hey what's going on
welcome to the Doug show I'm Doug
Covington and in this episode I talk
with someone who has an awesome name
Adam Steele and he's the founder over at
low key annex and loge annex is
basically an agency that caters to se OS
and other agencies that need premium
link building services and I I actually
didn't know about log annex until I
received an email they sent a cold email
to me I guess because I have such a cool
youtube channel maybe I'm not sure but
they reached out to me and they were
like hey maybe we could work together
here's some of the stuff we're working
on and then I was like how do check it
out I get a lot of pitches but this one
looked I don't know there was something
that seemed a little bit better and when
I hopped over there I saw they had some
testimonials by some pretty prominent
folks like Nick Eubanks from I'm from
the future comm and then Brian Dean who
I'm more familiar with from backlinko
and I was like well if these dudes think
Logie annex is legit then maybe I should
check them out so at that point I
started working with him a little bit
testing out some services and I really
liked what I was seeing so not only does
organics have like some good services
they also have like some great
educational content so I'll put links
and stuff to that but I talked to Adam
who like I said is the founder of log
annex and it was very insightful we
talked about like getting started with
SEO in general we talked about running
an agency and a lot of detailed stuff
about working as an SEO and just the SEO
factors that are out there in general we
talked a little bit about like a link
building plan for new sites and that
sort of thing we even digress I couldn't
help myself if you listen to many of
these episodes you realize I go on
tangents often just if I'm interested in
something and we talked about being
Coover because I recently visited
the Vancouver area and Adam is he's
lived there for a pretty long time so it
was interesting to hear his take as a
local person and lived in in Vancouver
heard that does live in Vancouver and
how it's changed over the years because
I that was the first time that I ever
visited being Coover and it was a little
bit different than I expected
so anyway we talk about all sorts of
stuff like I said I'll put links in the
description so you can get to like some
of the educational content over on the
blog section of Logue annex and
additionally I'll show you or I'll put a
link for like the guest posting packages
and services and stuff that I've used
that I've been very happy with so anyway
if you happen to be listening to your
first Doug show episode thanks a lot do
have a look at some of the other
episodes out there I go deep on many
topics but I mainly talk about Amazon
affiliate marketing SEO and actually
there's a lot of random stuff too so
that's the main focus so do you have a
look around if you dig it that's great
subscribe tell a friend all that kind of
stuff so let's hear from Adam yeah hey
what's going on it's Doug Huntington
here and welcome to the Doug show I'm
sitting with Adam Steele of loge annex
how's it going today it's going really
well Doug how are you doing doing
awesome I'm fresh back from vacation so
I'm a little rusty so this is a couple
false starts here but we're good to go
now so you and I sort of connected
recently you run basically a sort of a
link building company right and for the
other people that don't know you that
well can you give a little intro about
yourself and what you do at your company
sure so my name is Adam Steele I've been
doing SEO and maybe more specifically
link building for about 10 years now
just shy of I suppose
and loge annex the company that's we've
run since more or less day one does link
building we do a couple other things but
for the most part our bread and butter
is link building so things like guest
post outreach or manual outreach on
behalf of clients we do a little bit of
citation building so we'll have a bunch
of different citation related products
or GMB related products and finally some
sort of higher tier placements so
placements on big sites with you know 10
20 50 million organics per month that
type of stuff so sort of the gamut of of
SEO services and our main customer tends
to be either agencies or folks with you
know maybe like a marketing director or
something knows what he's he or she is
doing but you know wishes to not train a
team wishes to not have the headcount
and so just sources it out to us and and
we take care of them God and how did you
get started with like SEO in general I
mean 10 years is a very long time in
this industry so yeah what was your sort
of gateway in yeah gateways a good worry
yeah my gateway drug was affiliate
marketing as it was for many many folks
and I was introduced in affiliate
marketing at an affiliate marketing
company I worked in compliance so I
essentially looked at incoming traffic
whether it be generated by email or
display ads or what have you and just
make sure that everything was legit and
if it wasn't then scrub it for our
advertisers and so that exposed me to to
SEO certainly but also to social ads and
email and and many other sort of traffic
channels and so from there I left the
affiliate marketing company and started
my own agency trying to take some of the
traffic generation ideas that I had seen
folks the affiliates sort of engaging in
and then trying to take the
same approaches for for clients like
small medium-sized businesses and so
that was my first sort of foray into
internet marketing how long were you at
that first company where you know you
got paid to learn it sounds like yeah it
would totally was sort of a pay to learn
experience I was there for all of
something like six months and then just
sort of I think it got to the point
where I had seen enough enough
affiliates making ridiculous money and
they're all it's so weird they're so
young so I could see myself in them
essentially like I just figured well
here's and here's I think I was in my
early early 20s at the at the time so
here's a 21 year old or so and we're
just about to send him a check for six
figures for a month's work and I'm just
like what the hell is going on here and
so you know the the glamour and whatnot
caught my eye and I just figured I could
maybe do it myself
figure it out and what which are
educational background or did you have
any other sort of marketing experience
before you were in at that agency
accounting I was an accounting student I
my my pop was accountant and so I had
imagined a life in accounting because he
had done quite well and it seems like a
good fits and he had his own accountancy
so just just sort of made sense so I was
in what was previously called the
Chartered Accountants the CA program
program and I got maybe two and a half
years before I bailed okay gotcha see
never you you got started but you didn't
finish get your degree okay no I don't
know cool smart it's like you got so I
did enough medical people experience
University and moved on so and I
mentioned before we kind of go on
tangents and were you located by the way
thank Hoover British Columbia Canada
okay cool so I just I went on this
vacation and I drove to Alaska from
Colorado so they're pretty long Wow
and we came back through Vancouver which
was beautiful by the way but if you
lived there a long time yeah either
Vancouver or Victoria which is on
Vancouver Island just off the coast of
Vancouver okay um for the majority of my
life I've lived up as far as do you know
where the Yukon is you probably would
have passed through there on the way to
Alaska I imagine we drove yeah so I I
lived in Whitehorse for my first was
think kindergarten through to grade 3
I'm gonna say something like that okay
cool yeah yes oh so cool yeah I haven't
been there in a very long time I'm sure
it's changed a bunch but now you drew
drove through some beautiful countryside
along the way some beautiful forests
yeah it's like indescribable like Canada
is so big everyone's so nice you already
know that one thing I was gonna bring up
is like everyone always told me like hey
being Coover's fantastic you would love
it I like sorry about you know outdoorsy
kind of stuff and all that was fine but
I've after I talked to some folks I've
heard in the last couple years is just
changed quite a bit in Vancouver
maybe traffic's a little worse a lot of
the just real estate prices or bananas
and stuff just curious have you observed
the same thing yeah absolutely okay
there's been a lot of a lot of
immigration into Vancouver and with that
came a lot of money and a lot of that
money was put into homes many of which
are which are and are or were empty and
so our government's been working really
hard somewhat successfully maybe at
putting taxes into place to sort of
regulate that a little bit but and and
the market is certainly slowed since but
that type of investment triggered a lot
of change in Vancouver for better or for
us so yeah definitely our the price the
cost of living here in Vancouver it's
always been I think relatively expensive
but certainly in the
past you know five to ten years it's
it's skyrocketed everything's someone
was saying I was there's a woman
visiting from from the UK I was talking
with her and said she pays about a pound
or I don't know what that the equivalent
or that the conversion is but I imagine
it's not too far from one to one or
maybe one to one point four or something
like that but she pays a pound for a
pineapple and she goes to the grocery
store here in Vancouver and at seven
bucks which you know works out to be you
know let's say five and a half American
something like that why don't you that's
really cheap cuz like I'm paying closer
to what you're the price that you
measure I'm there yeah I guess there's
pineapples closer to I don't I don't
know I don't know I guess we get him
from Hawaii or something like that but
okay anyway let's get back on topic and
appreciate the digression there I mean
it was super interesting like traveling
and you know checking all that stuff out
and to get you know a locals opinion a
native to Vancouver so ok sure back to
SEO let's let's get into it so you've
been doing SEO for quite a while and
obviously there's a lot of algorithm
updates that Google pushes out so how
have you dealt with that over the years
sounds like you've successfully
navigated those waters so what can you
tell us about that I think I don't I
certainly don't claim to be there's a
lot of more technical SEO in the sort of
technical SEO definition sense but also
just more technical SEO s if that makes
sense then myself and so for me SEO was
never a super super passion and thus I
never dug in quite as much as as some
other folks so I tend to tended to stick
to what I knew and what I could
understand and what I cared enough to to
read up on and practice and that kind of
thing and what that ended up being is
just sort of the basics like what what
has worked since the beginning and
continues to work now and those tend to
be things around content and structuring
content and all that kind of stuff
link building link building has always
been you know going back-to-back and
when and I think it was a AOL or
something like that had a business
directory in there selling links in that
business directory for like four hundred
bucks or something like that like that I
don't know how many years to go that was
but very long time because well before I
even started so I just have focused on
the core things and then everything if I
can't achieve the results that I require
with just the core principles or core
there are tenants of SEO then that's
when I hire smarter people than myself
to do the more technical stuff so for me
personally I've just stuck to the basics
and tried to be really really good or I
should even say that just tried to do as
well as I could at the basics and and
that served me pretty well I find I've
hired a number of SEO in the past and
the ones that we've capped are the ones
that don't lose themselves in the
details it's very easy to lose users
lose yourself in these little minut
details that have very little SEO
benefit and spent too much time doing
sort of the 80% that doesn't provide any
of the value sort of thing and we've
sort of always been about focusing on
that that 20% that provides 80% of the
value and so that's that's sort of been
how I've approached it over the years
nice I I find myself doing the same sort
of thing that you mentioned like here's
some core stuff that mostly works most
of the time and if you stick to that you
do it pretty good like you'll do okay
generally those are like a little bit
less risky they're not necessarily going
to work like as fast
is may be trendy flash-in-the-pan kind
of thing which is fine because I mean I
think you and your clients and me and
you know other folks that I work with
it's like we won a long-term sort of
more secure less risky situation and I
take it you're working with pretty big
businesses so they don't want to mess
around with potentially the livelihood
of the business so it totally makes
sense I guess quick summary so you were
like link building in a you know
conservative way and then just
straight-up solid content right more or
less and then just you know just being
good at on-site just basic on-site stuff
just just talking basics I think just
people forget about just the basics
doing the basics really well and then
then you can you know approach
everything else and think about how you
might improve you know click-through
rate in the SERPs and I might occupy
more real estate in the SERPs and you
know be it through scheme are other
things so do a simple staff first and
then and then get to the more
complicated time intensive budget
intensive types of of things okay so
let's let's go into some of the content
stuff so you were like just do some of
those basic on-site SEO things correctly
so I imagine some of that is around like
the title some subheadings images can
you just kind of hit a checklist of some
of the things that you know people
should be looking at for engage yeah the
list is is long and I certainly don't
have it memorized
and I certainly don't claim to be able
to just name them off or anything like
that so it's not something I personally
spend a lot of time on anymore but you
know one of the sort of again sort of
main sort of tenants of our approach and
certainly other people's approach is not
not new or anything but as we tend to
just kind of approach everything from a
serf level so look at the the keywords
that that were after look at who's
presently ranking look at sort of the
average of those folks like what is the
average effort what's the average
content look like what what's working
essentially and then create our strategy
around around that and so only what we
did showed a previous to that is we
would just go all out as many words as
we could squeeze on a page like just
crazy crazy stuff that would take us a
lot of time and sometimes not be
particularly great quality and cost a
lot of money oftentimes and we've since
scaled that back quite a bit and just
take taken a very sort of serf focused
approach to the work that we do so we
pull up all the websites that are
ranking for that particular keyword just
take notes on what what types of things
we're seeing what is the average of the
things that we're seeing and how can we
just do slightly better than then that
average and then we would go out and and
do that and that's everything from
content structure how they're
structuring that particular content is
it a list that seems to be winning or
does it seem to be more of an editorial
style piece that's working how many
shares are these particular pieces
receiving so we know how much you know
how much effort we need to put on the
sort of social side of things with the
content promotion side of things and all
those sort of things obviously there's a
lot of sort of basics and just writing
content and writing the titles around
the content and simple things like title
tag about a description what-have-you
but I think that stuff is generally more
well and well understood and it's
usually again sort of the details where
people are losing themselves and not
just focusing on what what is proven to
work what is Google basically
serving us on a platter and saying hey
this is what's going to work so just do
this don't don't go to too too crazy got
it I like the simplicity there you have
data that you can analyze it's free you
can go look at it so totally that's
awesome so when you have like a new
client I take it you do sort of an audit
of like what I guess where do their hats
in potential keywords that they're going
for you'll do that audit for them that
sort of thing or how does that work I'm
just curious about
you know new person comes in and then
they hire you for like a managed
services kind of deal sure I should just
sort of at the outset mentioned that
that is a sort of very small part of the
business that we do manage services we
so to foresee it being a bigger part of
it as supposing that we can get the
price to a point where it makes sense
for agencies like an agency is typically
taking in two three maybe four thousand
dollars like on average per month from
from a client so we've got a price
ourselves accordingly and that's it's
been tricky to do over the years so it's
never been a huge part of our business
so typically when we get a client it's
it's an agency or it's somebody who
really knows what they want already and
so we're looking through a much more
sort of narrow lens than looking at you
know the whole website and saying okay
you know these are sort of the the
biggest opportunities for you but you
know what it does come to you know
client approaching us typically we're
the first question we ask us is what is
your your outcome like what don't tell
me the tasks there's a lot of times they
come to me with the tasks because that's
how they're used to working I'm so it'll
be like you know I'm gonna need some
citations I'm gonna need this and that's
all great more whatnot but you know if
you do want our consult I need to know
what is sort of the the ideal outcome
for you or what is the ideal outcome for
your client what are they hired you
could do what is the sort of net result
that they want and then we just kind of
reverse engineer whatever it is that
they want by usually looking at their
competitors who are kicking ass doing
whatever it is that they want and put
together a plan based on based on that
again not trying to reinvent the wheel
or anything just looking at what's
working in that particular surf and then
advising accordingly so we might say you
know it looks like this clients you know
this competitors link velocity has been
such for so long and they already have
you know you know an average domain rank
of you know among they're referring
domains of
so and yours is this so we need to get
ours at least up to you know so at this
point and we might start saying okay
well in order to do that we need to be
acquiring links of sort of this quality
in this quantity and so to put together
a little bit of a plan for them again
not naughty that that sort of very
customized approach is not super super
formal and that we're putting together
this huge document it's usually
something that is just a conversation
you know we've just somebody one of our
clients would would say hey could I bug
you for a little bit of your time I get
on the phone with them and we just go
through it together and just trying to
identify the best opportunities for you
know for their buck you know so nothing
too crazy
quite honestly god that makes sense so
shifting gears a little bit let's say
there's some beginners out there which I
guess most people are beginners or they
haven't started yet
so what are some common mistakes that
they make with SEO whether it's on page
or off page or whatever just advice that
you can give yeah mm-hmm well the first
one that came to mind it may be oh it'll
help me think of other ones but the
first one that came to mind is what
seems to be I often take for granted
what I think everybody knows and often
not quite so many people as I think help
but what I know anyway anyways there we
did a study not too long ago maybe only
a week ago around the correlation
between Google my business rankings and
organic rankings and so there seems to
be there there's enough people I think
that imagine that they don't have to be
ranking super well organically to rank
well in Google my business and that
might be true and small like not so
competitive markets but our research
when we you know basically looked at a
bunch of different metros actually
varying sized box
we didn't want to just focus on metros
we wanted to do cities of you know multi
million population we wanted to do some
of the six figures and we wanted to do
some in those sort of five figure
population and we did a whole lack of
different professions so might have been
dentist locksmiths try to try to sort of
really run the gamut of different types
of industries or niches and essentially
what we determined or I guess we could
say we found some correlation was that
the better organic rankings you had the
more likely you were to show up and
Google my business or show up well in
Google my business like top three for
example there is really clear
correlation between the top three
listings in Google my business so to
answer your question I think there is
not enough attention placed on organic
rankings when the goal is to rank well
in Google my business folks tend to just
not spend enough enough time there the
other one that comes to mind also
related to local search is folks tend to
spend more time than they need to on
citation building it's I think in the
last you know a few years
citation building itself is has become
less maybe not maybe not less important
but just it doesn't need to occupy as
much time as perhaps we put into it
previously and so what I usually
recommend folks do is they start with an
audit of their existing citations and
that's something that that we offer it's
seven bucks super super cheap delivers
very quickly and gives them a sort of a
lay of the land citation wise and from
there they're able to sort of decide
okay well I you know my competitors have
X amount of citations I should probably
have you know what a Y amount of
citations so I just recommend people
just get that out of the way right away
do it in one shot you know maybe it's a
hundred citations get it over with and
move on and don't don't revisit it or
don't make it
this monthly effort or anything because
it's it's not that big of a chunk of
sort of the pie if you will so get it
done and move on to things like reviews
on your Google my business page or more
importantly probably I believe the
organic rankings so work on on your your
link building so the two things that
come to mind right oh wait right away
that that I see quite often gadget cool
you know I will give you you sort of
implicitly said this earlier where I'll
rephrase and just give you this answer
it's basically like people skipping over
the basics or maybe spending too much
time on things that don't really matter
or it's like to get to like ninety nine
percent to ninety nine point five
percent and like they're doing these
things spending all this time and really
they should spend their time on like the
basic four or five things they're like
we know those work and they get you 80%
of the way there and I see it all the
time and I mean frankly I can't blame a
new person there's all this information
coming at him people are trying to sell
products you know I'm guilty of it
you're guilty of it a little bit too
right like we're all trying to sell
something or other but it's hard to
distinguish for a beginner like what's
really important and what's not because
everyone is saying hey this is the most
important thing you have to do X so I
just know I I mean I did it in the
beginning to where I was like doing all
this stuff thinking it mattered and
really it was just like one guy once did
it and then it kind of worked for him
but he wasn't sure and then I listened
to him and then you know I'm chasing my
tail around so any comments on that sort
of idea or if not that's okay yeah yeah
we talked about that a little bit we
only have you know for clients and even
for you know affiliate sites and whatnot
we only have so much budget to spend on
our projects so we have to be
intelligent
how we spend that and so I'm not saying
don't do those small things like we've
been playing around a lot with like FAQ
schema and things like that and it's
made a big difference in our
click-through rates believe it or not
you'd think that people would you know
just get their information from those
schema that from the FAQ schema and boom
they don't they don't need to go to your
website but that's not been the case at
all having that extra chunk of serve
people are still clicking on that link
and more so than then pre FAQ schema so
the little things are still important
but if I've got a thousand bucks per
month to spend on a project
I'm not putting $800 into those little
things I'm putting $800 into the things
that have worked for a very long time
and continue to work and then I'm
putting $200 into the little things that
are going to make sort of the
incremental incremental differences so
yeah all right so we got some juicy link
building questions we're gonna get to in
a second but before we do very
interested in hearing like your story
and transition from an employee at an
agency to starting your own agency I
don't know how many people are on your
team now I imagine it's quite a few
given the amount of work that you're
doing but can you just talk about like
from employee to business owner and
someone who needs to scale work with
clients and all that stuff I had a I had
a couple influences in my life early on
that were business owners and that I
including my dad that I just I really
looked up to and I looked at their
lifestyle and I could imagine that being
my own eye that the hard work didn't I
liked the hard work they put in crazy
amounts of hours so that that didn't
bother me and it just it just was super
attractive to me
just you know we didn't have a lot of
money growing
until kind of later on and I could just
see how these oh nice dog
oh thanks Georgie I love Georgie do you
want to come over here thank you uh Oh
cute
anyways I just I I just looked at the
lifestyle that I could have if I applied
myself and sort of just did what I
understood that they did and accounting
obviously do things wasn't the thing but
my the other influence my buddy's father
was he was into internet marketing as
well and I can't remember exactly which
sort of part of internet marketing but I
just I saw him traveling speaking all
these types of things and I thought man
I could I could do that I could have
that lifestyle and so from there on and
this was early on this was high school
for sure from then on I think I kind of
knew that that was the direction I'd be
going in eventually I just had to find
the thing and as a high schooler I
didn't really know the thing I thought I
was accounting and then later on I
figured out was something else but so
from there I just like I said you know I
worked for that affiliate marketing
agency for a little bit
six months or so and then it just I
think it was just naivete but I just I
believed I could do it and I could do it
right now and and so I just I quit and
there was just I think for that
everybody has a different personality
from me I have sort of the camera
whoo-hoo phrases it this way I want to
say it's Tony Robbins but he says burn
the boats and and that was kind of the
thing I just I took the leap and I
didn't have it I felt like I didn't have
a choice but to succeed especially as I
told more and more people about what I
was doing I felt this sort of social
pressure that I couldn't let all these
people down like I would be ashamed to
let them down because I it just I just
couldn't
and so I just I took what little I knew
I tried to sell the clients totally fail
that back because they could tell I
didn't know what I was doing like I
could see it and I remembered they had
introduced at the agency or the the
affiliate marketing company that
introduced me to internet marketing
forums and so I had an account already
just from doing compliance on wicked
fire was trying to we were trying to
spot you know our affiliates who may be
bragging about doing you know sending
junk traffic and things like that so we
spend a lot of time kind of digging
around there and seeing what people were
doing and so that's where I started I
just started learning from the people
that were on that forum trying to
emulate what they were doing and I
actually just found my first buy sell
trade thread at the time the company
that I the name of the company I had
come up with was creature local and I
found this thread it was from 2010 I
think November 2010 and I had just
looked at what other people were doing
on the buy sell trade threads and I just
more or less copied them I come up with
a couple ideas it didn't sell super well
at first so I ended up selling Gmail
addresses so again I'd seen that some
people were selling Gmail addresses to
people who were I guess automating
social bookmarks and things like that so
I just I literally just started creating
Gmail addresses by the hundred and
packing them up and selling them and
that was good because if I be I created
trust among that community and so when I
did come out with you know once they
started to recognize that I could do
other things there was already that
trust component and so from there I went
to selling them citations and then links
and all that kind of stuff and very
quickly like all my team or contractors
always happen they are abroad they're
remote
distributed as they say and my first
hire John was back then in 2010 he's
still with me many of the folks that we
hired back
are strangely still with us and we just
it's kind of snowballed from from there
and and today I think give or take we're
15 full timers give or take and then a
bunch of like part timers that we either
pay you know maybe they only do 20 hours
a week or maybe we pay them on a unit
like per unit basis you know we pay them
X for one citation or or Y for ten
citations or or what have you so yeah
that's that's that's sort of the story
if you will
yeah that's all I mean I like how you
got started just about as small as you
can doing like a little bit after youth
it sounds like you you tried to sell
some services to clients but they were
like huh we don't think so yeah but then
you were like okay I got to approach
this differently you iterated and then
you slowly grew more work than you could
handle and you just slowly hired people
over time right yeah at some point I
couldn't create all those gene panels
myself so somebody somebody needed to
help me I remember being on this it was
one of my first first vacation since
becoming a business owner and quite
honestly thinking back on it I had no
business being on that vacation I was
broke and I did it anyways and I
remember spending the entire vacation
sitting on the on the balcony on my
laptop building either citations myself
so submitting to people to Yelp and the
like and creating Gmail addresses and
that was my first vacation it's awesome
where were you at it was Mexico I think
a Texaco man living the dream you're
like near a beach but not on it you can
see it maybe from where you are at they
got close yeah seeing like that that's
the rough part like with owning your
business right if you're on vacation and
someone's covering for you it's your
corporate job it's like ah who cares
they'll figure it out you know they
can't reach me but like nowadays we're
just connected by our phone and my at
all times anyone can
bugged you so interesting so you said
you got about 15 people
now just curious do you have like some
orange structure in place or is it
pretty flat everybody reports to you
yeah there there's some structure it's
it's a work in progress it's never it's
kind of like a web website it's never
done you're always picking at it you're
never really happy with it
it's a labor of love and so you know
every month or two I'm adjusting the org
structure and trying to find something
trying to identify where people are
there where can't people are strongest
and put them in that you know put them
in the position that sort of best
matches the outcome that I'm looking for
match them to the outcomes essentially
and yeah it's it's an is a never-ending
thing I - many people report to me
presently I'm trying to fix that the
goal is to have about three people that
report to me but like I said it's it's a
work in progress if you're gonna talk
afterwards my background is project
management I worked for like some
consulting companies so I've done
amazing that sort of stuff before I got
laid off so we could take it offline
later let's please help out so one thing
I'm gonna ask you is it's amazing that
you have some of the same people that
you hired from years ago still working
with you why do you think that's the
case nobody's asked me that before I
don't know I think I don't know I think
we pay them very fairly we I sometimes I
recently entered a partnership and my
partner sometimes gives me crap about
this but III don't think of the fact
that you know this individual is in the
Philippines and $1.00 to them is much
different than a dollar - to me I in my
country I've never really spent a lot of
time thinking about that and so we just
pay them kind of like we would pay
somebody here
just based on on on their skills maybe
not quite like I might pay somebody I
might have to pay somebody here a little
bit more but it's not that far from and
that and I think that was became my
approach from early on and so I think
that's fairly true of everyone on our
team maybe yeah I would say pretty well
everyone on our team is we just didn't
think so much about you know okay well
they're from the Philippines so I can
pay them like three dollars an hour and
they're gonna live like a king I hear
that all the time I think that's
ridiculous I think you ought to pay them
for the value that they're creating and
yeah so I think that's probably a part
of it and I think maybe that sort of
fair fairness probably trickles down
into other aspects of my management
style if you will which i-i-i i don't
think i'm my partner is much a much
better manager than me i can tell i i've
always been able to tell he's he's just
so empathetic he's always asking people
how they're feeling and all that kind of
thing i'm a little bit robotic and that
i just kind of focus on on what i'm i'm
doing and i you know i clock in a clock
out and and i just I sometimes I forget
that I'm working with human beings here
and it doesn't hurt to be a little bit
more human here and there so I wouldn't
claim to have it figure it out I'm still
trying to trying to work on it cool that
all makes sense so let's shift gears we
got a few more minutes left we'll try
and get through all these juicy
link-building questions will turn to
treat them rapid-fire and I think folks
are gonna like this I can tell already
just our conversation went well and
everything so maybe we do around to in
the future if you're up for it but let's
do these linked alright just quick over
a few like link building for like a
brand new site and you could talk a
little bit about link velocity as well
but just what's your approach again kind
of go into the circ seeing what's up and
seeing what's working but generally
speaking you know if we're talking about
a local
so I'm starting with getting those
citations done right away just getting
them done I know they take forever to
get indexed so it's like the first thing
I do and I forget about it and then I
move on to trying to do where possible a
mix of both locally focused stuff so
stuff from websites in their locale so
maybe it might be you know if we're
talking about a garage door company
let's say then I'm thinking about okay
who are their vendors where are they
located are they also located in in
Vancouver who's supplying them do they
have websites where might we get a link
on their website do does my client have
any kids do those kids play on a sports
teams could we sponsor those sports
teams for a link on a website they have
things just things like that that I can
put my client to work on because
generally those they're they're not
gonna be fast at any of that and so if I
can get them started really really early
on just kind of picking out their
address book anybody they pick anybody
they know locally that has a website I
want to find a way onto that website
whether it's topically relevant or not I
don't care I want the the locally
relevant those are the hardest the
hardest links to get him in my
experience and sometimes it requires
picking up a phone and people don't
always like to do that so yeah it takes
time it takes effort and getting it
started early is really smart the other
stuff tends to be sort of more of the
the guest post type of stuff usually
it's it's relation bait relationship
based approach we have and long have had
a sort of rolodex if you will of
webmasters in a whole whack of different
niches and so our next step would be for
us to go to work and start contacting
some of these folks and see how we might
and this is a really important thing I
think and something that I think folks
tend to forget is you need you ought to
maybe not need but you ought to I think
and I think your response is going to be
quite a bit better if you do try
find ways to create value for these for
these webmasters and these contributors
and these whoever they might be like how
can if it's a webmaster how might I
bring value to their business how are
they making money how might my content
bring them more money have I done the
research around that could I do some
keyword research and find some
opportunities for them that I could
write a great piece or that they could
you know likely rank for and that could
come to me like hey you know there's no
others there's 500 searches per month if
we put this together and maybe I can
help you promote a little bit this could
bring value to your business instead of
hey I've got a piece of content it's
mediocre would you put it on your site
you know what I mean like that's often
how people are approached so trying to
come from a place of value and empathy
versus a place of Requirement or need
yes and a couple of things I want to go
into backtrack so a lot of my audience
their affiliate marketers so if you're
interesting coming at it from the the
local aspect I imagine a lot of it's you
know trance transfers over like the
guest posting or bringing value in fact
one of the things I mentioned and try
and get people to do is like yeah you
want to bring value so potentially like
if you're pitching a guest post you can
tell the webmaster hey I'm gonna mention
products you could put your own
affiliate links in there and then
they're like oh hey maybe I'll make some
money from it and I would get free
content a lot of people are trying to
publish often so that's a great way to
do it
so the BACtrack is like for affiliate
marketers where the local citations and
stuff like that may not make sense do
you have any other suggestions or just
like start with a relationship building
do the guest posting like try to be a
member of the community at large that
sort of thing yeah I would as soon as
possible start building that rolodex
because you never know when affiliates
in my experience don't just build one
website and then that's there one
website forever they tend to move into
new markets and all that kind of thing
so building that rolodex and respecting
that rolodex is really important and
doing that as early as possible like
keep a database them just like you would
if you know you're going out to meet ups
and you're trying to keep track of the
people that you are meeting and how you
might you know bring value to them in
the future and who they work for and all
that kind of stuff same same thing
applies here there I think oftentimes we
think of all of these things as websites
and not people but they're people and
and we need to kind of talk to them like
people and that's I think that's the
only way that as an affiliate you're
going to get sort of above the the
fodder if you will and I would recommend
not in this kind of a no-brainer but
again a lot of people try to go for
scale and they may fail miserably
and some people can do scale like the
guys over at authority hackers those
dudes can do scale but they also have a
decade of link building experience so
yeah right but basically what I was
gonna say is don't be afraid to reach
out on via Twitter don't be afraid you
know if you've got something of value to
bring people will reply to you maybe not
always like you're gonna face a lot of
rejection of course that's just part of
it but don't be afraid to preach on
Twitter on LinkedIn on and don't be
afraid to do the follow up a lot of
people they just they do the single
email or the single outreach and like
you and I I'm sure both guilty we miss
stuff like that like I have missed
really good opportunities in my inbox
just because I forgot just you know it
was like I can remember one specifically
a roundup and it would have been an
incredible link super super super good
link and I just I got busy I forgot
about it
and they never reached out again and and
they never reached out again the
opportunity never came up again so yeah
don't be afraid to to follow up don't be
afraid to reach out and treat people
like human beings very good so last link
building question we'll have time for is
around link quality so
obviously this is very important we
don't want to get garbage linked so how
do you approach link quality yeah that's
a big big question that requires a big
answer but we try to do as much by
metrics as possible so stuff that can be
automated as much as possible and we try
not to forget the basics and the basics
of things like we believe how many
people never check whether the site that
they wanna link on is even indexed how
many pages are indexed if you search the
brand name does it even show up was it
previously penalized did you throw it in
a dress and look at their organic search
trend or organic traffic trends was
there a big drop-off or does it continue
is it you know the organic traffic going
in an upwards trajectory have you looked
at the referring domains have you taken
the time to actually look at the links
like you might see Forbes in there but
that doesn't mean it's a good link from
Forbes you might see other big sites
that you recognize it doesn't mean it's
a good link from that site like
sometimes I'll go into an agency I'll be
looking at an agency's website and I'll
look open it up and got holy crap
they've got a lot of great links with
high domain rank and and everything but
then I start opening up the the links
themselves and they're all blah comments
and not all links are the same I believe
I don't believe a blog comment has the
same weight assuming they're all every
time I say do follow now I think of Nick
Eubanks and how he's like there's no
such thing technically as do follow like
there's no do following that could be no
it's just a link so yeah so yeah there's
just there's a lot of just some basic
stuff so I try to focus on the metrics
first and just get stuff start with the
stuff that you can if possible automate
or if not possible to automate because
you know you don't have the programming
chops or have a programmer which I
should say was probably the best hire I
ever made early on was hiring a
programmer but if you want to try to
process all that stuff for people who
don't have a lot of experience in SEO so
that they can do that first
sort of bit of qualifying so that when
the link gets to you or somebody that
you have to pay more money to per hour
that most of the crap is gone and now
they take more of a qualitative approach
where they're opening up the website
they're looking okay where you know pull
up the last ten let this last 10 blog
post for example where they linking out
to how are they linking out to those
sites is it a super keyword rich anchor
is it going to you know nasty web sites
that are that have nasty inbound links
those kinds of things to do what kind of
you know are they linking out from their
side bar where they linking out to their
side bar as their footer stuff going on
what's the quality design who are the
authors are the authors even real have
you taken the picture and thrown that
into 10i to see if this person is even
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