in this video I talked to John Dykstra
from the fat stacks blog John's a good
friend of mine a fellow bald man and
he's crushing it out there he publishes
some income reports and I encourage you
to check those out there will be a link
in the description in this particular
video we talked about a few different
topics so number one kind of interesting
is that John gets like a million or more
visitors to his sites per month but he
claims he's not so great at SEO which
seems funny but he explains it
then we talked about a few other topics
including image SEO and a few things you
could do to optimize your images for SEO
as well as a few mistakes that people
can make we also talked about content
that attracts links which doesn't sound
that hard to do overall but it is one of
those skills that you'll have to develop
and sort of test and tweak to see what
works for you so quick plug for John's
podcast I'm a listener they're very sort
of concise bite-sized episodes most of
the time he publishes pretty often so
I'm highly encourage you to check it out
and of course the fat stacks blog so if
you are new to the channel here have a
look at some of the other videos and if
you like what you see please subscribe
and by the way if you do have questions
for John leave a comment just ask and it
is highly likely almost a hundred
percent likely that John will be back on
the channel again on the podcast and we
can answer those questions that all
right let's send it to the interview now
hey what's going on it's Doug Pennington
here and I'm with my good buddy
John Dykstra how are you doing today Jay
really well Doug yeah thanks for having
me and we're just gonna have like a
casual conversation I've been listening
to your podcast a lot lately you have
some great titles which I'm not
surprised you have some good titles out
through those things and just there's a
behind the scenes sort of chat people
seem to dig these and I like like
talking to you when we may as well get
some content out of this so so for
people that don't know you John just
quick
intro what are you what are you up to
these days I'm basically an online
publisher I own some content sites and
build them up over the years and that's
really my focus that sucks kind of a fun
thing I do where I just blogged about
what I'm doing it's kind of a business
blog but my other sites I think there's
about nine right now
I focus only on about four four or five
it's nine nine stuff and just mostly
informational little bit of product
promotion on them but focus on
informational content and just been
growing them over the years and I just
really enjoy publishing content for
website visitors awesome and you're a
recovering lawyer I guess right yeah I
practice law for a number of years and
well this is backward websites for small
business or chests just getting off the
ground and so I was with a small firm
and needed sites like that kind of site
built and I didn't build it I had no
clue how do you know any of this stuff
and hired a company I did it for I hired
a really good company and they actually
suggested blogging which was really
novel at the time and so they sort of
set up that you know the basic brochure
site and they said okay well we've got
this with this built-in CMS which which
was at the time very progressive for
like like business site developers which
was essentially what WordPress was and
it wasn't WordPress though and they said
well just blog on this and I write
articles about law and what your
potential clients my like and and just
provide a lot of information they even
so that said this this was cool they
said you know you guys should write a
book
little books that you hand out so I did
that too and in our practice areas that
we prefer to focus on and so we did this
book we did a free giveaway for visitors
to the site they signed up for it we'd
mail it out to them and built up the
blog and it really worked
of course it could have been easier back
then because there was very little
competition but anyways that's where I
got the blogging buck and I was just
having loads of fun with it and when
off into a different piece just for fun
after that just to see what it would do
and well here I am today awesome very
cool and let's get into some of these
topics so you have quite a few websites
you have a portfolio and you're getting
a huge number of visitors per month and
you can share that number in a second
but you also claim that you're bad at
SEO so can you explain how you get so
much traffic yet you maybe don't feel
like your skills are very good an SEO
area Yeah right no no it's actually true
this thought came to me because I've got
I got a buddy who who is part of a SEO
agency and I bounce questions off him
he's really nice he helps me out but I
mean this guy knows SEO so does he's got
a partner and he knows SEO the the
technical stuff the off-site stuff they
know it inside out and I'm asking these
really simple that I'm thinking to
myself like I should really know the
stuff by now right it's been 10 years I
should know this stuff and this is like
SEO 101 but I don't know it and so it's
sort of chuckle to myself it's like well
you know Here I am this publisher online
and you know my biggest traffic source
is google search and I don't know the
answers questions and so it occurred to
me wow you know so anyways I have I
don't know any gave a month that ranges
from between 1 and 1.3 1.4 million
visitors a month across my site it's
mostly one my one really big excitement
sprinkled across the others and so occur
to me now I managed to do this with
without really knowing SEO and like I
don't do SEO for clients I'm not
interested in it and so the reason I say
I don't really know SEO is well first up
I don't really do any off-site stuff now
I know about it okay I mean I I know
enough that I could probably do a lot of
damage to my site so I don't I don't
build links I don't do a lot of
promotion maybe fast acts probably the
most promotion idea which is you know I
you know I know folks like you and we
chat stuff and but it's not really like
oh to just I'll write promote but with
my niche sites none of that and so I
don't know any off-site stuff except for
the usual automated blasts SEO channels
which is
almost done even worth it and then with
the on-site technical stuff like you
know I I have search console setup man I
never dig in the only reason I do that
is because SEO said it's a good thing to
do with a sitemap so they did that make
sense to me so I get that fortunately
you know they're tools to do all this
stuff
I couldn't create a sitemap if I have to
I wouldn't even know how to do that I
rely on the Yoast plugin and like on
site stuff in terms of like keyword
density and link text to put in and all
of these technical factors that essence
talked about I know nothing about
I don't read about I'm not interested in
so what I do is I don't fashion myself
as like a niche site SEO person or any
of that
I really just fashioned myself as an
online publisher and I've been using the
term more and more it's a little bit
different I think in my mind been a
blogger I think a blog is I mean it's
really interchangeable but a blog is
really sort of almost like got more of a
personal like fat slacks like I kind of
blog about what am I doing this week
sort of thing where's all my publishers
more like what your online magazine type
site it could be a new site it can be
evergreen content site and really I'm
just a publisher providing content and
the hope is is that the contents good
enough that it will get traffic via
Google and and that's all I do and the
most SEO I really do is I pay attention
to what's working and then I'm like okay
well these topics are working on these
sites
so I do more of them related whether
it's that it's a it's a type of article
that seems to be working and by that I
mean like an article concept right like
product reviews that's that's a type of
article we're all fairly familiar with
that or a tutorial type article that's
an article concept or maybe it's it's
topical you know I tend to I tend to
enter a really broad large niches where
there's many sub niches within and so
let's say a particular topic is
performing really well I'll look at that
okay well I could really flesh out out a
lot more I could I could add another 20
articles and
that's really in-depth section on that
so so that's about the extent of what I
do and I could do a little bit of damage
with a dress and keyword research tools
and I suppose I become pretty adept at
keyword research and really digging and
looking for the really little
competition stuff but but that's about
the extent of it so you know if you
asked say ting SEO if I had a
five-minute conversation with them
especially one who knows what they're
doing they would say well you you don't
really know that much and I would 100%
agree with that I'm okay with that and
and I think the point is you don't need
to be like an SEO expert to become a
reasonably successful online publisher I
focus on the publishing not on the SEO
got it and I recently met up with a with
a friend online I had not met him in
person but I got to sit down and have a
beer with him a couple months ago
and he was asking me a lot of SEO
questions especially like sort of
cutting edge things I was like I don't
know again it was like five or six
questions where I was like you know what
I'm not I'm not really sure i don't read
blogs I really don't consume that much
information I usually just do the same
boring stuff the things that I'm good
enough at and I think that's what you're
saying - it's like you know how to do
the publishing you know how to find
content that people like and you're not
like bogged down with the things that
you're probably not too interested in
learning about right yeah that's exactly
a you you brought up an interesting
point about not reading a whole lot
that's kind of ironic given that you
publish a lot of really terrific content
in this fear I really like it but the
reason I like yours and this is a point
is that I'm actually fairly judicious
about what I read in terms of like
business books which I generally
typically avoid altogether but in terms
of blogs and email lists and so forth
and I really seek out and will restrict
my reading to the content that's
alliance with my current strategy
because I don't want to get distracted
it's so I can get distracted like
literally with one email and and it's
happened it's like oh wow I'm getting
great results
with with this and it's something
totally different than what I'm doing I
know nothing about it
yeah what I do is I actually go and I've
wasted literally weeks going down some
rabbit hole unrelated or what I'm doing
it's it's akin to starting over which is
ridiculous because I should just stick
with what I'm doing so I now make a made
a decision
I read blogs and email us are talking
about what I'm currently doing and if
it's not and if they're focused as other
I their stuff doesn't work or that I got
a problem with it it's just it helps me
focus to just stick with reading people
doing the similar stuff to me for sure
in to that point there's a lot of
misinformation so you also had a story
of how I think you you wasted some some
huge amount of money for like
misinformation can you just kind of give
us the background on that one yeah well
when I I used to never use this planet's
most of my revenue on my content sites
are is generated from display ads I used
various ad networks but that wasn't
always the case I mean I got started in
this with with affiliate marketing as a
lot of people to you and that made sense
me I do I do like the affiliate
marketing model I think it's great its
results oriented and you basically earn
what you can perform and so but I had
read a lot of blogs that were talking
about you know Adsense miss what ads are
a total waste of money and there's way
better ways to monetize a site and I was
I was new I didn't know any better right
and it's like okay well they know more
it means well I never explored display
ads which was a huge mistake because I
actually had sites at the time that
probably would have done reasonably well
with that they were affiliate marketing
oriented but I always did like to
publish non affiliate content like
informational content but this content
would be on these generally these
affiliate sites and they didn't generate
affiliate sales they just attracted
traffic and that's all well I get and
but the problem is is that is anyone who
says display ads are like the worst way
to monetize
typically they have their sights focused
within the business realm particularly
like the how to blog route or how to do
SEO realm and these are great niches and
there there's a lot and they probably
know these niches really really well a
lots of good information but the problem
is is yeah adsense and his plans are
probably not the best option for these
types of niches but for a lot of other
niches like affiliate marketing is not
viable and really your best bet is as
planets and so my point is this it's
like try different things just you know
and and try to understand like if
somebody says something is declaring
essentially like display ads have been
ad well try to look at why they would
say that what is their business model
and if you're doing something totally
different it's not apples to apples and
unfortunately I followed that advice for
a number of years and I I got in his
play odds by accident like if I could
still actually remember the day when I
had this site it was a new site this is
2014 and I started getting a lot of
traffic to it and my intention was it as
gonna be an affiliate site and because
that's all I knew but I wasn't making a
nickel and affiliate Commission's
despite I don't I think I had like over
a thousand visitors a day maybe more and
back then there was like Facebook
traffic was awesome so I think it was
actually quite a bit more Facebook
traffic was really easy and free and
cheap if you did the ads back then so I
was doing that
and so I just decided oh you know what
I've got this adsense account I had I
never really use it I and so I just
threw up a couple of Adsense ads on the
thing and it made like over a hundred
bucks like within a day and like I just
threw like two up there just without
anyone any thought whoa you know like
okay ditch the affiliate focus this is
going to splay out and that's when I got
into it and I haven't looked back and
there was a thing that was a big turning
point and what I'm doing I'm like this
is terrific I can publish on any topic
within my knee shows and monetize that
content and I can focus on content that
with back then like oh well I could this
will probably do really well on Facebook
so you know post it you know the hordes
of traffic from Facebook and make money
off that and that that was eye-opening
it was great very cool
and I have to admit I'm part of the
group that gives some of that advice so
but let me explain so yeah I talk a lot
about affiliate marketing and most of
the time I am giving the advice to
people who maybe are getting way less
traffic than you just mentioned they're
getting like maybe 15 visitors a day and
there they have issues elsewhere and
they're thinking hey I should put ads on
my site to squeeze a little bit more
revenue out of 15 visitors per day when
they need more traffic they need more
content they need more SEO things going
on they just need more traffic so
usually I try to encourage people to
like wait until they're ready
I tell them some probably arbitrary
number like wait so you get a few
hundred visitors a day and then go to
your informational content and then put
some ads there to test it out and
experiment and I know several of my
students right now I think they're
making about a third of their revenue
from their informational post and
they're using display ad networks to you
know put ads not everywhere but just on
those informational posts and they're
like I wish I would have done it a
little sooner but they listened to my
advice where I was like just make sure
you get the other stuff right first you
know want to cannibalize your affiliate
sales where maybe you're making more
money from that so yeah I'm part of the
problem but I have some logic at least
behind it so any any thoughts on that
yeah I think if you have yeah you
definitely want to distinguish on a site
I mean if I do fill it stuff still to
this day it's not a focus but I do it
and so if I do have a page on a site
that's that's generating lots of gravity
from affiliate yeah I'll turn the ads
off on that and that makes sense and so
yeah you know if you're starting a site
out and it's we've got a lot of buyer
intent content on there for whether it's
Amazon or some software or something
like that yeah obviously display ads are
not your best bet because a high can
hurting Paige with affiliate promotions
is going to out-earn display ads like
all the time right it's just no contest
my point is is if you'd like to publish
outside of the hole buyer intent around
where you're not mentioning products are
not linking out then display ads are
your best bet and further that is when
you look beyond buyer and head keywords
world of keyword opportunities becomes
available and that's what I liked about
it
you're not hedged in with okay well I'm
my sites about sneakers and I'm gonna
focus on you know just writing content
that is going to quote sneakers with
really high conversion rates you're
pretty limited with keywords there's a
lot but you're still limited and let's
face it that stuff is boring to write
like deadly be boring unless you are a
real sneaker freak but if you think more
broadly such as basketball perhaps in
general I mean you you could cover the
sneakers in depth and have a whole
section on sneakers and do the affiliate
length thing but then you can have tons
of content about basketball generally
and to me that would be more interesting
it's like well if you if I'm into
basketball that's kind of a fun site to
write including the sneaker aspect and
you can monetize that with display ads
right on and I think yeah you you
explained it well so I'm not even gonna
try and repeat what you said so I'm
gonna jump away from our outline just
for a second here but you'll you'll be
fine this is not completely out of left
field so I recently bought bought of
site and I'm I was like migrating it
over and this morning I'm just having so
many technical issues like decides down
like the only thing that I wanted was
not have the site go down but I'm having
issues like migrating my back up like
cloning system that I've used many times
before
like I'm not able to connect the FTP and
you know DNS fill in a bunch of other
like tech acronyms there but John do you
have any stories where you have like a
tech issue and it just was so
frustrating
oh yeah I'm terrible at this stuff you
you even say DNS or name servers and I'm
just like I use Kinston hosting with
amazing customer support I'm just like
open up you gotta help me out here how
do i do that's right like because i
registered with GoDaddy and then I got
hosting there CloudFlare it's like all
supposed to be integrated end all right
to this day I don't even know how I can
barely like it seems like starting a
site is hard to get all this stuff going
so if you're frustrated getting your
site going they're driving you crazy
with all this tech stuff
just two jumble through it usually most
most hosts hosting companies have really
good support even the lower-cost ones
I'm amazed at the like live chat like I
still have Bluehost account and I'll hit
him up on live chat when I gotta deal
with this stuff they're very helpful but
probably my worst tech story is with my
biggest site it's gonna be a couple
years ago I was still it was doing
really well man and I got I got some
sort of malware attack on this thing
like it was totally brutal in fact it
was it was displaying as a are you know
ID that's not the site right they
basically took it over and I could still
go in there and deal with the content
and everything but it was somehow shown
as a dot ru and it was completely hot
and I had no idea what to do and you
know it within pretty short time after
that it was D index from Google like
they basically told me a search console
your site it's like damn next I'm like
whoa I had a pretty good idea was to
hack and nothing else so I thought okay
well I think I could fix this I was
pretty pretty nervous about that
obviously right so I like I think I
think I hired security at that point
like they have services I can like just
you know they got the freebie sort of
thing but I I need to pay them and they
went in and they just clean the thing
out and I was actually really amazed
because Google reindex them very very
quickly ie I think I did submit a review
for when security had done their thing
and you I wrote a little thing you know
security did all blah blah blah blah and
I mean within a week it was reindex
which I was really impressed by because
Google is sort of known to us as like
this big black hole with no
customer support you never hear anything
no matter what you ask them and yeah but
sure enough I mean it was a quick
response it was reindex all my rankings
for golden like they didn't really move
so I meant I feel really fortunate I
came out as I did but I'll tell you that
I think it was about four or five weeks
that I took like dealing with that whole
mess oh that's by far the worst worst
tech issue I ever had with a site these
attacks like recently I download again
wasn't nearly as bad but BuzzFeed had a
really good article recently about a lot
of work WordPress site owners or what's
happening is there's some sort of attack
creating these so if you ever site check
it but they're creating users it has
been users and then they're going in and
they're injecting outbound spam links
and they're hard to fight because they
usually target older content which you
wouldn't normally going right check like
it's not like we go check all our
content every day to make sure it's
right we just see what's good and I was
just doing some work on some old posts I
mean if I don't these spam links are
like let's that's right and then I
looked and I found this rogue user was
created and then I'm like so anyways I
had to hire wordfence they have it they
have a cleanup service for that which
was very cool and they clean it but they
got rid of the links they clean it all
out but that was a race of thing I mean
it's I can get D index but I mean who
wants a bunch of I had no idea how many
spam open up on links where I think I
think there were over 20 you know on the
site and that's not cool so another
other problem easy to these things ever
stop do you know if it was like an old
plug-in had a vulnerability or do you
know how they got in oh probably because
I'm super lazy and I don't update my
stuff as quickly as I should so I added
manage WP to my sites and it just
updates everything weekly so yeah it's
my fault I'm pretty I'm I'm telling you
the tech stuff I'm irresponsible
so who has my fault like for sure right
good word of advice keep your stuff
updated and I installed wordfence also I
guess they have additional security
measures paints fake users being created
and so forth so far seems I use the free
version seems to be good
cool and another plug for manage WPD so
I use them too I think it's like one or
two dollars per month per site to have
like off-site backups you can restore it
and a push of a button so I haven't not
gonna would I haven't had any issues and
a lot of my sites for a site ground and
they have a malware scanning add-on that
I always get and it checks it I think
either its weekly or daily I can't
remember if I ever have an issue I know
I can go back to manage WP and restore
from the point before there was an issue
and then I mean if things are updated as
they should be and I'm pretty lean on
plugins because I know there's always a
vulnerability like the more things you
have going on like the more issues you
can have so yeah I'm a plug-in hog
another problem how many do you usually
like on a baseline 30 I try to keep it
to about 10 or 11 and usually like three
of those or security in some way or
another so dude a slow your site Anika
sure it comes to so they're rocking it
pretty good right probably do I just
can't seem to let go of them but it was
the same not what I do and here's the
thing was back to this distraction thing
you know some cool little plugin comes
out you set it up and then you know you
deploy it across your content and it's
cool it does what it says but it's
another plug-in and then it's like oh I
don't want to get rid of it because I
kind of like what it does now if I would
have just never bothered trying it in
the first place then I wouldn't have
this problem but that's how that's how I
end up with 30-plus plugins gotcha
and one thing that I I had a friend and
he would you know get the functionality
of a plug-in but then he was hiring a
wordpress developer to like hard-coded
into his like WordPress core files or
whatever so would be I'm just gonna make
up the file I don't quite know it's like
main dot PHP
it's like in that file or something like
that so it's hard coded loads faster
removes the the issues so that's that's
interesting yeah you know I've dabbled
with that just a touch because I have a
technical background so I've added a few
pieces of code for for example no
indexing your archive like blogroll so
it's very so and that's just like two
lines of code and it runs faster so I
don't have to use another plug-in to do
that functionality so it is dangerous
though you can like destroy your whole
site I'm messing with a PHP so I've done
that too yeah big white wall Oh yep and
then yeah then the support from your
hosting company comes in really handy
yes all right let's shift gears into
more like SEO kind of things so this is
something I know that you're good at so
image SEO a few of your sites have quite
a few images so can you give us like the
top couple things that you can suggest
that a lot of people maybe miss with
image SEO yeah I do use a lot of images
filling out the alt text field very
descriptively I think helps a lot and
don't try to manipulate like you know
don't don't just putting keywords that
aren't related to the image I just
describe the image that's it I just
here's the image here's what here's what
it's about
so that's number one obviously like
optimize them so that they're they're
pretty small files like when I started
with an image site I was uploading it
just that were 5,000 pixels wide and
like 2 megabytes which was insane and it
would take forever to load and I wonder
why why doesn't my site load fast it was
like you learn right so now I resize
everything no bigger than a thousand
pixels wide and optimize them down to
like 150 200 kilobytes even that's
probably a bit big the latest
development with image and SEO which I
like is what IP format for images it
doesn't work in Safari but for Chrome
and I think Firefox it shows up that
format loads I'm it is really fast
and you can get web pee with like short
pixel plugin I think image if I also
does the same is oeq has a site speed
thing they they will do WebP you format
so there's lots of there's lots of
options to do that but and basically
they can actually turn existing images
into that format they load faster it
seems to be that the latest format so
that that's a big one and I've done that
across all my sites in terms of you know
some images I like images because
especially on visual sites because they
can attract a lot of links mainly
because people read them often and
source like it so that's worked out well
in terms of link building because other
people just taken I don't care they
could have in terms of you know and
another question I get asked a lot is I
hate left and right aligning back when
there was only desktop it was great
right you could you could do these nice
you know left the line 300 pixel wide in
major then text would wrap around it and
look cool and all that don't do that
with mobile it makes a total mess what
you end up with is you end up with like
a real thin strip of text on the right
or you know and tablet who knows what it
looks like so these days what I do is I
just go full-size like on desktop that's
the full width of the column which is
usually like anywhere from like 700 to
800 pixels and then in mobile it'll take
up the full the full width as well you
know getting me that weird text wrapping
I think those days are done
it's I do the same with that by the way
I don't align and it's left or right I
just like go center and pull width so
yeah but that's pretty much it use them
use images I think don't steal them
though copyright trolls are out there in
force and use the stock image sites take
your own photos that's that's the best
thing to do I'm telling you if you if
you're into like like I know Doug you do
Amazon affiliate stuff buy the products
you're writing about and you can
literally take 30 images of your own are
you using iPhone they're not the best
images in the world
I'm certainly not a pro photographer but
I'll take them and they're good enough
and I think they do two things first off
you get a lot of unique
but second of all your readers see
that's like oh this person actually has
the product and use the product you hear
the images because they're not like the
nice fancy professional photos from the
virtual and Amazon so I do that quite a
bit as well I love being able to use my
own photos but stock photo sites are
great I use shutterstock but there's
some free ones out there very cool and I
learned something here which is obvious
the right aligning or left aligning of
images so I still do that a little bit
but yeah you're a hundred percent right
I definitely have seen it where I have
poorly formatted for like a phone or
just a different display that's not like
super wide so I can't remember to change
that and then yeah another note for the
like not custom images but images that
you have taken yourself
I think iPhones are pretty darn good
these days I mean they're way better
than like the cameras that I had that
we're very expensive you know ten years
ago and if you can get the lighting like
right usually your pictures gonna be
pretty darn good and it looks authentic
it looks real people are trusts or
people will trust you were content a
little bit more if they're like oh they
have the you know product right there so
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