hey what's going on it's Doug Huntington
here and in this video I have a casual
conversation with a friend of mine Rob
Atkinson and Rob and I have known each
other for a few years now he connected
with me just via email back in 2014
after I was on the niche pursuits
podcast and he was just introducing
himself and and chatting a little bit
fast forward we ended up in a mastermind
group we partnered on a project called
Project white hat we sold that site that
we then we worked on together for like
two hundred and thirty-five thousand
dollars back in 2017 I believe and you
know we remain friends we haven't worked
on anything together and we haven't
caught up in a while so really that's
what this conversation is we're just
chatting catching up talking shop and we
recorded it so you can watch it and
hopefully you will enjoy it if you do
have any questions for Rob leave them in
the comments below
Rob's probably gonna join me again sort
of as a guest host so we can hit those
questions so please do leave comments
any questions you may have for Rob at
the end of the interview Rob and I
talked about how we met for the first
time and how that came about so this was
sort of like just a side conversation we
were having but it's interesting so it's
at the very end of the interview hey
what's going on it's a Doug Huntington
here from niche site project in the Doug
show and I'm sitting with my good friend
Rob Atkinson how are you doing today
I'm doing great thanks for having me
back and it's been a while since we
caught up in we are friends and we we
ping each other every now and then but
we haven't talked business or had any
updates in a while so I hardly even know
what you're working on so we're gonna
we're gonna do an update overall you
know what you're up to and stuff like
that but for the people that don't know
you can you give a little intro like who
you are what you're doing now and maybe
you know your old your old life your old
corporate life sure I guess I'll start
with the old corporate life so did the
normal path went to college was doing
accounting got a job out of school did
that for two or three years
didn't like it found out about this
internet marketing thing started doing
it on the side built a couple of sites
got some revenue rolling told my wife at
the or my girlfriend at the time I was
like quitting our jobs we're moving to
chiang mai thailand we're doing that
digital nomad thing quick the quitter
jobs my sites actually tanked like the
day after we got married so i went to
zero income then we hooked up and we did
some interviews on your site back in the
day and then from there i was just
growing affiliate sites kind of got that
to a nice baseline we lived abroad for a
while and then that brings us to today
i'm pretty much solely focused on one
large authority site although i do work
with a couple of close friends or
acquaintances where reduce further these
like JV sites and yeah that's about it
for now okay cool and everyone if you're
interested in seeing some of those like
interviews and coaching progress from
packing the day yeah these are like old
school like if you think these are rough
interviews those were really rough and i
mean really it was just like looking
over our shoulder where our shoulders
where you and i were like trying to
figure out how to like scale your
business and i guess
you know looking back at your your
corporate career like where there are
many skills that were like very
transferable from like the accounting
world over to like what you're doing now
i think yes and no broadly speaking
no because accounting is so
black-and-white it's like if things
either tie out or they don't right
whereas internet marketing was such a
struggle when i started because it's
like there's no answer to how i
perfectly optimize content there's no
roadmap there's no answer so that was a
bit of a struggle but I think having
like the overall understanding of how
like the numbers work reading financial
the connections of how business works
and flows really helps with just general
mindset I would say cool and when you
and I were doing those early
sessions there's about six or seven of
them that are freely available on the
YouTube channel I'll link him up in the
description and stuff like that but a
lot of that was about like scaling the
business because you had figured out how
to recover you know after I think it was
a Google update or a Google penalty in
September of like 2014 roughly yep
exactly
and essentially well a lot of us got hit
around that time period it was a there's
a transition point for many of us so you
got hit pretty hard and we were we were
figuring out how to replicate your
success with like one or two sites and
how you can again scale up and develop a
portfolio of sites so if I recall you
were you were gonna like launch a site
every month or every quarter or some
interval and then you know just have a
bunch of them so what happened with that
did that work
kind of like launching a lot of sites
allowed me to kind of just see which
ones were trending the right way which
ones were the winners and then from
there they got more focused more focused
attention on them but in all honesty it
dropped like you can scale a lot of
every business and I scaled like we all
did like got rid of all these tasks that
we should not be doing but there is an
element in an SEO it that I believe and
I'm kind of struggling right now
within my business where it's like the
further I get out of the SEO and keeping
up with the trends and these little
things it really is hard to do it at an
elite level and then also trying to find
people to do it at that level who have
that passion that you have is really
really challenging so it's not
impossible I think there's elements of
SEO that are challenging the scale yes
and it was I mean I I didn't know how
was gonna work out I didn't do anything
like that but I knew how to scale a
system so it's cool that you were able
to do that now you mentioned that you're
focusing pretty much on one site so how
long have you been focusing on the
single site yeah so that was launched
January 2000
tene so i guess that puts us recording
this can i say the recording date yeah
sure
October 2019 so we're almost going on
three years which is pretty crazy nuts
and at that point I kind of remember cuz
we were finishing up you and I sold a
site together Yeah right jacket white
hat people can look up that whole ordeal
so you and I were basically finishing up
that work even though it took a few more
months to sell it and you had some
bandwidth and I think probably I'm
putting words in your mouth but you
enjoyed working with a partner you know
cuz you have such a good experience
working with me
that's alright yeah okay I'm just
looking for a compliment no if it was we
can talk about that later if you want
but for me personally like working with
a partner just it creates another level
of accountability and you know I would
have driven to like build more sites and
create and grow my portfolio but it's
still at the end of the day can be
challenging for motivation because
sometimes this isn't the most
inspirational stuff we're doing so it
was great to have a partner both you and
my current partner
cool thanks yeah it was a good working
with you I was going to say like I the
accountability is big I mean I think
we're both like motivated and obsessed
so even when the motivation like is is
kind of dwindling or we have an off day
were really into the work yeah but
having the partner where you're like I'm
gonna do X and like we're gonna bust
each other's balls if you don't do it
yeah I can't like I can't show up to the
next meeting saying I was supposed to do
this and I didn't do it like I I can't
do that and I I haven't had a partner
for anything for the last almost three
years and I've basically just been like
whatever so yeah so anyway so you've
been working on this one site and
basically I mean it took off and it was
clear that you should work on that one
site you can kind of ignore the other
ones even if they were doing really well
right yep yeah so actually like I
had a little bit of a portfolio I still
have like one site that generates I
haven't touched it since then it is
still generating but I actually had
another site in this same niche as the
one side I have now completely ignored
it and it's pretty much it's fizzled out
but it's okay okay cool
and people want to know can you reveal
any like revenue stats or kind of where
you're at right now and total totally
would respect if you if you can't reveal
that but how are things going things are
going well I prefer not to share like
actual numbers but I think when you had
me back what was it a few years ago in
your course videos or something like
that I was up at about 30k I'll just per
month I just say it's it's continued to
to riot is pretty nicely awesome
and with that said I know that you know
you have an authority side it's a pretty
big site out there like what's the
didn't look like right now and you have
a partner yeah what's the team look like
yeah
so we've I just checked on our slack
recently we have 26 people but I think
maybe about half of those are full-time
and within that half or maybe us-based
and half our like Serbian and in
Portugal and different parts of Europe
and stuff like that and we have 102 from
the Philippines as well so it's just
kind of a mixed team and a half hour
part time I'd already talked about that
okay so that's that's a pretty big team
like how was it organized so I imagine
you and your partner or somewhere at the
top of the pyramid there yeah kind of so
he's he's really good at technical
aspects you know site speed design those
type of things I'm more kind of the in
the operations for day-to-day sort of
things okay and then as far as like a
reporting structure you must have some
managers in there because it would be
kind of a nightmare
have like a flat work chart with 26
people so how many managers are in that
all right so my partner manages like
kind of the lead content manager who
then manages kind of our YouTube and our
kind of core content lead I guess you
could say and then those people kind of
manage the writers so that's on one end
on my end I directly manage the one main
SEO person that I have taught and then
under there is like our person who puts
together our checklist for our SEO team
our does on page and stuff like that and
there's also outreach department there's
another guy that manages the outreach
department and then there's like a lead
outreach manager and some some other
staff there to help send emails and
craft pitches and stuff like that okay
and yeah let's move into that sort of
outreach area there's a there's a lot of
folks who are especially on the YouTube
side there's quite a few people who are
like you know you don't have to worry
about building links links are fine to
have but they'll come naturally and so
on and so forth
and I kind of remember like you were
scaling pretty quickly during the
outreach period actually right on the
coattails of project a white hat where
we were like figuring out what was
working really well so do you think
those links help you in in the site like
get out of the sandbox and get I guess
rankings more quickly get earnings more
quickly and just launch fast I I do
I think our preach is the way to go
these days from what I've kind of
gathered from friends about in the SEO
community kind of what's going on and
with a couple of sites that I have with
some JV partners just some smaller scale
sites starting to see that PB ends
especially with during a launch time
just aren't working the way they used to
and I think Google's just getting a
little bit better at wanting
see new sites get guest posts or get
natural outreach links from sites that
have traffic and stuff like that so I
think it's all about trust factor
especially early on so I think you do
need them and I think I would avoid
anything like PB ends early on
especially okay in IE well I'm not I
haven't I haven't used PB ends in a
really long time
like we don't use it for our main site
and if I were to launch any other sites
right now I do not plan on using PPM's
cool and I don't either and for people
that don't know that's private blog
networks and generally it's like a link
scheme where you're finding expired
domains that have like good Authority or
so like a good backlink profile and then
getting links from in Google doesn't
like it so you can get a penalty from it
and that's I mean I think that's you
know the five or whatever penalties I've
gotten it back in the day yeah we're
from PB n so and do you believe your
issues were pbn related back in the day
yeah that one we were talking about
September 2014 it was completely PB
unrelated so okay yeah they're just
they're just they used to be worth it if
you were willing to kind of roll the
dice a bit back then but I just don't
think they're worth the time anymore at
all yeah it takes over quite a lot to
manage a network it can be a little
expensive and to do a good job it can be
very expensive but I think the the worst
part about the PB ends is aside from the
penalty which is obvious is it feels
like you're getting a lot of work done
and you may be learning from some people
who are probably selling you some sort
of product related to implementing a
network and then you're doing a ton of
work you're spending money and then you
don't get the results at the end of the
day it just feels like you're busy yeah
and I think it doesn't really feel like
you're building sort of a real business
or you're I mean I understand there are
elements of SEO you need to like take
advantage of these hacks and optimize
and you can't just pretend everything's
going to be rosy but at the same time
it's like
this is the way you're trying to build
like your business long term it just
doesn't seem that great yeah if if an
update can wipe you out or if someone
like discovers your network then that's
an issue like if it's that simple
because it's not that hard to find and
uncover someone's Network if you go you
know hunt around for it so from like a
outreach perspective or like launching a
site perspective do you have like a
blueprint or like a couple like bullet
points where you're like hey if I'm
launching a site I want to get X number
of Link's and I want to publish this
much content and I want the links to
kind of go to here and there and that
sort of thing do you have anything in
mind you can just spit out I might give
a really unpopular answer which is
because I've been so focused on that one
site and what I talked about earlier
about scaling and kind of getting myself
out of a lot of the day-to-day I
honestly don't think I'm as sharp with
SEO as I used to be and it's kind of led
me inspired me to kind of do these
smaller projects so I'm in the middle of
launching a couple of small-scale sites
and trying to kind of piece together
what it takes to be successful at launch
what we're going to do is Oh gasps post
we're gonna be very stringent on like
the number of monthly active visitors
whether like through EHRs and kind of
the trust factor of the site's not doing
we want to make it look like the the
link was I guess not guest post not
sponsored like really natural-looking
and just try maybe go a little bit
slower in terms of like how many links
we choose but really go for like links
that look really legit to Google and you
said it's mostly based on like organic
search traffic because that implies that
Google likes the site and they like what
they're doing yeah that's and that's my
general theory of why I think the PB NS
for launch
aren't working because they generally
don't have the traffic if they don't
have the trust so yeah yes okay
perfect and by the way I've talked to a
couple other SEO folks who were like
more in the trenches of like doing
consulting or agency work or something
like that and this reflects exactly that
and oh when you look at some of the
guest posting services you're doing it
in-house because you have a staff but
the guest posting services like Logue
annex in the Hoth which I've been
testing quite a bit in the last six
months or so they've shifted over from
the old DEA model that's domain
authority from Maas if people don't know
so instead of just like a metric from a
company that can be pretty easily
manipulated they're going off of organic
search traffic which is based on
rankings which yeah that's pretty
accurate you you can't achieve that on
multiple tools like it's right not
possible cool
the sign of a good healthy site if
you're getting traffic and stuff like
that so perfect and do you have like a
guide on like where you're sending the
links they go into the home page or
inner pages or I like I've always liked
the idea of kind of like homepage heavy
first just because you can it's easier
to send links with the anchor text with
your brand name so trying to get that
trust trying to get Google to identify
hey this is the name of the brand links
for a new site probably generally go
towards the home page like if you have a
best article and your sites one month
old and you get a link there and you're
like ranking number 100 cuz you're a
fresh site like how does that happen
like it just doesn't so you try to kind
of follow like logically like how your
links might start at the beginning
you're out hustling trying to connect
with bloggers trying to be on forums
you're gonna get home page links
probably yeah and it sounds like the
branded anchor tag so for like niche
site project com it would be niche site
project so those are the kind of anchor
text that you would want to send to the
home page yeah any variation you can
have the dot-com at the end another
thing we're considering one thing we saw
in last year's hago update from like
August 2018 I think it
so this might not be anything but a lot
of sites do well that had a weird amount
of links going to their about page so
because they had a really legit about
page with different people and their
owners would like go out and be like
being referenced and being sent the
links to the about page so I think it's
like over-the-top extra credit you don't
need to do it to have a site successful
but I think it all turns points towards
like trust anything you can do to do the
thing that the SEO minded person
wouldn't do it so wouldn't waste links
on those right it's so funny because
when you when you hear like I do a lot
of YouTube stuff and there's a lot of
sensational just everyone's looking for
a shortcut and a lot of it just doesn't
seem like it's gonna work and like like
you said it's like the counterintuitive
thing I think on niche site project I
actually have a decent number of links
going to the about page which I'm like
yeah that's weird
but yeah it's really not that we're in
the natural world
exactly yeah so it's it's um yeah like
fight sure like like you're just like
cheating SEO instincts or whatever yeah
yeah it's like I cou kind of have to
play like you have to play the long game
and if you think you're gonna rank your
best whatever article by doing like the
most aggressive thing it's usually
better to just kind of try to be a
little bit more patient take a little
bit longer once your site has that trust
I mean you can do a lot of things and
get away with a lot more things I think
well let's move into that you're you're
setting up perfect segues for us here so
is there like a guideline like how many
links do you want to the homepage or is
there some amount of time before you'll
start you know getting links to some
inner pages I think it's just a
case-by-case basis like if you're saying
a lot of so what I mean by that if
you're saying a lot of links to the
homepage and a few months have gone by
and you see generally all your keywords
are starting to rise consistency that
consistently that's what you're kind of
looking for you're kind of like Google
is
starting to trust us if you can wait
until one of your best or Money articles
review articles has started to pop near
page one or getting a little bit traffic
I would wait until about till that point
to send your link as long as possible
because that page is getting traffic
which means people are viewing it which
means getting a link to this commercial
keyword is likely in the real world you
know if you're still ranking number 50th
number 50 and you're not getting any
traffic like Google knows that we want
to rank these keywords like what's the
odds of link could go that page can you
land that page and be successful maybe
but tried again try to be patient and
try to wait to see if you can rise up
before you send a link to a specific
money page okay and then you threw out
like 50th but I guess as long as you're
getting a little bit of organic traffic
to a post then it's ideally in an ideal
world like if the link accidentally went
to that page and you went I don't think
it's a deal breaker but I think SEO
nowadays is one of those things where
it's like there it's hard to isolate
what's going to work and not work so you
almost have to check like 200 boxes so
for me I'm just gonna try to do
everything I can right even if it might
be a little excessive cool and that sort
of brings me to like some of the recent
algo updates you have algorithm updates
so a lot of them I mean really like in
the last I would say a year and a half
it's been almost impossible to like
pinpoint I feel like yeah - one thing so
there's the you know EA T so the
expertise Authority and trust update and
then a lot of sort of mini updates
related to it but it's been super hard
to tell what's going on so have you had
any impacts from like the updates in the
last year say all right so last year our
site around that August first one we
were at kind of peak traffic traffic
August 2018 we kind of took a tumble
around September October of 2018 there
were more updates around then and we've
lost so we went from peak to losing
about 35
I think and we just tried everything
you know from November December January
February all the things and just we're
just kind of we felt like we were sort
of just demoted and we couldn't really
do much to improve then randomly on
March 12th there was a big update and
we're up 40 percent so we got it all
back and then this most recent one I
think was about three weeks ago two
three weeks ago we lost about fifteen
percent so from our high of August last
year
we're probably down about 10-15 percent
so it's just been up down up down and
like you said earlier I I can't really
pinpoint anything interesting and did
the revenue hit follow along pretty
closely with the traffic yeah I would
say it was pretty pretty even with that
yeah okay and what was it like a panic
like when you lost that thirty five
percent like mentally I mean going
through
we were like surprisingly calm I would
say I mean we were trying to do
everything we could to improve but we
were operationally still really sound
with our numbers like it wasn't you know
digging into our our team at all we were
still profitable and things were still
going fairly well but anytime you lose
thirty five percent it's kind of like
what's going on
we do have my partner does have this
like theory that I don't know if it
applies to our industry or it could be
kind of what's going on with these
updates but he's convinced there is no
real rhyme or reason it's almost like
these subsets of sites like perform well
for a while Oh they've been tuned to
well we need to like bump them down a
little bit and for the end user for
Google like you can't really tell the
difference between the site that's rank
two and four like they're almost the
same thing so it's kind of like a market
share and you can't have one insight be
too comfortable at the top for too long
or else it's just not gonna work for
Google's plans interesting well in that
I mean I've had
I'm not the only one but a theory of
like some randomness where it's like
yeah I mean it's almost a commodity
right like the information is pretty
good on most of the sites exactly so
yeah I see exactly what your partner's
saying where it's like yeah little shift
is not going to be detrimental it's not
going to destroy their Google search
product yes at all so they're just maps
with our lives right which they they
don't care about they don't yeah they
don't want us to do good with SEO like
if we master this thing there goes
AdWords right so that's true that's true
interesting so and just to make sure I
got it so like you guys took the hit
traffic and revenue dropped have you
guys were the margins are good enough
that like your staff was okay you didn't
have to adjust in a major way nope
we kind of went on as normal and then I
just got lucky on March 12th where it
came back that's crazy
I'll have to off to look back like my
some of my traffic has had little ups
and downs but it's more like in the five
to eight percent range so I could set it
but yeah it's not again it's hard to
decipher like exactly what's going on
and then depending on how many sites and
how many pages you have and the ability
to track exactly what's going on because
at some point yeah you kind of would
lose track of what's or I I do I don't
keep track close enough but how many
pages and posts are on your site mmm I
think maybe like I think like over 700
okay yeah we've been pretty consistent
to do like five posts per week we had a
goal last year of getting it up to 20
per day but it just didn't seem like it
was there are other things we could do
and spend our time and energy on that
seems better than that okay that would
be you said 20 per day
oh I'm sorry 20 per week my bad right
now I was like me that's quite a shift
right so you have about 600 ish and
something like that several hundred over
500 we'll say between 500 and a thousand
oh what's the approximate length of like
you know the big hitters just curious
about word can work out you know for
like the the big best whatever keywords
yeah our main one is huge like kind of
our main keyword portal page that links
out to all the subtopics I think that
one's like 1012 thousand but generally
speaking I'm gonna say most of the heavy
hitter best pages or maybe 5,000 okay
4,000 5,000 6,000 yeah
all right and then did they start at
that length or did you add to them
is there a like a minimum length that
you like publish something and then you
go back and iterate on it those
particular ones because we knew they're
pretty valuable I think they started
pretty high I remember four or five
thousand being kind of the normal the
norm we don't really go back that much
we've added to some but it hasn't been a
really consistent thing and then most of
like the average best whatever type of
articles I would say are more in the 2-2
maybe 3,000 maybe 4,000 range okay cool
and do you have any display type ads or
ad network type ads on your site no okay
and I'm asking I've had a couple like
great interviews recently with Ron
Stefanski and then John Dykstra over at
fat stacks blog and it runs over at one
our professor but they do ad based sites
so they're in like you know huge traffic
volume they're making they publish their
income report so this weird the reason
why it's a great interview okay so the
reason why I brought up the display ads
is I've had you know some very
successful folks with display ads but
you're sticking generally to like
product reviews so you have a specific
you know affiliate offer or whatever
that you're you're targeting okay cool
and because you know
how valuable it is you don't want to put
any ads up because it wouldn't it
wouldn't pays as much as you need well
I've been tempted to do it
My partner is quite against it thinks it
might slow down the site taint our brand
those kind of things so it would be more
money on the table but we've just kind
of shelved it for now I guess okay
that's funny punch it I kind of want to
do it but I'm not like I'm not really
hurt to the point where it's like we
know we have to do it cool and I was
gonna say I you know I like a fast
loading right hand
I was testing some display ads and it's
so slow like I look at what was
happening and I was like you know what
I'm just gonna turn it off and my site
slowed about like in one second unless
it's like a ton of images that I didn't
optimized properly or something like
that but like when you load display ads
on your site like it basically kills any
kind of optimization that you've done so
yeah and the brand ability and stuff
like that is depending on what you're
doing may or may not share important
obviously you know the people that I
mentioned a minute ago they're putting
ads on like that's why they created the
site they know they can get a ton of
traffic and it's optimized for that even
though it loads slow that's just the
name of the game for what they're doing
so yeah now from an on-page perspective
yeah let's switch to on page do you have
any like you know must have things for
on-page you don't have to go through the
whole checklist that your team has but
are there a couple things where you're
like if you if you could do these you
know four or five things right you're
gonna be like 80% of the way there yeah
I mean hmm if you get the URL and the
keywords in the URL and the the ghost
title whatever you want to call it SEO
title your h1 you know this is really
basic like you know long tails in your
headings and stuff like that
you know I I think honestly on page
we've chilled out a little bit from the
days I don't know if you remember I've
ever talked about it but we used to be
pretty dang crazy with like our keyword
density and stuff like that
we've kind of like relaxed on that and
more natural so yeah I don't really have
a ton to say so well and I'll read
between the lines so well written tight
grammar get a couple keywords in and be
mindful of subheadings yeah yeah and if
you can if you can really you know make
sure that your content is hitting on the
topic well like whether you have a good
researcher you have a really good writer
like before I would just slap up
anything I think if you're having like
really irrelevant like sections on your
thing just to like make it longer and
stuff like that I almost think that's
like not the way to go cuz go for a
while was really saying hey let's have
the longest content I don't really think
it's about the the law I guess it's just
like hit on your topic the best I guess
yeah it's really I kind of remember
those days and I shifted some stuff
around even on like niche site project
where I had I don't even know how long I
would say 15 or 20 thousand words on
like one post and then it didn't it
didn't work so right if I did it back up
into like the most logical way I'm gonna
actually set up like a silo in it yep
did much better now do you do you guys
do silos and that sort of thing
yeah so for like our bread-and-butter
kind of silo it's really quite
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