Success with Whitacre's Local Online Marketing book

Claude, you're a funny guy...not really.

You usually have constructive answers. I think you're slipping!

Success with Whitacre

Greetings. Not really sure if 'success' and 'Whitacre' should ever be used in the same sentence, unless it also contains the phrase, 'lack of.'

OK. I know we're not in the basement but I couldn't resist showing Claude what 'funny' actually looks like. :-)

Cheers. - Frank

That was a very well thought out response to the question at hand. I actually learned from it. Thank you, Peter Lessard.

Exactly. This is the point where many small business owners give him a call and fork over 6k, as per Peter Lessards post. It's brilliant.

That's precisely why I wrote the book.

All my books are lead generation books. But I wrote them to be able to stand on their own, and have valuable content. And this book was very specifically written as a lead generator....and it's worked well. It also sells briskly, generating a profit, outside of lead generation.

The reason I earlier said I haven't decided to update in in a year or two...is because I didn't think I wanted the new clients it generates. If I updated it, it would just be to sell a more current book, not to generate leads.

My sales books (and new ones coming out) are where I am spending more of my time.

If anyone is interested I sell a few hundred copies a month. Mostly on Amazon and related site, but also on my own websites. Maybe half of the buyers are buying the Kindle version.

The marketing is effective enough, that I do no other marketing, except speaking occasionally. He're's the amazing thing; None of the Kindle buyers become clients. It's all the print book buyers. Not sure why. But it's also like that for the rest of my books. The print book buyers are all the clients.And all the refund requests (maybe 5%) are from Kindle books, never from print books.

I hope that's helpful to someone.

Sure. I'm sure most of this is in the book, but here is what I do. For my clients, I include animated videos, using voice actors and animation software. but what I'll be describing is mostly free.

Make sure your video TITLE has what you need. If you have a local business, make sure your city and state are in the title. Include the keywords that are going to be used to look up information on Google. For example, a bad title is "A Bad Day At The Dentist For Bob".

A great title is "Dental Implants; Cleveland Ohio Dentist Describes Dental Implant Benefits".

The person may use the city and state (or just city) in a search. After all, People in Cleveland aren't looking for dentists in Austin Texas.

If you are selling a product, consider putting the word "Review" in the title. Yes, you can review any product you sell. You're an expert, aren't you?

Try to think of the top several words that someone would use to look up what you sell. Be sure to include at least one of them in the title, along with your city and state. Then, make the video all about that one thing.

Write a description that includes all your top search phrases. You can even just write out, everything you say in the video.

In the description, recommend at least one of your other videos, and include a link.

If you have a local business, make your phone number the first thing in your description.

After you upload the video, send an e-mail to all your friends asking them to watch your video, and leave a comment. You can buy views on Fiverr, but it isn't necessary.

After the video is uploaded onto your Youtube account.....go to several most popular videos, that are in your niche, and watch them. Leave a comment. Your username in the comment, will create a link back to your video. Do a few of those, for each video, every day for a couple of weeks. Leave real comments, leave a few search phrases in comment. These comments link back to your account, not each video. But it helps your videos in your account.

This creates a lot of internal linking in Youtube.

Be sure to embed your videos on your website. If you have a blog, post them there as well.

As far as external links to your video, you can use cheap links. There are tons of Fiverr gigs that will create short articles, post them on sites, with keyword links to your video.

I wouldn't use these services to link to website, but Youtube? Sure.


The most common mistake I see is a terrible Title for the video. It's the single most important part of the video for SEO, and to get viewers to watch.

If you have a local business, with service to several cities, include the names of all the cites in the description. Do you sell several brands? Include all the brand names in the description. Do you have a retail location? Include it in the description. List all the services you offer, in the description. Link to your website, in the description.

Unless there are a million people in your city, at least one video should show up pretty seen, maybe a few days. For clients, I can usually get 3 or 4 videos, a website, and listing on Google page one for a major search phrase or keyword.

The more videos, the better. The better chance one or two will have the keywords to get them ranked on Google page one. And the more videos you have, the more people find, when scanning Youtube or Google. It increases the views per video. And be sure to link the videos to each other in the description. Just one link per description. If you have ten videos, don't link all ten on every video description. That's spamming, and may get your videos deleted.

A daily 5 minutes, commenting on other videos, from your account....is going to help tremendously. I build at least 100 of those internal links, per client.


We also create slide show videos, and post them on different video sites, with links back to the main videos on Youtube. There are Fiverr gigs that will send a video to 40 different video sites, with links...for $5.


Hope it helps.

You should have linked all the videos (on other videos sites) to the Youtube videos, and then linked the Youtube videos to your website. As long as your Google position hasn't dropped, it isn't because of the videos...unless something in the videos is preventing people from calling. That's a real possibility. And your videos should be on your website, linking to the Youtube videos.

You really should hire someone to do all this for you. There are several good SEO video guys here.

Where were your 1800 visitors coming from? Google? Youtube?

Where are your 800 visitors now coming from now?

Does it matter if they go to your site from Youtube or can they call a number directly for the Youtube video view page?

Have you set up clickable annotations in Youtube for your videos?

Do you have a local area code phone number in the Youtube transcripts, Closed Captions, annotations and descriptions?

What kind of phone call tracking are you using so you know how many calls are generated directly from your videos?

Have you used Schema Markup on your local site so that it shows a "five star rating" in the Google SERPs?

How many of your videos are embedded on the HOMEPAGE of a site/sites? A homepage link/embed is powerful. Instead of buying links on Fiverr, consider buying an aged domain that already has a few links pointing to it. Host it on a different host than your local page. Do you have a friend that will host a domain for you? If not, buy a cheap hosting service.

By buying a domain with links instead of just a Fiverr service, you can get a homepage link/embed, plus you have an asset you can sell. You can put 1-4 videos on the homepage and get more value IMO than buying link services.

Another option with Fiverr is to look for good blogs that will let you post an article on their site. See if they will let you include an embedded video.

Set up social media accounts and submit the videos to them.

Grab the RSS of your Youtube channel(s), blogs with embedded videos, as well as all the social sites that offer them and ping and submit the RSS feed to the relevant ping services and RSS directories.

As Claude mentioned, do some internal linking on Youtube. But take it a step further. I use Scrapebox to find Youtube video view pages and channel pages that have decent PageRank and few other comments. This will build PageRank to your own channel page.

PageRank probably isn't all that important any more, but once you learn how to do the Scrapebox research it will only take an extra minute or two and it won't hurt.

Create playlists on other channels, including your own videos and others in the playlists. What are the most popular videos about your area? Make playlists using them, adding your own SHORT videos as "commercials".

Do you have the Google Maps program? The Pro version is now free, it used to be $400 a year and it makes videos from Google Maps. Create video tours about interesting places in your area, adding a little promotion for your services.

Create another YT channel and search for Creative Commons videos relating to your niche. Modify them and use them to create links to your other videos and website. You can use annotations as well as links in your descriptions.

"Steal" the tags of high ranking videos as well as the tags on "related videos" on popular, relevant videos.

Send out press releases using services that allow you to embed Youtube videos.

Create general interest videos related to your local videos. Using Powerpoint, modify and convert them to PDFs and Powerpoint presentations and share them on ebook sites and doc sharing sites like Slideshare. Take the audio and submit to the popular podcasting sites. You can get links and/or traffic from all of these sources.

Do collaborations with other Youtube channels in your local area, but aren't direct competitors. Exchange links on your channel pages, etc.

Have some general interest videos and use them to get subscribers to your channel. Don't worry about likes and comments. Focus on subscribers. If you have good videos with subscribers, likes and comments will come naturally.

Learn how to use emotional trigger points in your videos. People act and buy due to emotions. After you trigger their emotions. give them some logical reasons to justify their emotions.

Use a strong call to action in all your videos to either call, click or subscribe. Make it as obvious and easy as possible what you want them to do next.

Also have an "end card" with a call to action that lasts for at least 15-20 seconds at the end of the video. Use things like "Call now for our web specials before it's too late". Or "Call now a FREE no risk consultation".

Set up retargeting on the landing page you send your traffic to, so you can market to them again.

Video marketing isn't just about ranking. It's also about optimizing the views and traffic you have.