Link Building SEO for Entrepreneurs w/ Nicholas Rubright

0:00welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast.

0:03I'm your host, Crystal Waddell.

0:04And today I'm here with one of my new friends, Nick Rubright, and we met on LinkedIn.

0:09Just having chats about SEO and link building.

0:13And so Nick kindly came on the show to share some link building and PR strategies that even solo business owners can try to execute. So welcome to the podcast, Nick.

0:25It's so nice to have you here.

0:26Thanks.

0:27I'm excited to have the discussion.

0:28Yeah.

0:29Tell us a little bit about who you are and your journey in SEO.

0:33Like how did you even become a part of the SEO community?

0:36Oh, man. I I've been doing SEO for 10 years. And I started when I was in college, I built like a music streaming app.

0:42And I went to the record companies and they wanted a million dollars for licenses. So I was like, okay, I don't have a million dollars.

0:47Then I started like DMing musicians on Facebook. And I was like, man, this takes forever. What if there was a way to Get them, wonder if they're Googling something.

0:54And then I was like, how do I get at the top of Google? So I just figured it out.

0:57I built a blog. And I did SEO and grew it to 35, 000 monthly visitors. I eventually had to shut down the app.

1:03But I had this traffic. And then I was trying to figure out how to monetize it. So I did affiliate marketing. And I built some affiliate posts.

1:09I did some email marketing. I injected affiliate links into my content that was doing well and stuff.

1:14And I got $2,000 a month in, money for me.

1:18Which is a lot for my affiliates, like Amazon, where I was only making 3%, they were making like 50 grand a month off my traffic.

1:24Yeah, at that point I, I was driving for Uber to make. Money.

1:28And I went to my parents and I was like, could I sell this? And they're like, yeah. So I, I started doing freelancing.

1:33And then yeah, it snowballed into what is now my agency. And yeah, that's how I, that's how I got going with SEO.

1:39What's interesting is I feel like I've heard your story. On a different podcast.

1:43Really? Maybe, I've been on other podcasts, so maybe.

1:46It sounds familiar with the music app and then asking your parents about what you should do. And then what was the other?

1:52Oh, the Uber driving.

1:53Oh yeah.

1:54Maybe that's just something people have in common as they're building apps and their businesses.

1:59But it's funny I feel like I heard those three elements before.

2:02Yeah, I've been on other podcasts. And ClickUp did a story about it and Mailshake did a story about it.

2:07I don't know, maybe.

2:07I've mentioned it before, but.

2:09I think there's SEO professionals that have worked inside of companies.

2:13And then there's people like me who figure it out.

2:15And I think it's it's sold differently by each party, right?

2:20People inside big companies do SEO a lot differently, I think, than people like me who figured it out.

2:25To us, it's more like science and to them, it's more like math.

2:28Yeah, for sure. It's like forming a hypothesis and saying, okay, does it work?

2:31Does it not? What can you adjust to make it work?

2:34Yeah. How do I do this?

2:35It's like from nothing. I don't know, it's, you just figure it out.

2:38And they're we need this many links or pages or whatever.

2:41Because their boss is like looking for some KPI, I don't know.

2:44I guess it's [big] versus small.

2:45Yeah.

2:46When you are in it and it's your business. And every minute, every dollar counts.

2:51I think you can get to the heart of what really matters for your business faster.

2:55Than, someone who does have a checklist of things to meet.

2:59Because it's look, sometimes you just have to make the priority of what is actually going to move the needle.

3:05[Versus] all the things that would be great to do.

3:06It's what do we actually need to do to make money?

3:08I think big clients just don't realize that they... like, I like to treat the big clients and the small clients the same.

3:13Like we've got to be efficient with the dollar.

3:15It's like a responsibility as a marketer to be efficient with your dollars. Because people get jobs off of our work.

3:21Or keep their jobs off of our work. Because we're supposed to acquire new customers for the business. So we offset churn.

3:28So we have to do our jobs. So people can keep their jobs.

3:31We have to be efficient with the dollar. So I think it's important to think entrepreneurially in a marketing role.

3:36Just any, in any marketing role, right?

3:39And telling your managers off when they're asking for too much is important part of that.

3:42Yeah. But again, if they want to keep their jobs, I don't know.

3:45So.

3:46It's a balance. It's a balance.

3:47What's the name of your agency?

3:49Ranko Media.

3:50Okay, awesome.

3:52So you told me like in our discussions back and forth, you said that PR is such a huge part of SEO.

4:00And that links from PR work way faster. Can you explain that a little bit?

4:05Yeah, I so I don't know why, but I know that when I get links from like a PR story, it inflates domain authority and rankings much faster.

4:11And what I think is happening. I don't know because we don't know how Google works.

4:14But it seems like the websites on Google news are indexed faster.

4:18Because Google needs that information like now for news sites, right?

4:22A newer website or like a blog or something, you can publish content.

4:25It might take a week to get indexed.

4:26But Google can see some information that's newsworthy, live. I don't know how they do this.

4:30Because I I experimented with that. I published a story like Fallout Boys' twitter got hacked like a bunch of years ago.

4:36And I published a story about it on my blog and it instantly went to Google News and got to the top of my... how the heck did it, how'd they find this so fast?

4:43I still don't know, but there's something about like newsworthy content that I think gets indexed faster.

4:47And I think that's where they start. And then they follow the links out from that.

4:51Because the news stories reference things like data and statistics that are available on many websites that are built by subject matter experts.

5:01Like if you're researching this stuff and you're putting out data, you're probably a subject matter expert.

5:05And those are the websites Google wants to find. So I don't know. I think it works that way, but. I've just noticed that if I get PR stories going out, I get links faster. And they get indexed faster.

5:14Stuff happens faster. It's just that to get them, it's this like really iterative process. And getting the story right.

5:22So while the links happen faster, it's okay, it still takes time to get the story right. Like probably three stories, three tries.

5:29And the tries are expensive because you got to do a ton of research. You got to build, you don't have to build content on your website, but I like to because the outcome is better.

5:36I was just thinking, number one, I agree with you. I think, because news is so timely, they probably have something in place to make sure that goes out first.

5:44So I totally agree with you on that.

5:46And then I also heard something about, a faster way to get your content indexed is to tweet it.

5:51It indexes Twitter more efficiently or whatever. So hearing you say that just reinforces like something I heard somewhere to be true.

6:00that's probably true. They probably take it. If it's being shared on social media a lot, they probably go, okay, we got to put this in.

6:05I'd imagine cause it's 15 percent of searches every single day have never been searched before. So they've pages.

6:12So like, where are they finding them? You know what I mean? That's like. The news element of this, I think.

6:17A lot of those keywords are probably newsworthy keywords. And they're like trying to find it on things like social media.

6:21That's where they go probably deep crawling, I would say. Like we crawl the internet for okay, we got to find that one piece of content that says this and that might be true, I don't know. They're crazy. The smartest people in the world work there, I don't know.

6:34I mean, that's definitely above my pay grade.

6:36In terms of the fastest working PR.

6:41You mentioned that podcasts are probably the best.

6:44Can you explain that?

6:45Yeah, I think podcasts are the most like inexpensive type of campaign to run.

6:51Because you don't have to build content on your website.

6:54And it's a bit predictable. It's you just have to get your pitch right.

6:57And then you participate.

6:59You don't have to build a whole blog post and pitch that out for links and then Fail on content.

7:04And content like good content's expensive to build but it has to be good if you're gonna win.

7:09So it's like one of those things where you just have to spend a lot of money to try. It's just like music.

7:13I've played in bands and stuff and i've put out music. I know It's the same thing. Like you have to make a really good song.

7:18If you're pitching bad content, then it's , it's not going to, it's not going to land.

7:21How do you get the pitch right? I think, that's the secret sauce, right? What does that even mean?

7:27Yeah. So it's. Really aligning with their, I call it content intent.

7:32Like why are they putting out content? Like getting to the root of that. So looking at their previous work. Like listening to their prior podcasts.

7:40What are they giving their audience, that their audience is coming to them for?

7:44And then you got to build something like that.

7:46So. Build something that helps them continue with their narrative.

7:50Find a way to help them so they can help you.

7:53Exactly.

7:53You're just giving them some more of their narrative, right? I'm pitching, I'm pretty good at this link building stuff.

7:59So I'm pitching podcasts about that.

8:00I know some deep cut link building knowledge that I can take as a subject matter expert and go, Hey, we can do a story on this and you probably can't get it elsewhere.

8:09So I have that going for me, but if you don't have a lot going for you, if the purposes links, you can find a hook based on your personal experiences.

8:16Like, why did you start the business? And then what'd you learn doing that thing that you can teach?

8:20What can you teach?

8:21As far as content, on the internet, people go for knowledge a lot.

8:27Like knowledge, or information, especially in B2B.

8:32Especially in B2B, they're trying to learn. Because everyone, like in marketing, everyone's pretty much a scammer.

8:37You know what I mean? You get all those dms on LinkedIn with oh, these DR 20 or 50 links or whatever.

8:42And I'm trying to sell link building in that. So you can't even imagine like how it's, for me, I'm like, I to get this perfect copy, to get any responses.

8:49But yeah, it's I don't know being in that i've learned that it's like man if I showcase myself as an expert through education then They can find me.

8:58Yeah, that was one thing I liked about what you did because you're talking about public relations as a method of getting links.

9:06Versus just buying links and link building services.

9:09Because ever since I've c ome into the world of seo, like the one thing that I have constantly heard is this negative narrative around link building.

9:19And buying links.

9:20And I'm like, wow, that's just so brave to be in the link building business if you're doing it right,.

9:25Because, it's just got such a negative connotation, but.

9:28Yeah, it does.

9:29I've been pitching content lately. I upsell links later, cause content's easy. I'm like, okay, I'm a good writer.

9:35I have some good samples. I can sell off that.

9:37They don't think I'm a scammer. And then when I have the client, I'm like, okay, you need links.

9:41And they're like uh, and I'm like, Oh no. You trust me though. Hold on. So I can have the discussion later on now. And I'm trying that approach.

9:47Yeah, and cold DMing works just for, I don't know if there's any freelancers or anything listening.

9:51If you can do cold DMs it can work.

9:53I just closed Spotify's business spinoff from a cold DM on LinkedIn.

9:58I just DMed the CMO and she thought I was a link spammer oh, one of these link guys. And she came back look, I get a lot of these, I'm not interested.

10:05And I'm like, yeah, but, and, I don't remember how I got her, but yeah, just, I don't know, it works.

10:10Stay persistent.

10:10Yeah. And just being honest and like real with them. And aligning, it's all about aligning.

10:15Like with PR, with sales, with any kind of outreach, it's about aligning with their goal.

10:20And if you're offering a service, that's what you're doing anyway. So I'm aligning with their goal of growing their business on some level.

10:26And if they're like looking for that.

10:27She's like, well, I am looking for content. I'm like, okay, cool. Then it's just about answering the questions. Okay. What's the price? Oh, it's whatever it is.

10:35Why is it so much? Cause I always get that. It's all this work, you know?

10:38Yeah. So I think we're talking about how to get the pitch right.

10:40And it's there's this framework I follow called AIDA: awareness ,Interest, desire action.

10:45And I write my pitches off of that. So the awareness is like, get the subject line, get a, get your first sentence really personalized on that message.

10:54In my agency, we built an AI to personalize emails I learned off of 10 years in my emailing history.

10:58Cause I've been doing cold email for 10 years. A lot of people don't have that.

11:02But so what you do is with that first sentence, you gotta just read their content, something they published, understand their need and connect with that.

11:09And it doesn't have to be like a whole freaking paragraph and be like, I love your article about this.

11:13Really liked your point about blah, blah, blah. And then just move on.

11:16It just has to be something to show that you're like a real person. And then you can pretty much templatize the rest, right? As long as it aligns, as long as the pitch is good, right?

11:24Yeah.

11:24And if you understand what they're looking for, you just give them the information. And make it fit on one screen. Make the email short.

11:30It's got to fit on a phone, like the whole thing, like start to finish on an iPhone screen, like no scrolling. Then you got good copy.

11:37Yeah.

11:38You're making me think of like the pitches that I receive from people. And it's funny, like for anyone listening that wants to pitch the podcast or pitch any other podcasts.

11:46What catches my eye is when someone mentions the name of the show in the first sentence.

11:51Because I'm like, Oh, they're actually talking to me.

11:54This isn't just, mass generated. And maybe it was, maybe it was just insert a field, but it's still getting my attention.

12:00And then the ones that really turned me off are the ones that are more, this is this person. And this is why they would be good for your show. Because it just starts off icky.

12:09This is why they're so great. And you should promote them.

12:13It would be better if they're like, Hey, I just listened to this episode that you interviewed Nick. I love what you guys talked about, digital PR.

12:18I tried that and I learned a lot. And then they went into, I think I can add value and do the next episode.

12:22Cause I could talk about. Like, my case study that I just ran off of what Nick said, what do you think?

12:27Yeah, exactly.

12:28Make it align. And make it like you said, benefit the other person as well.

12:33Just one more thing.

12:33Just try.

12:34Because you'll get it perfect, they'll say, they'll come back and say, no, not interested.

12:37But then you can say, Oh, what do you need?

12:38They engaged back. You have a chance.

12:40Yeah. Very true. Okay. So you mentioned that you have some things going for you that other people don't have.

12:46And when I hear you say that, it makes me think of relationships with media people.

12:52And so I just wondered, is that something that you have going for you? And do you have any tips on how to build relationships with, people in the media that you can continually go back to, to share data or stories?

13:03Yeah, so I thought about this a lot when I was younger. And to be honest, you don't need relationships to be successful in PR. You just need a good story.

13:11Like cold works, cold email works, you'll probably get a 3%, 3 to 5 percent win rate if you have a good story.

13:17That's surprising, honestly.

13:18That surprised me too.

13:19When I really like dove into the research of this.

13:21And I talked to other people doing it.

13:23Like even other PR people are like, yeah, I mean I have relationships, but if they don't like the story, they're not gonna publish it.

13:29It's the same thing, right? And you know if you email If 100 percent of the people you email you have a relationship with, yeah, you'll get a higher win rate.

13:36But you don't need it to be successful, right?

13:39You can be successful at three to 5 percent win rate with good targeting.

13:42And then, after you get a win, then there's a relationship.

13:45Because you just helped them because you gave them a good story. There you go. You have the relationship.

13:49So just start with the cold outreach and then it snowballs over time into a lot of contacts.

13:54But you can't pitch him a bad story.

13:55You gotta pitch them something that's meaningful to their audience. And that's how you get the relationship.

14:00Because they're getting so many bad pitches all the time. You get the relationship by giving good pitches.

14:04And then they go. Okay. This is like a legit.... he's listening.

14:07And cares about my You know.

14:10So then you get the relationship that way, even in a cold pitch.

14:13Then you just go back to them and then they know you. And they say yes, because it's an easy yes.

14:17You got through the trust barrier.

14:18That's how it helps. But, that it's just an advantage.

14:22What about this?

14:23How important are affiliate links within what you're pitching?

14:28To the people you're pitching to, like journalists?

14:31Because I've heard that, a way for them to monetize your content is an incentive for them to pick up your story. So how important are you know incentives like that?

14:42It depends on them, you know.

14:44If you research the content and see they're adding links then yeah, it's a powerful incentive.

14:47I mean, seeing how they monetize the website is huge.

14:50If i'm pitching guest posts I can pitch you know, software companies and say, Hey, I can write about this feature and how it benefits your audience.

14:57They're going to love that because that's a sales piece to them.

14:59But it's a link for me, because I can get a guest post published.

15:03So I don't know, in general, guest posting and B2B is much easier.

15:06Because like we talked about B2B, they use a lot of knowledge sharing to sell.

15:11So it's easy to get guest content on these websites of like B2B software companies and stuff.

15:17So if you ever need a hack for links, there you go. Do B2B outreach somehow. In your industry.

15:23I was thinking that I was like, dang, that's smart. And I'm making mental note of it.

15:28Yeah, I do it. Yeah. Cause if you're in like Cannabis or something, right? It's the hack there.

15:33What's a cannabis software company or something like who sells B2B here?

15:37You know because they want educational content to sell with.

15:41So you can sell the benefit of your content.

15:43That's the hardest industry I've worked in.

15:45And that's the hack I figured out, right? Go B2B somehow with those.

15:49And as an emerging industry too, that's probably a huge, wide open blue ocean in terms of creating content.

15:55Yeah exactly. And yeah, definitely.

15:58Okay.

15:59So I also reached out because I was interested in learning how to create linkable assets for my website, collageandwood.Com.

16:08And for those of you guys who don't know, I'm a maker.

16:11I sell and ship giant wooden letters all across the country. The United States and sometimes the world.

16:16And I also have help seniors celebrate the end of their athletic careers on senior night. So those are the two big things that my business does.

16:25Knowing that, do you have any ideas? Can you walk me through creating what might be valuable to journalists?

16:33Or, just a linkable asset process that other people could follow as well?

16:36Yeah, you're in an easy industry being in the senior citizens.

16:40Oh, it's not senior citizens. It's senior athletes like high school and college.

16:45Oh, okay.

16:46I actually had to change some of my keywords to, be like senior sports night instead of senior night.

16:50Because I did get some elderly, related keywords.

16:54Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think.

16:56A linkable asset to me is something you can pitch and use as bait. And the bait element is important.

17:01When journalists are writing, they're searching for data to make a point.

17:04And it took me a long time to prove out this concept because it takes a long time to get right.

17:09I had a lot of clients that would hire me and build the content. We get it up to page two or three and then they bail.

17:15So this is something you have to persist with before it's going to work.

17:18But it's very worth it because you get free links at the end. Cause if you can rank for a keyword that has statistics, data, average, whatever in the keyword.

17:27Then you can bait journalists for links because they're searching for that. You're at the top.

17:31They find your page and they reference data on the page and give you a link.

17:35I've gotten links from HubSpot, Neil Patel, entrepreneur, no outreach. With this strategy.

17:41So you go in Ahrefs or SEMrush, you put statistics, and then you can do like terms match and then you can filter for whatever.

17:48So for you carpentry statistics, maybe? No?

17:51What's good? Like high school?

17:53You had mentioned best gifts and maybe even -

17:56oh yeah,

17:57by state or something like, I don't know.

17:59Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So you can do like by state and that's cool. Cause like the state thing, you can create a data map.

18:04Like in maps do really well in here for some reason.

18:07What's a data map?

18:08Yeah so we would find that "by state" keyword that people are searching for.

18:12So top Valentine's Day gifts by state, let's say.

18:15Because they'll say it's timely.

18:16Let's say we're doing it around Valentine's Day or something.

18:18Then we would make a map and put pictures in each state of the top things. We'd rank the top 10.

18:24At the bottom of the article, like bottom 10, like what are the least popular? Throughout the country. So something like that.

18:30Okay, so you're saying that I would research what these top gifts were. Is that assuming that other people have written something about that?

18:38You do have to screen for if the data is actually available. So this would be like a crazy insane one where maybe you do a survey.

18:45You're like, okay, in the survey, you ask, what's your state? And then at the end, you go, okay, what gift did you give for Valentine's Day or something?

18:51And then you just go through all the data and make a map. I call it the map and rank campaign. You map something and then you rank it by state.

18:57Cause then you can pitch the map out as a main story to bigger PR like, Hey, we made a map of the top Valentine's Day gifts by state.

19:05And national outlets will want to publish that. I don't know. Maps do well.

19:08These whole Instagram pages with just like maps.

19:10So maps are awesome. But and then you pitch the ranking to local outlets like, Hey, you ranked number one for this. Or like your, whatever story you can get there with the ranking element of the data.

19:19And then you have this longevity to your pitching, right? You can do a national story and then all these local stories. And you have a lot of outlets that you can pitch it to.

19:28So that's one. Yeah.

19:29Okay, go ahead. You have another one.

19:31There's, it's endless-

19:32Keep giving them to me then!

19:33The only thing I was going to say is with that one, I know that surveys can be cost prohibitive for small businesses.

19:39So I'm just curious, like what an alternative to that would be.

19:43Because I love the idea. I get the concept and I get the national versus local.

19:47And, just the longevity piece of it. But it's actually getting the data piece that's prohibitive, I think for small businesses.

19:54Yeah. So what we, what you can do if it's like cost prohibitive is, there's, it's always like the content is such, the expensive part, especially with designing the graphics or whatever.

20:05Another one we do is like a trend report where we round up.

20:09And you could probably get the graphics cheap. If you want to just make it on brands. I don't know, there's a way to do that.

20:13For us, the graphics are usually the most expensive part because we have to be on brand. And we have to be really specific with it.

20:18And we have like different clients to work with and stuff.

20:21But we create a trend report and what that is, is like. We do deep Google trends research on, okay, we pick a keyword.

20:29What's going on in this industry. How do these Google trends show different behaviors in this industry?

20:35And then how can we present that data as here's 10 things we found, like a 10 trend roundup.

20:41And then we pick one of them and pitch it out with a press release. So for our client, Auvik, for example, they're in networking.

20:47We did networking trends. And we found Wi Fi seven hit a billion dollars in sales before it launched.

20:53And we're like, Whoa, Wi Fi seven is popping.

20:55That just came from going in Google trends.

20:57Deep researching.

20:58Asking questions. Going, what's going on? What? Let me just research it, like regular.

21:02And then, yeah, we published the trend report. We got the Wi Fi seven story made a press release, sent it out, and that's how we got our links.

21:08But that what happens with the trend reports, that's cool, is you rank for a keyword.

21:12We'll rank for networking trends. So then later, when journalists are searching networking trends, they just find it.

21:19And we get free links. Cause they're just finding our stuff and referencing it.

21:23So then all we have to do is make sure the data stays up to date, and it stays at the top of Google, and we're getting free links then.

21:28From one content asset.

21:30And then you just compound it, you do it again and again.

21:32So, it sounds like words like trends and statistics are the type of words that you're looking for. To get those people to find your content and then, link to it.

21:42Are there any other little magic words?

21:44Average. Cost is a big one and cost is a good one. Cost is hard because that's also a customer one. That's super valuable because you get people going, what's the cost? Like for me, what's the cost of a backlink? They'll go, customers might search that, read it, maybe buy.

21:59And journalists, when they're writing about backlink acquisition costs. Or link building costs or whatever.

22:04So cost keywords are big. But you need a lot of domain authority and a lot of like power to do that. And doing a PR story around cost is very difficult. If you're also trying to monetize the page because they can see through that.

22:15But just like any data keyword, maybe case study.

22:18Because journalists might Google a case study or a blogger might Google it, search Google for a case study.

22:23But anything data and anything like where you're pouring through a ton of data and finding these little tiny snippets of findings.

22:30That's like what you want to get to with a data story.

22:33And Brian Dean has a free digital PR course on SEMrush that you can take that talks about a lot of this.

22:39The trend report is based on that. It's not exactly in that, but he has three different stories that you can run there and try.

22:46But, at the end of the day, it's you can. I think something I learned through learning about digital PR is that you're never going to find that silver bullet of knowledge that's just the right answer.

22:58No one's going to tell you, here's the story for your business, right? No one can do that. It's an iterative process, and you have to just start.

23:05Make a story, start pitching, do it, and eventually you'll get it, right? It's the people who don't get it are the ones who give up. It's like that.

23:12You're an athlete in this. It's like a race. You got to seriously go at it. You got to you got to keep trying and iterating.

23:18And unfortunately, that's true for my clients investing in me doing it as well. I have to iterate. It takes fewer iterations for me, than it would for a client.

23:27Like, Maybe it takes me three or something. To get it right, but it takes a client five to 10.

23:31That's, do you want to spend your money or your time, so it's just like that though, but that's marketing.

23:37Okay.

23:38So you gave us the map example. And then he gave us the Google trends example.

23:42Could we round it out with one more top example or idea that you've seen success with in the past?

23:49Yeah.

23:50So the easiest way to get links, if you're in an easy industry.

23:53You just build a stat roundup, no graphics.

23:55You go blah, blah, blah, statistics, right? Then you just build that and publish it on your website and then you do guest posting to get links to it.

24:04But you get the links with the anchor text that matches the keywords.

24:07So for me, I published an article, Google Reviews Statistics. And then I just rounded up 10 stats I found on the internet, did the trend report ish thing. And then, in my case, it just ranked.

24:17I didn't have to do any link building.

24:18So there is a chance that your data asset ranks, if no one's written about it before.

24:23And then you're good and you don't have to do anything. But if you're doing guest blogging, what I could have done if it ranks like number four, I could have gotten a Google review statistics anchor text link to it to help push it up a little bit.

24:34So you can do just build the data content on your website. And do guest blogging for links. And that's like a very predictable way to get the outcome you're looking for as far as Active and passive link acquisition, right?

24:47But the problem people run into when they do guest blogging is they always try to go cheap with the links. And then the links are bad.

24:53You almost want to go more expensive. You want a really good writer.

24:55You want the content piece to be epic.

24:57Because when you're publishing a guest post one thing is You're building a relationship with that journalist or blogger and you want the content to be good anyway. But the other thing is if the content's good, the link's more powerful because Google uses on page factors to determine the quality of a link.

25:11It's almost the investor mindset of I need a cheaper link cost kicks in and it's that's counter to what you want. You almost want them to be more expensive.

25:19Because that's what makes them better. Like investing more in like the content of it. Or the outreach process or the story, cause then the links are more powerful, right?

25:30Okay. So I'm confused on where are you spending the money in this situation?

25:33Oh, labor. Software tools for analysis, just email software, outreach software tools, whatever. A writer.

25:42And then, like the person who's writing, they're writing for other publications?

25:47And then linking back to you. Is that what you're saying?

25:50Yeah, so if you're hiring a writer for it, it's I don't know. A lot of people want to hire for it because they hate doing it.

25:54It's such a painful I sent 20 emails and then talk to this person. You know what I mean? It's a lot of work and then finding the contact, writing every email by hand it's just a lot of work.

26:03I guess I just talk about outsourcing a lot, partly because I run an agency and I just talk to everyone who wants to outsource it.

26:08Yeah, if you want to DIY, just, it doesn't cost anything. Just write the articles. Don't pay for links. Write good articles that actually do something for the audience.

26:16Get it published, get your link in there, link to your stat page. And then yeah, that'll do it.

26:21Yeah,

26:22I think for product sellers and small e commerce brands that might use Shopify.

26:27That, there's a challenge of writing without writing exactly for your product, to promote your product and to find ideas that the people who are Buying from you would be interested in. Understanding their customer journey.

26:39And so do you have any ideas for, ideating or, just really being able to understand a customer's journey?

26:46I think it's like really understanding the problem that your product solves. For me I find a lot of success, honestly, just talking to my customers. It sounds so basic.

26:55But like I, I got on a call with someone and I was trying to do my own SEO.

27:00And I was like, man, I can't just rank for SEO. That's, when I was starting my website, I'm like, that's insane. I got to find some other buyer intent keywords.

27:06So I just started asking people when I was doing interviews.

27:09Like for clients and stuff, just like, yo, what did you search for?

27:12Because they didn't find me for search necessarily.

27:15But I asked him what they search for. And he's oh, I don't know, like Houston SEO. And I'm like, I'm not in Houston, that was interesting to me because I'm like it doesn't okay. Wait.

27:22So he's searching locally, but he didn't actually want a local person.

27:26So then what I did on my website is I built all these city pages for like link building.

27:30So I found the opportunity by talking to my customer.

27:33It wasn't through a tool. It was just, I talked to my customer and I'm like, wait, what? You're doing that?

27:36Holy crap. No way. I just built off of his behavior.

27:40Yeah.

27:40That's okay.

27:41So I think this is probably the last question I have, because it ties it up in terms of what we can actually control.

27:47Because what you're just talking about right now is building internal links, right?

27:51How powerful are internal links versus getting links from other websites?

27:56I've seen a lot of movement, just building internal links versus outreach.

28:01Yeah, they're really good. If you have other pages on your website that have links though, and that's where this ties in, right?

28:06You build the stat roundup on your website. And then that's a powerful internal linking asset.

28:11You link from that to your product pages and it's going to pass the link authority down to those product pages.

28:16So yeah. That's why, when I'm building a page on my website, it's only for sales or links, nothing else.

28:23If it's for anything else, I do it as a guest post, right?

28:26So if it's man, I have some cool tips that I could share. Or like some cool ideas of how to increase business profits. Okay. That's a guest post.

28:33It's not like a valuable page for my website necessarily.

28:37It's just cool information and it can make a cool link. So I'll pitch it out as a guest post.

28:41Wow. That's really interesting, but also very smart.

28:43Just like being able to separate what is business and what is not.

28:48What's going to really drive business outcomes.

28:50Yeah, because a lot of people just try to build a lot of keyword driven content.

28:54They're like, oh, it's good for seo. And i'm like, yeah, if it gets a link. But like it's not very targeted.

28:57You don't just publish random content with keywords.

28:59And the whole clustering thing.

29:01I don't agree with the clustering thing up front because like it happens naturally anyway, as you build your website.

29:05You start to publish more pages, more blog posts, you're going to cluster anyway. But keep your focus on links and sales.

29:12The cluster can exist within that, only.

29:14You don't need to build all these topical pages.

29:17And all you're going to get is people that are like top of funnel, not ready to buy, and that can be an offsite piece, like a guest post or something.

29:25Yeah, the whole concept of clustering.

29:28I ran into it a different way. Part of it was that I was using surfer SEO.

29:32But when I was using surfer, I saw that I was missing more targeted keywords.

29:39And again, since I sell to sports moms and, senior athletes, someone who is looking for a basketball senior night gift, isn't looking for senior night gift necessarily.

29:50They're probably looking for basketball senior night gift.

29:54So once I got an aha, then I was like, oh, okay, I need to do it for basketball and you do it for softball.

29:58I need all of these different product links. I wrote blogs related to that or whatever. And then I ended up with a cluster, obviously. That builds my authority for sports senior night.

30:10But I agree with you that you can get there both ways.

30:13But if you are an authority on a certain topic, you're going to end up with a bunch of different articles or pages that support your authority.

30:23Yeah. And you're just going to build it. Another reason to build content on your website is sales.

30:27I call it sales enablement. This is a term that's used in like marketing a lot, but a lot of entrepreneurs don't know about it. But it's like content that helps you sell.

30:35So like for me, that's like a blog post about exactly everything I do to do a guest posting campaign.

30:41So I'll talk about it and the client will go, what's that? On the call. And ask some questions here.

30:45I'll send you an article. And then they read the whole thing and go, geez, this guy.

30:47Helps me close the deal. So that kind of content as well. And even better if it's offsite, imagine if I sent that and it was on like search engine journal or something?

30:56Then he'd be like so that's what PR can do.

30:58And for your business, I think the reason I pitched the map thing is because you're selling like gifts . And you have this element of the newsworthy part ties into what you sell.

31:08So people will read the story and be like, oh man, I wanna get those. And then they'll lazy click to your website and buy it, .

31:13The lazy click is what you want to look for there, but that ties to your product very well.

31:17And it's newsworthy at the same time. So you have, you have the tie there.

31:21And it's really, finding that's all in creative thinking.

31:23I don't know, there's no weird freaking direct scientific answer to it.

31:28It's just. Thinking through the dots and going, Oh, whoa. Oh yeah, they totally would click that.

31:33And then over time you get better at thinking that way, like the thinking through how the internet user, behaves through things.

31:39If you think about it, we're just looking at a block in front of us with light shining at our face.

31:43Oh man, so like just understanding that element of the user on the computer is okay, yeah, you really ought to make this thing easy.

31:51Yeah.

31:51I think having these type of conversations and hearing someone have this type of conversation, it's like the catalyst for ideation.

31:59Like some people might not even know that this was a possibility. And I know the point of time where I didn't know that certain things were a possibility.

32:07And you've even reframed, ideas for me.

32:10I just wrote down an idea like, okay, because I need data that already exists.

32:15So I'm like senior photographers are another big target for me because I sell senior photo props.

32:20So I'm like, I could figure out, how many senior photographers there are in each state. And do a roundup and that type of stuff.

32:27I don't know.

32:27But I just would not have had that idea if we wouldn't have this conversation.

32:32Yeah, definitely. But. I think after having the conversation, you realize how it's not the scientific mathematical like crazy...

32:38it's just like it's art.

32:40Like making music. And musicians are pretty good at making music cause they've been doing it so long.

32:44But you can figure it out.

32:45You just have to start. And then pull on a string.

32:48Yes, exactly. I love that! Pull on the strings.

32:49I play guitar. I love that.

32:51Okay.

32:51If someone wants to, connect with you, follow you, all that type of stuff.

32:55Where can they locate you on the internet?

32:58If you want to talk to me about business, LinkedIn is probably the best place.

33:02And if they want to, they could book a call on my website, RankoMedia.com.

33:06They just scroll to the bottom, book a call.

33:08Yeah, that's pretty much it.

33:09Okay.

33:10Awesome.

33:10Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

33:13The information you shared is just so helpful.

33:16We can take it and apply it to our individual businesses.

33:19So thank you so much.

33:20Yeah, I hope it's helpful.

33:22That's it. I'll see you next time.

33:24Bye.

33:25Thanks, Crystal.