issues too. So just keep all of that in mind. But no short answer is you’re at you should be fine if you’re just using a partial match keyword, or and I say keyword, but it could be like a location and the domain as opposed to actual keywords that make sense. You know, I’ve used this as an example. But like home pros could be a generic business name for general contractors or remodelers or deck builders or, you know, pretty much any sort of home service type contractor home pros could be a brand new, so you could put like the city name, like Fairfax home pros, right could be a potential name for any type of really any type of contractor that’s in the home service industry. And so that would have the location modifier as a partial match keyword. Right, but not the actual service. But you could have like, you know, plumbing pros could be a plumber, you know, so you could, in that case, you could say, you know, Fairfax plumbing pros. Now that case, I would say that’s a little bit too close to being over-optimized. You see it, I’m saying so just try to find something that would be maybe a bit more vague or a lesser, a less common type of term that is synonymous with what you’re trying to promote, to make it to where it’s not going to over-optimize or tripping over-optimization filter for everything else that you do on-site. That’s all I’m saying. Was that clear as mud or what?

Marco: No, that was clear. Okay. Be careful with over-optimization. That’s all.

Hernan: Bradley.

Bradley: There’s Hernan you’re tardy, man.

Hernan: I’m sorry, did I completely lost track of time launching Facebook ads campaigns? I was in the vortex. So I do apologize.

Bradley: So what you’re saying is if the Hangouts isn’t as important to, you know, no, no, I think

Marco: you’ll be I think he’s using code because Adam used to call it running in the woods running in the woods.

Hernan: Yeah, right. Right. For me, it’s launching campaigns. Right?

Bradley: That’s it.

What Is The Long Term Benefit Of Press Release For A Site And GMB Listing?

Alright, the next question from Gordon, he says, if you’ve already got, let’s say, since most sites that the press releases are destroyed, we will purge the PR in 30 days or so other than a short term bump of SEO juice or traffic, what is the purpose or long term benefit of press release? For a site or GMB listing since the benefit appears to go away after a month or so? Well, we’ve covered this in the Local PR Pro and in the mastermind and stuff like that, I’ll tell you kind of on a more conceptual or higher level. First of all, when you’re you should be stacking, we just covered this a neat little last MGYB webinar that we did last week, by the way, last Thursday. So if you go to the mgyb.co/store/webinar, you can see it, you can also go to our YouTube channel and search for PR stacking, or press release SEO, either one of those, and you’ll see the video that like Marco and I did an hour long webinar where we talk very specifically about how to get the best results with press releases. So if you’re doing the press release stack method, which is daisy chaining, press releases together, then the idea is to find the press releases that do not purge for example, like on Press Advantage, it would be the press releases that are published on that domain, or Digital Journals, another one and there are others. But find the ones that do not purge and use those as part of the stack, right so that you’re essentially daisy-chaining them together. Something else is press releases, I think should be an ongoing method, something that you continually do. You don’t have to do them, you know, all that often. But as I suggested in the webinar last week that I, for all of my clients, even my lowest paying clients, they’re getting now at least two a month or higher playing my most of my, my average client gets one press release per week. And I know that seems like a lot. But I do that because they’re really, really powerful. And, you know, we the way that especially that we talked last week in the webinar, which again, you guys can find that on our YouTube channel. It works really well to come to us to constantly publish press releases, right? You silo them together, or that you step we talked about the PR silo stack last week, which is something new. That’s working well, I’ve been testing that for several weeks now and it’s been working really well, then that’s how you won’t, you’ll end up preventing the juice, as you mentioned here from disappearing. It’s funny, but when we first came out with a local PR pro method, which is shit, that’s probably two years ago now.

I had done a whole lot of testing initially, and so did Rob. And it was funny, because once we had fully proven the process or the method that it worked, and we were able to duplicate it across many different properties. I tested it on 15. I know Rob tested it on many as well. It was funny, but I kind of kind of really stopped publishing press releases for a lot of the properties that I had used in proving that, you know, and testing and proving the method. And it was funny because about I taught originally to PR stack link to the top local PR that was published. So in other words, if you were to if you were targeting a local, and it was called local PR Pro, so if you were targeting a local keyword, a lot of times you would find a particular one of the media sites that it was republished on would rank really well for a local term. Right, so your press release would rank on one of those published domains. And in my case, for a lot of the sites that our clients that I have in Virginia and the lead gen sites and things like that, we had an NBC 12 or something was one it was Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate website. It was their affiliate website, that would it would publish on. So in other words, it was a local Richmond being the capital of Virginia, that one typically ranked very well for any sort of local Virginia business that I was trying to promote press releases. So originally, I would say we would link within a PR stack to whatever the top local ranked press release was in the stack. But then that’s when I found out a couple of months later that they purge. And how did I find that out? Well, because of all of a sudden for things that were kicking ass rankings, especially maps listings, that we that I had pushed with nothing other than press releases. After about three months or so I saw started seeing a lot of those dropping off or falling, you know, several positions in maps. And upon investigation, I found out that most of the press releases that we had been linking to within the stack had been purged from the sites. So that’s why I added some additional training to the PR pro method, which was to only link to PR is that don’t get purged. So find the publication sites that don’t get purged use those in the stack or setup redirect links within the press releases, like a domain. So you can do custom domain redirects or you know like you can use the pretty links plugin and your own domain or something like that. So that you can one day purge, you can go back in and change the target or destination URL within the redirect to another press release. That is still published. Now, I don’t recommend doing that. Because if you’re doing this as an ongoing thing, you’re going to constantly have to go back and edit redirect links. And think if you’re doing this on a regular basis that is going to compound they’re going to accumulate to where you’re going to have more and more and more redirects to edit as time goes on. And so that’s not an efficient way to run a business. So your best bet is to just find the press releases that don’t hurt. As I said, press advantage it would be you can link to the media page of the organization page, you could link to the press releases published on the press advantage domain, you could link to the digital journal. And you can also look through there are a few others in there as well that you could find, if you do any of the upgraded services as you know, Yahoo financial, or, you know, yahoo finance or whatever, or AP news or anything like that a lot of the times those won’t purge either you can link to those also. Okay. So once again, the short answer is continually posted PR hours, but use the date the silo stat or the stacking method, preferably the siloed stacking method again, go watch the webinar that we posted last week, and link to the other press releases that aren’t going to purge. Right. It’s a good question, though, Gordon,

Marco: I think that the great part of this is that you get that media room. Right? Yeah, and all of your releases get published, or that you get a blurb in that media room. And so when you when you’re doing link building, and you link build into your organization page, as they call it, in press advantage, all of the press releases that are in their benefit. And everything within that press release is linked to also benefits. And it ends up in whichever whatever syndication pages are still active, right? Because the other is are either up, there’ll be a forum for not found, or whatever area you’re going to get that because they’ve been they’ve probably, but the idea is that that the ones that haven’t parts, they keep benefiting just from that just from link building into that organization page or that media center.

Bradley: There you go. So there it is, by the way, just go to YouTube, you can go directly to our channel and search our channel and you’ll see it there. But you can also just go to YouTube and type in PR stacking. And it’s the first video or if you type in press release SEO. It’s the fourth or fifth video. So again, guys, just go check that video out. It’s it was an hour and one minute long. We just streamed it five days ago. And it’s very, very powerful method.

Hernan: And while you’re at it, you can also hit that subscribe button because damn

Bradley: right you can

Hernan: Oh, yeah.

Bradley: All right back at it.

How Would You Handle A Know-It-All SEO Client Prospect?

Muhammad’s up. I think we have answered this question in the past, but we’ll answer it again. We’ve got time. Hey, guys, I’m talking to a prospect is presenting a challenge. They’re interested in what I have to say. But at the same time, they’re annoying, you know, the kind of prospect that read an SEO blogger too, and thinks that they’re the bee’s knees. They think they know it all. And normally I would just to walk away way but this guy came to me and seems genuinely interested. What’s the best way to handle this? Do I just brute force my way through my showing how much more I know. Is there a smarter way?

Henan: Run like the wind!

Bradley: Yeah. Honestly, I, I know. Muhammad, you’ve kind of answered your own question. Do you know that? If they’re a pain in the ass now, no matter what you do, they’re always going to question it, because they’re always going to suggest that they know a better way or that they know more. Right? So no matter if you brute force your way through it now, as you mentioned, and kind of bludgeon them over the head with what you know how much smarter you are, or how much more SEO knowledge you have than them, then again, all that’s going to happen is it’s going to quiet them maybe for a moment, or two, or day or two a week or two, maybe a month or two. But they’re going to come back. And second guests are question what you’re doing, you know, going forward at some point in time, they’re going to think they’re going to read another SEO blog post or two, and come back and question. And it’s funny because this, you know, after the question about PR press releases, I was actually doing some searches on Google the other day about press releases. And I saw like an SEO Roundtable, a post that was just published in the last few months about that was specifically a post from the I guess the Google Hangout that they do with, you know, Robert molar, or whatever his name is Miller or whatever the hell His name is, and the Google Gods on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, whatever. And, you know, they republish those, like highlights from that on a lot of the SEO blogs. I think it was SEO roundtable specifically. And one of the questions that it was just a short clip from the webinar, but it was basically saying press releases don’t work for SEO. And it was Google, like Robert Miller, or whatever the hell his name is the one it was saying. And so they highlighted that in a blog post on SEO roundtable about our press releases don’t work for SEO. Yeah, well, that’s bullshit. I love it when Google says stuff doesn’t work because that usually means it does work. And they want you to stop doing it because it works. Right? That’s why they say, oh, it doesn’t work. So it’s funny because, you know, your, your client or prospective client here will go read it, especially like, for example, in all of my SEO strategy, like methods for all of my clients, press releases are a part of the strategy. Now. It’s, there’s no, it’s not an add on. I mean, it’s an add on service for existing clients that didn’t have it. But for all new proposals, it’s part of my SEO retainer package, right, because it’s just part of what I do. It’s a foundational method. And so if I had a client that came to me and said, Well, I see press releases, I saw on an SEO roundtable blog posts that Google said the press releases don’t work for SEO. You know, that would piss me off. Because I know for a fact that they do. And they do work, right. And so my point is, you’re no matter what it is that you say or do now, if that’s the type of a client, or business or person that’s going to, you know, continually brush up on SEO blogs and try to expand their you know, what they think is their SEO knowledge, they’re always going to come back and question what you’re doing. So personally, like, like, Ron said, I would tuck my tail between my legs and run away.

Hernan: Yeah, I think I think it’s like, I think that you’re totally right, Bradley, and, and this comes after working with several of these types of guys. Right? And I think it’s, it’s, it’s like a disposition, like, they’re, they’re already starting the conversation with that disposition with that attitude, if you would, right. So it’s gonna, I mean, you don’t need to prove your worth to anyone, like, the reality is that people need to be educated, your job is not to educate a client, or how awesome you are, it’s just like, you know, do your job, because otherwise, you’re like, that’s double the amount of energy investment that you need to put, you need to put energy into working and making things work. And you also need to put energy on explaining what you’re doing. And, you know, it’s just a waste of time, in my opinion, so you know, there’s, there’s a lot of clients out there. That’s, that’s the that’s at least the position that I take when something is not entirely right. And trust your gut feeling Mohammed, like, you’ve been doing this long enough, and you’ve been having great results. So I would trust your gut feeling on this one. Because from the perspective that there’s a lot of clients out there, so it’ll be my take on it. You know, my,

Marco: my answer to that goes until this guy, why the fuck is he wasting your time? If he thinks that you’re the expert, if he’s coming to you, as the expert in the matter? Why in the fuck is he giving you his opinion? The fuck you care? I mean, just Just tell him off, man, this is so ridiculous. You go to the doctor and tell Hey, during the operation, you might take me off the end. Just I can tell you what you need to do next. Who the fuck does that? No, Mohammed? No. I mean, you know, the fuck away from this guy. tell tell him No, no, go keep reading your blogs, and I’ll just go my way. And we’re good. That’s it?

Bradley: Yeah. And the best way, as I said, is just, you know, don’t argue just, I would run away from that, that prospect anyways. But the point is, is just you just show results, you don’t have to explain methods. You know what I mean? Like, you can just say, look, this is the kind of results I can get, show portfolios, you know, showcase how the type of results that you can get. And that’s it, that should be all the explaining you need. Right? And if somebody wants, you know, you don’t, like Marco said, you don’t go to the doctor and tell the doctor how to do their job, or you don’t go into an auto mechanic and tell them how to do their job, right? You just you go. And if they’ve got, if they’ve got a good reputation and for getting results and fixing cars, then you go and you give them your damn car, you know, I mean, so you gotta treat it the same way. So I totally agree with what both of them said.

Where Should You Focus Your SEO Resources If You Have A Wholesale Real Estate Business?

Ernest says, Hey, guys, thanks for the free live. I hope to join mastermind on my business to become self-sufficient. I’m following the battle plan for a new site. I boarded the press releases syndication network and backlinking in the last week I wholesale real estate in a media market. Okay, cool. So it’s good business. Any suggestions on where to devote most of my resources, I plan to finish a battle plan in the next two weeks. Thanks for everything. Yeah, drive stack? Absolutely, it’s going to be a part of that, in my opinion, that’s foundational, once again, so press release syndication net, like again, that just like the battle plan, says, syndication network is a great start, and in or press release. But as I just mentioned, a press release, great to announce when you’re starting a new website, or a new business, or whatever, it’s kind of announcing it to the world like, Hey, this is a new web property or a new business that’s being started or whatever the case, may new location, opening up whatever. But then, you know, you should start factoring in press releases as an ongoing strategy. Number one, backlinking to the syndication network, to the press release, or the organization page, preferably, is a good strategy, but also remember to, you know, maybe months to get a drive stack, right. And then also, you’re going to want to build backlinks to the drive stack. So those are some of the things that you can do now, you know, this is not SEO related, but I can tell you that I’m getting good results with pay per click marketing for in the real estate industry, you know, for for flipping properties, essentially, I’m getting good results with PPC marketing. And so I would, I would suggest you take a look into that as well, because it will, you know, SEO may take you a little bit of time, especially if you’re wholesaling houses, I mean, I’m assuming you’re wholesaling houses, but I don’t know that to be true. But that’s a little bit more competitive than perhaps the business that I’m in. So it may take you a little while to get some significant results with SEO. Whereas with the pay per click marketing, you can get results almost overnight. And also be sure to set up remarketing. You know, like a use Google Tag Manager. Go, there’s training for that that you can find on YouTube and all kinds of stuff on how to set up Google Tag Manager. Create a remarketing list, you know, you got to add the remarketing tag in Tag Manager. All of that but then set up some remarketing ads, the Google Display Network is much much easier to set up ads on now than it’s ever been. And once you start once you get over 100 people on your remarketing list, so 100 people that have visited your cell seller lead capture page, which is I know what you’re doing if you’re wholesaling properties, right. Then once 100 people have visited your page, you can start serving remarketing ads. And those tend to work really well too. Because if somebody lands on your page but doesn’t convert, let’s say that they don’t turn into you know, they don’t submit their information for their about their property, then you can follow them around the web for as much as 540 days with remarketing ads saying like you know, reminding them that you’re there and that you’re willing to buy their property. So it makes sense. So again, it’s a great way to get conversions out of people that have visited your site that didn’t convert then, but at a later date when time and circumstance have changed their situation. And they’re ready at that point to make that sale that you know, to sell their property possibly to you. You want to constantly remind them that you’re there. Does that make sense? So remarketing is really really important for that business model. I think it’s important for all local, all businesses period anymore, guys, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t be using remarketing. And Hernan can speak to the Facebook side of it. But specifically for Google and SEO and stuff like that I would recommend looking into PPC and certainly remarketing.

Hernan: Yeah, totally, totally 100% agree with, with what you should stay there because we’re trying to get as many touchpoints with the people that are coming to our websites as possible. I read the other day that I think it was for I think it was like for consumer electronics, which is a really hot niche, right that people like buy stuff online all the time. I think that there was a there was this calculation made that people need at something like 32 touching points at this point to make a purchase from the first point from the first starting point all the way up until they purchase something 32 touchpoint. That’s a long, that’s a long cycle. And we’re talking about consumer electronics when we’re talking about real estate in general specific wholesaling. The lead time is like, it could be six months, it could be a year, you know, so people are going into system right now. If you’re capturing leads, they might not be ready to pull the trigger a year from now. And that’s fine. You know, that’s the lay of the land. So yeah, I totally, totally agree with what you’re saying not only in terms of PPC and in terms of remarketing retargeting on Facebook, right? Like, you know, even if it’s if it’s like a low budget type of stuff, you know, you’re leveraging really qualified traffic from Google, which is usually really qualified if people are like, inputting their queries on search, and they are clicking on your website and visiting, they’re really qualified, and then you can follow them around with the GDN, the Google Display Network, and the, you know, Facebook as well. So it’s pretty cool.

Marco: I don’t see a drive stack on the list.

Bradley: Well, I did mention that I told him, You gotta drive stack.

Marco: Next Yeah. And then, but the order of progression is, for the rest of you guys. If you’re going to be ordering the battle plan and looking into it, if you want to, you want to verify that it’s we did the entity, a webinar, right, where we talk about this, it’s your syndication network, and drive stack, you order those and as soon as you get your syndication network back, you put that with your drive stack order. So that then you’re when you hit your drive stacking and G site with the press release, everything will benefit everything attached to that drive second, and G site will benefit from the press releases, the press releases should be a stack, and then behind that link building. So that’s I mean, that that’s really the order that the link building you should order, like at the very end when everything is set up, right, ready to go that first PR is ready. You hit it. And then once your PR stack is ready, right, four or five down the line that’s around three or four is when you get all that Google love starts coming in. You hit it again. So that everything it creates like a what that duty is to call it a slipstream, right. Yeah, Link link stream. I think it was Becker. I’m thinking, Alex Becker, but he’s a slipstream. So credit where credit is due he is the one he’s the one who used to mention that too when thinking of linking this way, so that you’re shooting a straight stream of link building juice into that drive stack and G site. And then everything that’s attached to it, right your money sites, your inner pages, even and even your Google site will benefit from everything that you’re doing. So hopefully, you’ll take this and try to work that in so that your next PR will benefit everything that you do or your next set of PR, and your link building will benefit everything in that stream.

What Schema Should You Use On City Pages That Do Not Have Separate GMBs?

Agreed. Austin says, Hey, would you What would I guess what type of schema would you recommend on city pages that do not have separate GM B’s, which actually create citations or profiles for the city pages? Well, I don’t know if it’s just a page that’s highlighting a city like for example if you’ve only got one location, but you’re and I’m just assuming that this what you’re talking about? Because you say you’re not you don’t have separate Jimmy’s, it’s probably a business that is targeting multiple locations, but it might only have one physical location, right? Well, that’s perfectly fine. You would want to use organization or corporation type markup schema markup, which that can go site wide or global. Right. And in that case, I you know, I, I don’t know that I would do individual. I don’t know that you can even do local schema unless it has its own physical location that’s corresponding with the location that you’re trying to mark up. That makes sense because I’ve never done that. But organization or corporation markup could be something that you put on the site sitewide for the brand, essentially, that’s branded markup, right? There are two different types. There’s the organization, there’s Corporation, just go figure out which one’s the better option for you. And then I would put that site-wide, as far as what you could do on the city pages, you know, with the different types of markup that are available now, like article markup, image markup video markup, there are all those things that you could do on the pages to try to get squeeze more power out of them. Without it requiring local business markup, which requires a physical location, right? Local Business markup has to have an address associated with it, right. And that’s so that so again, you don’t want to use local, you can’t really use local markup on individual city pages unless they have their own. And I’m using air quotes, but the physical location, that makes sense. So I would, you know, I would, I would just go stick with organization or corporation markup for the brand that could be site-wide like it could be a global type of schema markup. And then you could do content markup, with you know, different elements of the page could be marked up to help try to squeeze more power out of it. As far as citations, now at once again, you don’t want to create, you know, really create citations unless something has a physical location, right? At least not the way that we talk about citations when it comes to local stuff. When you can create co-citation that’s different, but we’re not going to get into that right now. But what I’m saying is, in he says, By the way, loving the press advantage, I’m unlimited plan, you all turned me on to last month. Well, that’s great. And so here’s the thing, you would only need one brand page, right? Let’s just say that. And again, I’m just making an assumption here that you’ve got a brand that you’re trying to promote. It has, let’s just say one physical location, but you’re trying to promote multiple locations or cities to where you’re getting traction in SEO for terms that are associated with those location modifiers, right. That’s what I’m assuming you’re trying to do. So what you can do is again, go back and watch the PR stacking webinar that Marco and I did last week. And you’ll see what I’m talking about when I talk about the PR silo stack. Right. And so you would want to silo your website correctly. And then you can start using your press advantage unlimited plan that you, you’re glad that you got and I’m glad you got it as well, to start using press releases in the same way that you would silo your website, it’s called theme mirroring, right, you mirror the silo structure from your website, you press releases, and also do it with a drive stack. Same thing with the folder folder and file structure within your drive stack and your Google site. Right, you want to mirror all of that together and then use press releases as a as a great strategy for link building to kind of help push the power of all that and you can string those together to where you can create PR silos when you only need one organization page, right? One brand page for that. So yeah, I wouldn’t try to create multiple brand pages that for different locations, because you don’t actually have a physical location for those. So you wouldn’t want like citations that because the citations would you know, mean that you’re going to have a physical address, or at least a city state zip. And I wouldn’t do that, I would just go with one brand page and then create silo structure and use that to kind of push into those other areas. Right.

Marco: As far as the schema, there is the city and place schema can get ridiculous when you start looking into it. But there’s also a when you do city and play schema, you could do service, you could do product and brand. You can do man, I was just looking at this the other day, you can do areas area, sir. If there are departments, you can do departments, you could do legal names, you could do a location schema, oh, no, sorry, you can’t do location. Because that that requires either a place or a postal address. So that’s what you have to be really careful with this. But there are tons of ways where you can mark up your city page without having to go with location. Yeah.

How Do You Create A Blog Content For A Lead Gen Site Targeted To Real Estate Photography And Videography?

Bradley: So next question is Hey, guys, I’m back with my photography lead gen side, I’ve decided to go after the real estate photography and videography niche, essentially making a promotional video for properties. My question is, how do I create blog content for this niche. I understand that you should make content that appeals to the people in your niche with the power to link to your articles, but it’s a bit of a stretch with local businesses sometimes, yeah, you just kind of get creative and try to think about, you know, how what what could be useful whole to people that are in that, you know, like, for example, people that are looking to buy or sell real estate, right, that’s what I would do, I would come up with content for people that are looking, you know, helpful content. So like how to stage homes, right how to prepare homes for fast to sell faster, to be more to have more curb appeal, right? How to, I don’t know how to maybe for by people interested in buying real estate, you could do content on you know how to improve credit scores, how to get the find the best loan rates, or mortgage rates, you know, different types of mortgages, you know, all those things that are related, and they would be useful information to somebody that would be buying or selling real estate. Does that make sense? If that’s what you’re doing, if your target market is realtors, then I would talk about marketing like that I would be blogging about marketing and marketing principles on how realtors could get better results using various types of formats, media, you know, that kind of stuff and combining all of them together. My point is, who is your audience, if your audience is a buyer or seller, of real estate, so like an end-user, or property owners or people that want to be property owners, right, which would-be buyers, then you want to talk about way, like in my opinion, you would want to have helpful content on how to get better and faster results at selling their properties. Like for somebody that is interested in listing a house for you know, putting their house up for sale or land up for sale, whatever the case may be, or and then likewise, for buyers, same thing, like what could you educate potential buyers on on how to get make the buying process easier, how to get the best deals, how to negotiate you know, all those kind of things. But again, if your target audience is like real estate professionals because you’re providing them with property listing, photo servicing or video videos for, you know, like virtual tours and stuff like that, then I would talk about marketing stuff and how to get better results. With with marketing for real estate stuff. Does that make sense? So that’s what I would do. Just think about who your audience is, and what would be helpful to them and create content around that. By the way, I don’t recommend that you do that. What I would recommend you doing is finding somebody that is good at that kind of stuff. Like if you’re doing blog content, find a good writer that has topic, you know, experience with that particular topic. Because they’re going to have that ability to find stuff that’s helpful to that industry. Go to up work. Look for people that are real estate writers, for example. You know, blog writers and article writers that are have experienced in the real estate industry, because then it takes the burden off of you to have to come up with all of those ideas and puts it on them and that’s what you pay them for. So it makes sense. Good question though.

How Do You Change A GMB Listing’s Name Without Compromising Its Current Rankings?

Brian says wondering how to handle this. My client is a local franchise store. Six months in business citations are messed up because I added a primary keyword to the company name and the GMB listing. But that keyword is not on any citations that GMB is listed as brand name plus city plus keyword plus city. Wow, that’s pretty spammy. I’m surprised it hasn’t been suspended yet. But anyways, his GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in a metro area. But the citations show his name only his brand name plus city without the keyword My concern is a big drop in GMB traffic if I take out the keyword from the GMB listing to make to match the citations. Not only that, but right now if you try editing your GMB name, it’s likely it will be suspended. Especially because it’s already spammy In my opinion because you do have too much stuff in there. And if you try to change anything on a listing that could potentially be flagged as spammy anyways, that could trigger the suspension. So I would recommend not taking it out, you know, six months ago, I would have said, Get rid of that extra keyword in there because it’s spammy. But you know, I right now, I would recommend not trying to edit it. That said, so add the keyword to the citation listings, you can. But you know, personally, I think you’re being a bit too spammy this way. Like in other words, I wouldn’t recommend ever doing those guys adding the keyword to a brand name just for the sake of SEO, because it’s not the actual brand name of the business. Right, if the business’s name is is whatever the company name is, then I would have never set up the GMB that way. Now I understand where you’re sweet, you know, you squeeze the keyword in there for a reason to get better results with the Google Map. But that’s not a really valid reflection of the company or the brand name, is it. And so what I’m saying is you’ve already got you’ve already done that you can’t take that back. I mean, you could but it’s very likely that the listing would be suspended if you tried to edit that right now. So you’re pretty much stuck with that right now. So you’re saying Should I go out and try to update the published citations on the web to now include that name? Well, no, because it’s not a true representation of the business right. And again, you have created invigoration or site NAP data issues, right? There are discrepancies there, which can cause problems. So you know, I don’t really have a good answer for you there. I would leave the citations the way that they are. Let’s see.

Is GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in the metro area? But yeah, so I would leave it as it is man. And actually what I would do is continue building citations with just the brand name the way that you should write and then at some point in the future, maybe the Jambi bloodbath will end. And you could go back and actually change the GMB name back to just the brand name, which is the way it should be really in my opinion, guys, I always recommend that don’t spam. You know, you want the brand name to be a reflection like the citations published on the web, including the maps listing as a reflection of the business name, in my opinion, because then it’s all congruent. That makes sense. So, you know, I hope that probably doesn’t give you the answer that you want. I you know, if it were that you were trying to update the citations to remove that that that name, then I would say absolutely go update the citations. Get rid of the spamminess. But now you’re saying Should I go out and make the citations more spammy? And I would say absolutely not. All right.

How Long Does Google Sandbox New Domains?

Don says, How long would you say we gotta wrap it up? In a couple of minutes? Guys? I’ve got an actual appointment phone appointment in a couple of minutes. How long would you say the Google sandbox in new domains websites for these days? That’s a good question. Marco. I haven’t tested anything recently. Do we have numbers is still 21 days? or What is it?

Marco: Yeah, it, it does. It’s not necessarily for a brand new website, right. It’s just the fact of how much activity you do on it. So that you do trigger that 21 day period, right where the website starts dancing. And then you trigger the seven What if you do anything within that, within that time, especially link building, it can go into a 70 day sandbox period. So now you’ve extended and if you do anything during that time, it can be permanently sandboxed, which means basically, you’ll never, or hardly ever be able to get that website into the first page. The Google dances real, don’t like that’s tested. We know we’ve seen it time after time, after time where we do something, you know, drive stack was link building, or maybe even just embed, right we do an embed run and you’ll see it starts fluctuating dancing, dropping on and off, in and out. But that’s just the algorithm trying to figure out what where this belongs. And however long it takes the algorithms to figure it out is how it’s how long your new website will take to rank I’ve seen them like ranking. And I’ve managed to rank them in less than 30 days. So it’s not safe. Okay, so 60 days, it’s 90 days. No, it is the Google dance. There is a period 21 days, three weeks it’s in, it’s in the patent, you’ll see the west side, if you do whatever it is even a change on the page, right? If you go in and start editing the page, or pages on a website, it’ll trigger it. And you’ll see that it will it sometimes it even drops off the index it looks like and then oftentimes it comes back even better than before. So that’s 21 days, 70 days, that you can extend it. And then you can actually literally sandbox yourself forever, where no matter how much you do to it, or what you do, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to get out of that. You might as well just take that page down and start a new one and try to rank that. That’s what I’ve seen and tested.

Unknown Speaker 59:42 I’m going to answer that it’s five o'clock and I literally have another call. I’ve got a handle but I want to answer the next two very, very quickly because I didn’t guys have got to wrap it up.

Do You Think Google Penalizes GMB Verified Listings That Are Very Close To Each Other?

Nolemkt says in June there was a Google update that knocked my GMB listing out of the three-pack. So I purchased the battle plan v3. A question is I have another verified GMB about five miles away from the same business. could this have triggered a filter and penalize mother GMB? Yes, actually, that could be what’s called a pigeon filter issue. I’ve experienced that, especially if it’s only five miles away, that can create a proximity-based penalty. Essentially, if there are two businesses that are two with locations too close to each other, unless you make them unique, more unique somehow or another like stuffing a keyword or a city name, a city name into the title of the brand name to make it more unique, but I don’t recommend doing that. So it could be that but without knowing a little bit more about it or researching and I couldn’t tell you but that could be part of it.

And I got the damn call coming in right now. I have to call him back in a moment.

What Permalink Structure Do You Recommend For A “We Buy Houses Investor” Niche?

Because the last thing I want to answer Austin’s question and he says I work mainly in the We Buy Houses investor niche, I’m an investor as well just recently picked up a new national client. I’m currently building out the new website, what permanent structure would you recommend? company state we buy houses city or company state city, the second one company state city. Again, you don’t want to get us especially with the partial match keyword in the domain itself, or the name the company name, which most likely in the domain. Also, I just again, guys, you don’t need to be spammy with your URL. You can accomplish the optimization through the title tags and the page content. Right. So like the SEO title, the title tags, essentially, the head is heading tags and in the content on the page. You don’t need to put it in the URL, I recommend going with a shorter more succinct URL structure. Okay. Alright, guys, I gotta wrap it up. Sorry about that. I got a call. I gotta now catch a recall. But thanks, Marco for hanging out. And we did our mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we’ll see you all then

  Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246

Click on the video above to watch Episode 246 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: Sweet, we’re live. Oh shit. That’s right. This is going to be the Hey guys, this might be the last hangout on air that we do. Because I’m keep getting notifications that Hangouts On Air is going away August 1. So wait a minute. Let’s see next week is the 31st. Alright, we get one more week. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop Hump Day Hangouts. That just means we’re going to change our streaming format, they won’t affect you guys at all. Just so you know, Hump Day hangouts will still go on, we’re probably going to use Zoom and Stream It directly into the YouTube channel. There’s a way to do that. And I’ve been meaning to try to play with that over the last couple weeks. That said, Hello, everybody. Something hangouts Episode 246. I think. Yes, do 46 it is July 24, 2019. Adam is not here today. That’s why I’m taking over announcing or you know, greetings and all that. And we’ve got Chris on and Marco on I don’t know where the hell Hernan is. He’s missing an action. Or just being tardy today. One of the two. So hey, Chris, how are you?

Chris: doing? Good. Like, super happy to be here as always?

Bradley: Very good. And Marco?

Marco: I’m good man knee-deep in the training. I’m studying man.

Bradley: Oh, yeah, we’re writing which training is at our VIP training.

Marco: It’s only for mastermind members. But, you know, you can get in the mastermind so you can find out what it’s all about.

Bradley: Well, that’s good. Uh, yeah, we can tell a little bit about what it’s about.

Marco: But I wouldn’t say shit. Well, it’s too good. It’s too good meant to give it away for free. It’s too damn good. Okay.

Bradley: I’ll follow your lead on this one. But it’s based around my new business. So I think that’s pretty much what you’re talking about. It’s a fun business. I was just talking to Chris about that. Two of the things that happened today that are pretty cool. So a lot of money to be made. Anyways, with that said, Enough teasing. So first of all, if this is your first time here, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, you can, I would suggest that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get notified of updates when we’re going live. Also, what we do a lot of times is take our you know, not a lot of times we have the question and answers from our Hump Day hangouts that get chopped up into individual q&a videos, and then uploaded to the channel, a separate Q&A video. So we’ve got a shit ton of content, literally thousands of videos on our YouTube channel about SEO and marketing, digital marketing, lead generation, client getting prospecting, you know, pretty much almost everything around digital marketing. So if you have any questions that you can typically find an answer by just going to our YouTube channel, and using the search this channel feature, right? So you just type in your question, and it will likely pull up an answer for you directly within our YouTube channel. But again, I recommend that you subscribe to our channel so that you stay notified of updates.

Also, if you’re just getting started, whether you have a new website that you’re trying to promote, be at local, affiliate, whatever. And it could even work for e-commerce. Or if you’re an established, have established websites you’re trying to promote pick up the Battle Plan. If you’re watching this on the Hump Day Hangouts page, where you can post questions, there are banners in the right sidebar that you can click on to take you over to the Battle Plan, which by the way, I put a POFU live banner on the page today that will take you over to our live event, which was going to be held in Denver, in October this year. And we have, we had a really good first live event last year. And so this year, it’s going to be POFU Live 2019. But those of you who don’t know what POFU Live or POFU means position to fuck you. Maybe we could talk about that in a minute. Maybe a little crude. But there’s a reason that we use that as kind of our slogan.

So with that said, Oh, yeah, Battle Plan. If you have any done need for done for you services, which come on guys, who doesn’t? You know, one of the things we teach a lot of times is not to do all the damn work yourself. Otherwise, you’re just you’re you’re your own boss if you’re doing your own work for generating money, but you’re still trading hours for dollars, essentially. And one of the best things that you can do for your businesses to unload the work, remove it from you. And you can do that either by delegating work, hiring virtual assistants, or employees and learning how to delegate work or finding third-party vendors that can do the work for you which we provide all of the methods that we teach, as done for you services in our store at MGYB.co, which stands for Make Google Your Bitch. So go to MGYB.co there’s a link or a banner in the right sidebar on this page as well, that will take you there so you can see the done for you services. And lastly, I think I’m doing pretty good fulfilling and for Adam. Lastly, join the mastermind. If you really want to take your business to the next level, the mastermind is what it sounds like we don’t just have a bunch of training in the mastermind, although there is a bunch of training in the mastermind. It’s a community of like-minded individuals that are all trying to grow their businesses primarily through digital marketing. And so that the real value in my opinion is not just all of the training, and all of the discounts and all of the first opportunities that new trainings and new products and all of that I think the real value is truly the actual masterminding with other successful and aspiring, you know, people that are ambitious, in other words, people that are trying to grow their businesses and get the most out of life that they can. And it’s I think it’s a great community. We have a Facebook group where we chat on a regular basis about all various types of topics, not just digital marketing, but all different kinds of things. So I would highly encourage you to come join the mastermind to how to do guys you guys want to add to that?

Marco: No, I can Awesome, man.

Bradley: Sweet

Chris: if you want to POFU Live ticket. People should better hurry up. You can get them at pofulive.com. Probably somebody can drop the link. Yeah. And you’re like, I’m super excited, especially for the VIP Plus package. Because like the live event that we’ve booked this special extra day. Oh, man,

Bradley: can we all get together? Did we tell what the live event is? I didn’t know if I was no,

Chris: no, no, no, keep it keep it that it like the one?

Marco: Let’s Let’s wait.

Bradley: So I can’t. So we can’t tell what the VIP event is not the admin. Oh, no, you know what? It’s on the damn sales page Or on the sales page, I can see it

Marco: loving that people go to the sales page. Okay, the live event is and go to Denver.

Bradley: It’s gonna be awesome. I think it’s gonna be awesome. So yeah, go to the sales page, pofulive.com. And you can see what it is. But the VIP event we booked the venue for that. And it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to that. So Denver’s supposed to be a fun city. I’ve never been but looking forward to going so. All right. Let’s do it. Uh, yeah, I guess let’s get into questions. Um, nothing else to announce guys, right.

Chris: I don’t think so. Okay, well, that’s the POFU Live sales page. Let me close that out. All right, here we go. I’ll zoom in a little bit. By the way, there is no storms brewing here. So I think I’ll make it this time. Last week. It’s suck because I got booted off like, within I think 20 minutes. And that was primarily because of the power going out but there are no black clouds outside today. So hopefully everything will go fine.

Bradley: Okay, I’ll take that as a note.

When Is The Availability Of The MGYB Service That Helps Hiring VAs?

Bradley: Okay, Fitz asked seven days ago. And I think that was because it looks like Marco had been commenting. So I’m just going to start after Mark was the last comment. He says, When will we get the service to help us hire VAs come back to MGYB? That’s a good question. That’s something that we probably we’ve talked about doing that reopening that up? I don’t know if when we’re going to do it, though. That’s a good question fits. I think we probably should, but it requires a lot on our end to find and screen VAs, you know, and put them through the interview process and all of that. So typically, we only offer that when we have to when we have a need to hire and we fire up the hiring funnel. And we end up screening, you know, and interviewing several at a time, virtual assistants or you know, a VA and then we end up hiring one or two usually and then all of the other candidates that were qualified, then that’s when we will open that up and say, hey, look, we’ve got some candidates that are available that have you know, passed all their all of our tests and interviews and such like that. And then we’ll make it available. But it’s not something that we have a steady stream of because we’re not constantly hiring. Fortunately, we’ve gotten to the point where we are pretty well, pretty well manned right now. So

Marco: even when we opened it up last time, it was only in in the internet, it was only offered in about in the mastermind. That’s true. And I also all we also offer to train VAs, but again, that was only in the mastermind, that that’s who gets it and I keep telling people the place to be is in our mastermind because you get the most benefits. I mean, from aside from everything that you mentioned, things like this where people are needing VA and we had some train vas and we just offered them to to our mastermind. I mean, it’s just a perk and that’s who gets it the list that we had that went pretty quick. But again, our mastermind is the ones who scooped it up.

Bradley: Yeah. So and I think that’s what cities he was going to try to come back to the mastermind anyway, so I haven’t seen you in there yet, man. Get back in.

What Are The Best Alternatives To Do Local SEO That Has Similar Results With GMB?

next to cinnamon I guess. Sounds like a stripper. So if you’re a stripper now the GMB is touching by Google, what are the best alternatives to do local SEO and get similar results? Well, I don’t know that you can get similar results with anything outside of you know, using GMB stuff. A, you know, I recommend doing what Marco says now, which is when you’re first setting up or trying to verify the listing. If you’re doing that on your own. Did you try to get the listing optimized as much as possible prior to verifying it receiving you know the postcard so that you don’t have to touch it once it’s verified. I have finally Google I’ve talked about this about three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now, one of my longtime clients, all I did was I was in there making a slight edit to their GMB. It’s in the pest control industry. But it’s a valid legit business. It was a real bonafide address, not even a PO Box or anything. It was like their actual business address. It’s a service area business. And it got terminated gets terminated for suspended the GMB did. And I appealed it. And I just got the bullshit reply back this morning from Google saying that it was suspended and that they will not reinstate it due to it not meeting their quality guidelines. And then they linked over to their quality guidelines. You know, doc or whatever, that is stupid, because there is nothing that we did on that page. And there’s nothing about that business that violates their quality guidelines, none whatsoever. And so I sent a reply back saying, you know, please explain there’s, you know, this is a valid, legit business that has not done anything that violates quality guidelines. Now I know I’m not going to get a response. So I already emailed my client to tell them we’re moving on, we got to move on to plan B, because it’s likely that it will never be reinstated. So Plan B is to go out and create a fake parking listing, you know, which sucks, but I’m going to get a listing created in the same or verified in the same damn zip code. So that then all I have to do is I mean, it’s going to suck because I’ve done it been doing SEO for that client for like seven years, I think. So we’ve got like literally over 600 and some citations or maybe even more than that that are going to need to be updated. And it’s going to be a really tedious process, but it’s the only thing that I think that can be done in order to get his GMB back which is just dumb. So as far as Is there anything else that you can do? No, I would recommend if you’re starting a new listing, try to get it set up and optimized as much as possible before it’s verified so that once it’s verified, you don’t have to touch it anymore. I have not seen any suspension to occur from doing GMB posts. But doing anything else on page can suck, can cause trigger suspension, okay can be uploading a photo as an owner or a manager. If you’re uploading a photo, you can upload photos to a GMB by the way as a Google user, not as a manager or an owner. In other words, especially if you’re a local guide, or if you have personas that you built out using something like BrowSEO, for example or Ghost Browser, and you have some, you know, Google profiles out there that have some history and that kind of that it seemed like they’re valid, they’re not, you know, then you can upload photos that way to an actual GMB listing. But I wouldn’t do much with the GMB website, I wouldn’t do much with changing information like the business description or hours of operation or anything service areas or anything, once you have the initial things set up, at least for now, eventually, maybe it’ll get to the point where you can we can do that kind of stuff again, but right now, it’s just google still on a on a rampage. And it’s a bloodbath, and it’s just not something I bed because you could lose it.

Bradley: I mean, the other things that you can do would be local SEO, obviously, you can do pay per click marketing, Google AdWords can be incredibly expensive. It can, it can also work very well. But it can be really expensive. You can set up the Bing Maps listing, but that’s not something I get a lot of traffic from or leads from. I’m sure you guys are aware of that. And then you can work on organic SEO, I don’t get a lot of really good results from organic SEO for local businesses. Because they typically, you know, they’re buried now, especially depending on what kind of business it is. But for most contractors, which is primarily what I work with, there’s almost every industry now has the verified or Google guaranteed, like Carousel of ads above, like at the very top, and then there are ads, and then there are maps. And then like, you know, you’ve got to scroll two-thirds of the way down to the page even get to the organic listings. So you know, Google’s trying to force more people into paying, which is why they have there are Google guarantee ads for service, you know, service type providers. And then there’s the ad section and now the map section, which, you know, I unfortunately that don’t probably end up going paid to I think, think that’s part of the ways that they’re going to end up getting rid of spam is forcing GMB to become a paid listing.

So, you know, I probably didn’t answer that as the way that you wanted to, I would just suggest that you do, you know, hope more of a holistic approach for marketing as opposed to just relying on GMB for leads for a business. Right. So that would include Pay Per Click marketing, not just in for the search, PPC, but also you can do PPC ads for Bing search, which also is the same platform as AOL. Believe it or not, some people still use that not many, and Yahoo. But you can also set up remarketing, you can set up Facebook ads, content marketing, press release marketing, which is called inbound PR marketing, right. So those are all different things that you can do to create more of a holistic marketing approach something that is more than just relying on maps SEO. Marco, you want to add to that,

Marco: I mean, you can still do local GMB. Right, it’s just that what you’ll have to do is you’ll have to work through your clients GMB with the understanding that if you get in there, and you do something, just whatever Google is really touchy that it might get suspended. So the client has to understand the risk and that it might not be recovered. Now, when I run into something like that, when a client suspends or what I recommend, when you have a client suspend the GMB is have the client, talk to Google. And if you’re going to go in and call Google and talk to them, act really stupid and ignorant and you don’t know what the fuck was going on. You hired this guy, he took your money, just do whatever you have to do to get that GMB recovered, because that’s somebody’s livelihood. Right. So that’s something that you have to understand in the local space. Most of the traffic, as Bradley just said, comes through that three-pack, it comes through those listings, it comes to those calls. Now, of course, it’s things that you could do organically, to push that up. And if you’re working on a local GMB level, local GMB Pro, those methods that are taught in that training, they still work. And if you push on that with an RYS stack, press release stack behind it and the link building behind that it’s going to push it up into the three pack. The question is, are you going to have that property to push up into the three-pack? It’s not likely you could have it I mean, the methods that Bradley taught prior to all this, it still works, go to the post office, yet a post, post, peel box with street address, push that up into the three-pack, those methods are still viable. The thing that we can’t do is verify businesses anymore. I mean, MGYB we did it for we can’t do that anymore. And the thing we can’t do is since they were Yeah, they have spammed addresses they were they were just totally fake addresses, sometimes empty fields, garbage cans, we would verify anything, it didn’t matter. You can’t get them back, you can’t recover those. And so what do you do? You’re stuck out there with nothing. So it depends on what you mean by local SEO, and get similar results.

Bradley: Yeah.

Will Google Penalize A Partial Matched Domain?

Yep. Okay. So next is Gordon Gordon. What’s up, buddy? He says, Hey, guys, thank you very much again, for the help you provide. You’re welcome. You said last week’s session was cut very short by storm. So I’m posting my question again. Okay. Thank you, because otherwise, it would have gotten Miss Gordon. He says, if you’ve already gone back and covered last week, missed questions, please just ignore this. No. And I have not. You mentioned previously, that was not a good idea to use a keyword match domain for a local business site. But if you use something like top local plumber, com or top local plumber is not a keyword you intend on targeting? Where you tend to target excuse me, will you still run the risk of a Google penalty when you optimize the site for targeted plumber related keywords and the specific geolocation just because you have plumber and the domain name now, because, you know, that seems that’s natural that what I was talking about was an exact match. So a lot of times, you know, you can use a partial match keyword, because a lot of times the service will be part of the brand name, right. Like, you know, Joe’s plumbing, for example, right plumbing is part of his name. But what I’m talking about is not using exact match keywords, if you want to rank for you know, I use this example all the time, but plumbing, Fairfax VA or plumber, Fairfax VA, like, if you had that exact match domain, that’s what’s real can cause the filters, right to be a bit more sensitive, that can cause Panda, Panda type penalties, really, over-optimization penalties. And that’s because it essentially you’ve already got you to know, you’re you’re putting up red flags, saying that you’re already a, you know, an SEO, in other words, you’re starting off with everything that the bots look at, from that point forward from the moment that they come to scan your domain, it’s through the lens of it’s like an SEO Slanted Lens, right? Because it knows that it’s an exact match keyword. And so it just makes running you you run the risk of all of the additional optimization that you’re doing of over-optimizing, right, but a partial match isn’t quite the same. Because like I said, a lot of times brand names will have a partial match keyword as part of the brand name. And that makes perfect sense to do. So whether you’re adding like city, like the location as a partial match or a product or service, especially for local, then it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re not just combining the two is my point. So, you know, again, now, if you already have plumber and the domain name, then, you know, just keep that in mind when you’re creating like your URL structures and things like that, especially if you’re siloed your site, which you probably should, you know, you I recommend going with the virtual silo now as opposed to the physical silo, we’ve talked about that in the past a physical silo is that category slash post name, permalink structure and WordPress where you visit, literally see the silo structure, the hierarchy of the categories within the URL, right? That’s really unnecessary. I used to build all of my sites that way because I liked seeing that hierarchy in the URL. But now you can actually, it’s better off, in my opinion, to have a shorter URL. So if you just go with the posting, permalink structure, then you can avoid having, you know, multiple occurrences of the keyword within the URL, which can cause issues too. So just keep all of that in mind. But no short answer is you’re at you should be fine if you’re just using a partial match keyword, or and I say keyword, but it could be like a location and the domain as opposed to actual keywords that make sense. You know, I’ve used this as an example. But like home pros could be a generic business name for general contractors or remodelers or deck builders or, you know, pretty much any sort of home service type contractor home pros could be a brand new, so you could put like the city name, like Fairfax home pros, right could be a potential name for any type of really any type of contractor that’s in the home service industry. And so that would have the location modifier as a partial match keyword. Right, but not the actual service. But you could have like, you know, plumbing pros could be a plumber, you know, so you could, in that case, you could say, you know, Fairfax plumbing pros. Now that case, I would say that’s a little bit too close to being over-optimized. You see it, I’m saying so just try to find something that would be maybe a bit more vague or a lesser, a less common type of term that is synonymous with what you’re trying to promote, to make it to where it’s not going to over-optimize or tripping over-optimization filter for everything else that you do on-site. That’s all I’m saying. Was that clear as mud or what?

Marco: No, that was clear. Okay. Be careful with over-optimization. That’s all.

Hernan: Bradley.

Bradley: There’s Hernan you’re tardy, man.

Hernan: I’m sorry, did I completely lost track of time launching Facebook ads campaigns? I was in the vortex. So I do apologize.

Bradley: So what you’re saying is if the Hangouts isn’t as important to, you know, no, no, I think

Marco: you’ll be I think he’s using code because Adam used to call it running in the woods running in the woods.

Hernan: Yeah, right. Right. For me, it’s launching campaigns. Right?

Bradley: That’s it.

What Is The Long Term Benefit Of Press Release For A Site And GMB Listing?

Alright, the next question from Gordon, he says, if you’ve already got, let’s say, since most sites that the press releases are destroyed, we will purge the PR in 30 days or so other than a short term bump of SEO juice or traffic, what is the purpose or long term benefit of press release? For a site or GMB listing since the benefit appears to go away after a month or so? Well, we’ve covered this in the Local PR Pro and in the mastermind and stuff like that, I’ll tell you kind of on a more conceptual or higher level. First of all, when you’re you should be stacking, we just covered this a neat little last MGYB webinar that we did last week, by the way, last Thursday. So if you go to the mgyb.co/store/webinar, you can see it, you can also go to our YouTube channel and search for PR stacking, or press release SEO, either one of those, and you’ll see the video that like Marco and I did an hour long webinar where we talk very specifically about how to get the best results with press releases. So if you’re doing the press release stack method, which is daisy chaining, press releases together, then the idea is to find the press releases that do not purge for example, like on Press Advantage, it would be the press releases that are published on that domain, or Digital Journals, another one and there are others. But find the ones that do not purge and use those as part of the stack, right so that you’re essentially daisy-chaining them together. Something else is press releases, I think should be an ongoing method, something that you continually do. You don’t have to do them, you know, all that often. But as I suggested in the webinar last week that I, for all of my clients, even my lowest paying clients, they’re getting now at least two a month or higher playing my most of my, my average client gets one press release per week. And I know that seems like a lot. But I do that because they’re really, really powerful. And, you know, we the way that especially that we talked last week in the webinar, which again, you guys can find that on our YouTube channel. It works really well to come to us to constantly publish press releases, right? You silo them together, or that you step we talked about the PR silo stack last week, which is something new. That’s working well, I’ve been testing that for several weeks now and it’s been working really well, then that’s how you won’t, you’ll end up preventing the juice, as you mentioned here from disappearing. It’s funny, but when we first came out with a local PR pro method, which is shit, that’s probably two years ago now.

I had done a whole lot of testing initially, and so did Rob. And it was funny, because once we had fully proven the process or the method that it worked, and we were able to duplicate it across many different properties. I tested it on 15. I know Rob tested it on many as well. It was funny, but I kind of kind of really stopped publishing press releases for a lot of the properties that I had used in proving that, you know, and testing and proving the method. And it was funny because about I taught originally to PR stack link to the top local PR that was published. So in other words, if you were to if you were targeting a local, and it was called local PR Pro, so if you were targeting a local keyword, a lot of times you would find a particular one of the media sites that it was republished on would rank really well for a local term. Right, so your press release would rank on one of those published domains. And in my case, for a lot of the sites that our clients that I have in Virginia and the lead gen sites and things like that, we had an NBC 12 or something was one it was Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate website. It was their affiliate website, that would it would publish on. So in other words, it was a local Richmond being the capital of Virginia, that one typically ranked very well for any sort of local Virginia business that I was trying to promote press releases. So originally, I would say we would link within a PR stack to whatever the top local ranked press release was in the stack. But then that’s when I found out a couple of months later that they purge. And how did I find that out? Well, because of all of a sudden for things that were kicking ass rankings, especially maps listings, that we that I had pushed with nothing other than press releases. After about three months or so I saw started seeing a lot of those dropping off or falling, you know, several positions in maps. And upon investigation, I found out that most of the press releases that we had been linking to within the stack had been purged from the sites. So that’s why I added some additional training to the PR pro method, which was to only link to PR is that don’t get purged. So find the publication sites that don’t get purged use those in the stack or setup redirect links within the press releases, like a domain. So you can do custom domain redirects or you know like you can use the pretty links plugin and your own domain or something like that. So that you can one day purge, you can go back in and change the target or destination URL within the redirect to another press release. That is still published. Now, I don’t recommend doing that. Because if you’re doing this as an ongoing thing, you’re going to constantly have to go back and edit redirect links. And think if you’re doing this on a regular basis that is going to compound they’re going to accumulate to where you’re going to have more and more and more redirects to edit as time goes on. And so that’s not an efficient way to run a business. So your best bet is to just find the press releases that don’t hurt. As I said, press advantage it would be you can link to the media page of the organization page, you could link to the press releases published on the press advantage domain, you could link to the digital journal. And you can also look through there are a few others in there as well that you could find, if you do any of the upgraded services as you know, Yahoo financial, or, you know, yahoo finance or whatever, or AP news or anything like that a lot of the times those won’t purge either you can link to those also. Okay. So once again, the short answer is continually posted PR hours, but use the date the silo stat or the stacking method, preferably the siloed stacking method again, go watch the webinar that we posted last week, and link to the other press releases that aren’t going to purge. Right. It’s a good question, though, Gordon,

Marco: I think that the great part of this is that you get that media room. Right? Yeah, and all of your releases get published, or that you get a blurb in that media room. And so when you when you’re doing link building, and you link build into your organization page, as they call it, in press advantage, all of the press releases that are in their benefit. And everything within that press release is linked to also benefits. And it ends up in whichever whatever syndication pages are still active, right? Because the other is are either up, there’ll be a forum for not found, or whatever area you’re going to get that because they’ve been they’ve probably, but the idea is that that the ones that haven’t parts, they keep benefiting just from that just from link building into that organization page or that media center.

Bradley: There you go. So there it is, by the way, just go to YouTube, you can go directly to our channel and search our channel and you’ll see it there. But you can also just go to YouTube and type in PR stacking. And it’s the first video or if you type in press release SEO. It’s the fourth or fifth video. So again, guys, just go check that video out. It’s it was an hour and one minute long. We just streamed it five days ago. And it’s very, very powerful method.

Hernan: And while you’re at it, you can also hit that subscribe button because damn

Bradley: right you can

Hernan: Oh, yeah.

Bradley: All right back at it.

How Would You Handle A Know-It-All SEO Client Prospect?

Muhammad’s up. I think we have answered this question in the past, but we’ll answer it again. We’ve got time. Hey, guys, I’m talking to a prospect is presenting a challenge. They’re interested in what I have to say. But at the same time, they’re annoying, you know, the kind of prospect that read an SEO blogger too, and thinks that they’re the bee’s knees. They think they know it all. And normally I would just to walk away way but this guy came to me and seems genuinely interested. What’s the best way to handle this? Do I just brute force my way through my showing how much more I know. Is there a smarter way?

Henan: Run like the wind!

Bradley: Yeah. Honestly, I, I know. Muhammad, you’ve kind of answered your own question. Do you know that? If they’re a pain in the ass now, no matter what you do, they’re always going to question it, because they’re always going to suggest that they know a better way or that they know more. Right? So no matter if you brute force your way through it now, as you mentioned, and kind of bludgeon them over the head with what you know how much smarter you are, or how much more SEO knowledge you have than them, then again, all that’s going to happen is it’s going to quiet them maybe for a moment, or two, or day or two a week or two, maybe a month or two. But they’re going to come back. And second guests are question what you’re doing, you know, going forward at some point in time, they’re going to think they’re going to read another SEO blog post or two, and come back and question. And it’s funny because this, you know, after the question about PR press releases, I was actually doing some searches on Google the other day about press releases. And I saw like an SEO Roundtable, a post that was just published in the last few months about that was specifically a post from the I guess the Google Hangout that they do with, you know, Robert molar, or whatever his name is Miller or whatever the hell His name is, and the Google Gods on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, whatever. And, you know, they republish those, like highlights from that on a lot of the SEO blogs. I think it was SEO roundtable specifically. And one of the questions that it was just a short clip from the webinar, but it was basically saying press releases don’t work for SEO. And it was Google, like Robert Miller, or whatever the hell his name is the one it was saying. And so they highlighted that in a blog post on SEO roundtable about our press releases don’t work for SEO. Yeah, well, that’s bullshit. I love it when Google says stuff doesn’t work because that usually means it does work. And they want you to stop doing it because it works. Right? That’s why they say, oh, it doesn’t work. So it’s funny because, you know, your, your client or prospective client here will go read it, especially like, for example, in all of my SEO strategy, like methods for all of my clients, press releases are a part of the strategy. Now. It’s, there’s no, it’s not an add on. I mean, it’s an add on service for existing clients that didn’t have it. But for all new proposals, it’s part of my SEO retainer package, right, because it’s just part of what I do. It’s a foundational method. And so if I had a client that came to me and said, Well, I see press releases, I saw on an SEO roundtable blog posts that Google said the press releases don’t work for SEO. You know, that would piss me off. Because I know for a fact that they do. And they do work, right. And so my point is, you’re no matter what it is that you say or do now, if that’s the type of a client, or business or person that’s going to, you know, continually brush up on SEO blogs and try to expand their you know, what they think is their SEO knowledge, they’re always going to come back and question what you’re doing. So personally, like, like, Ron said, I would tuck my tail between my legs and run away.

Hernan: Yeah, I think I think it’s like, I think that you’re totally right, Bradley, and, and this comes after working with several of these types of guys. Right? And I think it’s, it’s, it’s like a disposition, like, they’re, they’re already starting the conversation with that disposition with that attitude, if you would, right. So it’s gonna, I mean, you don’t need to prove your worth to anyone, like, the reality is that people need to be educated, your job is not to educate a client, or how awesome you are, it’s just like, you know, do your job, because otherwise, you’re like, that’s double the amount of energy investment that you need to put, you need to put energy into working and making things work. And you also need to put energy on explaining what you’re doing. And, you know, it’s just a waste of time, in my opinion, so you know, there’s, there’s a lot of clients out there. That’s, that’s the that’s at least the position that I take when something is not entirely right. And trust your gut feeling Mohammed, like, you’ve been doing this long enough, and you’ve been having great results. So I would trust your gut feeling on this one. Because from the perspective that there’s a lot of clients out there, so it’ll be my take on it. You know, my,

Marco: my answer to that goes until this guy, why the fuck is he wasting your time? If he thinks that you’re the expert, if he’s coming to you, as the expert in the matter? Why in the fuck is he giving you his opinion? The fuck you care? I mean, just Just tell him off, man, this is so ridiculous. You go to the doctor and tell Hey, during the operation, you might take me off the end. Just I can tell you what you need to do next. Who the fuck does that? No, Mohammed? No. I mean, you know, the fuck away from this guy. tell tell him No, no, go keep reading your blogs, and I’ll just go my way. And we’re good. That’s it?

Bradley: Yeah. And the best way, as I said, is just, you know, don’t argue just, I would run away from that, that prospect anyways. But the point is, is just you just show results, you don’t have to explain methods. You know what I mean? Like, you can just say, look, this is the kind of results I can get, show portfolios, you know, showcase how the type of results that you can get. And that’s it, that should be all the explaining you need. Right? And if somebody wants, you know, you don’t, like Marco said, you don’t go to the doctor and tell the doctor how to do their job, or you don’t go into an auto mechanic and tell them how to do their job, right? You just you go. And if they’ve got, if they’ve got a good reputation and for getting results and fixing cars, then you go and you give them your damn car, you know, I mean, so you gotta treat it the same way. So I totally agree with what both of them said.

Where Should You Focus Your SEO Resources If You Have A Wholesale Real Estate Business?

Ernest says, Hey, guys, thanks for the free live. I hope to join mastermind on my business to become self-sufficient. I’m following the battle plan for a new site. I boarded the press releases syndication network and backlinking in the last week I wholesale real estate in a media market. Okay, cool. So it’s good business. Any suggestions on where to devote most of my resources, I plan to finish a battle plan in the next two weeks. Thanks for everything. Yeah, drive stack? Absolutely, it’s going to be a part of that, in my opinion, that’s foundational, once again, so press release syndication net, like again, that just like the battle plan, says, syndication network is a great start, and in or press release. But as I just mentioned, a press release, great to announce when you’re starting a new website, or a new business, or whatever, it’s kind of announcing it to the world like, Hey, this is a new web property or a new business that’s being started or whatever the case, may new location, opening up whatever. But then, you know, you should start factoring in press releases as an ongoing strategy. Number one, backlinking to the syndication network, to the press release, or the organization page, preferably, is a good strategy, but also remember to, you know, maybe months to get a drive stack, right. And then also, you’re going to want to build backlinks to the drive stack. So those are some of the things that you can do now, you know, this is not SEO related, but I can tell you that I’m getting good results with pay per click marketing for in the real estate industry, you know, for for flipping properties, essentially, I’m getting good results with PPC marketing. And so I would, I would suggest you take a look into that as well, because it will, you know, SEO may take you a little bit of time, especially if you’re wholesaling houses, I mean, I’m assuming you’re wholesaling houses, but I don’t know that to be true. But that’s a little bit more competitive than perhaps the business that I’m in. So it may take you a little while to get some significant results with SEO. Whereas with the pay per click marketing, you can get results almost overnight. And also be sure to set up remarketing. You know, like a use Google Tag Manager. Go, there’s training for that that you can find on YouTube and all kinds of stuff on how to set up Google Tag Manager. Create a remarketing list, you know, you got to add the remarketing tag in Tag Manager. All of that but then set up some remarketing ads, the Google Display Network is much much easier to set up ads on now than it’s ever been. And once you start once you get over 100 people on your remarketing list, so 100 people that have visited your cell seller lead capture page, which is I know what you’re doing if you’re wholesaling properties, right. Then once 100 people have visited your page, you can start serving remarketing ads. And those tend to work really well too. Because if somebody lands on your page but doesn’t convert, let’s say that they don’t turn into you know, they don’t submit their information for their about their property, then you can follow them around the web for as much as 540 days with remarketing ads saying like you know, reminding them that you’re there and that you’re willing to buy their property. So it makes sense. So again, it’s a great way to get conversions out of people that have visited your site that didn’t convert then, but at a later date when time and circumstance have changed their situation. And they’re ready at that point to make that sale that you know, to sell their property possibly to you. You want to constantly remind them that you’re there. Does that make sense? So remarketing is really really important for that business model. I think it’s important for all local, all businesses period anymore, guys, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t be using remarketing. And Hernan can speak to the Facebook side of it. But specifically for Google and SEO and stuff like that I would recommend looking into PPC and certainly remarketing.

Hernan: Yeah, totally, totally 100% agree with, with what you should stay there because we’re trying to get as many touchpoints with the people that are coming to our websites as possible. I read the other day that I think it was for I think it was like for consumer electronics, which is a really hot niche, right that people like buy stuff online all the time. I think that there was a there was this calculation made that people need at something like 32 touching points at this point to make a purchase from the first point from the first starting point all the way up until they purchase something 32 touchpoint. That’s a long, that’s a long cycle. And we’re talking about consumer electronics when we’re talking about real estate in general specific wholesaling. The lead time is like, it could be six months, it could be a year, you know, so people are going into system right now. If you’re capturing leads, they might not be ready to pull the trigger a year from now. And that’s fine. You know, that’s the lay of the land. So yeah, I totally, totally agree with what you’re saying not only in terms of PPC and in terms of remarketing retargeting on Facebook, right? Like, you know, even if it’s if it’s like a low budget type of stuff, you know, you’re leveraging really qualified traffic from Google, which is usually really qualified if people are like, inputting their queries on search, and they are clicking on your website and visiting, they’re really qualified, and then you can follow them around with the GDN, the Google Display Network, and the, you know, Facebook as well. So it’s pretty cool.

Marco: I don’t see a drive stack on the list.

Bradley: Well, I did mention that I told him, You gotta drive stack.

Marco: Next Yeah. And then, but the order of progression is, for the rest of you guys. If you’re going to be ordering the battle plan and looking into it, if you want to, you want to verify that it’s we did the entity, a webinar, right, where we talk about this, it’s your syndication network, and drive stack, you order those and as soon as you get your syndication network back, you put that with your drive stack order. So that then you’re when you hit your drive stacking and G site with the press release, everything will benefit everything attached to that drive second, and G site will benefit from the press releases, the press releases should be a stack, and then behind that link building. So that’s I mean, that that’s really the order that the link building you should order, like at the very end when everything is set up, right, ready to go that first PR is ready. You hit it. And then once your PR stack is ready, right, four or five down the line that’s around three or four is when you get all that Google love starts coming in. You hit it again. So that everything it creates like a what that duty is to call it a slipstream, right. Yeah, Link link stream. I think it was Becker. I’m thinking, Alex Becker, but he’s a slipstream. So credit where credit is due he is the one he’s the one who used to mention that too when thinking of linking this way, so that you’re shooting a straight stream of link building juice into that drive stack and G site. And then everything that’s attached to it, right your money sites, your inner pages, even and even your Google site will benefit from everything that you’re doing. So hopefully, you’ll take this and try to work that in so that your next PR will benefit everything that you do or your next set of PR, and your link building will benefit everything in that stream.

What Schema Should You Use On City Pages That Do Not Have Separate GMBs?

Agreed. Austin says, Hey, would you What would I guess what type of schema would you recommend on city pages that do not have separate GM B’s, which actually create citations or profiles for the city pages? Well, I don’t know if it’s just a page that’s highlighting a city like for example if you’ve only got one location, but you’re and I’m just assuming that this what you’re talking about? Because you say you’re not you don’t have separate Jimmy’s, it’s probably a business that is targeting multiple locations, but it might only have one physical location, right? Well, that’s perfectly fine. You would want to use organization or corporation type markup schema markup, which that can go site wide or global. Right. And in that case, I you know, I, I don’t know that I would do individual. I don’t know that you can even do local schema unless it has its own physical location that’s corresponding with the location that you’re trying to mark up. That makes sense because I’ve never done that. But organization or corporation markup could be something that you put on the site sitewide for the brand, essentially, that’s branded markup, right? There are two different types. There’s the organization, there’s Corporation, just go figure out which one’s the better option for you. And then I would put that site-wide, as far as what you could do on the city pages, you know, with the different types of markup that are available now, like article markup, image markup video markup, there are all those things that you could do on the pages to try to get squeeze more power out of them. Without it requiring local business markup, which requires a physical location, right? Local Business markup has to have an address associated with it, right. And that’s so that so again, you don’t want to use local, you can’t really use local markup on individual city pages unless they have their own. And I’m using air quotes, but the physical location, that makes sense. So I would, you know, I would, I would just go stick with organization or corporation markup for the brand that could be site-wide like it could be a global type of schema markup. And then you could do content markup, with you know, different elements of the page could be marked up to help try to squeeze more power out of it. As far as citations, now at once again, you don’t want to create, you know, really create citations unless something has a physical location, right? At least not the way that we talk about citations when it comes to local stuff. When you can create co-citation that’s different, but we’re not going to get into that right now. But what I’m saying is, in he says, By the way, loving the press advantage, I’m unlimited plan, you all turned me on to last month. Well, that’s great. And so here’s the thing, you would only need one brand page, right? Let���s just say that. And again, I’m just making an assumption here that you’ve got a brand that you’re trying to promote. It has, let’s just say one physical location, but you’re trying to promote multiple locations or cities to where you’re getting traction in SEO for terms that are associated with those location modifiers, right. That’s what I’m assuming you’re trying to do. So what you can do is again, go back and watch the PR stacking webinar that Marco and I did last week. And you’ll see what I’m talking about when I talk about the PR silo stack. Right. And so you would want to silo your website correctly. And then you can start using your press advantage unlimited plan that you, you’re glad that you got and I’m glad you got it as well, to start using press releases in the same way that you would silo your website, it’s called theme mirroring, right, you mirror the silo structure from your website, you press releases, and also do it with a drive stack. Same thing with the folder folder and file structure within your drive stack and your Google site. Right, you want to mirror all of that together and then use press releases as a as a great strategy for link building to kind of help push the power of all that and you can string those together to where you can create PR silos when you only need one organization page, right? One brand page for that. So yeah, I wouldn’t try to create multiple brand pages that for different locations, because you don’t actually have a physical location for those. So you wouldn’t want like citations that because the citations would you know, mean that you’re going to have a physical address, or at least a city state zip. And I wouldn’t do that, I would just go with one brand page and then create silo structure and use that to kind of push into those other areas. Right.

Marco: As far as the schema, there is the city and place schema can get ridiculous when you start looking into it. But there’s also a when you do city and play schema, you could do service, you could do product and brand. You can do man, I was just looking at this the other day, you can do areas area, sir. If there are departments, you can do departments, you could do legal names, you could do a location schema, oh, no, sorry, you can’t do location. Because that that requires either a place or a postal address. So that’s what you have to be really careful with this. But there are tons of ways where you can mark up your city page without having to go with location. Yeah.

How Do You Create A Blog Content For A Lead Gen Site Targeted To Real Estate Photography And Videography?

Bradley: So next question is Hey, guys, I’m back with my photography lead gen side, I’ve decided to go after the real estate photography and videography niche, essentially making a promotional video for properties. My question is, how do I create blog content for this niche. I understand that you should make content that appeals to the people in your niche with the power to link to your articles, but it’s a bit of a stretch with local businesses sometimes, yeah, you just kind of get creative and try to think about, you know, how what what could be useful whole to people that are in that, you know, like, for example, people that are looking to buy or sell real estate, right, that’s what I would do, I would come up with content for people that are looking, you know, helpful content. So like how to stage homes, right how to prepare homes for fast to sell faster, to be more to have more curb appeal, right? How to, I don’t know how to maybe for by people interested in buying real estate, you could do content on you know how to improve credit scores, how to get the find the best loan rates, or mortgage rates, you know, different types of mortgages, you know, all those things that are related, and they would be useful information to somebody that would be buying or selling real estate. Does that make sense? If that’s what you’re doing, if your target market is realtors, then I would talk about marketing like that I would be blogging about marketing and marketing principles on how realtors could get better results using various types of formats, media, you know, that kind of stuff and combining all of them together. My point is, who is your audience, if your audience is a buyer or seller, of real estate, so like an end-user, or property owners or people that want to be property owners, right, which would-be buyers, then you want to talk about way, like in my opinion, you would want to have helpful content on how to get better and faster results at selling their properties. Like for somebody that is interested in listing a house for you know, putting their house up for sale or land up for sale, whatever the case may be, or and then likewise, for buyers, same thing, like what could you educate potential buyers on on how to get make the buying process easier, how to get the best deals, how to negotiate you know, all those kind of things. But again, if your target audience is like real estate professionals because you’re providing them with property listing, photo servicing or video videos for, you know, like virtual tours and stuff like that, then I would talk about marketing stuff and how to get better results. With with marketing for real estate stuff. Does that make sense? So that’s what I would do. Just think about who your audience is, and what would be helpful to them and create content around that. By the way, I don’t recommend that you do that. What I would recommend you doing is finding somebody that is good at that kind of stuff. Like if you’re doing blog content, find a good writer that has topic, you know, experience with that particular topic. Because they’re going to have that ability to find stuff that’s helpful to that industry. Go to up work. Look for people that are real estate writers, for example. You know, blog writers and article writers that are have experienced in the real estate industry, because then it takes the burden off of you to have to come up with all of those ideas and puts it on them and that’s what you pay them for. So it makes sense. Good question though.

How Do You Change A GMB Listing’s Name Without Compromising Its Current Rankings?

Brian says wondering how to handle this. My client is a local franchise store. Six months in business citations are messed up because I added a primary keyword to the company name and the GMB listing. But that keyword is not on any citations that GMB is listed as brand name plus city plus keyword plus city. Wow, that’s pretty spammy. I’m surprised it hasn’t been suspended yet. But anyways, his GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in a metro area. But the citations show his name only his brand name plus city without the keyword My concern is a big drop in GMB traffic if I take out the keyword from the GMB listing to make to match the citations. Not only that, but right now if you try editing your GMB name, it’s likely it will be suspended. Especially because it’s already spammy In my opinion because you do have too much stuff in there. And if you try to change anything on a listing that could potentially be flagged as spammy anyways, that could trigger the suspension. So I would recommend not taking it out, you know, six months ago, I would have said, Get rid of that extra keyword in there because it’s spammy. But you know, I right now, I would recommend not trying to edit it. That said, so add the keyword to the citation listings, you can. But you know, personally, I think you’re being a bit too spammy this way. Like in other words, I wouldn’t recommend ever doing those guys adding the keyword to a brand name just for the sake of SEO, because it’s not the actual brand name of the business. Right, if the business’s name is is whatever the company name is, then I would have never set up the GMB that way. Now I understand where you’re sweet, you know, you squeeze the keyword in there for a reason to get better results with the Google Map. But that’s not a really valid reflection of the company or the brand name, is it. And so what I’m saying is you’ve already got you’ve already done that you can’t take that back. I mean, you could but it’s very likely that the listing would be suspended if you tried to edit that right now. So you’re pretty much stuck with that right now. So you’re saying Should I go out and try to update the published citations on the web to now include that name? Well, no, because it’s not a true representation of the business right. And again, you have created invigoration or site NAP data issues, right? There are discrepancies there, which can cause problems. So you know, I don’t really have a good answer for you there. I would leave the citations the way that they are. Let’s see.

Is GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in the metro area? But yeah, so I would leave it as it is man. And actually what I would do is continue building citations with just the brand name the way that you should write and then at some point in the future, maybe the Jambi bloodbath will end. And you could go back and actually change the GMB name back to just the brand name, which is the way it should be really in my opinion, guys, I always recommend that don’t spam. You know, you want the brand name to be a reflection like the citations published on the web, including the maps listing as a reflection of the business name, in my opinion, because then it’s all congruent. That makes sense. So, you know, I hope that probably doesn’t give you the answer that you want. I you know, if it were that you were trying to update the citations to remove that that that name, then I would say absolutely go update the citations. Get rid of the spamminess. But now you’re saying Should I go out and make the citations more spammy? And I would say absolutely not. All right.

How Long Does Google Sandbox New Domains?

Don says, How long would you say we gotta wrap it up? In a couple of minutes? Guys? I’ve got an actual appointment phone appointment in a couple of minutes. How long would you say the Google sandbox in new domains websites for these days? That’s a good question. Marco. I haven’t tested anything recently. Do we have numbers is still 21 days? or What is it?

Marco: Yeah, it, it does. It’s not necessarily for a brand new website, right. It’s just the fact of how much activity you do on it. So that you do trigger that 21 day period, right where the website starts dancing. And then you trigger the seven What if you do anything within that, within that time, especially link building, it can go into a 70 day sandbox period. So now you’ve extended and if you do anything during that time, it can be permanently sandboxed, which means basically, you’ll never, or hardly ever be able to get that website into the first page. The Google dances real, don’t like that’s tested. We know we’ve seen it time after time, after time where we do something, you know, drive stack was link building, or maybe even just embed, right we do an embed run and you’ll see it starts fluctuating dancing, dropping on and off, in and out. But that’s just the algorithm trying to figure out what where this belongs. And however long it takes the algorithms to figure it out is how it’s how long your new website will take to rank I’ve seen them like ranking. And I’ve managed to rank them in less than 30 days. So it’s not safe. Okay, so 60 days, it’s 90 days. No, it is the Google dance. There is a period 21 days, three weeks it’s in, it’s in the patent, you’ll see the west side, if you do whatever it is even a change on the page, right? If you go in and start editing the page, or pages on a website, it’ll trigger it. And you’ll see that it will it sometimes it even drops off the index it looks like and then oftentimes it comes back even better than before. So that’s 21 days, 70 days, that you can extend it. And then you can actually literally sandbox yourself forever, where no matter how much you do to it, or what you do, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to get out of that. You might as well just take that page down and start a new one and try to rank that. That’s what I’ve seen and tested.

Unknown Speaker 59:42 I’m going to answer that it’s five o'clock and I literally have another call. I’ve got a handle but I want to answer the next two very, very quickly because I didn’t guys have got to wrap it up.

Do You Think Google Penalizes GMB Verified Listings That Are Very Close To Each Other?

Nolemkt says in June there was a Google update that knocked my GMB listing out of the three-pack. So I purchased the battle plan v3. A question is I have another verified GMB about five miles away from the same business. could this have triggered a filter and penalize mother GMB? Yes, actually, that could be what’s called a pigeon filter issue. I’ve experienced that, especially if it’s only five miles away, that can create a proximity-based penalty. Essentially, if there are two businesses that are two with locations too close to each other, unless you make them unique, more unique somehow or another like stuffing a keyword or a city name, a city name into the title of the brand name to make it more unique, but I don’t recommend doing that. So it could be that but without knowing a little bit more about it or researching and I couldn’t tell you but that could be part of it.

And I got the damn call coming in right now. I have to call him back in a moment.

What Permalink Structure Do You Recommend For A “We Buy Houses Investor” Niche?

Because the last thing I want to answer Austin’s question and he says I work mainly in the We Buy Houses investor niche, I’m an investor as well just recently picked up a new national client. I’m currently building out the new website, what permanent structure would you recommend? company state we buy houses city or company state city, the second one company state city. Again, you don’t want to get us especially with the partial match keyword in the domain itself, or the name the company name, which most likely in the domain. Also, I just again, guys, you don’t need to be spammy with your URL. You can accomplish the optimization through the title tags and the page content. Right. So like the SEO title, the title tags, essentially, the head is heading tags and in the content on the page. You don’t need to put it in the URL, I recommend going with a shorter more succinct URL structure. Okay. Alright, guys, I gotta wrap it up. Sorry about that. I got a call. I gotta now catch a recall. But thanks, Marco for hanging out. And we did our mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we’ll see you all then

  Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246

Click on the video above to watch Episode 246 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: Sweet, we’re live. Oh shit. That’s right. This is going to be the Hey guys, this might be the last hangout on air that we do. Because I’m keep getting notifications that Hangouts On Air is going away August 1. So wait a minute. Let’s see next week is the 31st. Alright, we get one more week. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop Hump Day Hangouts. That just means we’re going to change our streaming format, they won’t affect you guys at all. Just so you know, Hump Day hangouts will still go on, we’re probably going to use Zoom and Stream It directly into the YouTube channel. There’s a way to do that. And I’ve been meaning to try to play with that over the last couple weeks. That said, Hello, everybody. Something hangouts Episode 246. I think. Yes, do 46 it is July 24, 2019. Adam is not here today. That’s why I’m taking over announcing or you know, greetings and all that. And we’ve got Chris on and Marco on I don’t know where the hell Hernan is. He’s missing an action. Or just being tardy today. One of the two. So hey, Chris, how are you?

Chris: doing? Good. Like, super happy to be here as always?

Bradley: Very good. And Marco?

Marco: I’m good man knee-deep in the training. I’m studying man.

Bradley: Oh, yeah, we’re writing which training is at our VIP training.

Marco: It’s only for mastermind members. But, you know, you can get in the mastermind so you can find out what it’s all about.

Bradley: Well, that’s good. Uh, yeah, we can tell a little bit about what it’s about.

Marco: But I wouldn’t say shit. Well, it’s too good. It’s too good meant to give it away for free. It’s too damn good. Okay.

Bradley: I’ll follow your lead on this one. But it’s based around my new business. So I think that’s pretty much what you’re talking about. It’s a fun business. I was just talking to Chris about that. Two of the things that happened today that are pretty cool. So a lot of money to be made. Anyways, with that said, Enough teasing. So first of all, if this is your first time here, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, you can, I would suggest that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get notified of updates when we’re going live. Also, what we do a lot of times is take our you know, not a lot of times we have the question and answers from our Hump Day hangouts that get chopped up into individual q&a videos, and then uploaded to the channel, a separate Q&A video. So we’ve got a shit ton of content, literally thousands of videos on our YouTube channel about SEO and marketing, digital marketing, lead generation, client getting prospecting, you know, pretty much almost everything around digital marketing. So if you have any questions that you can typically find an answer by just going to our YouTube channel, and using the search this channel feature, right? So you just type in your question, and it will likely pull up an answer for you directly within our YouTube channel. But again, I recommend that you subscribe to our channel so that you stay notified of updates.

Also, if you’re just getting started, whether you have a new website that you’re trying to promote, be at local, affiliate, whatever. And it could even work for e-commerce. Or if you’re an established, have established websites you’re trying to promote pick up the Battle Plan. If you’re watching this on the Hump Day Hangouts page, where you can post questions, there are banners in the right sidebar that you can click on to take you over to the Battle Plan, which by the way, I put a POFU live banner on the page today that will take you over to our live event, which was going to be held in Denver, in October this year. And we have, we had a really good first live event last year. And so this year, it’s going to be POFU Live 2019. But those of you who don’t know what POFU Live or POFU means position to fuck you. Maybe we could talk about that in a minute. Maybe a little crude. But there’s a reason that we use that as kind of our slogan.

So with that said, Oh, yeah, Battle Plan. If you have any done need for done for you services, which come on guys, who doesn’t? You know, one of the things we teach a lot of times is not to do all the damn work yourself. Otherwise, you’re just you’re you’re your own boss if you’re doing your own work for generating money, but you’re still trading hours for dollars, essentially. And one of the best things that you can do for your businesses to unload the work, remove it from you. And you can do that either by delegating work, hiring virtual assistants, or employees and learning how to delegate work or finding third-party vendors that can do the work for you which we provide all of the methods that we teach, as done for you services in our store at MGYB.co, which stands for Make Google Your Bitch. So go to MGYB.co there’s a link or a banner in the right sidebar on this page as well, that will take you there so you can see the done for you services. And lastly, I think I’m doing pretty good fulfilling and for Adam. Lastly, join the mastermind. If you really want to take your business to the next level, the mastermind is what it sounds like we don’t just have a bunch of training in the mastermind, although there is a bunch of training in the mastermind. It’s a community of like-minded individuals that are all trying to grow their businesses primarily through digital marketing. And so that the real value in my opinion is not just all of the training, and all of the discounts and all of the first opportunities that new trainings and new products and all of that I think the real value is truly the actual masterminding with other successful and aspiring, you know, people that are ambitious, in other words, people that are trying to grow their businesses and get the most out of life that they can. And it’s I think it’s a great community. We have a Facebook group where we chat on a regular basis about all various types of topics, not just digital marketing, but all different kinds of things. So I would highly encourage you to come join the mastermind to how to do guys you guys want to add to that?

Marco: No, I can Awesome, man.

Bradley: Sweet

Chris: if you want to POFU Live ticket. People should better hurry up. You can get them at pofulive.com. Probably somebody can drop the link. Yeah. And you’re like, I’m super excited, especially for the VIP Plus package. Because like the live event that we’ve booked this special extra day. Oh, man,

Bradley: can we all get together? Did we tell what the live event is? I didn’t know if I was no,

Chris: no, no, no, keep it keep it that it like the one?

Marco: Let’s Let’s wait.

Bradley: So I can’t. So we can’t tell what the VIP event is not the admin. Oh, no, you know what? It’s on the damn sales page Or on the sales page, I can see it

Marco: loving that people go to the sales page. Okay, the live event is and go to Denver.

Bradley: It’s gonna be awesome. I think it’s gonna be awesome. So yeah, go to the sales page, pofulive.com. And you can see what it is. But the VIP event we booked the venue for that. And it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to that. So Denver’s supposed to be a fun city. I’ve never been but looking forward to going so. All right. Let’s do it. Uh, yeah, I guess let’s get into questions. Um, nothing else to announce guys, right.

Chris: I don’t think so. Okay, well, that’s the POFU Live sales page. Let me close that out. All right, here we go. I’ll zoom in a little bit. By the way, there is no storms brewing here. So I think I’ll make it this time. Last week. It’s suck because I got booted off like, within I think 20 minutes. And that was primarily because of the power going out but there are no black clouds outside today. So hopefully everything will go fine.

Bradley: Okay, I’ll take that as a note.

When Is The Availability Of The MGYB Service That Helps Hiring VAs?

Bradley: Okay, Fitz asked seven days ago. And I think that was because it looks like Marco had been commenting. So I’m just going to start after Mark was the last comment. He says, When will we get the service to help us hire VAs come back to MGYB? That’s a good question. That’s something that we probably we’ve talked about doing that reopening that up? I don’t know if when we’re going to do it, though. That’s a good question fits. I think we probably should, but it requires a lot on our end to find and screen VAs, you know, and put them through the interview process and all of that. So typically, we only offer that when we have to when we have a need to hire and we fire up the hiring funnel. And we end up screening, you know, and interviewing several at a time, virtual assistants or you know, a VA and then we end up hiring one or two usually and then all of the other candidates that were qualified, then that’s when we will open that up and say, hey, look, we’ve got some candidates that are available that have you know, passed all their all of our tests and interviews and such like that. And then we’ll make it available. But it’s not something that we have a steady stream of because we’re not constantly hiring. Fortunately, we’ve gotten to the point where we are pretty well, pretty well manned right now. So

Marco: even when we opened it up last time, it was only in in the internet, it was only offered in about in the mastermind. That’s true. And I also all we also offer to train VAs, but again, that was only in the mastermind, that that’s who gets it and I keep telling people the place to be is in our mastermind because you get the most benefits. I mean, from aside from everything that you mentioned, things like this where people are needing VA and we had some train vas and we just offered them to to our mastermind. I mean, it’s just a perk and that’s who gets it the list that we had that went pretty quick. But again, our mastermind is the ones who scooped it up.

Bradley: Yeah. So and I think that’s what cities he was going to try to come back to the mastermind anyway, so I haven’t seen you in there yet, man. Get back in.

What Are The Best Alternatives To Do Local SEO That Has Similar Results With GMB?

next to cinnamon I guess. Sounds like a stripper. So if you’re a stripper now the GMB is touching by Google, what are the best alternatives to do local SEO and get similar results? Well, I don’t know that you can get similar results with anything outside of you know, using GMB stuff. A, you know, I recommend doing what Marco says now, which is when you’re first setting up or trying to verify the listing. If you’re doing that on your own. Did you try to get the listing optimized as much as possible prior to verifying it receiving you know the postcard so that you don’t have to touch it once it’s verified. I have finally Google I’ve talked about this about three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now, one of my longtime clients, all I did was I was in there making a slight edit to their GMB. It’s in the pest control industry. But it’s a valid legit business. It was a real bonafide address, not even a PO Box or anything. It was like their actual business address. It’s a service area business. And it got terminated gets terminated for suspended the GMB did. And I appealed it. And I just got the bullshit reply back this morning from Google saying that it was suspended and that they will not reinstate it due to it not meeting their quality guidelines. And then they linked over to their quality guidelines. You know, doc or whatever, that is stupid, because there is nothing that we did on that page. And there’s nothing about that business that violates their quality guidelines, none whatsoever. And so I sent a reply back saying, you know, please explain there’s, you know, this is a valid, legit business that has not done anything that violates quality guidelines. Now I know I’m not going to get a response. So I already emailed my client to tell them we’re moving on, we got to move on to plan B, because it’s likely that it will never be reinstated. So Plan B is to go out and create a fake parking listing, you know, which sucks, but I’m going to get a listing created in the same or verified in the same damn zip code. So that then all I have to do is I mean, it’s going to suck because I’ve done it been doing SEO for that client for like seven years, I think. So we’ve got like literally over 600 and some citations or maybe even more than that that are going to need to be updated. And it’s going to be a really tedious process, but it’s the only thing that I think that can be done in order to get his GMB back which is just dumb. So as far as Is there anything else that you can do? No, I would recommend if you’re starting a new listing, try to get it set up and optimized as much as possible before it’s verified so that once it’s verified, you don’t have to touch it anymore. I have not seen any suspension to occur from doing GMB posts. But doing anything else on page can suck, can cause trigger suspension, okay can be uploading a photo as an owner or a manager. If you’re uploading a photo, you can upload photos to a GMB by the way as a Google user, not as a manager or an owner. In other words, especially if you’re a local guide, or if you have personas that you built out using something like BrowSEO, for example or Ghost Browser, and you have some, you know, Google profiles out there that have some history and that kind of that it seemed like they’re valid, they’re not, you know, then you can upload photos that way to an actual GMB listing. But I wouldn’t do much with the GMB website, I wouldn’t do much with changing information like the business description or hours of operation or anything service areas or anything, once you have the initial things set up, at least for now, eventually, maybe it’ll get to the point where you can we can do that kind of stuff again, but right now, it’s just google still on a on a rampage. And it’s a bloodbath, and it’s just not something I bed because you could lose it.

Bradley: I mean, the other things that you can do would be local SEO, obviously, you can do pay per click marketing, Google AdWords can be incredibly expensive. It can, it can also work very well. But it can be really expensive. You can set up the Bing Maps listing, but that’s not something I get a lot of traffic from or leads from. I’m sure you guys are aware of that. And then you can work on organic SEO, I don’t get a lot of really good results from organic SEO for local businesses. Because they typically, you know, they’re buried now, especially depending on what kind of business it is. But for most contractors, which is primarily what I work with, there’s almost every industry now has the verified or Google guaranteed, like Carousel of ads above, like at the very top, and then there are ads, and then there are maps. And then like, you know, you’ve got to scroll two-thirds of the way down to the page even get to the organic listings. So you know, Google’s trying to force more people into paying, which is why they have there are Google guarantee ads for service, you know, service type providers. And then there’s the ad section and now the map section, which, you know, I unfortunately that don’t probably end up going paid to I think, think that’s part of the ways that they’re going to end up getting rid of spam is forcing GMB to become a paid listing.

So, you know, I probably didn’t answer that as the way that you wanted to, I would just suggest that you do, you know, hope more of a holistic approach for marketing as opposed to just relying on GMB for leads for a business. Right. So that would include Pay Per Click marketing, not just in for the search, PPC, but also you can do PPC ads for Bing search, which also is the same platform as AOL. Believe it or not, some people still use that not many, and Yahoo. But you can also set up remarketing, you can set up Facebook ads, content marketing, press release marketing, which is called inbound PR marketing, right. So those are all different things that you can do to create more of a holistic marketing approach something that is more than just relying on maps SEO. Marco, you want to add to that,

Marco: I mean, you can still do local GMB. Right, it’s just that what you’ll have to do is you’ll have to work through your clients GMB with the understanding that if you get in there, and you do something, just whatever Google is really touchy that it might get suspended. So the client has to understand the risk and that it might not be recovered. Now, when I run into something like that, when a client suspends or what I recommend, when you have a client suspend the GMB is have the client, talk to Google. And if you’re going to go in and call Google and talk to them, act really stupid and ignorant and you don’t know what the fuck was going on. You hired this guy, he took your money, just do whatever you have to do to get that GMB recovered, because that’s somebody’s livelihood. Right. So that’s something that you have to understand in the local space. Most of the traffic, as Bradley just said, comes through that three-pack, it comes through those listings, it comes to those calls. Now, of course, it’s things that you could do organically, to push that up. And if you’re working on a local GMB level, local GMB Pro, those methods that are taught in that training, they still work. And if you push on that with an RYS stack, press release stack behind it and the link building behind that it’s going to push it up into the three pack. The question is, are you going to have that property to push up into the three-pack? It’s not likely you could have it I mean, the methods that Bradley taught prior to all this, it still works, go to the post office, yet a post, post, peel box with street address, push that up into the three-pack, those methods are still viable. The thing that we can’t do is verify businesses anymore. I mean, MGYB we did it for we can’t do that anymore. And the thing we can’t do is since they were Yeah, they have spammed addresses they were they were just totally fake addresses, sometimes empty fields, garbage cans, we would verify anything, it didn’t matter. You can’t get them back, you can’t recover those. And so what do you do? You’re stuck out there with nothing. So it depends on what you mean by local SEO, and get similar results.

Bradley: Yeah.

Will Google Penalize A Partial Matched Domain?

Yep. Okay. So next is Gordon Gordon. What’s up, buddy? He says, Hey, guys, thank you very much again, for the help you provide. You’re welcome. You said last week’s session was cut very short by storm. So I’m posting my question again. Okay. Thank you, because otherwise, it would have gotten Miss Gordon. He says, if you’ve already gone back and covered last week, missed questions, please just ignore this. No. And I have not. You mentioned previously, that was not a good idea to use a keyword match domain for a local business site. But if you use something like top local plumber, com or top local plumber is not a keyword you intend on targeting? Where you tend to target excuse me, will you still run the risk of a Google penalty when you optimize the site for targeted plumber related keywords and the specific geolocation just because you have plumber and the domain name now, because, you know, that seems that’s natural that what I was talking about was an exact match. So a lot of times, you know, you can use a partial match keyword, because a lot of times the service will be part of the brand name, right. Like, you know, Joe’s plumbing, for example, right plumbing is part of his name. But what I’m talking about is not using exact match keywords, if you want to rank for you know, I use this example all the time, but plumbing, Fairfax VA or plumber, Fairfax VA, like, if you had that exact match domain, that’s what’s real can cause the filters, right to be a bit more sensitive, that can cause Panda, Panda type penalties, really, over-optimization penalties. And that’s because it essentially you’ve already got you to know, you’re you’re putting up red flags, saying that you’re already a, you know, an SEO, in other words, you’re starting off with everything that the bots look at, from that point forward from the moment that they come to scan your domain, it’s through the lens of it’s like an SEO Slanted Lens, right? Because it knows that it’s an exact match keyword. And so it just makes running you you run the risk of all of the additional optimization that you’re doing of over-optimizing, right, but a partial match isn’t quite the same. Because like I said, a lot of times brand names will have a partial match keyword as part of the brand name. And that makes perfect sense to do. So whether you’re adding like city, like the location as a partial match or a product or service, especially for local, then it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re not just combining the two is my point. So, you know, again, now, if you already have plumber and the domain name, then, you know, just keep that in mind when you’re creating like your URL structures and things like that, especially if you’re siloed your site, which you probably should, you know, you I recommend going with the virtual silo now as opposed to the physical silo, we’ve talked about that in the past a physical silo is that category slash post name, permalink structure and WordPress where you visit, literally see the silo structure, the hierarchy of the categories within the URL, right? That’s really unnecessary. I used to build all of my sites that way because I liked seeing that hierarchy in the URL. But now you can actually, it’s better off, in my opinion, to have a shorter URL. So if you just go with the posting, permalink structure, then you can avoid having, you know, multiple occurrences of the keyword within the URL, which can cause issues too. So just keep all of that in mind. But no short answer is you’re at you should be fine if you’re just using a partial match keyword, or and I say keyword, but it could be like a location and the domain as opposed to actual keywords that make sense. You know, I’ve used this as an example. But like home pros could be a generic business name for general contractors or remodelers or deck builders or, you know, pretty much any sort of home service type contractor home pros could be a brand new, so you could put like the city name, like Fairfax home pros, right could be a potential name for any type of really any type of contractor that’s in the home service industry. And so that would have the location modifier as a partial match keyword. Right, but not the actual service. But you could have like, you know, plumbing pros could be a plumber, you know, so you could, in that case, you could say, you know, Fairfax plumbing pros. Now that case, I would say that’s a little bit too close to being over-optimized. You see it, I’m saying so just try to find something that would be maybe a bit more vague or a lesser, a less common type of term that is synonymous with what you’re trying to promote, to make it to where it’s not going to over-optimize or tripping over-optimization filter for everything else that you do on-site. That’s all I’m saying. Was that clear as mud or what?

Marco: No, that was clear. Okay. Be careful with over-optimization. That’s all.

Hernan: Bradley.

Bradley: There’s Hernan you’re tardy, man.

Hernan: I’m sorry, did I completely lost track of time launching Facebook ads campaigns? I was in the vortex. So I do apologize.

Bradley: So what you’re saying is if the Hangouts isn’t as important to, you know, no, no, I think

Marco: you’ll be I think he’s using code because Adam used to call it running in the woods running in the woods.

Hernan: Yeah, right. Right. For me, it’s launching campaigns. Right?

Bradley: That’s it.

What Is The Long Term Benefit Of Press Release For A Site And GMB Listing?

Alright, the next question from Gordon, he says, if you’ve already got, let’s say, since most sites that the press releases are destroyed, we will purge the PR in 30 days or so other than a short term bump of SEO juice or traffic, what is the purpose or long term benefit of press release? For a site or GMB listing since the benefit appears to go away after a month or so? Well, we’ve covered this in the Local PR Pro and in the mastermind and stuff like that, I’ll tell you kind of on a more conceptual or higher level. First of all, when you’re you should be stacking, we just covered this a neat little last MGYB webinar that we did last week, by the way, last Thursday. So if you go to the mgyb.co/store/webinar, you can see it, you can also go to our YouTube channel and search for PR stacking, or press release SEO, either one of those, and you’ll see the video that like Marco and I did an hour long webinar where we talk very specifically about how to get the best results with press releases. So if you’re doing the press release stack method, which is daisy chaining, press releases together, then the idea is to find the press releases that do not purge for example, like on Press Advantage, it would be the press releases that are published on that domain, or Digital Journals, another one and there are others. But find the ones that do not purge and use those as part of the stack, right so that you’re essentially daisy-chaining them together. Something else is press releases, I think should be an ongoing method, something that you continually do. You don’t have to do them, you know, all that often. But as I suggested in the webinar last week that I, for all of my clients, even my lowest paying clients, they’re getting now at least two a month or higher playing my most of my, my average client gets one press release per week. And I know that seems like a lot. But I do that because they’re really, really powerful. And, you know, we the way that especially that we talked last week in the webinar, which again, you guys can find that on our YouTube channel. It works really well to come to us to constantly publish press releases, right? You silo them together, or that you step we talked about the PR silo stack last week, which is something new. That’s working well, I’ve been testing that for several weeks now and it’s been working really well, then that’s how you won’t, you’ll end up preventing the juice, as you mentioned here from disappearing. It’s funny, but when we first came out with a local PR pro method, which is shit, that’s probably two years ago now.

I had done a whole lot of testing initially, and so did Rob. And it was funny, because once we had fully proven the process or the method that it worked, and we were able to duplicate it across many different properties. I tested it on 15. I know Rob tested it on many as well. It was funny, but I kind of kind of really stopped publishing press releases for a lot of the properties that I had used in proving that, you know, and testing and proving the method. And it was funny because about I taught originally to PR stack link to the top local PR that was published. So in other words, if you were to if you were targeting a local, and it was called local PR Pro, so if you were targeting a local keyword, a lot of times you would find a particular one of the media sites that it was republished on would rank really well for a local term. Right, so your press release would rank on one of those published domains. And in my case, for a lot of the sites that our clients that I have in Virginia and the lead gen sites and things like that, we had an NBC 12 or something was one it was Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate website. It was their affiliate website, that would it would publish on. So in other words, it was a local Richmond being the capital of Virginia, that one typically ranked very well for any sort of local Virginia business that I was trying to promote press releases. So originally, I would say we would link within a PR stack to whatever the top local ranked press release was in the stack. But then that’s when I found out a couple of months later that they purge. And how did I find that out? Well, because of all of a sudden for things that were kicking ass rankings, especially maps listings, that we that I had pushed with nothing other than press releases. After about three months or so I saw started seeing a lot of those dropping off or falling, you know, several positions in maps. And upon investigation, I found out that most of the press releases that we had been linking to within the stack had been purged from the sites. So that’s why I added some additional training to the PR pro method, which was to only link to PR is that don’t get purged. So find the publication sites that don’t get purged use those in the stack or setup redirect links within the press releases, like a domain. So you can do custom domain redirects or you know like you can use the pretty links plugin and your own domain or something like that. So that you can one day purge, you can go back in and change the target or destination URL within the redirect to another press release. That is still published. Now, I don’t recommend doing that. Because if you’re doing this as an ongoing thing, you’re going to constantly have to go back and edit redirect links. And think if you’re doing this on a regular basis that is going to compound they’re going to accumulate to where you’re going to have more and more and more redirects to edit as time goes on. And so that’s not an efficient way to run a business. So your best bet is to just find the press releases that don’t hurt. As I said, press advantage it would be you can link to the media page of the organization page, you could link to the press releases published on the press advantage domain, you could link to the digital journal. And you can also look through there are a few others in there as well that you could find, if you do any of the upgraded services as you know, Yahoo financial, or, you know, yahoo finance or whatever, or AP news or anything like that a lot of the times those won’t purge either you can link to those also. Okay. So once again, the short answer is continually posted PR hours, but use the date the silo stat or the stacking method, preferably the siloed stacking method again, go watch the webinar that we posted last week, and link to the other press releases that aren’t going to purge. Right. It’s a good question, though, Gordon,

Marco: I think that the great part of this is that you get that media room. Right? Yeah, and all of your releases get published, or that you get a blurb in that media room. And so when you when you’re doing link building, and you link build into your organization page, as they call it, in press advantage, all of the press releases that are in their benefit. And everything within that press release is linked to also benefits. And it ends up in whichever whatever syndication pages are still active, right? Because the other is are either up, there’ll be a forum for not found, or whatever area you’re going to get that because they’ve been they’ve probably, but the idea is that that the ones that haven’t parts, they keep benefiting just from that just from link building into that organization page or that media center.

Bradley: There you go. So there it is, by the way, just go to YouTube, you can go directly to our channel and search our channel and you’ll see it there. But you can also just go to YouTube and type in PR stacking. And it’s the first video or if you type in press release SEO. It’s the fourth or fifth video. So again, guys, just go check that video out. It’s it was an hour and one minute long. We just streamed it five days ago. And it’s very, very powerful method.

Hernan: And while you’re at it, you can also hit that subscribe button because damn

Bradley: right you can

Hernan: Oh, yeah.

Bradley: All right back at it.

How Would You Handle A Know-It-All SEO Client Prospect?

Muhammad’s up. I think we have answered this question in the past, but we’ll answer it again. We’ve got time. Hey, guys, I’m talking to a prospect is presenting a challenge. They’re interested in what I have to say. But at the same time, they’re annoying, you know, the kind of prospect that read an SEO blogger too, and thinks that they’re the bee’s knees. They think they know it all. And normally I would just to walk away way but this guy came to me and seems genuinely interested. What’s the best way to handle this? Do I just brute force my way through my showing how much more I know. Is there a smarter way?

Henan: Run like the wind!

Bradley: Yeah. Honestly, I, I know. Muhammad, you’ve kind of answered your own question. Do you know that? If they’re a pain in the ass now, no matter what you do, they’re always going to question it, because they’re always going to suggest that they know a better way or that they know more. Right? So no matter if you brute force your way through it now, as you mentioned, and kind of bludgeon them over the head with what you know how much smarter you are, or how much more SEO knowledge you have than them, then again, all that’s going to happen is it’s going to quiet them maybe for a moment, or two, or day or two a week or two, maybe a month or two. But they’re going to come back. And second guests are question what you’re doing, you know, going forward at some point in time, they’re going to think they’re going to read another SEO blog post or two, and come back and question. And it’s funny because this, you know, after the question about PR press releases, I was actually doing some searches on Google the other day about press releases. And I saw like an SEO Roundtable, a post that was just published in the last few months about that was specifically a post from the I guess the Google Hangout that they do with, you know, Robert molar, or whatever his name is Miller or whatever the hell His name is, and the Google Gods on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, whatever. And, you know, they republish those, like highlights from that on a lot of the SEO blogs. I think it was SEO roundtable specifically. And one of the questions that it was just a short clip from the webinar, but it was basically saying press releases don’t work for SEO. And it was Google, like Robert Miller, or whatever the hell his name is the one it was saying. And so they highlighted that in a blog post on SEO roundtable about our press releases don’t work for SEO. Yeah, well, that’s bullshit. I love it when Google says stuff doesn’t work because that usually means it does work. And they want you to stop doing it because it works. Right? That’s why they say, oh, it doesn’t work. So it’s funny because, you know, your, your client or prospective client here will go read it, especially like, for example, in all of my SEO strategy, like methods for all of my clients, press releases are a part of the strategy. Now. It’s, there’s no, it’s not an add on. I mean, it’s an add on service for existing clients that didn’t have it. But for all new proposals, it’s part of my SEO retainer package, right, because it’s just part of what I do. It’s a foundational method. And so if I had a client that came to me and said, Well, I see press releases, I saw on an SEO roundtable blog posts that Google said the press releases don’t work for SEO. You know, that would piss me off. Because I know for a fact that they do. And they do work, right. And so my point is, you’re no matter what it is that you say or do now, if that’s the type of a client, or business or person that’s going to, you know, continually brush up on SEO blogs and try to expand their you know, what they think is their SEO knowledge, they’re always going to come back and question what you’re doing. So personally, like, like, Ron said, I would tuck my tail between my legs and run away.

Hernan: Yeah, I think I think it’s like, I think that you’re totally right, Bradley, and, and this comes after working with several of these types of guys. Right? And I think it’s, it’s, it’s like a disposition, like, they’re, they’re already starting the conversation with that disposition with that attitude, if you would, right. So it’s gonna, I mean, you don’t need to prove your worth to anyone, like, the reality is that people need to be educated, your job is not to educate a client, or how awesome you are, it’s just like, you know, do your job, because otherwise, you’re like, that’s double the amount of energy investment that you need to put, you need to put energy into working and making things work. And you also need to put energy on explaining what you’re doing. And, you know, it’s just a waste of time, in my opinion, so you know, there’s, there’s a lot of clients out there. That’s, that’s the that’s at least the position that I take when something is not entirely right. And trust your gut feeling Mohammed, like, you’ve been doing this long enough, and you’ve been having great results. So I would trust your gut feeling on this one. Because from the perspective that there’s a lot of clients out there, so it’ll be my take on it. You know, my,

Marco: my answer to that goes until this guy, why the fuck is he wasting your time? If he thinks that you’re the expert, if he’s coming to you, as the expert in the matter? Why in the fuck is he giving you his opinion? The fuck you care? I mean, just Just tell him off, man, this is so ridiculous. You go to the doctor and tell Hey, during the operation, you might take me off the end. Just I can tell you what you need to do next. Who the fuck does that? No, Mohammed? No. I mean, you know, the fuck away from this guy. tell tell him No, no, go keep reading your blogs, and I’ll just go my way. And we’re good. That’s it?

Bradley: Yeah. And the best way, as I said, is just, you know, don’t argue just, I would run away from that, that prospect anyways. But the point is, is just you just show results, you don’t have to explain methods. You know what I mean? Like, you can just say, look, this is the kind of results I can get, show portfolios, you know, showcase how the type of results that you can get. And that’s it, that should be all the explaining you need. Right? And if somebody wants, you know, you don’t, like Marco said, you don’t go to the doctor and tell the doctor how to do their job, or you don’t go into an auto mechanic and tell them how to do their job, right? You just you go. And if they’ve got, if they’ve got a good reputation and for getting results and fixing cars, then you go and you give them your damn car, you know, I mean, so you gotta treat it the same way. So I totally agree with what both of them said.

Where Should You Focus Your SEO Resources If You Have A Wholesale Real Estate Business?

Ernest says, Hey, guys, thanks for the free live. I hope to join mastermind on my business to become self-sufficient. I’m following the battle plan for a new site. I boarded the press releases syndication network and backlinking in the last week I wholesale real estate in a media market. Okay, cool. So it’s good business. Any suggestions on where to devote most of my resources, I plan to finish a battle plan in the next two weeks. Thanks for everything. Yeah, drive stack? Absolutely, it’s going to be a part of that, in my opinion, that’s foundational, once again, so press release syndication net, like again, that just like the battle plan, says, syndication network is a great start, and in or press release. But as I just mentioned, a press release, great to announce when you’re starting a new website, or a new business, or whatever, it’s kind of announcing it to the world like, Hey, this is a new web property or a new business that’s being started or whatever the case, may new location, opening up whatever. But then, you know, you should start factoring in press releases as an ongoing strategy. Number one, backlinking to the syndication network, to the press release, or the organization page, preferably, is a good strategy, but also remember to, you know, maybe months to get a drive stack, right. And then also, you’re going to want to build backlinks to the drive stack. So those are some of the things that you can do now, you know, this is not SEO related, but I can tell you that I’m getting good results with pay per click marketing for in the real estate industry, you know, for for flipping properties, essentially, I’m getting good results with PPC marketing. And so I would, I would suggest you take a look into that as well, because it will, you know, SEO may take you a little bit of time, especially if you’re wholesaling houses, I mean, I’m assuming you’re wholesaling houses, but I don’t know that to be true. But that’s a little bit more competitive than perhaps the business that I’m in. So it may take you a little while to get some significant results with SEO. Whereas with the pay per click marketing, you can get results almost overnight. And also be sure to set up remarketing. You know, like a use Google Tag Manager. Go, there’s training for that that you can find on YouTube and all kinds of stuff on how to set up Google Tag Manager. Create a remarketing list, you know, you got to add the remarketing tag in Tag Manager. All of that but then set up some remarketing ads, the Google Display Network is much much easier to set up ads on now than it’s ever been. And once you start once you get over 100 people on your remarketing list, so 100 people that have visited your cell seller lead capture page, which is I know what you’re doing if you’re wholesaling properties, right. Then once 100 people have visited your page, you can start serving remarketing ads. And those tend to work really well too. Because if somebody lands on your page but doesn’t convert, let’s say that they don’t turn into you know, they don’t submit their information for their about their property, then you can follow them around the web for as much as 540 days with remarketing ads saying like you know, reminding them that you’re there and that you’re willing to buy their property. So it makes sense. So again, it’s a great way to get conversions out of people that have visited your site that didn’t convert then, but at a later date when time and circumstance have changed their situation. And they’re ready at that point to make that sale that you know, to sell their property possibly to you. You want to constantly remind them that you’re there. Does that make sense? So remarketing is really really important for that business model. I think it’s important for all local, all businesses period anymore, guys, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t be using remarketing. And Hernan can speak to the Facebook side of it. But specifically for Google and SEO and stuff like that I would recommend looking into PPC and certainly remarketing.

Hernan: Yeah, totally, totally 100% agree with, with what you should stay there because we’re trying to get as many touchpoints with the people that are coming to our websites as possible. I read the other day that I think it was for I think it was like for consumer electronics, which is a really hot niche, right that people like buy stuff online all the time. I think that there was a there was this calculation made that people need at something like 32 touching points at this point to make a purchase from the first point from the first starting point all the way up until they purchase something 32 touchpoint. That’s a long, that’s a long cycle. And we’re talking about consumer electronics when we’re talking about real estate in general specific wholesaling. The lead time is like, it could be six months, it could be a year, you know, so people are going into system right now. If you’re capturing leads, they might not be ready to pull the trigger a year from now. And that’s fine. You know, that’s the lay of the land. So yeah, I totally, totally agree with what you’re saying not only in terms of PPC and in terms of remarketing retargeting on Facebook, right? Like, you know, even if it’s if it’s like a low budget type of stuff, you know, you’re leveraging really qualified traffic from Google, which is usually really qualified if people are like, inputting their queries on search, and they are clicking on your website and visiting, they’re really qualified, and then you can follow them around with the GDN, the Google Display Network, and the, you know, Facebook as well. So it’s pretty cool.

Marco: I don’t see a drive stack on the list.

Bradley: Well, I did mention that I told him, You gotta drive stack.

Marco: Next Yeah. And then, but the order of progression is, for the rest of you guys. If you’re going to be ordering the battle plan and looking into it, if you want to, you want to verify that it’s we did the entity, a webinar, right, where we talk about this, it’s your syndication network, and drive stack, you order those and as soon as you get your syndication network back, you put that with your drive stack order. So that then you’re when you hit your drive stacking and G site with the press release, everything will benefit everything attached to that drive second, and G site will benefit from the press releases, the press releases should be a stack, and then behind that link building. So that’s I mean, that that’s really the order that the link building you should order, like at the very end when everything is set up, right, ready to go that first PR is ready. You hit it. And then once your PR stack is ready, right, four or five down the line that’s around three or four is when you get all that Google love starts coming in. You hit it again. So that everything it creates like a what that duty is to call it a slipstream, right. Yeah, Link link stream. I think it was Becker. I’m thinking, Alex Becker, but he’s a slipstream. So credit where credit is due he is the one he’s the one who used to mention that too when thinking of linking this way, so that you’re shooting a straight stream of link building juice into that drive stack and G site. And then everything that’s attached to it, right your money sites, your inner pages, even and even your Google site will benefit from everything that you’re doing. So hopefully, you’ll take this and try to work that in so that your next PR will benefit everything that you do or your next set of PR, and your link building will benefit everything in that stream.

What Schema Should You Use On City Pages That Do Not Have Separate GMBs?

Agreed. Austin says, Hey, would you What would I guess what type of schema would you recommend on city pages that do not have separate GM B’s, which actually create citations or profiles for the city pages? Well, I don’t know if it’s just a page that’s highlighting a city like for example if you’ve only got one location, but you’re and I’m just assuming that this what you’re talking about? Because you say you’re not you don’t have separate Jimmy’s, it’s probably a business that is targeting multiple locations, but it might only have one physical location, right? Well, that’s perfectly fine. You would want to use organization or corporation type markup schema markup, which that can go site wide or global. Right. And in that case, I you know, I, I don’t know that I would do individual. I don’t know that you can even do local schema unless it has its own physical location that’s corresponding with the location that you’re trying to mark up. That makes sense because I’ve never done that. But organization or corporation markup could be something that you put on the site sitewide for the brand, essentially, that’s branded markup, right? There are two different types. There’s the organization, there’s Corporation, just go figure out which one’s the better option for you. And then I would put that site-wide, as far as what you could do on the city pages, you know, with the different types of markup that are available now, like article markup, image markup video markup, there are all those things that you could do on the pages to try to get squeeze more power out of them. Without it requiring local business markup, which requires a physical location, right? Local Business markup has to have an address associated with it, right. And that’s so that so again, you don’t want to use local, you can’t really use local markup on individual city pages unless they have their own. And I’m using air quotes, but the physical location, that makes sense. So I would, you know, I would, I would just go stick with organization or corporation markup for the brand that could be site-wide like it could be a global type of schema markup. And then you could do content markup, with you know, different elements of the page could be marked up to help try to squeeze more power out of it. As far as citations, now at once again, you don’t want to create, you know, really create citations unless something has a physical location, right? At least not the way that we talk about citations when it comes to local stuff. When you can create co-citation that’s different, but we’re not going to get into that right now. But what I’m saying is, in he says, By the way, loving the press advantage, I’m unlimited plan, you all turned me on to last month. Well, that’s great. And so here’s the thing, you would only need one brand page, right? Let’s just say that. And again, I’m just making an assumption here that you’ve got a brand that you’re trying to promote. It has, let’s just say one physical location, but you’re trying to promote multiple locations or cities to where you’re getting traction in SEO for terms that are associated with those location modifiers, right. That’s what I’m assuming you’re trying to do. So what you can do is again, go back and watch the PR stacking webinar that Marco and I did last week. And you’ll see what I’m talking about when I talk about the PR silo stack. Right. And so you would want to silo your website correctly. And then you can start using your press advantage unlimited plan that you, you’re glad that you got and I’m glad you got it as well, to start using press releases in the same way that you would silo your website, it’s called theme mirroring, right, you mirror the silo structure from your website, you press releases, and also do it with a drive stack. Same thing with the folder folder and file structure within your drive stack and your Google site. Right, you want to mirror all of that together and then use press releases as a as a great strategy for link building to kind of help push the power of all that and you can string those together to where you can create PR silos when you only need one organization page, right? One brand page for that. So yeah, I wouldn’t try to create multiple brand pages that for different locations, because you don’t actually have a physical location for those. So you wouldn’t want like citations that because the citations would you know, mean that you’re going to have a physical address, or at least a city state zip. And I wouldn’t do that, I would just go with one brand page and then create silo structure and use that to kind of push into those other areas. Right.

Marco: As far as the schema, there is the city and place schema can get ridiculous when you start looking into it. But there’s also a when you do city and play schema, you could do service, you could do product and brand. You can do man, I was just looking at this the other day, you can do areas area, sir. If there are departments, you can do departments, you could do legal names, you could do a location schema, oh, no, sorry, you can’t do location. Because that that requires either a place or a postal address. So that’s what you have to be really careful with this. But there are tons of ways where you can mark up your city page without having to go with location. Yeah.

How Do You Create A Blog Content For A Lead Gen Site Targeted To Real Estate Photography And Videography?

Bradley: So next question is Hey, guys, I’m back with my photography lead gen side, I’ve decided to go after the real estate photography and videography niche, essentially making a promotional video for properties. My question is, how do I create blog content for this niche. I understand that you should make content that appeals to the people in your niche with the power to link to your articles, but it’s a bit of a stretch with local businesses sometimes, yeah, you just kind of get creative and try to think about, you know, how what what could be useful whole to people that are in that, you know, like, for example, people that are looking to buy or sell real estate, right, that’s what I would do, I would come up with content for people that are looking, you know, helpful content. So like how to stage homes, right how to prepare homes for fast to sell faster, to be more to have more curb appeal, right? How to, I don’t know how to maybe for by people interested in buying real estate, you could do content on you know how to improve credit scores, how to get the find the best loan rates, or mortgage rates, you know, different types of mortgages, you know, all those things that are related, and they would be useful information to somebody that would be buying or selling real estate. Does that make sense? If that’s what you’re doing, if your target market is realtors, then I would talk about marketing like that I would be blogging about marketing and marketing principles on how realtors could get better results using various types of formats, media, you know, that kind of stuff and combining all of them together. My point is, who is your audience, if your audience is a buyer or seller, of real estate, so like an end-user, or property owners or people that want to be property owners, right, which would-be buyers, then you want to talk about way, like in my opinion, you would want to have helpful content on how to get better and faster results at selling their properties. Like for somebody that is interested in listing a house for you know, putting their house up for sale or land up for sale, whatever the case may be, or and then likewise, for buyers, same thing, like what could you educate potential buyers on on how to get make the buying process easier, how to get the best deals, how to negotiate you know, all those kind of things. But again, if your target audience is like real estate professionals because you’re providing them with property listing, photo servicing or video videos for, you know, like virtual tours and stuff like that, then I would talk about marketing stuff and how to get better results. With with marketing for real estate stuff. Does that make sense? So that’s what I would do. Just think about who your audience is, and what would be helpful to them and create content around that. By the way, I don’t recommend that you do that. What I would recommend you doing is finding somebody that is good at that kind of stuff. Like if you’re doing blog content, find a good writer that has topic, you know, experience with that particular topic. Because they’re going to have that ability to find stuff that’s helpful to that industry. Go to up work. Look for people that are real estate writers, for example. You know, blog writers and article writers that are have experienced in the real estate industry, because then it takes the burden off of you to have to come up with all of those ideas and puts it on them and that’s what you pay them for. So it makes sense. Good question though.

How Do You Change A GMB Listing’s Name Without Compromising Its Current Rankings?

Brian says wondering how to handle this. My client is a local franchise store. Six months in business citations are messed up because I added a primary keyword to the company name and the GMB listing. But that keyword is not on any citations that GMB is listed as brand name plus city plus keyword plus city. Wow, that’s pretty spammy. I’m surprised it hasn’t been suspended yet. But anyways, his GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in a metro area. But the citations show his name only his brand name plus city without the keyword My concern is a big drop in GMB traffic if I take out the keyword from the GMB listing to make to match the citations. Not only that, but right now if you try editing your GMB name, it’s likely it will be suspended. Especially because it’s already spammy In my opinion because you do have too much stuff in there. And if you try to change anything on a listing that could potentially be flagged as spammy anyways, that could trigger the suspension. So I would recommend not taking it out, you know, six months ago, I would have said, Get rid of that extra keyword in there because it’s spammy. But you know, I right now, I would recommend not trying to edit it. That said, so add the keyword to the citation listings, you can. But you know, personally, I think you’re being a bit too spammy this way. Like in other words, I wouldn’t recommend ever doing those guys adding the keyword to a brand name just for the sake of SEO, because it’s not the actual brand name of the business. Right, if the business’s name is is whatever the company name is, then I would have never set up the GMB that way. Now I understand where you’re sweet, you know, you squeeze the keyword in there for a reason to get better results with the Google Map. But that’s not a really valid reflection of the company or the brand name, is it. And so what I’m saying is you’ve already got you’ve already done that you can’t take that back. I mean, you could but it’s very likely that the listing would be suspended if you tried to edit that right now. So you’re pretty much stuck with that right now. So you’re saying Should I go out and try to update the published citations on the web to now include that name? Well, no, because it’s not a true representation of the business right. And again, you have created invigoration or site NAP data issues, right? There are discrepancies there, which can cause problems. So you know, I don’t really have a good answer for you there. I would leave the citations the way that they are. Let’s see.

Is GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in the metro area? But yeah, so I would leave it as it is man. And actually what I would do is continue building citations with just the brand name the way that you should write and then at some point in the future, maybe the Jambi bloodbath will end. And you could go back and actually change the GMB name back to just the brand name, which is the way it should be really in my opinion, guys, I always recommend that don’t spam. You know, you want the brand name to be a reflection like the citations published on the web, including the maps listing as a reflection of the business name, in my opinion, because then it’s all congruent. That makes sense. So, you know, I hope that probably doesn’t give you the answer that you want. I you know, if it were that you were trying to update the citations to remove that that that name, then I would say absolutely go update the citations. Get rid of the spamminess. But now you’re saying Should I go out and make the citations more spammy? And I would say absolutely not. All right.

How Long Does Google Sandbox New Domains?

Don says, How long would you say we gotta wrap it up? In a couple of minutes? Guys? I’ve got an actual appointment phone appointment in a couple of minutes. How long would you say the Google sandbox in new domains websites for these days? That’s a good question. Marco. I haven’t tested anything recently. Do we have numbers is still 21 days? or What is it?

Marco: Yeah, it, it does. It’s not necessarily for a brand new website, right. It’s just the fact of how much activity you do on it. So that you do trigger that 21 day period, right where the website starts dancing. And then you trigger the seven What if you do anything within that, within that time, especially link building, it can go into a 70 day sandbox period. So now you’ve extended and if you do anything during that time, it can be permanently sandboxed, which means basically, you’ll never, or hardly ever be able to get that website into the first page. The Google dances real, don’t like that’s tested. We know we’ve seen it time after time, after time where we do something, you know, drive stack was link building, or maybe even just embed, right we do an embed run and you’ll see it starts fluctuating dancing, dropping on and off, in and out. But that’s just the algorithm trying to figure out what where this belongs. And however long it takes the algorithms to figure it out is how it’s how long your new website will take to rank I’ve seen them like ranking. And I’ve managed to rank them in less than 30 days. So it’s not safe. Okay, so 60 days, it’s 90 days. No, it is the Google dance. There is a period 21 days, three weeks it’s in, it’s in the patent, you’ll see the west side, if you do whatever it is even a change on the page, right? If you go in and start editing the page, or pages on a website, it’ll trigger it. And you’ll see that it will it sometimes it even drops off the index it looks like and then oftentimes it comes back even better than before. So that’s 21 days, 70 days, that you can extend it. And then you can actually literally sandbox yourself forever, where no matter how much you do to it, or what you do, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to get out of that. You might as well just take that page down and start a new one and try to rank that. That’s what I’ve seen and tested.

Unknown Speaker 59:42 I’m going to answer that it’s five o'clock and I literally have another call. I’ve got a handle but I want to answer the next two very, very quickly because I didn’t guys have got to wrap it up.

Do You Think Google Penalizes GMB Verified Listings That Are Very Close To Each Other?

Nolemkt says in June there was a Google update that knocked my GMB listing out of the three-pack. So I purchased the battle plan v3. A question is I have another verified GMB about five miles away from the same business. could this have triggered a filter and penalize mother GMB? Yes, actually, that could be what’s called a pigeon filter issue. I’ve experienced that, especially if it’s only five miles away, that can create a proximity-based penalty. Essentially, if there are two businesses that are two with locations too close to each other, unless you make them unique, more unique somehow or another like stuffing a keyword or a city name, a city name into the title of the brand name to make it more unique, but I don’t recommend doing that. So it could be that but without knowing a little bit more about it or researching and I couldn’t tell you but that could be part of it.

And I got the damn call coming in right now. I have to call him back in a moment.

What Permalink Structure Do You Recommend For A “We Buy Houses Investor” Niche?

Because the last thing I want to answer Austin’s question and he says I work mainly in the We Buy Houses investor niche, I’m an investor as well just recently picked up a new national client. I’m currently building out the new website, what permanent structure would you recommend? company state we buy houses city or company state city, the second one company state city. Again, you don’t want to get us especially with the partial match keyword in the domain itself, or the name the company name, which most likely in the domain. Also, I just again, guys, you don’t need to be spammy with your URL. You can accomplish the optimization through the title tags and the page content. Right. So like the SEO title, the title tags, essentially, the head is heading tags and in the content on the page. You don’t need to put it in the URL, I recommend going with a shorter more succinct URL structure. Okay. Alright, guys, I gotta wrap it up. Sorry about that. I got a call. I gotta now catch a recall. But thanks, Marco for hanging out. And we did our mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we’ll see you all then

  Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 246

Click on the video above to watch Episode 246 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: Sweet, we're live. Oh shit. That's right. This is going to be the Hey guys, this might be the last hangout on air that we do. Because I'm keep getting notifications that Hangouts On Air is going away August 1. So wait a minute. Let's see next week is the 31st. Alright, we get one more week. That doesn't mean that we're going to stop Hump Day Hangouts. That just means we're going to change our streaming format, they won't affect you guys at all. Just so you know, Hump Day hangouts will still go on, we're probably going to use Zoom and Stream It directly into the YouTube channel. There's a way to do that. And I've been meaning to try to play with that over the last couple weeks. That said, Hello, everybody. Something hangouts Episode 246. I think. Yes, do 46 it is July 24, 2019. Adam is not here today. That's why I'm taking over announcing or you know, greetings and all that. And we've got Chris on and Marco on I don't know where the hell Hernan is. He's missing an action. Or just being tardy today. One of the two. So hey, Chris, how are you?

Chris: doing? Good. Like, super happy to be here as always?

Bradley: Very good. And Marco?

Marco: I'm good man knee-deep in the training. I'm studying man.

Bradley: Oh, yeah, we're writing which training is at our VIP training.

Marco: It's only for mastermind members. But, you know, you can get in the mastermind so you can find out what it's all about.

Bradley: Well, that's good. Uh, yeah, we can tell a little bit about what it's about.

Marco: But I wouldn't say shit. Well, it's too good. It's too good meant to give it away for free. It's too damn good. Okay.

Bradley: I'll follow your lead on this one. But it's based around my new business. So I think that's pretty much what you're talking about. It's a fun business. I was just talking to Chris about that. Two of the things that happened today that are pretty cool. So a lot of money to be made. Anyways, with that said, Enough teasing. So first of all, if this is your first time here, welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, you can, I would suggest that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get notified of updates when we're going live. Also, what we do a lot of times is take our you know, not a lot of times we have the question and answers from our Hump Day hangouts that get chopped up into individual q&a videos, and then uploaded to the channel, a separate Q&A video. So we've got a shit ton of content, literally thousands of videos on our YouTube channel about SEO and marketing, digital marketing, lead generation, client getting prospecting, you know, pretty much almost everything around digital marketing. So if you have any questions that you can typically find an answer by just going to our YouTube channel, and using the search this channel feature, right? So you just type in your question, and it will likely pull up an answer for you directly within our YouTube channel. But again, I recommend that you subscribe to our channel so that you stay notified of updates.

Also, if you're just getting started, whether you have a new website that you're trying to promote, be at local, affiliate, whatever. And it could even work for e-commerce. Or if you're an established, have established websites you're trying to promote pick up the Battle Plan. If you're watching this on the Hump Day Hangouts page, where you can post questions, there are banners in the right sidebar that you can click on to take you over to the Battle Plan, which by the way, I put a POFU live banner on the page today that will take you over to our live event, which was going to be held in Denver, in October this year. And we have, we had a really good first live event last year. And so this year, it's going to be POFU Live 2019. But those of you who don't know what POFU Live or POFU means position to fuck you. Maybe we could talk about that in a minute. Maybe a little crude. But there's a reason that we use that as kind of our slogan.

So with that said, Oh, yeah, Battle Plan. If you have any done need for done for you services, which come on guys, who doesn't? You know, one of the things we teach a lot of times is not to do all the damn work yourself. Otherwise, you're just you're you're your own boss if you're doing your own work for generating money, but you're still trading hours for dollars, essentially. And one of the best things that you can do for your businesses to unload the work, remove it from you. And you can do that either by delegating work, hiring virtual assistants, or employees and learning how to delegate work or finding third-party vendors that can do the work for you which we provide all of the methods that we teach, as done for you services in our store at MGYB.co, which stands for Make Google Your Bitch. So go to MGYB.co there's a link or a banner in the right sidebar on this page as well, that will take you there so you can see the done for you services. And lastly, I think I'm doing pretty good fulfilling and for Adam. Lastly, join the mastermind. If you really want to take your business to the next level, the mastermind is what it sounds like we don't just have a bunch of training in the mastermind, although there is a bunch of training in the mastermind. It's a community of like-minded individuals that are all trying to grow their businesses primarily through digital marketing. And so that the real value in my opinion is not just all of the training, and all of the discounts and all of the first opportunities that new trainings and new products and all of that I think the real value is truly the actual masterminding with other successful and aspiring, you know, people that are ambitious, in other words, people that are trying to grow their businesses and get the most out of life that they can. And it's I think it's a great community. We have a Facebook group where we chat on a regular basis about all various types of topics, not just digital marketing, but all different kinds of things. So I would highly encourage you to come join the mastermind to how to do guys you guys want to add to that?

Marco: No, I can Awesome, man.

Bradley: Sweet

Chris: if you want to POFU Live ticket. People should better hurry up. You can get them at pofulive.com. Probably somebody can drop the link. Yeah. And you're like, I'm super excited, especially for the VIP Plus package. Because like the live event that we've booked this special extra day. Oh, man,

Bradley: can we all get together? Did we tell what the live event is? I didn't know if I was no,

Chris: no, no, no, keep it keep it that it like the one?

Marco: Let's Let's wait.

Bradley: So I can't. So we can't tell what the VIP event is not the admin. Oh, no, you know what? It's on the damn sales page Or on the sales page, I can see it

Marco: loving that people go to the sales page. Okay, the live event is and go to Denver.

Bradley: It's gonna be awesome. I think it's gonna be awesome. So yeah, go to the sales page, pofulive.com. And you can see what it is. But the VIP event we booked the venue for that. And it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to that. So Denver's supposed to be a fun city. I've never been but looking forward to going so. All right. Let's do it. Uh, yeah, I guess let's get into questions. Um, nothing else to announce guys, right.

Chris: I don't think so. Okay, well, that's the POFU Live sales page. Let me close that out. All right, here we go. I'll zoom in a little bit. By the way, there is no storms brewing here. So I think I'll make it this time. Last week. It's suck because I got booted off like, within I think 20 minutes. And that was primarily because of the power going out but there are no black clouds outside today. So hopefully everything will go fine.

Bradley: Okay, I'll take that as a note.

When Is The Availability Of The MGYB Service That Helps Hiring VAs?

Bradley: Okay, Fitz asked seven days ago. And I think that was because it looks like Marco had been commenting. So I'm just going to start after Mark was the last comment. He says, When will we get the service to help us hire VAs come back to MGYB? That's a good question. That's something that we probably we've talked about doing that reopening that up? I don't know if when we're going to do it, though. That's a good question fits. I think we probably should, but it requires a lot on our end to find and screen VAs, you know, and put them through the interview process and all of that. So typically, we only offer that when we have to when we have a need to hire and we fire up the hiring funnel. And we end up screening, you know, and interviewing several at a time, virtual assistants or you know, a VA and then we end up hiring one or two usually and then all of the other candidates that were qualified, then that's when we will open that up and say, hey, look, we've got some candidates that are available that have you know, passed all their all of our tests and interviews and such like that. And then we'll make it available. But it's not something that we have a steady stream of because we're not constantly hiring. Fortunately, we've gotten to the point where we are pretty well, pretty well manned right now. So

Marco: even when we opened it up last time, it was only in in the internet, it was only offered in about in the mastermind. That's true. And I also all we also offer to train VAs, but again, that was only in the mastermind, that that's who gets it and I keep telling people the place to be is in our mastermind because you get the most benefits. I mean, from aside from everything that you mentioned, things like this where people are needing VA and we had some train vas and we just offered them to to our mastermind. I mean, it's just a perk and that's who gets it the list that we had that went pretty quick. But again, our mastermind is the ones who scooped it up.

Bradley: Yeah. So and I think that's what cities he was going to try to come back to the mastermind anyway, so I haven't seen you in there yet, man. Get back in.

What Are The Best Alternatives To Do Local SEO That Has Similar Results With GMB?

next to cinnamon I guess. Sounds like a stripper. So if you're a stripper now the GMB is touching by Google, what are the best alternatives to do local SEO and get similar results? Well, I don't know that you can get similar results with anything outside of you know, using GMB stuff. A, you know, I recommend doing what Marco says now, which is when you're first setting up or trying to verify the listing. If you're doing that on your own. Did you try to get the listing optimized as much as possible prior to verifying it receiving you know the postcard so that you don't have to touch it once it's verified. I have finally Google I've talked about this about three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now, one of my longtime clients, all I did was I was in there making a slight edit to their GMB. It's in the pest control industry. But it's a valid legit business. It was a real bonafide address, not even a PO Box or anything. It was like their actual business address. It's a service area business. And it got terminated gets terminated for suspended the GMB did. And I appealed it. And I just got the bullshit reply back this morning from Google saying that it was suspended and that they will not reinstate it due to it not meeting their quality guidelines. And then they linked over to their quality guidelines. You know, doc or whatever, that is stupid, because there is nothing that we did on that page. And there's nothing about that business that violates their quality guidelines, none whatsoever. And so I sent a reply back saying, you know, please explain there's, you know, this is a valid, legit business that has not done anything that violates quality guidelines. Now I know I'm not going to get a response. So I already emailed my client to tell them we're moving on, we got to move on to plan B, because it's likely that it will never be reinstated. So Plan B is to go out and create a fake parking listing, you know, which sucks, but I'm going to get a listing created in the same or verified in the same damn zip code. So that then all I have to do is I mean, it's going to suck because I've done it been doing SEO for that client for like seven years, I think. So we've got like literally over 600 and some citations or maybe even more than that that are going to need to be updated. And it's going to be a really tedious process, but it's the only thing that I think that can be done in order to get his GMB back which is just dumb. So as far as Is there anything else that you can do? No, I would recommend if you're starting a new listing, try to get it set up and optimized as much as possible before it's verified so that once it's verified, you don't have to touch it anymore. I have not seen any suspension to occur from doing GMB posts. But doing anything else on page can suck, can cause trigger suspension, okay can be uploading a photo as an owner or a manager. If you're uploading a photo, you can upload photos to a GMB by the way as a Google user, not as a manager or an owner. In other words, especially if you're a local guide, or if you have personas that you built out using something like BrowSEO, for example or Ghost Browser, and you have some, you know, Google profiles out there that have some history and that kind of that it seemed like they're valid, they're not, you know, then you can upload photos that way to an actual GMB listing. But I wouldn't do much with the GMB website, I wouldn't do much with changing information like the business description or hours of operation or anything service areas or anything, once you have the initial things set up, at least for now, eventually, maybe it'll get to the point where you can we can do that kind of stuff again, but right now, it's just google still on a on a rampage. And it's a bloodbath, and it's just not something I bed because you could lose it.

Bradley: I mean, the other things that you can do would be local SEO, obviously, you can do pay per click marketing, Google AdWords can be incredibly expensive. It can, it can also work very well. But it can be really expensive. You can set up the Bing Maps listing, but that's not something I get a lot of traffic from or leads from. I'm sure you guys are aware of that. And then you can work on organic SEO, I don't get a lot of really good results from organic SEO for local businesses. Because they typically, you know, they're buried now, especially depending on what kind of business it is. But for most contractors, which is primarily what I work with, there's almost every industry now has the verified or Google guaranteed, like Carousel of ads above, like at the very top, and then there are ads, and then there are maps. And then like, you know, you've got to scroll two-thirds of the way down to the page even get to the organic listings. So you know, Google's trying to force more people into paying, which is why they have there are Google guarantee ads for service, you know, service type providers. And then there's the ad section and now the map section, which, you know, I unfortunately that don't probably end up going paid to I think, think that's part of the ways that they're going to end up getting rid of spam is forcing GMB to become a paid listing.

So, you know, I probably didn't answer that as the way that you wanted to, I would just suggest that you do, you know, hope more of a holistic approach for marketing as opposed to just relying on GMB for leads for a business. Right. So that would include Pay Per Click marketing, not just in for the search, PPC, but also you can do PPC ads for Bing search, which also is the same platform as AOL. Believe it or not, some people still use that not many, and Yahoo. But you can also set up remarketing, you can set up Facebook ads, content marketing, press release marketing, which is called inbound PR marketing, right. So those are all different things that you can do to create more of a holistic marketing approach something that is more than just relying on maps SEO. Marco, you want to add to that,

Marco: I mean, you can still do local GMB. Right, it's just that what you'll have to do is you'll have to work through your clients GMB with the understanding that if you get in there, and you do something, just whatever Google is really touchy that it might get suspended. So the client has to understand the risk and that it might not be recovered. Now, when I run into something like that, when a client suspends or what I recommend, when you have a client suspend the GMB is have the client, talk to Google. And if you're going to go in and call Google and talk to them, act really stupid and ignorant and you don't know what the fuck was going on. You hired this guy, he took your money, just do whatever you have to do to get that GMB recovered, because that's somebody's livelihood. Right. So that's something that you have to understand in the local space. Most of the traffic, as Bradley just said, comes through that three-pack, it comes through those listings, it comes to those calls. Now, of course, it's things that you could do organically, to push that up. And if you're working on a local GMB level, local GMB Pro, those methods that are taught in that training, they still work. And if you push on that with an RYS stack, press release stack behind it and the link building behind that it's going to push it up into the three pack. The question is, are you going to have that property to push up into the three-pack? It's not likely you could have it I mean, the methods that Bradley taught prior to all this, it still works, go to the post office, yet a post, post, peel box with street address, push that up into the three-pack, those methods are still viable. The thing that we can't do is verify businesses anymore. I mean, MGYB we did it for we can't do that anymore. And the thing we can't do is since they were Yeah, they have spammed addresses they were they were just totally fake addresses, sometimes empty fields, garbage cans, we would verify anything, it didn't matter. You can't get them back, you can't recover those. And so what do you do? You're stuck out there with nothing. So it depends on what you mean by local SEO, and get similar results.

Bradley: Yeah.

Will Google Penalize A Partial Matched Domain?

Yep. Okay. So next is Gordon Gordon. What's up, buddy? He says, Hey, guys, thank you very much again, for the help you provide. You're welcome. You said last week's session was cut very short by storm. So I'm posting my question again. Okay. Thank you, because otherwise, it would have gotten Miss Gordon. He says, if you've already gone back and covered last week, missed questions, please just ignore this. No. And I have not. You mentioned previously, that was not a good idea to use a keyword match domain for a local business site. But if you use something like top local plumber, com or top local plumber is not a keyword you intend on targeting? Where you tend to target excuse me, will you still run the risk of a Google penalty when you optimize the site for targeted plumber related keywords and the specific geolocation just because you have plumber and the domain name now, because, you know, that seems that's natural that what I was talking about was an exact match. So a lot of times, you know, you can use a partial match keyword, because a lot of times the service will be part of the brand name, right. Like, you know, Joe's plumbing, for example, right plumbing is part of his name. But what I'm talking about is not using exact match keywords, if you want to rank for you know, I use this example all the time, but plumbing, Fairfax VA or plumber, Fairfax VA, like, if you had that exact match domain, that's what's real can cause the filters, right to be a bit more sensitive, that can cause Panda, Panda type penalties, really, over-optimization penalties. And that's because it essentially you've already got you to know, you're you're putting up red flags, saying that you're already a, you know, an SEO, in other words, you're starting off with everything that the bots look at, from that point forward from the moment that they come to scan your domain, it's through the lens of it's like an SEO Slanted Lens, right? Because it knows that it's an exact match keyword. And so it just makes running you you run the risk of all of the additional optimization that you're doing of over-optimizing, right, but a partial match isn't quite the same. Because like I said, a lot of times brand names will have a partial match keyword as part of the brand name. And that makes perfect sense to do. So whether you're adding like city, like the location as a partial match or a product or service, especially for local, then it doesn't really matter as long as you're not just combining the two is my point. So, you know, again, now, if you already have plumber and the domain name, then, you know, just keep that in mind when you're creating like your URL structures and things like that, especially if you're siloed your site, which you probably should, you know, you I recommend going with the virtual silo now as opposed to the physical silo, we've talked about that in the past a physical silo is that category slash post name, permalink structure and WordPress where you visit, literally see the silo structure, the hierarchy of the categories within the URL, right? That's really unnecessary. I used to build all of my sites that way because I liked seeing that hierarchy in the URL. But now you can actually, it's better off, in my opinion, to have a shorter URL. So if you just go with the posting, permalink structure, then you can avoid having, you know, multiple occurrences of the keyword within the URL, which can cause issues too. So just keep all of that in mind. But no short answer is you're at you should be fine if you're just using a partial match keyword, or and I say keyword, but it could be like a location and the domain as opposed to actual keywords that make sense. You know, I've used this as an example. But like home pros could be a generic business name for general contractors or remodelers or deck builders or, you know, pretty much any sort of home service type contractor home pros could be a brand new, so you could put like the city name, like Fairfax home pros, right could be a potential name for any type of really any type of contractor that's in the home service industry. And so that would have the location modifier as a partial match keyword. Right, but not the actual service. But you could have like, you know, plumbing pros could be a plumber, you know, so you could, in that case, you could say, you know, Fairfax plumbing pros. Now that case, I would say that's a little bit too close to being over-optimized. You see it, I'm saying so just try to find something that would be maybe a bit more vague or a lesser, a less common type of term that is synonymous with what you're trying to promote, to make it to where it's not going to over-optimize or tripping over-optimization filter for everything else that you do on-site. That's all I'm saying. Was that clear as mud or what?

Marco: No, that was clear. Okay. Be careful with over-optimization. That's all.

Hernan: Bradley.

Bradley: There's Hernan you're tardy, man.

Hernan: I'm sorry, did I completely lost track of time launching Facebook ads campaigns? I was in the vortex. So I do apologize.

Bradley: So what you're saying is if the Hangouts isn't as important to, you know, no, no, I think

Marco: you'll be I think he's using code because Adam used to call it running in the woods running in the woods.

Hernan: Yeah, right. Right. For me, it's launching campaigns. Right?

Bradley: That's it.

What Is The Long Term Benefit Of Press Release For A Site And GMB Listing?

Alright, the next question from Gordon, he says, if you've already got, let's say, since most sites that the press releases are destroyed, we will purge the PR in 30 days or so other than a short term bump of SEO juice or traffic, what is the purpose or long term benefit of press release? For a site or GMB listing since the benefit appears to go away after a month or so? Well, we've covered this in the Local PR Pro and in the mastermind and stuff like that, I'll tell you kind of on a more conceptual or higher level. First of all, when you're you should be stacking, we just covered this a neat little last MGYB webinar that we did last week, by the way, last Thursday. So if you go to the mgyb.co/store/webinar, you can see it, you can also go to our YouTube channel and search for PR stacking, or press release SEO, either one of those, and you'll see the video that like Marco and I did an hour long webinar where we talk very specifically about how to get the best results with press releases. So if you're doing the press release stack method, which is daisy chaining, press releases together, then the idea is to find the press releases that do not purge for example, like on Press Advantage, it would be the press releases that are published on that domain, or Digital Journals, another one and there are others. But find the ones that do not purge and use those as part of the stack, right so that you're essentially daisy-chaining them together. Something else is press releases, I think should be an ongoing method, something that you continually do. You don't have to do them, you know, all that often. But as I suggested in the webinar last week that I, for all of my clients, even my lowest paying clients, they're getting now at least two a month or higher playing my most of my, my average client gets one press release per week. And I know that seems like a lot. But I do that because they're really, really powerful. And, you know, we the way that especially that we talked last week in the webinar, which again, you guys can find that on our YouTube channel. It works really well to come to us to constantly publish press releases, right? You silo them together, or that you step we talked about the PR silo stack last week, which is something new. That's working well, I've been testing that for several weeks now and it's been working really well, then that's how you won't, you'll end up preventing the juice, as you mentioned here from disappearing. It's funny, but when we first came out with a local PR pro method, which is shit, that's probably two years ago now.

I had done a whole lot of testing initially, and so did Rob. And it was funny, because once we had fully proven the process or the method that it worked, and we were able to duplicate it across many different properties. I tested it on 15. I know Rob tested it on many as well. It was funny, but I kind of kind of really stopped publishing press releases for a lot of the properties that I had used in proving that, you know, and testing and proving the method. And it was funny because about I taught originally to PR stack link to the top local PR that was published. So in other words, if you were to if you were targeting a local, and it was called local PR Pro, so if you were targeting a local keyword, a lot of times you would find a particular one of the media sites that it was republished on would rank really well for a local term. Right, so your press release would rank on one of those published domains. And in my case, for a lot of the sites that our clients that I have in Virginia and the lead gen sites and things like that, we had an NBC 12 or something was one it was Richmond, Virginia NBC affiliate website. It was their affiliate website, that would it would publish on. So in other words, it was a local Richmond being the capital of Virginia, that one typically ranked very well for any sort of local Virginia business that I was trying to promote press releases. So originally, I would say we would link within a PR stack to whatever the top local ranked press release was in the stack. But then that's when I found out a couple of months later that they purge. And how did I find that out? Well, because of all of a sudden for things that were kicking ass rankings, especially maps listings, that we that I had pushed with nothing other than press releases. After about three months or so I saw started seeing a lot of those dropping off or falling, you know, several positions in maps. And upon investigation, I found out that most of the press releases that we had been linking to within the stack had been purged from the sites. So that's why I added some additional training to the PR pro method, which was to only link to PR is that don't get purged. So find the publication sites that don't get purged use those in the stack or setup redirect links within the press releases, like a domain. So you can do custom domain redirects or you know like you can use the pretty links plugin and your own domain or something like that. So that you can one day purge, you can go back in and change the target or destination URL within the redirect to another press release. That is still published. Now, I don't recommend doing that. Because if you're doing this as an ongoing thing, you're going to constantly have to go back and edit redirect links. And think if you're doing this on a regular basis that is going to compound they're going to accumulate to where you're going to have more and more and more redirects to edit as time goes on. And so that's not an efficient way to run a business. So your best bet is to just find the press releases that don't hurt. As I said, press advantage it would be you can link to the media page of the organization page, you could link to the press releases published on the press advantage domain, you could link to the digital journal. And you can also look through there are a few others in there as well that you could find, if you do any of the upgraded services as you know, Yahoo financial, or, you know, yahoo finance or whatever, or AP news or anything like that a lot of the times those won't purge either you can link to those also. Okay. So once again, the short answer is continually posted PR hours, but use the date the silo stat or the stacking method, preferably the siloed stacking method again, go watch the webinar that we posted last week, and link to the other press releases that aren't going to purge. Right. It's a good question, though, Gordon,

Marco: I think that the great part of this is that you get that media room. Right? Yeah, and all of your releases get published, or that you get a blurb in that media room. And so when you when you're doing link building, and you link build into your organization page, as they call it, in press advantage, all of the press releases that are in their benefit. And everything within that press release is linked to also benefits. And it ends up in whichever whatever syndication pages are still active, right? Because the other is are either up, there'll be a forum for not found, or whatever area you're going to get that because they've been they've probably, but the idea is that that the ones that haven't parts, they keep benefiting just from that just from link building into that organization page or that media center.

Bradley: There you go. So there it is, by the way, just go to YouTube, you can go directly to our channel and search our channel and you'll see it there. But you can also just go to YouTube and type in PR stacking. And it's the first video or if you type in press release SEO. It's the fourth or fifth video. So again, guys, just go check that video out. It's it was an hour and one minute long. We just streamed it five days ago. And it's very, very powerful method.

Hernan: And while you're at it, you can also hit that subscribe button because damn

Bradley: right you can

Hernan: Oh, yeah.

Bradley: All right back at it.

How Would You Handle A Know-It-All SEO Client Prospect?

Muhammad's up. I think we have answered this question in the past, but we'll answer it again. We've got time. Hey, guys, I'm talking to a prospect is presenting a challenge. They're interested in what I have to say. But at the same time, they're annoying, you know, the kind of prospect that read an SEO blogger too, and thinks that they're the bee's knees. They think they know it all. And normally I would just to walk away way but this guy came to me and seems genuinely interested. What's the best way to handle this? Do I just brute force my way through my showing how much more I know. Is there a smarter way?

Henan: Run like the wind!

Bradley: Yeah. Honestly, I, I know. Muhammad, you've kind of answered your own question. Do you know that? If they're a pain in the ass now, no matter what you do, they're always going to question it, because they're always going to suggest that they know a better way or that they know more. Right? So no matter if you brute force your way through it now, as you mentioned, and kind of bludgeon them over the head with what you know how much smarter you are, or how much more SEO knowledge you have than them, then again, all that's going to happen is it's going to quiet them maybe for a moment, or two, or day or two a week or two, maybe a month or two. But they're going to come back. And second guests are question what you're doing, you know, going forward at some point in time, they're going to think they're going to read another SEO blog post or two, and come back and question. And it's funny because this, you know, after the question about PR press releases, I was actually doing some searches on Google the other day about press releases. And I saw like an SEO Roundtable, a post that was just published in the last few months about that was specifically a post from the I guess the Google Hangout that they do with, you know, Robert molar, or whatever his name is Miller or whatever the hell His name is, and the Google Gods on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, whatever. And, you know, they republish those, like highlights from that on a lot of the SEO blogs. I think it was SEO roundtable specifically. And one of the questions that it was just a short clip from the webinar, but it was basically saying press releases don't work for SEO. And it was Google, like Robert Miller, or whatever the hell his name is the one it was saying. And so they highlighted that in a blog post on SEO roundtable about our press releases don't work for SEO. Yeah, well, that's bullshit. I love it when Google says stuff doesn't work because that usually means it does work. And they want you to stop doing it because it works. Right? That's why they say, oh, it doesn't work. So it's funny because, you know, your, your client or prospective client here will go read it, especially like, for example, in all of my SEO strategy, like methods for all of my clients, press releases are a part of the strategy. Now. It's, there's no, it's not an add on. I mean, it's an add on service for existing clients that didn't have it. But for all new proposals, it's part of my SEO retainer package, right, because it's just part of what I do. It's a foundational method. And so if I had a client that came to me and said, Well, I see press releases, I saw on an SEO roundtable blog posts that Google said the press releases don't work for SEO. You know, that would piss me off. Because I know for a fact that they do. And they do work, right. And so my point is, you're no matter what it is that you say or do now, if that's the type of a client, or business or person that's going to, you know, continually brush up on SEO blogs and try to expand their you know, what they think is their SEO knowledge, they're always going to come back and question what you're doing. So personally, like, like, Ron said, I would tuck my tail between my legs and run away.

Hernan: Yeah, I think I think it's like, I think that you're totally right, Bradley, and, and this comes after working with several of these types of guys. Right? And I think it's, it's, it's like a disposition, like, they're, they're already starting the conversation with that disposition with that attitude, if you would, right. So it's gonna, I mean, you don't need to prove your worth to anyone, like, the reality is that people need to be educated, your job is not to educate a client, or how awesome you are, it's just like, you know, do your job, because otherwise, you're like, that's double the amount of energy investment that you need to put, you need to put energy into working and making things work. And you also need to put energy on explaining what you're doing. And, you know, it's just a waste of time, in my opinion, so you know, there's, there's a lot of clients out there. That's, that's the that's at least the position that I take when something is not entirely right. And trust your gut feeling Mohammed, like, you've been doing this long enough, and you've been having great results. So I would trust your gut feeling on this one. Because from the perspective that there's a lot of clients out there, so it'll be my take on it. You know, my,

Marco: my answer to that goes until this guy, why the fuck is he wasting your time? If he thinks that you're the expert, if he's coming to you, as the expert in the matter? Why in the fuck is he giving you his opinion? The fuck you care? I mean, just Just tell him off, man, this is so ridiculous. You go to the doctor and tell Hey, during the operation, you might take me off the end. Just I can tell you what you need to do next. Who the fuck does that? No, Mohammed? No. I mean, you know, the fuck away from this guy. tell tell him No, no, go keep reading your blogs, and I'll just go my way. And we're good. That's it?

Bradley: Yeah. And the best way, as I said, is just, you know, don't argue just, I would run away from that, that prospect anyways. But the point is, is just you just show results, you don't have to explain methods. You know what I mean? Like, you can just say, look, this is the kind of results I can get, show portfolios, you know, showcase how the type of results that you can get. And that's it, that should be all the explaining you need. Right? And if somebody wants, you know, you don't, like Marco said, you don't go to the doctor and tell the doctor how to do their job, or you don't go into an auto mechanic and tell them how to do their job, right? You just you go. And if they've got, if they've got a good reputation and for getting results and fixing cars, then you go and you give them your damn car, you know, I mean, so you gotta treat it the same way. So I totally agree with what both of them said.

Where Should You Focus Your SEO Resources If You Have A Wholesale Real Estate Business?

Ernest says, Hey, guys, thanks for the free live. I hope to join mastermind on my business to become self-sufficient. I'm following the battle plan for a new site. I boarded the press releases syndication network and backlinking in the last week I wholesale real estate in a media market. Okay, cool. So it's good business. Any suggestions on where to devote most of my resources, I plan to finish a battle plan in the next two weeks. Thanks for everything. Yeah, drive stack? Absolutely, it's going to be a part of that, in my opinion, that's foundational, once again, so press release syndication net, like again, that just like the battle plan, says, syndication network is a great start, and in or press release. But as I just mentioned, a press release, great to announce when you're starting a new website, or a new business, or whatever, it's kind of announcing it to the world like, Hey, this is a new web property or a new business that's being started or whatever the case, may new location, opening up whatever. But then, you know, you should start factoring in press releases as an ongoing strategy. Number one, backlinking to the syndication network, to the press release, or the organization page, preferably, is a good strategy, but also remember to, you know, maybe months to get a drive stack, right. And then also, you're going to want to build backlinks to the drive stack. So those are some of the things that you can do now, you know, this is not SEO related, but I can tell you that I'm getting good results with pay per click marketing for in the real estate industry, you know, for for flipping properties, essentially, I'm getting good results with PPC marketing. And so I would, I would suggest you take a look into that as well, because it will, you know, SEO may take you a little bit of time, especially if you're wholesaling houses, I mean, I'm assuming you're wholesaling houses, but I don't know that to be true. But that's a little bit more competitive than perhaps the business that I'm in. So it may take you a little while to get some significant results with SEO. Whereas with the pay per click marketing, you can get results almost overnight. And also be sure to set up remarketing. You know, like a use Google Tag Manager. Go, there's training for that that you can find on YouTube and all kinds of stuff on how to set up Google Tag Manager. Create a remarketing list, you know, you got to add the remarketing tag in Tag Manager. All of that but then set up some remarketing ads, the Google Display Network is much much easier to set up ads on now than it's ever been. And once you start once you get over 100 people on your remarketing list, so 100 people that have visited your cell seller lead capture page, which is I know what you're doing if you're wholesaling properties, right. Then once 100 people have visited your page, you can start serving remarketing ads. And those tend to work really well too. Because if somebody lands on your page but doesn't convert, let's say that they don't turn into you know, they don't submit their information for their about their property, then you can follow them around the web for as much as 540 days with remarketing ads saying like you know, reminding them that you're there and that you're willing to buy their property. So it makes sense. So again, it's a great way to get conversions out of people that have visited your site that didn't convert then, but at a later date when time and circumstance have changed their situation. And they're ready at that point to make that sale that you know, to sell their property possibly to you. You want to constantly remind them that you're there. Does that make sense? So remarketing is really really important for that business model. I think it's important for all local, all businesses period anymore, guys, there's really no reason you shouldn't be using remarketing. And Hernan can speak to the Facebook side of it. But specifically for Google and SEO and stuff like that I would recommend looking into PPC and certainly remarketing.

Hernan: Yeah, totally, totally 100% agree with, with what you should stay there because we're trying to get as many touchpoints with the people that are coming to our websites as possible. I read the other day that I think it was for I think it was like for consumer electronics, which is a really hot niche, right that people like buy stuff online all the time. I think that there was a there was this calculation made that people need at something like 32 touching points at this point to make a purchase from the first point from the first starting point all the way up until they purchase something 32 touchpoint. That's a long, that's a long cycle. And we're talking about consumer electronics when we're talking about real estate in general specific wholesaling. The lead time is like, it could be six months, it could be a year, you know, so people are going into system right now. If you're capturing leads, they might not be ready to pull the trigger a year from now. And that's fine. You know, that's the lay of the land. So yeah, I totally, totally agree with what you're saying not only in terms of PPC and in terms of remarketing retargeting on Facebook, right? Like, you know, even if it's if it's like a low budget type of stuff, you know, you're leveraging really qualified traffic from Google, which is usually really qualified if people are like, inputting their queries on search, and they are clicking on your website and visiting, they're really qualified, and then you can follow them around with the GDN, the Google Display Network, and the, you know, Facebook as well. So it's pretty cool.

Marco: I don't see a drive stack on the list.

Bradley: Well, I did mention that I told him, You gotta drive stack.

Marco: Next Yeah. And then, but the order of progression is, for the rest of you guys. If you're going to be ordering the battle plan and looking into it, if you want to, you want to verify that it's we did the entity, a webinar, right, where we talk about this, it's your syndication network, and drive stack, you order those and as soon as you get your syndication network back, you put that with your drive stack order. So that then you're when you hit your drive stacking and G site with the press release, everything will benefit everything attached to that drive second, and G site will benefit from the press releases, the press releases should be a stack, and then behind that link building. So that's I mean, that that's really the order that the link building you should order, like at the very end when everything is set up, right, ready to go that first PR is ready. You hit it. And then once your PR stack is ready, right, four or five down the line that's around three or four is when you get all that Google love starts coming in. You hit it again. So that everything it creates like a what that duty is to call it a slipstream, right. Yeah, Link link stream. I think it was Becker. I'm thinking, Alex Becker, but he's a slipstream. So credit where credit is due he is the one he's the one who used to mention that too when thinking of linking this way, so that you're shooting a straight stream of link building juice into that drive stack and G site. And then everything that's attached to it, right your money sites, your inner pages, even and even your Google site will benefit from everything that you're doing. So hopefully, you'll take this and try to work that in so that your next PR will benefit everything that you do or your next set of PR, and your link building will benefit everything in that stream.

What Schema Should You Use On City Pages That Do Not Have Separate GMBs?

Agreed. Austin says, Hey, would you What would I guess what type of schema would you recommend on city pages that do not have separate GM B's, which actually create citations or profiles for the city pages? Well, I don't know if it's just a page that's highlighting a city like for example if you've only got one location, but you're and I'm just assuming that this what you're talking about? Because you say you're not you don't have separate Jimmy's, it's probably a business that is targeting multiple locations, but it might only have one physical location, right? Well, that's perfectly fine. You would want to use organization or corporation type markup schema markup, which that can go site wide or global. Right. And in that case, I you know, I, I don't know that I would do individual. I don't know that you can even do local schema unless it has its own physical location that's corresponding with the location that you're trying to mark up. That makes sense because I've never done that. But organization or corporation markup could be something that you put on the site sitewide for the brand, essentially, that's branded markup, right? There are two different types. There's the organization, there's Corporation, just go figure out which one's the better option for you. And then I would put that site-wide, as far as what you could do on the city pages, you know, with the different types of markup that are available now, like article markup, image markup video markup, there are all those things that you could do on the pages to try to get squeeze more power out of them. Without it requiring local business markup, which requires a physical location, right? Local Business markup has to have an address associated with it, right. And that's so that so again, you don't want to use local, you can't really use local markup on individual city pages unless they have their own. And I'm using air quotes, but the physical location, that makes sense. So I would, you know, I would, I would just go stick with organization or corporation markup for the brand that could be site-wide like it could be a global type of schema markup. And then you could do content markup, with you know, different elements of the page could be marked up to help try to squeeze more power out of it. As far as citations, now at once again, you don't want to create, you know, really create citations unless something has a physical location, right? At least not the way that we talk about citations when it comes to local stuff. When you can create co-citation that's different, but we're not going to get into that right now. But what I'm saying is, in he says, By the way, loving the press advantage, I'm unlimited plan, you all turned me on to last month. Well, that's great. And so here's the thing, you would only need one brand page, right? Let's just say that. And again, I'm just making an assumption here that you've got a brand that you're trying to promote. It has, let's just say one physical location, but you're trying to promote multiple locations or cities to where you're getting traction in SEO for terms that are associated with those location modifiers, right. That's what I'm assuming you're trying to do. So what you can do is again, go back and watch the PR stacking webinar that Marco and I did last week. And you'll see what I'm talking about when I talk about the PR silo stack. Right. And so you would want to silo your website correctly. And then you can start using your press advantage unlimited plan that you, you're glad that you got and I'm glad you got it as well, to start using press releases in the same way that you would silo your website, it's called theme mirroring, right, you mirror the silo structure from your website, you press releases, and also do it with a drive stack. Same thing with the folder folder and file structure within your drive stack and your Google site. Right, you want to mirror all of that together and then use press releases as a as a great strategy for link building to kind of help push the power of all that and you can string those together to where you can create PR silos when you only need one organization page, right? One brand page for that. So yeah, I wouldn't try to create multiple brand pages that for different locations, because you don't actually have a physical location for those. So you wouldn't want like citations that because the citations would you know, mean that you're going to have a physical address, or at least a city state zip. And I wouldn't do that, I would just go with one brand page and then create silo structure and use that to kind of push into those other areas. Right.

Marco: As far as the schema, there is the city and place schema can get ridiculous when you start looking into it. But there's also a when you do city and play schema, you could do service, you could do product and brand. You can do man, I was just looking at this the other day, you can do areas area, sir. If there are departments, you can do departments, you could do legal names, you could do a location schema, oh, no, sorry, you can't do location. Because that that requires either a place or a postal address. So that's what you have to be really careful with this. But there are tons of ways where you can mark up your city page without having to go with location. Yeah.

How Do You Create A Blog Content For A Lead Gen Site Targeted To Real Estate Photography And Videography?

Bradley: So next question is Hey, guys, I'm back with my photography lead gen side, I've decided to go after the real estate photography and videography niche, essentially making a promotional video for properties. My question is, how do I create blog content for this niche. I understand that you should make content that appeals to the people in your niche with the power to link to your articles, but it's a bit of a stretch with local businesses sometimes, yeah, you just kind of get creative and try to think about, you know, how what what could be useful whole to people that are in that, you know, like, for example, people that are looking to buy or sell real estate, right, that's what I would do, I would come up with content for people that are looking, you know, helpful content. So like how to stage homes, right how to prepare homes for fast to sell faster, to be more to have more curb appeal, right? How to, I don't know how to maybe for by people interested in buying real estate, you could do content on you know how to improve credit scores, how to get the find the best loan rates, or mortgage rates, you know, different types of mortgages, you know, all those things that are related, and they would be useful information to somebody that would be buying or selling real estate. Does that make sense? If that's what you're doing, if your target market is realtors, then I would talk about marketing like that I would be blogging about marketing and marketing principles on how realtors could get better results using various types of formats, media, you know, that kind of stuff and combining all of them together. My point is, who is your audience, if your audience is a buyer or seller, of real estate, so like an end-user, or property owners or people that want to be property owners, right, which would-be buyers, then you want to talk about way, like in my opinion, you would want to have helpful content on how to get better and faster results at selling their properties. Like for somebody that is interested in listing a house for you know, putting their house up for sale or land up for sale, whatever the case may be, or and then likewise, for buyers, same thing, like what could you educate potential buyers on on how to get make the buying process easier, how to get the best deals, how to negotiate you know, all those kind of things. But again, if your target audience is like real estate professionals because you're providing them with property listing, photo servicing or video videos for, you know, like virtual tours and stuff like that, then I would talk about marketing stuff and how to get better results. With with marketing for real estate stuff. Does that make sense? So that's what I would do. Just think about who your audience is, and what would be helpful to them and create content around that. By the way, I don't recommend that you do that. What I would recommend you doing is finding somebody that is good at that kind of stuff. Like if you're doing blog content, find a good writer that has topic, you know, experience with that particular topic. Because they're going to have that ability to find stuff that's helpful to that industry. Go to up work. Look for people that are real estate writers, for example. You know, blog writers and article writers that are have experienced in the real estate industry, because then it takes the burden off of you to have to come up with all of those ideas and puts it on them and that's what you pay them for. So it makes sense. Good question though.

How Do You Change A GMB Listing's Name Without Compromising Its Current Rankings?

Brian says wondering how to handle this. My client is a local franchise store. Six months in business citations are messed up because I added a primary keyword to the company name and the GMB listing. But that keyword is not on any citations that GMB is listed as brand name plus city plus keyword plus city. Wow, that's pretty spammy. I'm surprised it hasn't been suspended yet. But anyways, his GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in a metro area. But the citations show his name only his brand name plus city without the keyword My concern is a big drop in GMB traffic if I take out the keyword from the GMB listing to make to match the citations. Not only that, but right now if you try editing your GMB name, it's likely it will be suspended. Especially because it's already spammy In my opinion because you do have too much stuff in there. And if you try to change anything on a listing that could potentially be flagged as spammy anyways, that could trigger the suspension. So I would recommend not taking it out, you know, six months ago, I would have said, Get rid of that extra keyword in there because it's spammy. But you know, I right now, I would recommend not trying to edit it. That said, so add the keyword to the citation listings, you can. But you know, personally, I think you're being a bit too spammy this way. Like in other words, I wouldn't recommend ever doing those guys adding the keyword to a brand name just for the sake of SEO, because it's not the actual brand name of the business. Right, if the business's name is is whatever the company name is, then I would have never set up the GMB that way. Now I understand where you're sweet, you know, you squeeze the keyword in there for a reason to get better results with the Google Map. But that's not a really valid reflection of the company or the brand name, is it. And so what I'm saying is you've already got you've already done that you can't take that back. I mean, you could but it's very likely that the listing would be suspended if you tried to edit that right now. So you're pretty much stuck with that right now. So you're saying Should I go out and try to update the published citations on the web to now include that name? Well, no, because it's not a true representation of the business right. And again, you have created invigoration or site NAP data issues, right? There are discrepancies there, which can cause problems. So you know, I don't really have a good answer for you there. I would leave the citations the way that they are. Let's see.

Is GMB is ranking great for the main keyword in the metro area? But yeah, so I would leave it as it is man. And actually what I would do is continue building citations with just the brand name the way that you should write and then at some point in the future, maybe the Jambi bloodbath will end. And you could go back and actually change the GMB name back to just the brand name, which is the way it should be really in my opinion, guys, I always recommend that don't spam. You know, you want the brand name to be a reflection like the citations published on the web, including the maps listing as a reflection of the business name, in my opinion, because then it's all congruent. That makes sense. So, you know, I hope that probably doesn't give you the answer that you want. I you know, if it were that you were trying to update the citations to remove that that that name, then I would say absolutely go update the citations. Get rid of the spamminess. But now you're saying Should I go out and make the citations more spammy? And I would say absolutely not. All right.

How Long Does Google Sandbox New Domains?

Don says, How long would you say we gotta wrap it up? In a couple of minutes? Guys? I've got an actual appointment phone appointment in a couple of minutes. How long would you say the Google sandbox in new domains websites for these days? That's a good question. Marco. I haven't tested anything recently. Do we have numbers is still 21 days? or What is it?

Marco: Yeah, it, it does. It's not necessarily for a brand new website, right. It's just the fact of how much activity you do on it. So that you do trigger that 21 day period, right where the website starts dancing. And then you trigger the seven What if you do anything within that, within that time, especially link building, it can go into a 70 day sandbox period. So now you've extended and if you do anything during that time, it can be permanently sandboxed, which means basically, you'll never, or hardly ever be able to get that website into the first page. The Google dances real, don't like that's tested. We know we've seen it time after time, after time where we do something, you know, drive stack was link building, or maybe even just embed, right we do an embed run and you'll see it starts fluctuating dancing, dropping on and off, in and out. But that's just the algorithm trying to figure out what where this belongs. And however long it takes the algorithms to figure it out is how it's how long your new website will take to rank I've seen them like ranking. And I've managed to rank them in less than 30 days. So it's not safe. Okay, so 60 days, it's 90 days. No, it is the Google dance. There is a period 21 days, three weeks it's in, it's in the patent, you'll see the west side, if you do whatever it is even a change on the page, right? If you go in and start editing the page, or pages on a website, it'll trigger it. And you'll see that it will it sometimes it even drops off the index it looks like and then oftentimes it comes back even better than before. So that's 21 days, 70 days, that you can extend it. And then you can actually literally sandbox yourself forever, where no matter how much you do to it, or what you do, it's going to be almost impossible for you to get out of that. You might as well just take that page down and start a new one and try to rank that. That's what I've seen and tested.

Unknown Speaker 59:42 I'm going to answer that it's five o'clock and I literally have another call. I've got a handle but I want to answer the next two very, very quickly because I didn't guys have got to wrap it up.

Do You Think Google Penalizes GMB Verified Listings That Are Very Close To Each Other?

Nolemkt says in June there was a Google update that knocked my GMB listing out of the three-pack. So I purchased the battle plan v3. A question is I have another verified GMB about five miles away from the same business. could this have triggered a filter and penalize mother GMB? Yes, actually, that could be what's called a pigeon filter issue. I've experienced that, especially if it's only five miles away, that can create a proximity-based penalty. Essentially, if there are two businesses that are two with locations too close to each other, unless you make them unique, more unique somehow or another like stuffing a keyword or a city name, a city name into the title of the brand name to make it more unique, but I don't recommend doing that. So it could be that but without knowing a little bit more about it or researching and I couldn't tell you but that could be part of it.

And I got the damn call coming in right now. I have to call him back in a moment.

What Permalink Structure Do You Recommend For A “We Buy Houses Investor” Niche?

Because the last thing I want to answer Austin's question and he says I work mainly in the We Buy Houses investor niche, I'm an investor as well just recently picked up a new national client. I'm currently building out the new website, what permanent structure would you recommend? company state we buy houses city or company state city, the second one company state city. Again, you don't want to get us especially with the partial match keyword in the domain itself, or the name the company name, which most likely in the domain. Also, I just again, guys, you don't need to be spammy with your URL. You can accomplish the optimization through the title tags and the page content. Right. So like the SEO title, the title tags, essentially, the head is heading tags and in the content on the page. You don't need to put it in the URL, I recommend going with a shorter more succinct URL structure. Okay. Alright, guys, I gotta wrap it up. Sorry about that. I got a call. I gotta now catch a recall. But thanks, Marco for hanging out. And we did our mastermind webinar tomorrow. So we'll see you all then