hey what's going on this is the Doug
show my name is Doug Pennington this is
part two of a two-part series of an
interview it's actually a rebroadcast
from the human proof podcast my friend
Dom wells from human proof designs
interviewed me a little while back and
like I mentioned this is part two so if
this happens to be the first episode
that you're listening to of the Doug
show welcome glad to have you this
episode won't make as much sense unless
you listen to the previous episode so I
highly encourage you to check that out
now before I send it over to the
interview which is reasonably long it
gets pretty meaty I just want to tell a
little story
currently my wife and I are in a bit of
a panic we're moving we've been living
in Bozeman for I think it's like four
four years is that right so anyway she
has a cool opportunity to get a new job
in a different town in a different state
so he are like I said scrambling of
course you have to deal with all the
normal stuff with moving figuring out
what to do like with your home are you
gonna sell it are you gonna keep it
packin figuring out if you're going to
don't need anymore that that sort of
thing my interesting little issue that I
have is I have a kegerator there's
something like 20 plus gallons of beer
in it now don't get me wrong I try and
do my part to you know drink drink what
I can each day almost every day but the
thing is there's still a little extra in
there so I'm sort of scrambling trying
to figure out okay we're gonna be able
to finish what we have do I need to have
a few friends over for a little you know
empty the keg party to to to make it
easier to move then the other part is
just beer that I have brewed but not yet
bottled because it was aging so I have a
couple beers that are you know very that
they're actually very very good and I'm
gonna need to bottle them I wasn't
planning on bottling them for a little
while but I'm gonna need to bottle them
and the next I don't know like a week or
so along with the regular packing then
the the final little conundrum that I'm
dealing with here is I have a barrel
it's a five gallon whiskey barrel that
I'm aging Biron so I need to empty that
I'll probably put it actually into a keg
because a keg is a fairly robust way to
transport beer across state lines
apparently wait that's just a joke I'm
not transporting alcohol across state
lines for any you know revenuers that
are listening but the mark the point is
I haven't had a beer that I have to
figure out what to do with worst case
scenario you drink it
so anyway I'm gonna send it over to the
intro that the Dom did for my interview
on the human proof podcast please check
it out very good podcast is a ton of
episodes a lot of big value that he
provides on his podcast so after Dom
does his intro we will get into the
actual interview so let's go ahead and
get started here anyway we're gonna pick
up where we left off and Doug is now
gonna talk us through everything he did
and it's a fantastic episode I can't
wait for you to hear it I guess the
title would be the issues encountered
with project go white hat and I just
recap what we were talking about sure so
basically my partner and I Rob we're
working on converting a gray hat site to
a white hat site in hopes of getting a
higher multiple whenever we sold the
site and in the process of doing this
basically ten months long project we
encountered a few issues we're gonna
talk about basically how we resolved
three main things one was around content
so if you remember from the previous
episode the content was kind of lousy in
general and there also wasn't very much
of it and we wanted to solve the site
for multiple six figures and we knew
that we needed to you know take a look
at content
what to do in a like large-scale way the
second major issue was actually
converting it to a white hat site from a
gray hat site and that required looking
at the private blog network links of
which there were 45 and then replacing
them with new white hat guest post links
that we got through outreach and then
finally Amazon changed the Commission
rates in March of 2017 and effectively
changed our Commission rate from about
eight and a half percent to about five
and a half percent significant decrease
in a bit so let's start with I mean
chronologically the first thing you did
was the content or did you do the
content and try to do the links at the
same time we did content in links at the
same time but the you know really the
content happened faster you know that
was something that I kind of had skills
with as far as building a team you know
finding what content we actually wanted
to place on the site and getting it
published quickly so content really
happened first all right cool so you had
about 45 posts on the site at the time
was the new content being added
regularly at the time or had it been
static for some time it had been very
static for a very long time yeah so
there wasn't there really wasn't much
going on and you know really there was
like one post right that was making 90
percent of the revenue and I could
straight-up just give you some details
on it I think there were about 2,500
words I mentioned in the last episode
the content was pretty poor in that it
was pretty clear that the author the
freelance writer that Rob hired they
really didn't know anything about the
product so it was really you know kind
of bad and you know we talked before
sometimes you know you can still make
good conversions on that but
we knew we needed to step up our game on
that specific post and then on top of
that since there were only 45 posts on
the site in general you know we wanted
to get that up over a hundred and you
know I was on one of the previous
episodes if someone hasn't you know
listened to it you should check out the
one on like the keyword golden ratio and
dom me you could probably tell us the
title of that one I don't recall but I
mean we straight up use the keyword
golden ratio and published a eighty post
over the course of several weeks to you
know get this at a level that we felt
more comfortable it would actually sell
for like multiple six figures yeah so
that's episode thirteen an episode
fourteen it's called getting longtail
traffic with Doug Cunningham so going
back to what you were saying so was it a
particular wizard and meesh where and I
know you can't reveal the niche but was
it one where the writer would have had
problems reviewing it and they were just
kind of guessing or were they just one
of those kind of writers who just sort
of made it up as they went along like
how bad was the content it was the
latter I mean they could have reviewed
it better but they just you know didn't
try that hard and I mean like I said the
crazy thing the the page was ranking
really well and it was making a lot of
money but it was just not that great and
I talked about this a little bit on
niche site project I call it like the
research paper method and it goes back
to you know back when we were in high
school or college and we had to you know
go write a research paper on some topic
we go to the library you know back when
I assume those are still in schools but
nowadays I'm sure people could just like
look everything up on their phone
without getting up but back in the day
like Dom you probably went to the
library you get some encyclopedias
that's like Wikipedia but with books
you're you remember encyclopedias right
yeah I remember the library uh so
basically I do this research paper
method rpm and you google the term that
you're interested in and then you find
like the best resources on the internet
you can solid eight that information
usually like Wikipedia probably will be
a source you may be able to go to like
the manufacturers website for the
products or various manufacturers and
like really get insight on you know how
they organize the information the
information that's actually provided and
you can see what's important to people
that actually buy the product because
it's in the manual and then you can go
to other niche sites too that may be
well researched and written well and you
can solid eight all that information to
write an outline using that content so
at that point you know if you put it all
together you've gone to the best sources
online you saw what they did and then
you wrote an outline on it
with that outline you can go to a you
know a competent writer which I hired on
up work by the way so I hired an writer
on up work this individual had you know
some journalistic background they were a
you know a qualified writer they were
professional so for about $200 I you
know provided the outline to the person
I provided the resources to the person
and I had them write an additional about
seven or eight thousand words I can't
remember off the top of my head for
about two hundred bucks
okay well it's higher than a lot of
people would go but I can obviously tell
them the results spoke for themselves do
you think you could have said to the
writer here's the method for researching
like here's how I want you to go out and
do the research and do you think the
writer could have done a good result as
well or is it better to be like okay
like they're not you know just let them
focus on writing and I'll
focus on the research right I think yeah
you could do that you could give that to
one person I think a better way would be
to hire a researcher who would create a
one-page outline based on the process
and then have a writer do it I think
having two separate people do it like
may bring fresh information to it or may
keep the process cleaner I'd be worried
about the writer
cutting corners and not doing as good of
a job but you know what that process
only took me about two hours and at that
point I mean I'm like an expert on the
topic so whenever he or she like would
give the article back to me I would know
if it was well-written or not so there's
like value in having knowledge yeah
definitely yeah I guess if it was me I
would probably maybe get a project
manager or a researcher or an editor to
do all of that
yeah research preparation stuff give it
to the writer and then have them read
the article afterwards like the project
person because then they will be able to
say yeah this article covers the key
points like the buying considerations
and I would say if anybody has their own
site and they want to outsource the
content which is pretty much everybody
then they should at least take the time
to do some research and like one of my
first websites was about shaving and I
thought I knew everything about shaving
and then later I got some of those
comments from people you know leaving
comments being like you don't know what
you're talking about and I thought
that's true I don't so part of my thing
was every week I would say right I'm
gonna write three posts for this site
every week I was very bootstrapped back
then so I did all the writing myself and
I also told myself I had to read one
forum for an hour every week and after a
few weeks I realized I you know I knew
everything I had gone through the FAQ
threads all the beginner threads so when
I was writing my articles I was able to
cater to that kind of beginner what do I
need to know so that you can actually
write an article about a razor you've
never seen before but you
say this is a good razor because it has
this and this is important because of
this and that's the kind of stuff you
only learn from reading a ton of other
articles and forums yes exactly and you
know like we're saying there's some
value in having that knowledge and I
believe you know you mentioned having
like an editor and you know basically a
content manager type to do the pre
research and I think that'd be perfect I
mean I actually I like to sort of
separate out like the writing from like
the editor I mean I expect the writer to
do some editing but I do know that I
mean they're working on a per job basis
and they're trying to finish fast and
even if they were proud they may make a
little mistake here and there and I
think a different editor can usually
like zip through it pretty quickly and
you know for the team that I put
together there was a Content Manager who
formatted the posts and then edited for
grammar and readability at the same time
so it was sort of an all-in-one but you
know me personally I like to have you
know the writers sort of separate even
you know from the research even though
if you have like a sort of
jack-of-all-trades type writer you could
have them do you know the research maybe
they are an expert in the niche
perhaps I mean you know there's all
sorts of people that you can hire
depending on what your needs are yeah
that's so true I don't believe it's
gonna cost you any more to hire more
people anyway because if you're going to
be paying per hour it doesn't matter
whether you're paying one person ten
hours or two people five hours but
you're gonna get a lot more out of that
with our sites that we build for
ourselves that we build for customers we
have a project manager we have writers
we have editors and then we have the
people who upload the content and then
we even have one person at the end whose
job it is to do the QA and doesn't cost
us anything more but it means there's
like four or five opportunities for
people to catch everything rather than
expecting this magical VA to do
everything perfectly right
exactly so one thing I can mention you
know the results from improving this
content so the traffic went up like
almost immediately just on this one post
right so we added roughly seven or eight
thousand words of content to twenty five
hundred word post and I believe we
started getting a whole lot of new
long-tailed traffic that we didn't have
before because all of a sudden we were
covering like these menu features we're
covering different products like there
was all these new words that we could
rank for so our traffic went up by about
40 percent in about you know 45 days or
so Wow why did you pick 7,000 is that
just how long you felt it needed to be
or whether competitors are nine
thousands yeah I think you know for the
most part it was like 15 to 20 percent
longer than you know most of the other
competitors so that's how we sort of
arrived we knew that it was going to be
you know sufficiently longer than some
of the competitors and you know sort of
arbitrary like there were certain things
that I added in the outline that you
know you could only say a hundred words
on it otherwise it's kind of boring and
redundant just in general so we just
picked that makes sense and it totally
makes sense that speaking from my own
experience every time we have extended a
post even if it's by 500 words of course
you're gonna increase the number of
keywords you rank for but then you're
also gonna improve a lot of the other
longtail rankings as well and then
that's gonna improve
the rest of the site so it's just like
everything is exponential and you're
just gonna get all these extra boosts
right exactly and you know what more
important so traffic went up by 40
percent the revenue went up too right
that's the most important thing the
revenue went up like it followed almost
exactly so within a month
traffic was up 40 percent and then the
revenue went from like ten thousand to
like fourteen thousand and if I remember
it was like ten thousand to fourteen to
nineteen thousand to thirty two thousand
in December Wow I mean obviously a lot
of that growth is because it was
December but I don't think that much can
be because just because of the Christmas
shopping season right yeah I mean we
obviously took advantage of the retail
season but you know the majority of it
was probably due to new longtail traffic
and and on that note at the same time I
went ahead and got all these key word
golden ratio type of key words that fit
the criteria and hired a team of I think
I put together a team of like four or
five writers in one content manager
slash editor to you know draft and post
and they basically work through all that
content and we were able to you know
start ranking for a lot of those getting
a little bit of traffic essentially as
soon as we published those articles and
how much did you pay be cagey our
writers because presumably you know kg
our contents not necessarily going to
learn as much do you pay a lower rate
and shorter word count right yeah so
those are typically about like 850 to a
thousand words or so depending on how
interesting the topic is and we were
paying the writers about fourteen or
fifteen dollars per article and then the
content manager would typically have to
work about 45 minutes or an hour to
format and draft the posts and then the
other useful piece of information is we
were paying that editor slash Content
Manager about nine or ten dollars an
hour I think it was nine dollars I think
I gave her a raise after some time so
all in those posts were roughly about
twenty five bucks each sounds like a bit
of a bargain I mean there's definitely
some
overhead with you know me serving as the
project manager but obviously with a
project with this scope in this level of
like revenue and risk involved I mean
I'm happy to do it rather than to turn
over the keys to someone else that you
may not see things that are wrong and
that needed to be fixed so I was happy
to oversee the content area yeah
absolutely so did you have any issues or
difficulties that you overcame or was it
just a case of we to improve the content
we need to add more content and then you
went out and did it it was no major
issues luckily but of course when you're
looking at you know a site that you're
changing content on number one so we
tried not to change too much on that big
post and then you know the other part is
just working through like building of
the team you typically what I do is say
I'm gonna hire a team of five writers
I'll hire eight writers assuming that a
few of them are just not gonna work out
sometimes people flake out plans change
maybe there's scammers I don't know and
they just disappear so you know there
was a period of you know building the
team spending time on that that was
probably one of the more time-consuming
things to work on building the team yeah
I think that's something that I mean I
could personally dedicate an entire
episode just to talking about that but
those are some pretty good tips I hire
more than you need I definitely know
with human proof designs when we needed
20 editors I would go out and hire 30
and normally you end up with about 22
and the same is true with writers so
yeah that's definitely the way we do it
now as well and when I start a new
project unless I'm working with a writer
who I've worked with before and I know
that they're not gonna flake out I'll
probably hire two or three writers and
only one of them will stay long-term
alright cool so moving onto the next
issue well we talked actually a little
bit in the last episode about how you
started
the guest posting and you're safe friend
but the person you were working with got
pretty good results straight away I
think you said you've got about ten
links in three or four weeks which is
I'd take that every day but then it
didn't work out because they didn't
really adapt so do you want to kind of
pick up from there and say how you got
over that sure the biggest mistake that
I made here was probably just not
releasing the person you know sooner and
you know you mentioned you know a friend
of mine so it was someone I was a you
know friend with for a while so I was
probably gave him more leeway I was you
know probably took a couple more excuses
than I normally would because I mean
honestly I take like one excuse
generally and then I move on because I
mean there's plenty of people that when
at work and plenty of people that want
to work with me so there's no reason to
stick with it but you know when it came
down to it I realized that I needed to
take over and I again you know this was
a big project something important there
was a lot of risk involved and a lot of
money involved so I was happy to take it
over and you know this is the biggest
mistake I made the project was should
have taken it over really quickly or
worked in parallel from the beginning
just to you know get things to happen
faster and the things that I did to I
guess make it happen being get those
guest posts faster I looked at the
landscape of you know what guest posting
used to be and sort of where it was
moving and as I mentioned basically
people are sending out like tons of
emails and they're sending out you know
very generic emails and frankly I think
they're probably not working that well
anymore because the same people are
getting the same emails over and over
again and there's really no it doesn't
seem like a person wrote it it seems
like an automated email because of this
so the thing that I did was add more
touch points so very simple I looked at
what people were trying to do they were
trying to scale it they were trying to
basically do things as quickly as
possible so I thought hey what if I do
the opposite what if I you know take
time get to know the person do some
actual networking and then take it from
there
would that work better so I put together
a couple people that would serve as
outreach managers and interesting thing
here some people must be thinking to
themselves when outreach manager you
know you're hiring an SEO to do some SEO
work like that would be really expensive
well I mean I'm I'm jaded I'm a control
freak and the last person that I want
doing SEO for me is an SEO I hire from
like up work I mean why are you laughing
why is that a good one
I think well you know I kind of agree
with you like I feel if someone hired an
SEO off up work I would feel there's
just so many things that could go wrong
and I think even if you hire someone who
has the best interests the best
intentions and the most experience I
think the first six months would be me
undoing all the training that the
previous person that hired them gave
them it's like when you hire a writer
and they do stuff like they Boulder the
keyword and they underline stuff and use
italics and you're like why are you
doing that and they're like my previous
person told me to do it and I just
wouldn't trust a no offense to an up
work SEO freelancer but I wouldn't trust
someone doing that kind of work for that
kind of rate with something as important
as SEO yep
I love it I mean that's exactly what I
think I mean I have a very specific
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