All Forum Posts by: Paul E. Drecksler

Thank you both for the answers. My buddy also showed me a financial calculator and we ran the numbers together and saw that while it costs slightly more to pay off a 30 year in 15 years, as opposed to getting the 15 year, (like Chris said), that the befits of the 30 year heavily outweigh the 15 year. I had not thought about negatively affecting my DTI ratio, but that's a HUGE factor given my specific objectives for the immediate future. Thanks very much.

Can you help me with this math problem?

$425,000 sale price.

$85,000 down payment (20%).

30 year fixed at 3.675% vs 15 year at 3.15%.

Difference in cash flow / monthly payment would be $809/month on a 30 year, which I could put right back into the property to pay off the principal faster. How long until I pay off the loan on a 30 year doing that, and how much interest do I save? Is there a spreadsheet or calculator that can help me run these numbers?

Background of this question: 

I'm considering a 15 year vs a 30 year mortgage on an investment property. It's a buy and hold rental. If I do a 15 year, I'd save $187k in interest on the loan but the payment would be $809/month higher. 

A 30 year mortgage provides more monthly cash flow that I could turn into other investments. Or I could just use the extra cash flow to pay off the principal faster, but at least I'd have the option with a 30 year if I needed the cash flow at some point, which I wouldn't have with the 15 year. 

So there's pros and cons to either and my particular scenario and objectives will determine what's best for me. However at the moment, I just want to run the numbers to see what the difference in total interest payout would be on a 15 year vs using the same difference in cash flow on a 30 year to pay off the principal faster. How do I run those number? Thanks for any help.

 Hi Brent - I've never personally done SEO for storage unit owners, but I agree. I can't imagine finding a storage unit by any other means other than Google or driving past it. In terms of online, all I would care about is Local SEO and PPC. I don't even think I'd exist on social media. 100% of online advertising budget would go towards SEM.

Hi Michael - great question! Hands down, without question, without a doubt, the #1 thing to concentrate on is creating the absolute best, most informative, most comprehensive content for the end user. All the SEO strategies and tricks of the trade won't mean jack if your content isn't legitimately better than any other alternative that visitors could find. Someone else has a 500 word resource? Make yours 7500 words. Competitor has 5 thin pages of content? Make your site 25 deep pages of content. SEO best practices will help you get found and rank initially... the content itself is what keeps you there. 

Whenever I tackle a new niche or subject for a website or article, the first question I ask myself is, "Can I create content that is undeniably better and more informative than anything else out there?" If not, I often won't even attempt to tackle that niche. I know that publishing articles and creating niche sites is a little different than trying to rank a business site, because you can't just move on and choose a different niche if it's your business, but the question remains the same... Can I create the best content available on this subject? It just might be that your answer has to be "YES" because you have no other choice haha. Content, content, content is the equivalent of location, location, location in my world. Everything else comes second. 

Beyond that leads to the question... what type of website are you trying to rank? Is it for a service business, a "we buy houses" site, a publication? Hard to say what to prioritize next without knowing that, but please feel free to respond and share. For service businesses, I lean towards saying "Google Reviews" because it kills two birds with one stone... earning social proof and a big ranking factor. And it's an easy thing to tackle that doesn't take any special SEO knowledge or skill. 

Beyond the content itself, and reviews for a business, there really isn't just ONE big thing when it comes to SEO... there are lots of little things that compound which results in you ranking.

One last thing I'll mention about content since it's so important... When putting money into content creation, I try and coach clients towards creating content that can be used in multiple channels.... like if it's created to rank on organic search, can it also be used as a landing page with with PPC ads? Why create two separate pages as a small business, one for SEO and one for PPC, when they should both answer the same questions for the same audience? The only difference being that you paid for the click to one of them. SEO is a long game. PPC is the fastest way to market. When I build content for the intention of SEO, I like to consider whether it can serve both purposes. 

Hope that helps a little!

Hi Tracy - I'm super biased towards SEO so I'll answer your question empathetically with a "hell no!"

But my longer answer is that they serve two different purposes entirely, and the truth is most small businesses don't even need to be on social media to the capacity that they are trying to be. My opinion blurs for Realtors because it's such a branding / face based business, so social media can help you stay in front of people and be the first person they think of when it's time to buy or sell. But some industries like CPAs, pest control, home inspectors.... come on. Their little FB page with 39 followers that hasn't been updated since 2017 is doing more harm than good. Who goes on Facebook to search for pest control companies? Whatever the answer is, it's less than people who go on Google. 

I love SEO because people search on Google for things they're going to buy when they aren't distracted by their sister's baby photo or friends vacation video. Plus the lifespan of a top rated page on Google is SO MUCH LONGER than the lifespan of any social media post. You don't have to constantly feed the system to stay relevant. So if you want to be found for those searches, concentrate on SEO.

Whereas social media isn't a direct "Search A, Find B" scenario. Social media is about staying in front of your audience. The keyword there though is "audience".... and you've got to be sure that your audience exists on that social platform and that they want to hear from you on it. For example, my choice of pest control company is entirely based on referral and/or Google reviews. I could care less about their "Happy Monday" posts. Get out of my feed with that crap. Concentrate on SEO. Are you supposed to engage with your gynecologist on social media? Or your therapist? Or your real estate appraiser? Concentrate on SEO. 

Sorry that answer is a bit all over the place. I'm a little triggered by the "SEO vs Social Media" question because of how many business owners I deal with who spread themselves soooooo thin across sooooo many mediums, when they probably should just be focusing on SEO. Most small business owners are monkey see monkey do when it comes to social media, but the problem with that approach is that a LOT of the successful social media campaigns aren't always so visible to the naked eye. So like you'll see a FB page with 50k Followers/Likes and start copying what they do... but the part you see on the surface in their newsfeed may not actually affect their bottom line. What you probably DON'T see is the 1000 variants of ads and demographics being split tested behind the scenes and the funnel of e-mail follows ups and video series that those ads are leading people down. 

I'm on two sides of the equation in my two different businesses because one is a service business and the other is a travel company. My service business is like non-existent on social media. The only reason I made a FB page for it was to run ads. I didn't even invite my friends to like the page. On the other side of my coin is my travel business which is hugely dependent on social media. Travelers live and breath social media. It connects me with an audience all over the world and builds credibility for my brand through social proof.... which are things that Google Reviews do better for most service businesses. 

Forgive the rant above. I hope there was some value in there somewhere. For anyone reading this, feel free to disagree or challenge anything i wrote above (or on any of my posts on this thread for that matter). Discussion is great. These are just my opinions from my experiences. 

Hi Nate - I feel like that shift away from P.O. Boxes happened a long time ago. I guess people started using companies that offered Suite numbers to do the exact same thing they were doing before with P.O. Boxes and now Google is cracking down on that. 



With that said, how do you bypass Google’s stricter policies and still successfully rank someone to the top of search results if they are a mobile business operating in multiple cities or states?

Well, we've got two things going on here. The first is ranking w/ Google Local, which are the results at the top of the page with the reviews attached, which I think is what you're specifically asking about. The second is the organic results which appear underneath. 

For Google Local... just use an address that isn't tied to one of those spammy fake mail shops that apparently are getting flagged. It's kind of like how Netflix bans most VPNS, which prevents people overseas from watching USA Netflix via VPN. The reason they can ban them is because there are like thousands of people using the same IP addresses from the VPN company, so Netflix knows which ones to ban. It's obvious. Whereas you can setup a private proxy from a friends house in USA and Netflix is none the wiser, because only one person is using it. So in comparison, using some BS mail shop service designed to trick Google isn't going to work the more people who use that address. Google will eventually be like, "Oh really, this little 1 story 1200 square foot building has 2,000 suites? GFYS." So just use an address that no-one else is using. Pay some small office to collect your mail for you and use their address + Suite #2 as your address. You can even use someone's local home address and just click "We service clients at their location" so that the address doesn't appear on maps (just the city name). Google only cares to see the address to confirm that you're not fake so that they can confirm with a Pin Code, but they don't care if it appears on the map. Personally I support Google cracking down on that because it was a huge form of search engine spam that was bad for the end user. 

The cons of running multiple Google Business Listings for each of your "locations" is that you're now dividing all your reviews and clout between multiple cities, which isn't always a good thing, especially if the cities are nearby. You've got to have separate addresses, separate phone numbers, etc. It's one thing to have an office in Los Angeles and another in San Diego... but it's something else entirely to have an "office" in Los Feliz, Woodland Hills, Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale (all part of Los Angeles Metropolitan Area for those who aren't familiar with those barrios). In that latter scenario, I'd rather just have one legitimate office, one listing, and indicate my service area. 

The second thing is Google organic results, which appear under the local. In that scenario, you can just create multiple landing pages on your website specific to each city and rank them for that city. That's a typical setup. I know law offices that cover huge areas (like 30 city names), that not only created landing pages for each individual city, but for each individual practice area within that city. So 30 cities x 8 practice areas = 240 individual landing pages like "Divorce Attorney Jupiter FL", "Real Estate Attorney Jupiter FL", "Divorce Attorney Varo Beach FL", "Real Estate Attorney Varo Beach FL", and so on. All those landing pages are on the same domain and share the same Google Local Listing. 

tldr: Don't try to game Google Local if you don't legitimately have a physical presence in the city you're trying to create a listing in. If you do legitimately have a presence, but no office, make a relationship with another business or homeowner to use their address. Simple as that. Otherwise just focus on organic results or PPC.

 Hi George - I use Wordpress for content marketing projects, blogs, and small business websites. And either Shopify or Wordpress + WooCommerce for e-commerce sites. 

I love Wordpress, but not because of the myth you hear going around a lot which is, "Wordpress is great for SEO." Wordpress isn't great at SEO.... I am great at SEO. Wordpress is just a tool I use. And for anyone reading this, you can be great at SEO too regardless of whether you're on Wordpress.

Wix, which is notorious for being terrible for SEO, is actually doing a really cool marketing campaign, where they've contracted two well known SEO firms to compete to see who can rank higher for the search query "Wix SEO". One firm made the website www.wixseolovers.com (built on Wix) and the other made www.wixseohaters.com (built w/out any CMS), and now they are competing to see who ranks higher by the end of 2019. It's an interesting idea, but a little stacked in the WixSEOLovers favor because their site actually teaches people how to optimize Wix sites, which is more relevant to the search query "wix seo", so therefore should rank higher, because people who find the site are finding what they are most likely searching for. Whereas if I was just a regular Wix customer and found the WixSEOHaters site, I'd leave because it doesn't teach me what I'm looking to learn. 

Anyway, I just share that story to say that platforms help with SEO, but one is not really better than the other. You can do the proper markup on any site regardless of platform. Wordpress is just incredibly easy because so many plugins are already developed for it that help you optimize your site. But Wordpress by itself out-of-box, without any knowledge of SEO, isn't any better or worse than Wix or any other CMS. 

Personally I gravitate to Wordpress because it's reliable and I can scale my development costs. Meaning, I own developer licenses for a lot of expensive software that's particular to Wordpress, my hosting caters to Wordpress, I've created systems of speed optimization, website caching/compression specific to Wordpress, the team of contractors I've built over the years are most familiar with Wordpress, etc. So why switch to a different, possibly inferior platform, when WP offers me no limitations for the types of sites I build? That's why I use it for most everything. 

However, while I think it's a great platform, if I just spent a ton of money on a website using a different platform, I may not necessarily switch to Wordpress just because "it's best for SEO" -- because you can optimize most anything. 

I had a great call with @Chris Mason last week where we went over a few SEO and website best practices. (Which he implemented like RIGHT away which was amazing. I saw two days later you had already made so many positive changes, Chris.) 

At the end of the call he said half jokingly, "I guess I'm just waiting for the part where you try to sell me something."

Just to clarify for anyone reading this, soliciting clients is not my intention with this thread. To be frank, I only take on a handful of new SEO clients a year nowadays and most are from referrals. As far as new clients go, I mostly do one-off consultations which come from lead gen systems I've developed over the years, not from posting on forums. 

So just to be clear about my intentions, I'm looking to build my personal network of real estate professionals so that I have resources to pull from when I have questions and need help in the future. This post and any info I offer is just to add value first. 

If you see this post in the future, even if some time has passed since it was created, feel free to add your questions to it. Let's make it a great resource about SEO for the community. 

@Brent Shields - sorry about the late reply, didn't get the notification (or overlooked it). 

Backlinks are important. They are definitely a ranking factor. However, not the only one of course. I think that some SEO folks get too obsessed with their pursuit of backlinks above all else and their efforts become spammy (hence the penalization like you mentioned).

There's a difference in a backlink strategy for local SEO vs national (like e-commerce or SAAS content marketing). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to assume that you and most people on this forum are interested in local SEO. I have a few comments to make about backlinks in response to your question: 

1) I tend to look at backlinks as a positive side effect of A) writing valuable content that people want to link to, and B) effective PR. And that's 90% of my backlinking strategy right there. In terms of local SEO, your most valuable and relevant backlinks are going to come from other websites and publications that are tied to your area. The exception being that a link from Forbes or HuffingtonPost is going to be helpful regardless. So with exception to the big publications, which links from would be great, my local efforts would be focused on earning links from other local publications. Write guest articles. Do interviews. Offer to add value to other people's publications and the links will come. Link swapping works within reason, but don't over-do it. For example, a page of "recommended local partners" would be a great way to exchange links with other professionals in your local network. 

2) In regards to penalization... it's not something you should worry about UNLESS you hire a company to purchase you backlinks, or utilize a Private Blog Network (PBN) to link to your sites. Those are the kinds of tactics that lead to problems like getting flagged / deindexed by Google. So just don't do that and you'll be fine. However, a local car mechanic linking to your real estate investment webpage is fine. You used the term "unrelated sites"... and that can defined liberally or conservatively, but in a nutshell, just don't pay for links and you'll be fine. 

3) Backlinks are too often prioritized over other SEO strategies. A few for example that I would priortize (for local sites) over soliciting backlinks would be: 

A) Google Reviews - This is one of the easiest and most powerful way to build your local SEO rank. It's the lowest hanging fruit, yet so few people grab from the tree. Google Reviews, Google Reviews, Google Reviews! An incredible SEO factor for local SEO.

B) Press - Like I mentioned earlier, write guest posts for local online publications that educate their readers. Don't take that as to write ADVERTISEMENTS because that's not going to fly. Write legitimate guest posts. It's fine if you have to widen your audience a little for the guest posts. For example, if you only catered to investors, I don't see a problem in taking your investor experience and writing an article geared towards regular home buyers if that's a bigger audience for the publication you're writing for. A link is a link. Just be sure to mention in the article that you work with investor clients and are taking a few lessons you've learned from investors over to help home buyers. (Just an example, I don't know what you do).

Another form of press is to get interviewed. You can even help craft the interview questions for the publication! Just another form of press. In the time it takes to solicit people for backlinks, you could put the same energy towards building your brand, getting PR, and earning backlinks at the same time. I don't understand why people solicit backlinks instead of going the PR route. It's like killing two birds with one stone. 

C) Optimize your website with basic SEO fundamentals. Proper meta titles and descriptions, H1 tags on every page, navigation, internal linking, sitemaps, submission to Google Search Console, etc. You have no idea how many folks I come across who are out building backlinks and haven't even done this step. Their backlinks are kind of worthless if Google doesn't understand what your site does and what to rank you for. Sometimes taking care of the SEO fundamentals are all you need in certain local markets because there isn't much competition. This + Google Reviews = Success for A LOT of local businesses. 

D) Web Directories. This basically just means listing your website places where it's available to you like Google Business Listing, Yelp (although I hate Yelp and don't recommend if you don't already use it), Facebook, BiggerPockets, YellowPages, FindLaw, WeddingWire, etc, etc, etc, depending on your industry. My caveat to this is to not go around creating a million profiles JUST for the ability to post your link. It's not worth it. Better to have a one or two very strong profiles built (the first always being Google Business Listing) than have 50 profiles to keep up with just for the backlinks. My point is to not forget to list your website URL in the websites, profiles, and directories that you're currently a part of. They may not be "do follow" links but they still help your website get indexed and affiliated with what you do. 

I hope that long winded answer helped a little. Feel free to ask any specific questions or post your site if you'd like me to take a look at anything. 

@Bright Ayalingo what I love about PPC is that you can test landing pages immediately so you don't have to wait forever to see if what you're doing converts. What's dangerous about it is that you can accidentally spend a fortune if you don't know what you're doing. People also use it as a crutch and don't simultaneously build up their organic SEO at the same time, which I think is the smartest move, to use both approaches simultaneously.

Starting out new is honestly the hardest because you may not be able to afford a professional to manage your ad spend, so you do it yourself and can either get into trouble, or don't get results and assume it doesn't work. (Or alternatively get great results of course too.. it's not rocket science!) So the other thing I recommend doing to test is posting your page in directories, Facebook groups, etc to get some feedback. Or just get on the phone with someone in your target audience and have them look at the page while you're on the phone so that you can get immediate feedback. In-person is obviously best, but on the phone is fine too because the reaction time will help you determine whether or not your message is easy to comprehend. And their questions will help you improve the page to see what information might be missing.

Anyway I know that's a little ambiguous because I don't know what your business is, or what you are trying to advertise, but I think what I said above is generally true regardless. If you care to share exactly what you do or what you are advertising, I'm happy to give more specific advice.