The SEO Playbook That Actually Works: PageRank, Topical Authority & Real Results

A lot of SEOs, like legit SEOs, know who you are. Um, and for people who don't

you are. Um, and for people who don't know who you are, you give some of the most some of the best actionable SEO

advice. And by that I mean SEO advice

advice. And by that I mean SEO advice that actually gets results. Like you

give SEO advice that actually gets like real results that I have used. I used so crazy. Well, okay. I'll let you

crazy. Well, okay. I'll let you introduce yourself and then I'll say like a great story from you.

>> Okay. Okay. So, thanks for having me.

Um, it's great to be here. Um, and and thanks for um all of the DMs you sent.

Um, appreciate it. Uh, so I've been working in SEO for like over 26 years. I

I was building websites back in 1995 when I was still living in South Africa.

Um, I then became a software engineer at Dell Computers and then I I moved to Dublin and I set up my first company. I

set up primary position in 2004. Uh in

2014, I became head of marketing for a New York-based software company. Uh that

was a client of mine, was my one of my fastest growing clients. And um they raised their first 20 million, opened up their European headquarters in Ireland.

I became director of marketing and uh moved to New York and then in after 6 years they got acquired for 250 million by progress software in Boston. Uh and

we grew from like 25 85 people to 600 in 6 years. It was it was pretty crazy. Uh

6 years. It was it was pretty crazy. Uh

and then I went to work at Insights, which is a an Israeli New York technology company. Um took their

technology company. Um took their digital marketing from 7%, closed 1 to 69% in 7 months. And then they got acquired 18 months later for 325 million

um by Rapid 7. And then um I was helping Instabase come out of stealth and they were valued by on CNN at 2 billion after

a year and a half. um and probably six other companies that acquired Netscope um and a few others. Um so it's been an interesting 5 years. So I have a great

um like hobby business or boutique SEO agency. It's myself and someone who's

agency. It's myself and someone who's worked for me for like 10 years 15 years and um it keeps me busy and it's a great lifestyle. I I live in between New York

lifestyle. I I live in between New York and Florida and uh in my spare time I like to help SEOs out. I I I learned from scratch. I learned the hard way.

from scratch. I learned the hard way.

Um, and I don't think it's specifically hard. I think it's just a mindset. And

hard. I think it's just a mindset. And

so I like to share that with people. And

it does ruffle a few feathers, but I'm not out to ruffle feathers. I'm out to say, look, this is how it works, right?

So at one end, the the end I hate the most is like, oh, create great content.

And that's lovely. But who gets to decide what what is great content, right? And that's the problem I have.

right? And that's the problem I have.

And so I think when people go to a forum or go to X and they say, I want to rank and people are like, oh, create great content. Yeah, that's not how it's going

content. Yeah, that's not how it's going to work, right? There's there's 10 million results in every index. So, I

think that's why we're here, right? Is

to talk about um how do people get up in Google and how does it really work? And

so, I prefaced this call with the an update on X and I just said, look, I I don't I didn't design page rank, right?

I I don't love or hate it. I'm not

advocating for it, but if you want to rank in Google, unfortunately, you need to understand it, right? And while

there's a lot of um debate about how significant page ranks in in input is um it's still fundamental and if you can

rank with page rank then you can rank with page rank right if if if you can rank with entities go go for it. I I

just don't see it. Um I know that Google has a ton of patterns. There's a lot of SEO experts who infer things and I I don't argue with them, right? I just

don't know how how it works in their mind. But um I like I said I I run an

mind. But um I like I said I I run an agency. We work with tech SAS companies.

agency. We work with tech SAS companies.

Most of those relationships are three and a half years on average. I restarted

5 years ago. So um the only relationships I don't have are when companies get acquired and it you know the parent company has its own internal SEO paid search team. I like advising

companies preede a and I also have three CMO board offers. Um and so I'm just here to share with people who are trying to get into Google and say look you can do it. You don't have to have a massive

do it. You don't have to have a massive brand. Anyone can do it. I I I I'm still

brand. Anyone can do it. I I I I'm still romanticized and naive and believe that Google democratized the internet.

>> That's amazing. Um Oh my gosh, I have so many different questions that I could go into. I'm actually I was going to ask a

into. I'm actually I was going to ask a different question, but since you were you mentioned helping successfully helping so many companies, do you have a standard

playbook that you run when you get into a company? Um, yeah. And and I'm and I'm

a company? Um, yeah. And and I'm and I'm kind of like, and it's odd because like p my personality is antiplaybook, right?

Like I I remember when I got hired at Kemp Technologies, um, the CEO hired me and the CEO hired me before he became CEO. It's like one of these rapidly

CEO. It's like one of these rapidly evolving things where they he he was he was general manager of Europe and they got asked to he got asked to write the playbook for the for Edison Partners, which is a venture capital company. Ray

is from the same city as my dad's family have been in for like the last 300 years. his his family actually owned the

years. his his family actually owned the oldest post office in Ireland for like 110 years. So Ray hired me, became CEO,

110 years. So Ray hired me, became CEO, and um then HR got involved and they said like oh they had to do a personality test and I just like selected four words out of like a

hundred and it came back with this two-page report and one of the lines in it I thought was so funny was like it said David is incapable of doing routine work but um yeah I I have a standard

playbook and it's it's building topical authority, right? So one of the guys I I

authority, right? So one of the guys I I talk a lot to on >> sorry can you explain topical authority for beginners lots of lots of SEO beginners listen to this show too. So

when you talk about page rank when you talk talk about topical authority you know >> so basically the way Google works and page rank and page rank n so page rank nearest seed which is its current latest

invocation um looks at how far you are from pages of or pillars of trust on the internet right so you can take the New York Times as a very big pillar of trust I always take microsoft.com as a pillar

of trust um and depending on how far you are from them de is your sort of like page rank score which is like a numerical long-in number Right. So it

could be like a billion or 100 billion depending on how many pages are on the internet at any one time.

>> What do you mean by how far you are from them?

>> So if you're a 100 clicks like a 100 jumps, you're going to be very far down.

If you're very close to them, you're going to have a a much higher standing of authority. And then depending on the

of authority. And then depending on the value of that link, right? So how far that link is from the highest point of authority on that site, right? So page

rank itself is a number, but it's expressed as topical authority. So for

example, one of the questions you see really really often forums is what is DA, DR, SR, you know, site authority, domain authority, right? So they are

typically a number, but if you look at it, um, a lot of people can outrank Microsoft and Google for very specific terms, right? Like I outrank Google for

terms, right? Like I outrank Google for what is GSC and what is Google and I do that to prove a point, right? I I use my own blog to make a point about how

things rank. Um, so if you take that

things rank. Um, so if you take that number and apply it as a percentage waiting to a term, you get a topical authority. With a lot of different

authority. With a lot of different phrases, you end up with an array. So

topical authority is the number converted or representative to a topic.

And a topic would be like what is SEO?

What is PPC? So PPC and SEO topics. Or

if you're a company like Simrush, then what is the SER report is a topic. So

topical authority is how you rank and how you convert numbers to ranking for particular phrases.

>> This method of marketing is so effective, I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept doing it. It's a form of SEO I call

doing it. It's a form of SEO I call compact keywords. Whereas most SEO

compact keywords. Whereas most SEO focuses on putting up articles to answer questions how what when compact keywords focuses on putting up dozens of pages that sell to searchers who are

actually looking to buy. These pages

rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less

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compactkeywords.com.

Back to the podcast. And so your your playbook is building topical authority.

>> My my playbook is building topical authority. I don't like buying back

authority. I don't like buying back links. Um I I think a lot of people

links. Um I I think a lot of people think I sell backlinks. I've had that thrown at me a few times, but um I um I I I like earning backlinks and building

backlinks, and I think it's really easy to do. And that you know that's that's

to do. And that you know that's that's where authority comes from but authority can also come from building traffic right so you can if you can find a way

to rank for like what is GSC then you can also start to rank for other things around GSC and that's how topical authority and I I didn't invent that that was actually cornerstoneing by

Yoast uh so that's like a 24 year old playbook and it's and it works very well my second playbook is uh competitive analysis right so And then my third

playbook is use case analysis. So um if you take Kemp for example, Kemp was a company that built a load balancer. Load

balancer distributes users between multiple servers. So that could be for

multiple servers. So that could be for sending uh WhatsApp messages or email or video streaming. And it's a single

video streaming. And it's a single product company and we built a 36,000 page website. So we took every single

page website. So we took every single use case. How do you load load balance

use case. How do you load load balance engine X? How do you load balance

engine X? How do you load balance Microsoft link? How do you load balance

Microsoft link? How do you load balance Microsoft Exchange server? and we just went through all of the UK use cases and produced content and then translated it into 16 languages.

>> Wow.

>> The other playbook I really really love that I think a lot of um new SEOs that's even more relevant in today's LLM world is just to go and buy keyword in domain.

Right? So it's the previous exact match keyword or EMD, right? uh where you would buy a domain name that matched your search phrase and used to rank for it and then Google somewhat reduced the

value of that by about 70%. The thing is that if you look at paid search and SEO which work really really similarly except one has dollar amounts that and the other has authority right so page

rank and authority in SEO and dollar amounts in page search page search also has a relevancy and SEO also has a relevancy right so if your document is called um for/ load balancer then it's

going to be related to load balancing if it's for/ um engine x load balancer it's going to be relevant only to enginex load balancer and all derivative terms from that for with paid search. So I I

use a lot of the same SEO pages for paid search except where I have to clone them and I don't want duplicate pages. So um

if we look at um sort of like the exact match domain one of the domains we bought was freeload balancer.com right so a lot of companies >> you bought that >> we bought it and it's still running right so if you look at

>> Microsoft >> that was in 2014 15 >> okay >> and um we so like a lot of companies we own chem technologies.com we couldn't acquire kemp kemp.com it was owned by a

NASA jet propulsion scientist who wanted to use it was a certain match discern it. Um, and so we bought

it. Um, and so we bought freeloadbalancer.com and launched it and in the first like 8 weeks it generated 600 leads and it went on to generate 160 leads every single month including the

NSA. I can't confirm or deny that

NSA. I can't confirm or deny that obviously, but um basically we we we paired down a cut down version that had all of the features, but was limited to

a 20 Gbit 20 megabit per second throughput, which doesn't sound like a lot, but these are typically like 30 Gbits a second network appliances. And

if you go look at if you go look for free load balancer today, it's still number one. And it it looks the branding

number one. And it it looks the branding is very close to Kemp, which and its branding is very close to progress. And

I think that's a really good example of how in if you're trying to rank for a phrase that Microsoft, Google's, Citrix um are all trying to rank for, that's a

great way to and Amazon um to get at the into the top of the search results is to have domain names um that match the search phrase, build a website on it, and then you can link back to your

parents site. And it's a very, you know,

parents site. And it's a very, you know, it you can buy those domains for $12 on GoDaddy, right? Um, and I think that's

GoDaddy, right? Um, and I think that's very relevant in LLM world because now all of that content is being read and synthesized on the LLM's homepage. And

so if they're citing your brand, you don't have to worry about building a massively expensive website, right? You

can just get WordPress with a theme, which is what I think we did.

>> And you said this is despite EMDs getting devalued.

>> So EMD used to be automatic, right? So

if you bought like um free Coca-Cola.com and people would start searching for like how do I get a free Coca-Cola it would just rank first and Coca-Cola and Google just you know uh downplayed it a

lot and and and and but that doesn't mean it went away right so go back to my um the similarity I was drawing between paid search and and um organic is if you look at branded search branded search

has a lower cost in paid search and you typically have a higher clickthrough rate in organic. So, if you're Nike and people are searching for Nike, Nike.com will have a higher clickthrough rate.

That's the only way Google knows it's its brand is that the keyword matches the domain name. So, it's still there.

Uh, Google only just started adding um domain name verification. So, 8 years ago when Dell was one of our biggest retailers, we actually ran ads for Dell.com even though we didn't own

Dell.com's website. Uh, and anyone could

Dell.com's website. Uh, and anyone could anyone could run Google ads on any other domain name as long as you out bid that current bidder.

>> Yeah. Oh my gosh. Um,

you have uh All right. So, you have some great tactics. This is the one that that

great tactics. This is the one that that this was just so so crazy. So I saw you post this on X which is it was something like if you have a page that is not

ranking um and it's not ranking at all crawled not indexed and uh you think that you have increased your topical authority for the content of that page

take down the page and republish it with the new URL. So I had a page that it was it was like it was crawled. I believe it was crawled. index. It was either pass

was crawled. index. It was either pass position 50 or it was just straight up crawl. I think it was crawled not index.

crawl. I think it was crawled not index.

And it should have been. It was for a very easy term. And I'm like, this isn't this is so crazy. This is a great page.

It's a great content. It should at least be ranking on page two or the bottom of page one. What is going on? And and so I

page one. What is going on? And and so I saw this post from you and other people have have since talked about it as well.

And you're like, "Yeah, take down the page, publish it to a new new URL." So,

I I changed maybe like uh I don't know, I just spent 5 minutes just changing some words on on the page and I used a new URL, very similar URL. I 301

redirected the old URL to the new URL. I

can't remember if I submitted the 301 redirect to Google Search Console or if it was the new page. It was probably the 301 redirect because I'd want Google to see that that old page has 301

redirected. And I couldn't believe it.

redirected. And I couldn't believe it.

In two weeks, I wasn't ranking in position eight or position seven or position three. I was ranking position

position three. I was ranking position one for the target keyword that previously was crawled.index for years.

It was crawled.index. And the

explanation that you gave was you put up a new page and it is judged with the new topical authority that you have built since first publishing the page. And and

that was the reason that that was so crazy to me was because I'm like, well, why wasn't that page it was crawled, but I guess it wasn't indexed. But if I

resubmitted resubmitted it to Google Search Console, it still wouldn't rank.

And and I was just like, this is so weird because you would think that this page that if you if you resubmitted it to GSC, it would be judged with the new topical authority, but no, you actually

had to publish it on a new URL. And it

was like you it was like some glitch. It

was like some glitch that that you found.

>> It's not a glitch. It's actually how page rank works. And so I'm I'm beginning to see how some detractors might think that I set you up for this.

Right. But the way you've actually presented this is actually a beautiful demonstration of how Matt Cuts's version of page rank is still at play here. And

I'll tell you what's going on. Right. So

here's what happened. As you know, um Google calls every URL the cannon, right? And that I think comes from

right? And that I think comes from Catholic law. Like so when when the when

Catholic law. Like so when when the when the Catholic Church lays down a law, right? That's law for all citizens in

right? That's law for all citizens in all countries. It's called the canon

all countries. It's called the canon law, right? So the canon is your URL.

law, right? So the canon is your URL.

And Google doesn't like any variations to it. And so a lot of newbies will say,

to it. And so a lot of newbies will say, "I've changed my URL." And I'll get all semantic and go like, "No, you didn't change your URL. What you did is you had an old URL and you introduced a new URL." Right? There's no even if you 301

URL." Right? There's no even if you 301 it, it's still a newer URL. And that's

important because the cannon has all of the topical authority and it's unique to that cannon. And so when you've got a

that cannon. And so when you've got a page that doesn't rank and like you said it's in crawl.indexed or

discovered.index, which I think is probably one of the most popular questions for newbies, especially on Reddit.

>> And people say, "Oh, it's it's not about it's about your content not being good enough, right?" And that's fair because

enough, right?" And that's fair because that is in a that is in a couple of videos that Google have released this year from Switzerland from their Google team where they say it's because we don't like your content. What they

actually mean or at least I infer what they mean is no one's linking to you therefore we think the quality is no good because what you've just said is you took the exact same content that was crawled and not discovered. You know, if

you go to GSC and say, "Crawl this page," it takes a few seconds while it lets the bots go and fetch the page, waits for any timeouts, and then it gives you an instant feedback, right? It

says, "I've read the page. This can be indexed." And then you hit crawl or or

indexed." And then you hit crawl or or request, and it doesn't go back in, and you're like, "Wow, well, maybe it doesn't like my content." But then, how come two years later you picked a new

slug, so here's what's going on. The new

slug gets a brand new start. We know

from the um the API leak whether what not you want to how you want to read into the API leak. Sean Anderson from Hobo Web does a huge amount of analysis on this. Great guy on X. Anyone can talk

on this. Great guy on X. Anyone can talk to him. He's not an ivory tower.

to him. He's not an ivory tower.

>> What's his name? I'm going to I'm going to write this down.

>> Yeah. Uh hobo-web, uh Sean Anderson, S h a n. Um, so, um, if you look at site

a n. Um, so, um, if you look at site authority, which is topical authority, and Sean just came out last week saying topical authority is 100% a real thing, and Sean and I don't agree on

everything, but we are able to amicably discuss everything and it's really cool.

Um, he said, look, so basically your site has a topical authority cluster score, right? And for when you start out

score, right? And for when you start out and that first page isn't ranking, it's cuz it's just slightly outside of your topical authority. As you build your

topical authority. As you build your topical authority, because that page has no traffic, Google's not crawling it.

And that's why um pages don't just suddenly burst to life. That's why site maps don't force Google to index you, right? If you have a page that has

right? If you have a page that has traffic, it'll automatically get crawled. So if you're building back

crawled. So if you're building back links and the backlink comes from an authorative page, Google automatically pick it up. If you're upset that Google hasn't picked up your backlink, it's because that page isn't ranking, which

means that page will never do you any good. So, when you picked a new URL a

good. So, when you picked a new URL a while later and your topical authority, also site authority, which all pages get and inherit when they're published, that was part of the API call for a new page.

Um, they're now that page is now being seen in light of the topic authority you have because it's had no clicks.

Google's not automatically indexing it.

You don't necessarily have to pick a new slug. You can just do it by making a

slug. You can just do it by making a minor edit and recalling the page and it will also rank. What you are doing when you pick a new slug is you're actually repositioning it. So the slug is the

repositioning it. So the slug is the single most important thing that you can tell Google what your page is about. If

you want to see how other pages are ranking, go and look at the slug. Like

literally do a search for house cleaning, HVAC in Boston, whatever, click on the top five and look at the slug. The answer is is hiding in plain

slug. The answer is is hiding in plain sight, right? literally plain sight. Um,

sight, right? literally plain sight. Um,

and so when you when you reindex that page, the slug will change the topic. In

other words, if you were saying, for example, um, how we keep our house squeaky clean and then you changed the slug to house cleaning pro, you've altered it. And if house cleaning

altered it. And if house cleaning professional was in your topical authority, that's why that page suddenly started ranking. And so, you've actually

started ranking. And so, you've actually also kind of busted the Google content appreciation engine myth, right? That is

the thing that Google can somehow gauge the quality of content. I I believe Google can definitely work out machine scale spam cuz it it does it very effectively. But I don't think Google

effectively. But I don't think Google can actually determine what content should be in its index, right? Like it

it it indexes a lot of content about moonlandings. It it it it indexes a lot

moonlandings. It it it it indexes a lot of content saying there were dinosaurs on the ark, right? And which may or may not be true. I'm not I'm not picking a position here, right? Um, and so I think that's what people have to realize is

that a lot of not all of the content that we read and write and and and consume is like what is the capital of France? What is the capital of DC?

France? What is the capital of DC?

Right? A lot of it is like here's an observation about a Supreme Court case which today is like highly subjective and highly controversial, right? It's

not black and white uh binary facts, right?

>> So wait, you're saying that the reason the old um and I I I had the keyword in both in both slugs. You're saying that the that the reason uh the old page

wasn't consistently judged as topical authority was built was because there's I mean the the way that uh page rank I guess is programmed is it the slug is

canon and so it's once so the reason I'm confused by this is because I'm like okay but as you build up your as you build up your authority if we

could just call it authority um as you as you're getting better better. I be

the thing is I didn't get it was actually it was like I I put up the page and then I kind of laid off the site for a while and it probably was on if I'm if I'm being real it probably was like a

year or two that I got like any worthwhile links to the to the site.

>> Makes sense.

>> Yeah. And so I Yeah, that would make that would make sense as to why the new URL would would do so much better.

>> What you can do to to to sort of test these, right? I'm a big big believer in

these, right? I'm a big big believer in testing things. You know, I I like going

testing things. You know, I I like going out and touching things. And one of the best things you can do is go to search console, go to pages, under pages, looked at, see information about index pages. All of the pages that you have

pages. All of the pages that you have clicks for, right? If you look at the last seven days and look at the pages that had the most clicks and then inspect those URLs, they will have all been indexed in the last 24 hours. All

of your pages will be called. Only the

pages with traffic will be indexed.

Right? So what happens is the caller comes across the page, opens it, takes all of the URLs out, throws them into another call list, and then it starts to process. It sends the site name and the

process. It sends the site name and the fave icon to the snippet builder, which we know is running on its own clock.

Then it sends the page CRC check and the page last mod date, and it compares the file size to the last file size. And the

indexer goes, I'm sorry, but I'm not this page is not getting traffic. I'm

driaging it. So the pages with the most clicks get indexed all the time. And so

because your page didn't get clicks, it's never getting clicks until you republished it. And Google treats it as

republished it. And Google treats it as a brand new page even though you didn't change the content, right? And so if you look at the way crawlers work and and the way a lot of web devs who are

focused on sitemaps work and they work at big websites where they have lots of authority and then they're trying to give advice to small noobs, noobs should never use sitemaps, right?

What they should do is if you're if you're building an establishing topical authority and you're writing a new blog post and you start at like what is house cleaning? How do I clean my house? How

cleaning? How do I clean my house? How

do I keep my house clean? When should I hire a professional? We're a

professional in Boston. Right? So that's

the most expensive keyword, the highest difficulty. This is the lowest keyword

difficulty. This is the lowest keyword down here. What you want to do is

down here. What you want to do is actually link from this page to the next page to the next page because that gives Google context. So when the spider opens

Google context. So when the spider opens a page that it's crawling every 24 hours, it reads the link. It gets the context from the AF text, not from the whole site, and then it passes it on to

the next page. What you don't want is for it to randomly find it in an XML list where it has no context, no backlinks, no authority. That's why

pages end up as crawled, not discovered or disco, sorry, called not index, discovered, not indexed.

>> Um, >> after you get site authority, >> and you publish like, hey, we're now house cleaning professionals in Washington DC. You don't have to link it

Washington DC. You don't have to link it to anything. It'll just rank, right?

to anything. It'll just rank, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> What uh what are the top ways that you I mean okay so you see SEO made way too complicated all the time basically like everyone everyone's trying actually um

from from working in an agency for a long time. I I will see SEO's

long time. I I will see SEO's deliberately over complicating SEO in order to better sell SEO.

>> So absolutely.

>> So what are I we see people just making up terms to confuse potential clients like that is like you see that. So what

are the top ways that people over complicate SEO and like if you were to boil it down to like the paro principle of SEO things that people should should do?

>> Sure.

>> Especially for noobs.

>> Yeah. For for everyone. Um so the first thing is Google Google isn't watching every step you make, right? Um it's not Sting, right? It's not the German Stazzy

Sting, right? It's not the German Stazzy Police. It doesn't care what you do. You

Police. It doesn't care what you do. You

can take a page, publish it, if it fails, take it off and republish it, right? Just be careful with the

right? Just be careful with the duplicate cannon. The duplicate cannon

duplicate cannon. The duplicate cannon means Google actually just holds on to the page title, the slug and the H1. And

that's how it thinks the page is unique.

So it's not even a very deep analysis, right? It doesn't actually care about

right? It doesn't actually care about the rest of the content. So you just have to be careful when you're unpublishing pages that it's removed properly from the index before you republish it as a new URL. Um but try and experiment. So if you

and experiment. So if you >> Oh, sorry. I I had one more I had one more question. So does does the um

more question. So does does the um >> the taking does Republishing a page as a new URL. Um, is that only for crawled

new URL. Um, is that only for crawled not indexed or do you would somebody also do that for let's say a page that's ranking on page two?

>> Uh, you could definitely do it for a page that's ranking on page two or five or six. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so for

or six. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so for example, if you if you wanted to rank for an SEO term and you said you wrote a blog post about latest updates in the Google core engine, right? um and you

publish the URL as Google SEO and you don't have a lot of authority, you're going to end up on page 900, right? So then you're like, okay, that was that was aiming a little

high. That was a little ambitious for my

high. That was a little ambitious for my domain name, right? So you decide to go with Google core update March 2026, right? Like very very specific. And then

right? Like very very specific. And then

you republish it. It's a narrower, longer term and so you need less authority, but you're also using a lot of relevance, right? Like Google doesn't publish a page per every update. So

there's no Google competition and so you might actually rank in the top five for that straight away. Um, republishing on a URL doesn't fix crawl.indexed. It just

allows you to use new um topical authority. To fix crawled and

authority. To fix crawled and discovered, not indexed, you need backlink authority or you need to pass authority from an internal page. just to

be very clear about how that works.

>> Okay.

>> Does that So, as you're as you're um publishing and you realize you're the highest position you're getting to is like page three, then unpublish and come back, right? And and and rethink about

back, right? And and and rethink about >> So, what you're saying you're saying, let's say a a piece of content is not making it past it. It it is it is actually in the index and it is ranking.

It's just not ranking well. And so

you're actually saying that that republishing the same content under a new slightly different URL will make it rank better.

>> Yeah. That the file name is the document name. And if you if you want to

name. And if you if you want to understand the importance of it, Google supports 57 file types of which HTML is just one, right? And PDF and doc are another. Those are the only three that

another. Those are the only three that actually support headings. Everything

else like bass video.xls well supports headings as well. A lot of them don't support headings. So Google actually

support headings. So Google actually gets the document name from the slug. If

you upload a video to YouTube and you go and edit it, it will have the file name of the video in the YouTube studio because guess what? It's the most important thing in YouTube as well. And

um because Google is built by a bunch of Unix engineers at a file system level, that's how they gauge the importance of the file. So if your file is SEO, you're

the file. So if your file is SEO, you're going to be in an index called SEO and you're going to be up against Google, Microsoft, SE round table, Nathan Gotch, whatever. Right.

whatever. Right.

>> Yeah. But I'm saying but I'm saying like you add like you literally just add one word to the URL slug >> and what you're doing is you're moving down a less competitive index

>> and so what you're doing is you're you're taking your relevancy to however much authority or however little authority you have and you're making that greater and then you're appearing in an index where there's less and less

competition. So for example um one of

competition. So for example um one of the first pages I outranked for this argument was um I had to hack it. I had

to hack it for Bing search console right because Bing still call it Bing web master tool. So I I ranked on page one

master tool. So I I ranked on page one for Bing search console because nobody else was ranking for it. So if I if I had ranked for if I tried to rank for Bing web master tools I would have been down on page nine. What I did is I moved

it my I created a new index called Bing search console knowing that people lazily type in Bing search console and voila I was back into number one position again.

>> Funny story about this. Oh sorry I'm sorry. Go ahead.

sorry. Go ahead.

>> So once you start getting traffic for it that's when you establish topical authority.

>> Um but yeah I mean it's it's so wait. So,

if if a noob is like um this this wasn't what I was originally going to say, but I'm I'm like taking the perspective of because I know how SEO noobs think and and I'm and you do too because we both

set out to to help educate people on SEO. So, an SEO noob would be like, "Oh

SEO. So, an SEO noob would be like, "Oh my gosh, I've been ranking at the top of page two forever. So, all I need to do is republish it under like a slightly new URL and I'm going to be on page one." Is that how it works?

one." Is that how it works?

>> Uh so, so it it depends, right? It

depends if if you have the it it depends if the the keyphrase you were publishing under required more authority than you have. So if you're going to publish

have. So if you're going to publish under SEO and you were to hit number one, you're going to rank for everything under SEO, right? To a degree. However,

if you put another keyword, you're narrowing and narrowing your index, right?

>> What if it's like what if it's a very meaningless keyword though? So

>> Oh, then you won't do anything to yourself.

You may you may actually index yourself out, right? So there are

out, right? So there are >> slugs are are are dependent. Sometimes

if you have a low amount authority, Google requires every single word in the slug to be present. That's how long tail search works. That's why longtale search

search works. That's why longtale search works. So a lot of newbies are given

works. So a lot of newbies are given advice, go after longtail. So if you put a if you have a slug, what is the 2026 Google 4 release 11.3 update? that's a

very specific slug and Google you will rank first on the odd chance of somebody putting in that entire slug and nothing else and so that might work if that's a big top if that's has search volume and

it won't work if there isn't right so if you if you change it to like google-agic duster and no one's searching for Google magic duster then you're not going to get any traffic but you will be first

right so that's that's a bonus right >> in my case in my case what happened was I just wasn't it was a non-competitive keyword other people were not targeting Yeah. And uh and it wasn't the type of

Yeah. And uh and it wasn't the type of thing where a variation would be heavily targeted either. It was just a straight

targeted either. It was just a straight up like that and all of it.

>> So >> yeah, >> the example you're quoting is where your page isn't being retouched by Google for 2 years because it had no clicks. And so

by pushing it back through the system, it benefited from an updated topical.

>> So what if what if I had actually driven clicks to it somehow? Maybe I shared it on social and it got a lot of clicks.

>> Clicks clicks have to come from Google, right? So social media doesn't matter,

right? So social media doesn't matter, doesn't help it in any way. Um the what Google can only do is look at data in its in its control, right? So if a page

is getting clicks and the specific phrases of the keywords, that transfers topical authority to your page for that keyword.

So if your page isn't getting clicks, it's not going to get reindexed. It's

not going to get rescanned. You can

leave it there for 10 years. The only

way to change it is let's say you forgot about this page. You didn't republish it. You wrote a new article that went to

it. You wrote a new article that went to number one, started getting a lot of traffic and you link that article to that old page. That old page will start to rank 100%.

>> So, so that's so so you don't have to you don't have to republish it under a new URL. You can

interlink to it with a page that is ranking that is getting traffic. Does it

have Yeah. A page that's ranking that's getting organic traffic specifically.

The URL republishing is for where it's out of your authority zone where you like I said you've picked something like the word SEO or the word Microsoft you have no hope of ranking for it right >> yeah yeah that's that's what that's what

happened was the the site was about it was the site was perceived to be about something different when the article went up which is why it wasn't ranking at all and by the time by the time I

republished it under the new URL I I had put up a lot of content in that new uh and probably just gotten links that I wasn't even paying attention within um within that new that new

sphere. And so yeah, that's it. It made

sphere. And so yeah, that's it. It made

perfect sense to me. I mean, mostly perfect sense with the exception of like >> I I I always went by the uh I always

liked the analogy a rising tide lifts all boats. Yes. which which is like do

all boats. Yes. which which is like do like a great holistic marketing and uh you know get branded searches, get some high author, get a big a natural mix of

backlinks. You want to have a natural

backlinks. You want to have a natural backlink profile get get like these things and then all of your pages are going to start to do better. But I mean it does make sense if a page is like if

someone's not clicking on that page from other pages on your site, they're not navigating to to it. There's some

brilliant Matt Cuts videos that explain this beautifully. My favorite one, and I

this beautifully. My favorite one, and I actually took a clip of it and put on my own YouTube channel. Um, one of it is like, "What do you mean we can't index in in milliseconds? If you if you're CNN and you have enough backlinks, we'll

index in milliseconds." That was that was made more than 10 years ago. And if

it teaches you anything, milliseconds was the time it took to download the page, not the time to go out and fact verify, did Russia really invade the Ukraine, right? It doesn't have time to

Ukraine, right? It doesn't have time to do that. It doesn't have access to that,

do that. It doesn't have access to that, right? So if they're indexing in

right? So if they're indexing in milliseconds because CNN has backlinks, if you need any more evidence than that, then I can't help you, right? Then

you're just never going to believe, right? And so the second thing he said

right? And so the second thing he said is um we when they first built Google, it took 3 months to index the web and the web was tiny tiny back then. When

they released Caffeine, they started triaging the web and they said, "We will literally crawl the most important part of the web every 24 hours." So, if your pages aren't getting indexed, they're

literally triaged out and that's why your page wasn't getting crawled. Um,

and if you want to stay in the same vein of topical authority and schema and other conflicting evidence, I'll give you two conflicting ideas for newbies for building topical authority around uh

FAQs and people also ask, right? So,

people also ask and FAQs are two great ways to build topical authority and the best way to do it is without schema. Uh

and and of course right now everyone's running around saying you need schema schema schema schema schema schema schema right um and I um I'll use schema if I work for a hotel website but I don't work for any hotel websites

airline site there's not really any need to use schema but if you um if let's say you're trying to to rank for a particular topic go and build an FAQ but build every single answer on its own

page and then you don't need to use schema what you're doing is you're exactly using the entire URL as relevancy. If you put it all in one

relevancy. If you put it all in one page, you're now splitting the relevancy and authority of that page against all of those FAQs against keywords that aren't in the slug in the page title. So

I if if someone says to you again, it's going to be web devs because it's easier for web devs to create a schema and allow people to write all of the FAQs out on one page and it'll work if you're Cisco and it'll work if you're any, you

know, high DA site. But if you're a newbie and you've got no clicks, it's just not going to work. The other thing is if you've got a page that's getting a little bit of traffic and it's sort of like you're trying to rank for a high

term but you're getting like lots of like little what is questions and you don't need like a tool like surfer or you know content optimization tools. Go

to GSC and look at the phrases that you're on page two for and use those as H2 headings on that page. they'll get

more clicks and your topical authority will go up and you will rank higher and it's the easiest thing in the world and it you don't need any tools to do it and that's how corner stoning works. That's

two completely different contrasting ideologies, right? The one says go and

ideologies, right? The one says go and use every question on its own URL and the other one is put the H2s on the same page. And that's because SEO is a

page. And that's because SEO is a system, right? It's not a binary

system, right? It's not a binary checklist. If you're you're going to go

checklist. If you're you're going to go in and go you have to have an image, you have to have and you tick all these boxes and it's not working. We know it's not working because people come to forums every day and I think I told you I volunteered on the Google product

support forum uh for 9 months. It was a thankless job and I gave up. Um people

were coming with the I'm doing everything right. I'm getting a rankmath

everything right. I'm getting a rankmath score of 10 out of 10. I'm getting this.

It's like these things don't matter.

They they're trying to teach you the basics of slug title H1 um the trilogy so to speak. But if you look at it as a system, if you've already got a page

that's getting clicks, you already have some authority by putting H2s that exactly match the phrase, you're just up upleveling what by what. If you have no clicks, you go and build FAQs out on

their own pages until one of them ranks and starts getting clicks. Then you go up from there.

>> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Also,

it's really interesting that you brought up that FAQ example. you are literally the second person to say that to me in the last week and a half and I had on these uh they they were old school SEOs

on my show and they had like uh rebranded themselves as kind of like reput online reputation experts. Um they

and they made uh they made an FAQ tool where so they were telling me about this on the podcast and I I got some heat from the comments because I was grilling them them on this. They're like, "Yeah,

we made this FAQ tool and it makes it it improves organic rankings and or improves the traffic you get from organic search." And what it does is it

organic search." And what it does is it actually makes every FAQ question as its own page. And I'm like, "Wait, wait,

own page. And I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Isn't that going to bloat

wait, wait. Isn't that going to bloat the site? That's like that." And and

the site? That's like that." And and they're like, "Yeah, actually it's its own subfolder." And I'm and and then I'm

own subfolder." And I'm and and then I'm like, "Are you telling me that there's a new subfolder for every question off the root domain? Is that cuz isn't that

root domain? Is that cuz isn't that going to like isn't that going to bloat it? And what what it really is is it's

it? And what what it really is is it's it's you have like a product page and then off the product page all the different questions that people might have those are their own subfolders and

then and then the slug after the subfolder is the answer. And and those pages I they're like they're not very long. I don't know if I would categorize

long. I don't know if I would categorize them as thin content because it is useful. It's like it's it's it is

useful. It's like it's it's it is useful. And uh and anyway, so these do

useful. And uh and anyway, so these do then they talked to me about FAQ schema and I I I fall into the same camp as you with schema. I make a lot of episodes on

with schema. I make a lot of episodes on it, but um but yeah, so they were sending me screenshots afterwards about the results that this gets and you were the second person to say like take your

FA take your FAQ questions and put them on separate pages. Even if it's even if it would be seen as thin, the fact is these are useful pages.

So absolutely and and and the thing about thin content is if you actually go read the Google SEO policy spam guide the Google's very clear on its on its penalties right and thin content is only

a penalty when it's with affiliate content otherwise there's no such thing as a there's no word count minimum and so if there's no word count minimum and there's no no thin content then there can't really be a content quality

standard right you can put up a table or a spreadsheet or a video with no content Google doesn't watch the video, it still doesn't watch the video. So, you can put

up any content you want. Um, and FAQs with 100 words or 10 words are perfectly enough. I mean, what does one of my

enough. I mean, what does one of my favorites is like, um, uh, oh, how how do you how do you how do you spell VPN, right? And that's for a client of mine out of California. And we

get a ton of traffic for people looking for VPN, right? It makes no sense cuz if you've typed it in, you've spelled it, right? Well done, right? But we get a

right? Well done, right? But we get a ton of traffic from that. And there was another client in cyber security. The

the board of directors, they were still in stealth mode. So the board of directors was like had eyes on our SEO strategy and they were like, "No, we're not putting up a glossery." I'm like, "We've got to put up a glossery." And we went for months and eventually they let

us put up a glossy. Now they have nine glosseries, right? And what we found is

glosseries, right? And what we found is not only did we get a ton of topical authority, >> but we actually started getting leads and 25% of their traffic comes from the glossery. And they're so cutting edge

glossery. And they're so cutting edge that they don't realize they're cutting edge. they were bringing AI into cyber

edge. they were bringing AI into cyber security a long time ago and um there were people that that were you know getting new job titles right so things

were moving from CESO to BO and people were getting these job titles not knowing what they meant and they were actually googling them and it was something we learned from uh from working in tech where we did FAQs and we

built Vizio stencils and what we would do is we'd draw up a network diagram and insert all of our points of technology and then we would create icons for the CIS admin to drop us into their own Vizio stencils

cuz that's how they they would map out data centers and network diagrams. And it was a great way for them to visualize where we sit on the network and how much intelligence we could gather from all of their different applications that they

were load balancing, for example. And

what we found out is that a lot of people if they're building a spread, you know, a slide, they're doing a presentation to the board of directors, they want to use terminologies that everyone else understood. And so it's a

great way to create a a path of discovery for someone who would never otherwise Google something they didn't know about to suddenly come into the company and discover it through the the the um glossery.

>> Well, so what do you think about AI generated glosseries that people are doing now?

>> Um it's going to be a huge challenge, right? It's it's it's going to be very

right? It's it's it's going to be very difficult. Um I I use a lot of AI

difficult. Um I I use a lot of AI generated content to help me. I Great. I

do. Yeah. To what extent to what extent is it? Is it like is it AI generated and

is it? Is it like is it AI generated and not reviewed? Is it AI generated and

not reviewed? Is it AI generated and reviewed but like very you barely edit it? Like yeah what are we talk what are

it? Like yeah what are we talk what are we saying here? Are you rem are you keeping in m dashes? Are you removing m dashes? Are you keeping in buzzwords?

dashes? Are you keeping in buzzwords?

Are you removing buzzwords?

>> I don't care about m dashes so I keep them. Um, and funny enough, I got

them. Um, and funny enough, I got Perplexity to make a list of SEO job titles and I put the table on a on a blog post and a minute later I was

actually ranking in Google where it listed all the job titles that Perplexity had created, right? Um, and

so there's no way in a table like that for Google to know if that's AI generated. And Google doesn't ban AI

generated. And Google doesn't ban AI content. Um, and it again it comes back

content. Um, and it again it comes back to I I'll maintain that Google's content agnostic. And so

agnostic. And so >> I had a you know Bill Hartzer, right?

>> I do. Yes.

>> Yeah. I had the same same conversation with him on the podcast which is like he's like yeah they don't they don't tell if it's if it's uh AI generated or not is >> they they have a policy page you can literally go to and they say we don't

care. And if you look at um it was

care. And if you look at um it was actually Richard Hearn who's another Irish SEO um phenomenal um SEO is very

quiet. He's on X. um he actually tweeted

quiet. He's on X. um he actually tweeted about the um DOJ trial uh where Google took a slide from the HR on boarding process with two people sitting at a

desk going we don't understand content so we guess and we surface and see and we test people like it and that's clickthrough rate testing. So Google

will test your content and then if people search for the same topic again other pages will get rewarded if they click there and your content will go down.

>> Wait, so I have I have a Okay, shoot. I

because I want to ask you about your take on AI, but I I literally have this on my list of questions and this is something that I was personally very curious about. You wrote on on LinkedIn,

curious about. You wrote on on LinkedIn, Google doesn't use bounce rates/dwelltime/chrome data.

>> I don't think it does. Um

>> even then you and you and obviously you you referenced the the Google API leak before >> which was all about this stuff.

>> Yeah. So it it's it's and and also um back to Sean Anderson Hobo Web and why I referenced him is he's he said that they actually did say that in the trial that

that they do potentially use that data.

Um the reason I don't think Google uses dwell time apart from the fact that they've been pretty adamant about it and I know people say like you can't trust Google but if you can't trust Google then where do we get anything right?

Where do we get paid rank? Where do we get CWVs? Where do we get anything? So

get CWVs? Where do we get anything? So

you have to try to figure out for yourself. You have to use critical but

yourself. You have to use critical but more importantly you have to test and experiment right and so if you look at the amount of content and the way people read blog posts. So if you take even a

big website and you go to analytics and you look at the just the blog pages and you look at the bounce rate it's 100%.

The number of pages that the number of people that read a second page is very very small. So people will go in read a blog

small. So people will go in read a blog post about why is gold up today? What

what what is the economic situation in Europe? Where is this healthcare

Europe? Where is this healthcare medication at? How does this work? What

medication at? How does this work? What

does this mean? People don't go and browse your whole website, right? And so

I don't think dwell time is a significantly important metric. I think

it's an important metric if you're writing content and you want to measure how that content is performing. If you

think like, well, I'm going to write 5,000 words and it keeps someone on my page. If you go and install Microsoft

page. If you go and install Microsoft Clarity or any other screen recorder and you watch how people scroll and they look for things and they underline things and then they vanish. I don't

think you can punish websites for that, right? Like we you might have somebody

right? Like we you might have somebody who might come in and read 10 pages, go away, come back 6 months later and fill in a contact form in 9 seconds. Do you

punish the website because they've converted someone from 9 months ago? Um,

if you look at CTR testing, it's much more efficient. In other words, if I

more efficient. In other words, if I type in I need a recommend the best CRM solution and if I keep searching for it and I click on the first answer that gets a 100%

clickthrough rate. If I click on the

clickthrough rate. If I click on the second one, they're both getting 50%.

But now the second one has a higher than average clickthrough rate. The first

one's in trouble. And if that happens and happens and happens, eventually they'll swap. or if a fifth result comes

they'll swap. or if a fifth result comes in and people start going to the fifth one and it gets a 30% clickthrough rate, it will take over the first one. And

that makes a lot more sense because all of that data is in Google's control.

Once people bounce out to other websites, you can quickload a page.

Suddenly it's a two-page visit if you have analytics on it. Secondly, easy to forget in the US, but the European Union, which is a much bigger population, is that's blocked by GDPR

and Google can't do it. And then Chrome isn't universal, right? it it doesn't sit on every desktop. It doesn't sit in AIG where they only use Internet Explorer 3 or something or six, right?

And so that data becomes very dangerous.

It's very, like I said, it's >> So you're saying you're saying it still uses clicks, but it doesn't necessarily use like pogo sticking, for example, isn't actually as big a deal as people

say. But at the same point, clicks are

say. But at the same point, clicks are clicks from the SER. Okay,

>> pogo sticking is right because it's it's me jumping around and selecting different solutions and every time I do click on another result.

>> You go you go into page one and you're like this doesn't have what I what I need. You leave sorry you go to result

need. You leave sorry you go to result one and then yeah you go back to Google then you go to result two.

>> Pogo sticking is the way it works.

>> Okay. Okay. So you so pogo sticking is a thing.

>> Yes. And then um you know do people like uh click on the same result or the same website even if it's not in the same position or do they click on site links

which is a part of twiddlers or tweakers twiddlers and nav boost. Um I think if you also look at the the document API warehouse leak you have to remember that

it's a document warehouse for an organization's in documents. And so

having an author in a in a in a company or having people do something in a in the same browser is completely different than the public worldwide web, right?

Those are two different things. And so

that's where it it falls into into interpretation and you can have philosophical debate.

>> Totally.

>> So So that's my view on it. And like I said, if if if I look at the number of pages that we build that just bounce yet they don't lose their rank position, then dwell time is something I worry

about. And and I I think what

about. And and I I think what >> So long clicks versus short clicks thing or not really a thing.

>> I I I don't think it's a thing.

>> Okay.

Pogo sticking is a thing.

>> Pogo sticking is definitely a thing.

Yeah, you can do and that's how that's how manip click through clickthrough rate manipulation tools work and they're very very effective unfortunately. Um

but people get addicted to them and they bust themselves. That's

bust themselves. That's >> Oh yeah.

>> Oh yeah. So you can you can see when people are using um it was a a very nice person who came to a forum a couple of years ago. Um I think it was after the

years ago. Um I think it was after the March helpful content update and they said, "Oh no, my site's been destroyed.

I don't know how I'm going to feed my kids." And a lot of people gave advice

kids." And a lot of people gave advice and I gave advice and she IM said, "Could you help me?" And I said, "Yeah."

And it took a few months, but she eventually gave me access to her search console and I had a look and every Thursday the number of impressions for what she was doing just went up and all

her clicks and clickthrough rates just went radically down. And so we figured out who it might be and she reported it to the Google spam report. And uh and

then also she had a lot of cannibalization and it took about 6 months but eventually she was on the right track. Um

right track. Um >> so do you did I don't know to what extent did she rebound?

>> Like she's in the top five.

>> So to so you're you're saying a competitor was doing negative SEO to her or someone someone on your team.

>> No no another company was using a um click-through manipulation tool.

Clickthrough manipulation tool is bot traffic that simulates a search and then clicks on a result and pushes it up by changing the over average CTR, >> right? And and so this other company was

>> right? And and so this other company was doing that to her as negative SEO to to get pushed down.

>> It'll be negative to everyone else, right? Because it's only clicking on

right? Because it's only clicking on their result.

And that's effectively how you catch yourself out. You get addicted to it,

yourself out. You get addicted to it, right? Because once you stop, you start

right? Because once you stop, you start to fall again.

>> So they've got to keep doing it. And

then they've got to add more and more keywords, right? So they figure out, oh,

keywords, right? So they figure out, oh, I've got this keyword, but I'm not getting a lot of leads, so I'm going to try this keyword. Okay, now I'm getting leads. I'm going to try another one to

leads. I'm going to try another one to get another one. And they get greedy.

And then eventually Google can see this pattern, right? Every Thursday there's

pattern, right? Every Thursday there's like a million >> more clicks than normal. And their their bot traffic masters are able to catch it.

>> Wow. And so you saw that you were looking at Google Search Console and you saw, yeah, every Thursday, what's going on here? This

on here? This >> Yeah. I I one of the things I I um I

>> Yeah. I I one of the things I I um I joked about when I when I when I left like in my my agency work and I was working with 12 companies and I went in house is I didn't know how to spend my time. I I was actually given every

time. I I was actually given every Friday off so I could run other projects just so I wouldn't you know just so I could not get bored. And um so I have like I have the projects I work on and

the people I work with, but in order to sort of like stay ahead of the curve um I take on other projects that I help people with pro bono. And so I have like 200 domains in my Google search console

and so I can see really really wild edge cases and that helps me a lot with correcting um my understanding of how page rank works. Like I'm I'm incredibly efficient because I'm lazy, right? I

think I I don't know if it's an urban legend, but Bill Gates is credited with you and if you want to solve a complex problem quickly, give it to someone lazy. They'll find the fastest way. M

lazy. They'll find the fastest way. M

>> and that's something I learned as an engineer in Dell which I'm really grateful for. But I I do not have a

grateful for. But I I do not have a checklist of we need 100 things for a page to rank. We need three things.

That's it.

>> Um my when people say like oh will you review this for content? No. I I'll I'll just admittedly say no I won't. I'll

review it once it's ranking but I'm not reviewing it today. You publish it as fast as humanly possible. We'll look at the data. The data will tell us where to

the data. The data will tell us where to go. I'm very very adamant about reducing

go. I'm very very adamant about reducing the number of things to do. I do not believe in adding 120 things. If there's

five things and it works, then we stay with those five things. There's no need to change it.

>> I'm adamant about that, too. Uh, and I also believe that everyone over complicates SEO. I just

complicates SEO. I just >> 100%.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, okay. So, I I really want your take on AI AI content using AI to create content. To what

extent is it fine? To what extent is it not fine? To what extent should people

not fine? To what extent should people do it and not do it? going back to pragmatic testing and and and and Google like not watching your every step.

Julian Goldie actually did this when he got and and got banned and Google released an entire update for him. So,

if you're getting hit by updates, you're following the wrong SEO influencer. But

what he did is he got um a Google spreadsheet, LinkedIn and some robots to build an entire website about birds, I think, right? And so he went and he got

think, right? And so he went and he got like keyword research, everything to do with birds, your FAQs, built it, got back links, automated, and within 12 hours he had like a million visits, right? That level is detectable and

right? That level is detectable and penalizable, and you'll get thrown out at Google. Where is Google going to go

at Google. Where is Google going to go with AI? I have no idea, right? It's

with AI? I have no idea, right? It's

going to be really interesting. A lot of people are very adamant that Google can catch and detect AI. And yeah, you can quote examples where you can go and for example, like you were saying earlier, M dashes, you can go to

>> Oh, no. I was actually saying that for humans because I think yeah cuz I think like I just think it'll increase bounce rate by by savvy by savvy readers smart readers sorry stupid readers they they

don't know or like unnowledgeable readers readers don't know but if you are targeting people who are who are smart they they might be able to tell >> see the other thing as well is like there's a lot to be said for ranking

first in Google and that being e all on its own which we didn't get to and I already just rambled on indefinitely but >> you write a lot about Yeah, if if if you actually go and click

on the first result in Google, unless it's like really really wild, people will run with it, right? Um

and and and and I've seen people quote things because people have bombed Google, right? They they've ranked the

Google, right? They they've ranked the wrong thing in purpose. Like there I think there was a a cartoon from um Dilbert where the somebody goes and Google something and it comes up as true and she goes like, "Yeah, I'm either

really clever or I'm just really good at SEO." Right? like I can change your

SEO." Right? like I can change your perception by ranking because people tend to accept what they're given. So

I've seen people pick up on landing pages and accept it just because it's from Google, right? Obviously if it reads like slop, it's going to read like slop, you know. Um so I I think yeah, you you should edit if you're going to

write something and put it out there, you should read it for sure.

>> Is that what you're doing?

>> Absolutely. Yeah. I I for example, if I if I might I I might use LLM um as as a way of getting over writers block. And

so what I'll do is I'll get it to write a blog post and I'll go like I don't like eats so I'll go and delete that and I'll re-edit it the way I wanted to but it'll give me the rough layout and the

starting point cuz otherwise I'll obsess about it and so it it um LM's help me write blog posts a lot.

>> Yeah I mean LLM's help me with content a ton. I talk about this like there it's

ton. I talk about this like there it's certainly not perfect. So, actually like all of the uh descriptions for my podcast episodes are created with ChachiPT. ChachiPT, even for a 10minute

ChachiPT. ChachiPT, even for a 10minute episode, a 10-minute transcript, ChachiPT will hallucinate into the description things that I didn't talk about or things that we didn't talk about. It'll say that we talked about

about. It'll say that we talked about these things. It'll say that we

these things. It'll say that we explained these things. That never

happened. So, then I have to fix it. Um,

but it it like it does a overall speed like overall does a pretty great job.

and I just have to make some corrections and it's a lot faster than me having to do it myself.

>> At someone with like ADHD, what I find is like if I'm on the way to the beach because our our building here in Florida has a driver, so I never have to drive anywhere. Um, whenever I'm waiting for

anywhere. Um, whenever I'm waiting for anything, I'll be on Reddit and I'll like fire off replies with lots of typos and stuff and that's my there's my proof it's not AI, right? Um, and then when I want to write a blog post, what I'll do

is I'll just tell whatever LLM I'm using, look, go to link, go go go to Reddit or go to X or go to LinkedIn and read what I wrote and write a blog post about it. And it it does a much better,

about it. And it it does a much better, more polished job. Um, and and that helps a lot.

>> I want to ask about um about uh publishers and and the helpful content update. So,

update. So, >> what do publishers who want to succeed with SEO, what do they need to be focusing on today?

Um, you mean in terms of like AdSense and affiliate stuff?

>> Yeah, I mean maybe they have I mean they're they're they're a publisher so maybe they're monetizing with display ads or maybe they're monetizing with affiliate with affiliate links.

>> That's a great question and I I know very little about it. Um I I was online for the whole um sort of when HCU HCU exploded and and there was a lot of

anger and a lot of uh you know a lot of businesses got taken out and I spoke to businesses in in Canada and the US and Europe who were losing you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue a

month. Um

month. Um Sean Anderson on hero web is actually a great resource for that. He reckons that if that a lot of eat principles could

apply for YM topics that are monetized, right, that he that he he says like it if you're monetizing it, it's going to be very difficult to rank. I don't know

a huge amount about it to be honest. Um

some of the SEOs I've spoken to are like it's clearly there's a lot of link farm um irregularity. Whatever heristics

um irregularity. Whatever heristics Google is using are using that could be it. I know that there are some SEOs who

it. I know that there are some SEOs who think that it's LLM's picking up on um similar patterns across the content.

>> Uh some people have said um it's the monetization and Smarty from SEO Smarty, she says, look, she's spoken to hundreds

that didn't have any monetization and also got caught on HCU. So HC is a very very big landscape and it's one of those things where I think you know the

analysis isn't final. Um Google's

clearly done something clever and we're you know we're sort of like missing it.

Um and also they're saying if you move your content to a fresh domain it's not going to help. And I don't know. So I I I

to help. And I don't know. So I I I don't I don't exactly know how it is.

And and I think it's one of those things where I don't where you need tools and SEO tools that can help analyze that don't exist. Right. uh like for example

don't exist. Right. uh like for example SEMrushes or or that sort of genre of of SEO tools, their ability to determine toxic backlinks is just laughable at

this point, right? Um

>> that was actually that's another thing that I wanted to ask you about since you since you brought it up. You wrote on LinkedIn, you said spammy looking back links won't spammy quote unquote looking back links won't get you in trouble. So

my my question is because I mean you probably see this as well like people worrying about backlinks, people using the disavow tool when they shouldn't be using the disavow tool. When should SEOs actually be worried about back

backlinks? What sets off red flags with

backlinks? What sets off red flags with Google?

>> Um yeah, that's a great question for grumpy SEO guys um subreddit probably.

But um the the problem is that Google calls it link spam and it's a bit like that old IRS joke um tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax avoidance is legal and tax

evasion. Tax avoidance is legal and tax evasion is illegal though it's not really it's just a term right. Um

Semrush doesn't Semrush includes way too much UG UGC content in its um toxic backlink list. And I think a lot of

backlink list. And I think a lot of people uh think that spammylooking websites are bad. They're not. What

Google's looking for in link spam is actually people looking for highly for placed links in content that are that

form unnatural networks from link farms. That's not the same as appearing 100,000 times on blogspot blogs or adult content. A lot of people really

content. A lot of people really confusing. A lot of people think that

confusing. A lot of people think that adult content is a no no. And I'm like, where do you think adult sites get all their traffic from? Right? Like it's not like, you know, fair never googling anything, right? But, uh, if you Google

anything, right? But, uh, if you Google it, it Google's full of it, right?

They're not the they're not content police, right? So, um, I think that

police, right? So, um, I think that people get very worried when they see backlinks they don't understand. And I

understand it because like Penguin, Panda, that era, Google clamping down on bad backlinks. I think what Google does

bad backlinks. I think what Google does now is it zeros link farms and it issues the penalty to the link farm more so to the recipient of the backlink in the in

the in the sense that you know you can't control your backlink type thing. I

don't think SEO should be disavowing backlinks unless they've been buying hundreds and hundreds of backlinks. I do

know websites, big SEO companies that do disavow backlinks, but they disavow backlinks they've bought. And I have seen their traffic improve after taking

hits, but it's very specific. They know

the back links they bought. I think that and I and I only know of like a handful of cases around that. I think for the most part, unless you're buying back links and you know you're getting caught with them

and another reason not to buy them, you just the disavow tool is not for you.

>> Yeah, I agree.

>> But it it does still work, right? I've

seen web master replies from Google saying we've we've received your disavow list. Um but um whether the site is

list. Um but um whether the site is going up because of them rushing to do a bunch of things to fix it, I don't have the time to analyze it.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. But

>> for newbies, for newbies, do not worry about >> Yes.

>> Yes. Yes. Yes. From my experience, like it's really a problem when you actually start to rapidly uh lose organic traffic. I like that's when you should

traffic. I like that's when you should just like as a proactive solution I believe it is quite dangerous.

>> I think even if you're losing traffic like so if you think about it you're not ranking you get an email from someone who says I've got some backlinks. You

buy them you start to go up because you're probably buying from someone that is outreaching millions of people.

They're they're forming a huristic.

You're part of the huristic. You get

caught in the net and your traffic's going down. I I I don't think you should

going down. I I I don't think you should disavow. I think what's happened is the

disavow. I think what's happened is the backlinks are zeroed. They're not

passing authority. You're falling down again. I don't think you Yeah, I I don't

again. I don't think you Yeah, I I don't think you have to disavow it. I don't

think it'll do any damage, but >> I wasn't Yeah, I wasn't I'm not I'm not referencing if you're actively engaging in black hat stuff. I'm I'm referencing the people cuz I think a lot of people

who do use the who want to use a disavow tool are worried that they got hit with negative SEO.

>> Yes. Yeah.

>> Negative is very >> Yeah. don't um negative SEO is actually

>> Yeah. don't um negative SEO is actually hard to do and you actually unless you have been dabbling in backlinks and know the value of them it's actually easy to get it wrong right you could actually buy links worth thousands of dollars and

actually help your competitor right um and so negative SEO is actually very hard to do in in real terms I think right except again clickthrough rate manipulation things like that I have

seen I have seen a bunch of times though where uh where people are trying to they're trying to game Google and they buy all of these uh exact match anchors

and then they lose they lose a lot of rankings or they lose a lot of traffic from the exact match anchor text which is like the abundance of it >> which I've seen to be a very common

common mistake that newbies make is that they and it's very unnatural >> but um yeah it's yeah um there are some interesting I'm sure you're familiar with the same like experiments I I

forget if it was search pilot who did this experiment and they bought like it was like they were targeting these like pool cleaning. It was like this. It It

pool cleaning. It was like this. It It

was a site they they owned and they were experimenting and they bought like I think it was like a 100,000 backlinks and it was only the last batch of backlinks that completely tanked the site.

>> I don't know if you know if you know what I'm referencing.

>> Um but it was >> but I'm going to look it up.

>> But it was Oh, I'll I'll send it to you after this. It was very but it was from

after this. It was very but it was from I mean it was from like a decade ago.

So, you know, >> I did work on a site that was from the UK many years ago, um, where they had bought a million back links and they got caught out and they were making huge

amounts of money. I think it was for custom license plates and they didn't tell me. They were like, "Oh, we don't

tell me. They were like, "Oh, we don't know what went wrong." And I was like, "Oh, I'm starting to find all these back links." And they're like, "Oh, yeah,

links." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, maybe we bought a couple." And then just became a million. I was like, "I'm just not interested. like I don't have the

not interested. like I don't have the time or day to help you with this.

>> The thing that annoys me about buying back links is you you see it done by so many people who are just very unfamiliar with SEO and you're just it's like

you're going to put all this work into a domain. You don't really know much about

domain. You don't really know much about link building and it's very likely that you're going to mess this up and then you're all that work is going to be for nothing. like you said, if if you're if

nothing. like you said, if if you're if you're buying the same anchor text and you're buying hundreds, you're creating heristics, right? Huristics just a fancy

heristics, right? Huristics just a fancy word for patterns, right? Um that are, you know, it's common, it used to be common in antivirus terms and it's now common in cyber security, but you're effectively creating heristics for

Google to identify unnatural links. Um

and like you said, if you if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing that. But also, if you look at the

doing that. But also, if you look at the the backlink selling world, it's very set up to prey on naive owners, right?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Very very much set up. You know, it it's easy for me to say, "Oh, I never buy back links." And I don't mean to do it

back links." And I don't mean to do it from like to take the higher moral ground. I'm just lucky I don't have to.

ground. I'm just lucky I don't have to.

Um cuz I have a lot of people that partner with Microsoft or Citrix or with each other. Um, I genuinely have

each other. Um, I genuinely have companies like from opposite sides of the country who partner with each other in real terms. Um, and so I'm very very lucky and I can build topical authority

very very quickly and so I realize I'm very lucky. Um, it's easier said than

very lucky. Um, it's easier said than done, right? If you've got a HVAC

done, right? If you've got a HVAC business that you want to hand down to your sons one day, you don't want to lose out because your competitors buying backlinks. So I think it's very unfair.

backlinks. So I think it's very unfair.

I think um you know you might say Google went too hard with what it did 10 years ago might have gone too hard with what it did in HCU. Um I think I don't think

it's dealing with backlinks. I actually

did tweet John Mueller about it and I said like you know what is the story?

Are you penalizing for it? Like cuz

there's there's there are mixed stories.

I remember someone who did niche sites got a an email um weeks after the HCU saying that one domain had fallen and then 2 days later two other domains had

fallen for single guest posts and it doesn't seem to be very equitable and I I don't know if if if Google's just playing a quiet game there. Uh but I I do say I do empathize greatly with with

small business owners who are buying backlinks. like you said, it's very

backlinks. like you said, it's very dangerous. Um, and you can destroy a

dangerous. Um, and you can destroy a business right?

>> Um, I want to I want to switch it up.

So, you said uh you said you can build topical authority really fast if you were to just give and you also said um that there are like three things to really focus on that move the needle.

You said that. You said that earlier when we were talking. Three things that move the needle and you can build topical authority very fast. So, if you were to to talk to like a new SEO and tell them like this is how you should

build topical authority really fast.

here are the three things that you should also be focusing on. What would

that be?

>> Um, so keep keep building content until you until you can land. Absolutely.

Build your visibility and profile, right? So while I'll say look, social

right? So while I'll say look, social media links don't get you anywhere and social media profiles don't get you anywhere and that's because they don't.

Um, it's still worthwhile to use social media to go and find business partners.

um go and network, right? Like I'm a huge fan of the open coffee movement. Um

so basically or BNI or chambers of commerce if you've got if you've got a HVAC business, why wouldn't you team up with the local electrician or plumber?

You're servicing the same people. If

they're reputable and you go and service someone's house and your electrician, a lot of appliances that use water also use electricity, right? And you don't get a lot of people who are certified in both. Why don't you why don't you have

both. Why don't you why don't you have don't you want someone you can recommend to your clients that is going to follow up and has the same um sort of standards and qualities that your organization

your brand espouses. Um why don't you link to each other? You can absolutely do that. Right.

do that. Right.

>> And it's not black hat and it's not black hat because of what's actually behind it which is you're a reputable business and you're related to this other reputable business and you would actually recommend this business

to a to a friend. That's how much you trust and it's and vice versa. And so

you guys are linking to each other.

>> If you're an SEO agency and your client needs to build an e-commerce shop and it's not something you have in-house, you don't want to bring in a web agency that's going to compete with you. You

don't want to bring a web agency that's going to let you down, right? And vice

versa. Web agencies don't want to bring in an SEO who can't move a needle. And

so those relationships are very important. And if you look at like SEO

important. And if you look at like SEO speakers, they're very clever at making sure that they're mentioned and that they've got contextual links and they link to each other and they talk about each other and they're playing page rank. And a lot of people play page rank

rank. And a lot of people play page rank and talk about other things, right? Like

there's a a writer who talks about like, oh, Google's actually measuring content and keyword count and outbound citations, right? There's nothing

citations, right? There's nothing stopping you from linking to Harvard University. That's not a that's not a

University. That's not a that's not a control, but at the same time, they're using um paid. Like there is a a very famous SEO who espouses eat. And I think

eat's a great thing. I just think ET isn't like making claims, but they actually bought a bunch of domains with ET in it and then redirected to their blog post and redirected their personal

website to their agency's website on the page of eat. So they were using page rank to push EAT and so it's kind of like well so you know you know it's page

rank right you can see it you can take a screenshot of it because you can see it.

So I think um if you're a newbie SEO um you can spy on backlinks using Bing web master tools for free. Bing web master tools is if you go use Bing web master

tools before you buy a $100 a month tool. Um you can take any domain name

tool. Um you can take any domain name and Bing will give you all of the backlinks minus spam. So if you look at NP digital, one of the best known SEOs

in the world and look at his site, Bing will return all 76,233 domains that link to him. and you can spy on every single one of them for free.

>> I was actually uh I at one point I don't know if I'm still ranking for this but I was ranking for free backlink checker >> and it was with uh with it was with a YouTube short that I made about using Bing to see backlinks.

>> Okay. I tried that as well. So that's

interesting that you got there.

>> Oh, you tried that? You Well, we actually So you're the second you're the second um SEO that I know of who has been on this show who I share a SER with. And so I had I had Joy Hawkins on

with. And so I had I had Joy Hawkins on and Joy Joy and I have both made YouTube shorts on link geckos where you get a backlink. You know what link link echos

backlink. You know what link link echos are where you get a backlink and then you lose oh so link geckos you get a backlink >> um and then you lose that backlink but the positive effects of that backlink

actually persist after you lose it. And

it's this thing called like uh it's called link geckos or link ghosts.

That's another name that it goes by. And

I I'll I'll send you the uh the the article on this. And so I made I made uh a YouTube short about this. I mean, it was a a Tik Tok comes out to Instagram

and to YouTube shorts. And actually that one video on all three platforms ranked for ranked in three positions for link

geckos, for links SEO. And Joy Joy Hawkins then she also made a video on it. And so then we were sharing a SER

it. And so then we were sharing a SER and she came on my show and we got to talk about that. Now you rank for king of SEO and I and I also rank for king of

SEO and we share this cuz I had on um so I had on my mentor and a close friend.

He was head of SEO at Omnicom >> and uh he when we were at Densu together he was like my mentor at Densu and then I left and we we just became close friends after. And after Denu he went to

friends after. And after Denu he went to Omnicom. He was head of SEO at Omnicom

Omnicom. He was head of SEO at Omnicom and I would call him because Omnicom at one point was the it was the most valuable publicly traded marketing agency in the world. At one

point it was like the most valuable and he was ahead of SEO at Omnicom. So I

would call him the king of SEO and when I had him on the podcast I named the show the king of SEO and then I was I was ranking on on page one I don't remember the position for king of SEO

and you are also ranking for king of SEO. Interesting.

SEO. Interesting.

Um, and I picked King of SEO. God of SEO was taken by Charles Float. And, um,

>> Charles Float is coming on the show in a few weeks.

>> Okay. Well, um, that's why I didn't go for that one. Um, so, King of SEO came up because when I initially searched for King of SEO, it was it was back when I was trying to show people how a way to

get into LLMs was just via SEO, right?

Particularly in Perplexity, Chatb just takes a bit longer. And um by ranking in Google, the the the results were mirroring each other through the query

fan out. And King of SEO just looked

fan out. And King of SEO just looked like something I could get done and I could also take the YouTube video spot for potentially, right? That's what I was thinking at the time. And if you if

you ask Pripexi and Chat GPT who the king of SEO was, they started with there's no such thing. This is an absolutely ridiculous idea. No one can be the king of SEO. There are no titles.

There were no awards. And I was like, "Wow, it sounds sounds really researchy." So, I went and wrote an

researchy." So, I went and wrote an article about who the king and I I'm pretty sure it's pure LLM content. And

again, because it's made up, like who cares about the quality? So, and then I ranked for it. And then I was like within seconds I was ranking in perplexity. And a couple of people like

perplexity. And a couple of people like went and said like, "Yeah, it's not a huge search term." I'm like, "Yeah, this isn't an exercise in what how SEO works, right? This is an exercise in how LLMs

right? This is an exercise in how LLMs work." And it it kind of showed that

work." And it it kind of showed that once they had content that said someone was the king of SEO, the the the narrative changed completely. And so I

very much wanted to use it as a you know, there are not research tools. And

so that's not my fault, right? But if

you're an SEO and you or you're a company and you're trying to work out how to get into LLMs because it's vital for your business, it's good to know that, right? and that if you rank for

that, right? and that if you rank for something in Google, there's a very good chance you will rank in most LLMs, including chat GPT for it. And so it was a really really good experiment from

that point of view. Um, and you know, I can think of other dozens of other cases as well around those terms. And so that that was why I did it and I I'm very fond of that uh experiment.

>> Um, you know, that that you can change something that was so adamant, you know.

>> Oh yeah. I mean, um, well, yeah. I mean,

I talk a lot about, we were talking about that earlier about hallucinations.

I was I like the just I I didn't put king of SEO in my, uh, YouTube title to rank for it cuz >> Sure. Absolutely. It was your It was a

>> Sure. Absolutely. It was your It was a term of endearment for a friend of yours. I like it.

yours. I like it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I felt I felt very arrogant doing it and and and I really, you know, >> I I I thought I I think like anyone who knows me, I think 99% of people got it,

right? I'm not trying to like the people

right? I'm not trying to like the people in that list are very serious. Yeah.

They're very serious SEOs. I don't have the time and and and also >> I'm a boring page rank guy, right? Like

a lot of people say to me on X, "Shut up. You're talking about SEO from 20

up. You're talking about SEO from 20 years ago." I'm like, "I know. I'm

years ago." I'm like, "I know. I'm

talking about SEO from 20 years ago. I I

can't change Google." And so I'll talk about the things I know and the things that work. Um, and lo and behold, the

that work. Um, and lo and behold, the king of SEO was done using 20-year-old SEO, I guess, cuz my website's 21 years old, so it's definitely using 20 years old ideas.

>> All right, I have two more questions for you. Um,

you. Um, >> the Okay, first one, you you mentioned some names. Um, but who who are other

some names. Um, but who who are other like SEOs and digital marketers that people should be following on on X or LinkedIn?

Um, if you're a if you're very much in brand marketing and you want to understand SEO and brand marketing, Morty Oberstein, Morty Oberstein is a really great guy and he's very friendly.

Just a really great guy to follow and X.

Um, who else do I really really like? I

know. Um, I'm very fond of Nathan Gotch.

I know he's he's setting up an AI tool.

Um, Ryan Jones who owns Ser Recon and is head of SEO at Razer Fish. He's a really really great guy. Uh very nice to follow. Um uh very interesting takes on

follow. Um uh very interesting takes on SEO. Uh very ahead of his game. Um there

SEO. Uh very ahead of his game. Um there

are a lot of really interesting things happening in SEO. Um oh um who else is also really good? Um

and Smarty is very knowledgeable, very strong.

Um I would have to go through and look at my ex. Um,

my ex. Um, I I the the people I follow on on on social media are the people I the people I talk to are probably the people I I admire the most.

>> That's a great answer. Thank you. All

right. So, last question. You said um you said to me over DM, you're like, "Yeah, I have some actionable SEO hacks that I can talk about." And I think you've already shared a ton, but are there any that you left out?

>> Let's see. Cuz I did make like a little list. Oh, yeah. Um,

list. Oh, yeah. Um,

so I think but I think we may have covered a lot of the covered we did cover a lot. I I think um uh don't give up on link building, but

don't like don't don't think building your own is all you can do. Like so B2B is is a hard area to do link building, right?

And I think a lot of newbie marketers uh especially people have like general roles in companies like they're maybe doing social media and SEO and so on.

Um, one of the things we did at Kemp and and the co-founder specifically told me not to do it, which meant that I absolutely went and did it. Uh, is we actually offered my time out to a lot of our partners. So, we had a lot of

our partners. So, we had a lot of partners that were working in the IT distribution MSP space and they weren't good at SEO. They a loted they did things like golfing events and stuff

like that, right? And and and marketing this. And so, we said, "Hey, we'll we'll

this. And so, we said, "Hey, we'll we'll help you with your SEO. will not only will we build a page about what we do and put it to you, but we'll help you rank for things in your area and in your

business. And that enabled us to write a

business. And that enabled us to write a lot of content and put links in it. And

it helped us fix things on their website where they had stupid page titles that weren't contextual or internal links that weren't contextual. And they their ranking went up, their authority went

up, and our authority went up. And um

again without we did have a very big PR budget towards the end. anything for for a year or two. The PR budget ended up in my lap at like something ridiculous like 80,000 a month. Just remember, we were

spending 200,000 a month on Google ads.

So for a small startup, SEO was everything. We built an 18 person

everything. We built an 18 person marketing team and Google accounted for 99% of our leads. We had seven Twitter accounts. We had a a verified Twitter

accounts. We had a a verified Twitter account and yet Google accounted for 99% of our leads. And one of the big things was going to all of our partners, especially the small guys, the small

guys in Europe and and that's actually how I got hired is we grew Europe so fast that Europe became bigger than the US and that's when they said like you have to become an employee. Um but we went to the small guys who said, "Yeah,

here's the Keystar website. You go

optimize it." Um and so there are those partnerships available. There's so much

partnerships available. There's so much creativity in Google. If you know what the if if you if you could understand the system and break it down to this page links to this page about this and

then here are the Google rules. So if

you don't break any of the Google rules, you're not going to get in trouble. And

then it just works by pages linking to pages.

Those are that's a building framework.

That's not a set of restrictions. You

can go broad, right? You can go with PR.

You can go with uh building content sites. Like why have one domain name?

sites. Like why have one domain name?

Why have one website that you spend a million dollars under design? Why not

build 10 websites? You know, why not have domain names that match specific industries? There's so much you can do.

industries? There's so much you can do.

The limitation is really only to what you can actually build a case for, right? Um I've had brilliant ideas that

right? Um I've had brilliant ideas that got shut down because I was terrible at building a good case for it and rightly so. And then there were things I was

so. And then there were things I was incredibly passionate about that I was able to translate to a business reason for doing.

Um, one of them was I want I built another site called Exchange Load Balancer and I a guy who reached out to me that I helped him with his SEO turned

out to be the exchange infrastructure vice president at one of the world's biggest banks who was being moved to the US but ended up getting stuck in Europe.

and he wrote I said to him just imagine a use case where you had to balance Microsoft Exchange in Amazon and my boss was like do not write this this is a

stupid idea would look terrible and so I built an entire website because he said don't put this on my website so I went and bought exchange load balancer and I bought a $40 WordPress theme and I stuck

it up on that site and as it turned out 20 years ago when Amazon was being built they standardized on micros Microsoft Exchange Server. Fast forward to where

Exchange Server. Fast forward to where they built the AWS cloud and Microsoft built Azure.

Amazon couldn't have their emails hosted on Office 365 and so they had to host it on Amazon. And there was no

on Amazon. And there was no documentation anywhere in the world that told them that they how to load balance in AWS except this $50 WordPress site that we built that had a fourpage guide

to well four when I say four page it was four sections. Each page is like 60 60

four sections. Each page is like 60 60 pages long and they became a quarter of a million a year client because of that.

>> That's awesome. And and was that exchange load balancer or or like keywords around that? Would you say they were high volume or low volume or in the middle? The way Kemp came from like a

middle? The way Kemp came from like a backwater technology company on Long Island out in the middle of nowhere to a $250 million tech company was when

Microsoft launched Exchange 2012 and they said you don't need a load balancer and the whole tech world was like you cannot do this any other way and people started googling load balancer and

Edison partners came along and offered the founders 25 million and so exchange load balancer was our first 50 million revenue.

>> I have a this is this is actually just a personal question. Um

personal question. Um obviously you're amazing at SEO. Have

you ever considered doing doing your own cuz you you're doing it for so many people and so many companies. I mean I think you know what I'm going to say.

How would you ever consider just making your own startup and doing it for your own startup?

>> That's a very good question and and yes I have and I think it it it speaks to a number of things. One is it's easy to be an expert in SEO and nothing else, right? Especially if you have if you

right? Especially if you have if you have ADHD and that just that's just my one like I studied accounting. Um and I was I probably fell 5 years behind in my

taxes, right? So um be founding your own

taxes, right? So um be founding your own company is is something else. And I and I I I over I talked myself out of building an affiliate HCU site or sorry

an affiliate AdSense site because I kind of saw something like HC. I'm not going to say I'm I'm I'm not a visionary, right? I'm not amazing at SEO. I you

right? I'm not amazing at SEO. I you

know I started out saying, you know, SEO is incredibly simple, right? So, um I actually do have three startups in the works and and I had to take a break from startups 10 years ago and that kind of

like um so I killed off three startups when I joined Kim and so I have three startups in the offing but I think just because you're good at SEO doesn't necessarily mean you're good at business. Um I' I've had other

business. Um I' I've had other businesses in the past. U I love self-employed.

>> That is so true.

>> But and and I take my hat off to the SEOs that in in a couple of years have built million-dollar enterprises. I

really do. You know, they're they're are smart people. I I I'm I'm just I just

smart people. I I I'm I'm just I just look at page rank as a very simple system that's very easy to tweak and I just have a mindset that tells me it is that. I remember listening to a talk at

that. I remember listening to a talk at Limmerick Open Coffee that was organized by a friend of mine, James Corbett, and um this guy was the head of the German version of LinkedIn and he happened to

be Irish and he happened to be the chief financial officer. And he was saying

financial officer. And he was saying when he was in Germany that there were conflicting rules that you could do this but not this and there was another rule saying you could do this and this and it was very very difficult because like

Germans have a a perception of being dogmatic and eventually he said look I'm a foreigner these these laws don't apply to me. if I if I get called up in court,

to me. if I if I get called up in court, I'm just going to say, look, I was trained as an accountant in Ireland. I

didn't really know what this meant.

Didn't apply to me. And um I I think I I just read a lot of rules and just go like, I'm sorry, I don't understand it.

It doesn't apply to me. And I and I think that's what sort of like made me a good software engineer for a while. And

then when I got bored of that, SEO just took over.

>> You haven't gotten bored of SEO >> and yet here we are. I generally thought SEO was dead 10 years ago.

>> Did you actually? You actually did. So,

you gave into the SEO is dead hype.

>> I I I I not gave into it. I genuinely

thought that and I was spending a lot of time on on Twitter at the time and I genuinely thought like it's not going to be the 90% channel that it was. I

definitely thought it was it was going to lose weight, right? Um and uh yeah, I got that wrong. I I got that wrong. I

>> I don't know if you if you've seen this on Google Trends, search engine optimization as is it's not just at an all-time high. It is at a dramatic

all-time high. It is at a dramatic all-time high. Maybe like five times.

all-time high. Maybe like five times.

Yeah. Like it's crazy.

>> I did I I shared it yesterday like here's your daily reminder that SEO is dead. It's like huge. Like it's 4x what

dead. It's like huge. Like it's 4x what it was 2 months ago.

>> Yeah. It's crazy.

>> It it makes sense. I I I see very much uh like like a lot of ADHD people, I built things in reverse. I I don't understand steps A, B, and C until I'm

like in XY Z techn area, right? And um I can see very much like I started at Dell as a software engineer and I ended up

owning 64 NT4 servers and I loved NT4.

And I can see that Google is to AI or or or web in infrastructure. What NT4 is to the virtualized VM world of the cloud

today. the VMware, the VM virtual

today. the VMware, the VM virtual machine cloud under um under um VMware or Azure HyperV runs on NTFS, which is

now a 40-year-old technology. It just

got to a point where it's been tweaked slightly, but it's the same thing.

Nothing has beaten Pagrank in my opinion, right? I know a lot of people

opinion, right? I know a lot of people don't like it. I know a lot of people think that content should rank for itself. I like the Aristotle theory that

itself. I like the Aristotle theory that there's a great question begs the question. I think a lot of people use it

question. I think a lot of people use it out of context, but what it means is if you want to rank in Google for best CRM software, there is already a million other people ahead of you, right? Your

document is the claim. So, if you've got a document says we 10 reasons why we're the best CRM or 10 things we've done to make it this the best CRM or 10 quotes

from CEOs that say we are the best CRM, that is still a claim. The document, the book cannot be evidence for the claim.

the claim is under question. And that is throughout society. If you go to a

throughout society. If you go to a judge, right, if you go to court, you sue someone, the the court doesn't accept either of your testimony as evidence. It it well, it's it can be

evidence. It it well, it's it can be entered as evidence. It's rejected as evidence. It's a claim. Um all evidence

evidence. It's a claim. Um all evidence has to be tested out. And that's why page rank is so fundamental. It has

nothing to do with page quality. And

that's why people hate it so much. There

is no way Google can assess content quality because of its subjectiveness.

In my opinion, if if design and quality were so objective, there would be threads all over the internet where people would put up their web design and everyone go, "Yes, that

is an amazing 7.3 out of 10."

But anyone can point a hole in it because they particularly don't like it.

Right? Um, and so that is the problem with it that I see. And that's why I think page rank Microsoft copied it, Yandex copied it, BU copied it, Brave search, which is what Claude runs on, copied it.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, it's like binary, you know, the way we build files and the reason 4K is so like difficult and and lumbersome to use is is because we rely on binary and

we've got hexodimal system. So when you look at video streaming, it's JPEG by JPEG by JPEG. When you get to 4K, it's like a 100 million times the data. If

you look at how like you know machine like I used to write in assembly code when I was at D. We we had we we built every computer using machine code and assembly it's like using assembly language MASM 4

>> uh which came out of the University of Wisconsin I think or Michigan or something like that. It's a really bizarre story. Um, when you look at

bizarre story. Um, when you look at that, all we've done is just the amount of bytes per second has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, but it's

the same architecture as an IBM PC x86 from 1990.

And so, I think that's where page rank is. I I don't think it can be beaten.

is. I I don't think it can be beaten.

>> It actually it's it's how Tik Tok works, right? You upload a video, you give it a

right? You upload a video, you give it a title, and then it surfaced through different groups. You can't really do

different groups. You can't really do that with content, but um it's it's what it does.

>> You know, it's it's funny because it's funny that you mentioned Tik Tok because uh I something that I say to people like actually I had this this conversation with Ran Fishiskin when he was on the

show was that doing SEO for so long, it made me a lot better at social. It made

me understand things that that uh social media algorithms value.

>> So, it's interesting that you bring that up.

>> Yeah. I actually met um Ran's brother and his mom at a talk in in DCU University uh in Dublin like 15 years ago. Uh and I met his mom and she's the

ago. Uh and I met his mom and she's the the nicest person at the time she called herself uh so Mars at the time was SEO Mars and she handed out business cards that said SEO mom.

>> Oh, that's funny.

>> Isn't that so nice?

>> Yeah, that is.

>> Um >> uh and then and I ended up being on like a tiny panel with them which like my my only claim to fame. Um and after that I went to work at Microsoft as an SEO. I

Microsoft asked me to uh run SEO for their biggest uh partners in Ireland and Northern Ireland and I gave a talk to their top gold tier partners at their

Leopardtown campus in Dublin and I built the slide deck and everything said Bing.

And then someone came to me afterwards and said like for the entire 40 minutes all I talked about was Google.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And a friend of mine was actually a sales guy for Microsoft and he went out to dinner and a vice president came over from Germany and he pulled out an iPhone and the guy nearly broke it over his head.

>> Oh my gosh.

>> But luckily as it worked out the the sales and marketing team actually wanted their partners to focus on Google because it just was so dominant. So it

it actually worked out fine.

>> I mean if you understand Google you understand you have a good grasp on every other search engine.

pretty much. I mean, you know, one of the funniest things if you if you take your website and it, you know, it's crawled, not discovered in Google, go to Bing, open an account because it'll cross check your GSC credential, so you don't have to go through validation

anymore. If you have no backlinks, it'll

anymore. If you have no backlinks, it'll literally pop up a message saying you don't have backlinks from authorative sites. It's just that simple. There's no

sites. It's just that simple. There's no

argument about it. um you know the quality the Google content quality issues is so difficult because like you said right at the start you took your page didn't change the content

republished didn't index just fine right um a lot of people also say like there has to be information gain and I know there's a pattern for information gain but when I write FAQs I don't write FA I I don't know what's going to rank right

I'm not going to sit down and do a page calculation for every single question what I do is I pick questions where I think there's not a lot of competition publish them. And

publish them. And >> that's what I do, by the way. That's

what I do, by the way. Yeah.

>> So, so the way I get to like a 90% accuracy is by brute force. I pick a 100 topics and then 70% of them will get there. And then guess what? I don't have

there. And then guess what? I don't have to do any more work on them. Now, I have to work on the other 30%, but that's really easy because they're in the same topic clusters as the other 70%. Little

bit of interlinking, job done. Right?

So, >> my my method is it's it's like two main things. It's build build topical

things. It's build build topical authority and then pick uh keywords lucrative pick like bottom of funnel transactional keywords in your in in

your topic uh that don't have a lot of competition and target those. That's

those two things.

>> Also, stop putting your brand name in the page title.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Please stop putting your brand name in the page title. There's a site name. All

right. But how about how about if you do it like if you do it like keyword and then you have the pipe and then you have like and then you have the brand. Yeah.

Really >> stop doing it. Absolutely.

>> Why? Why? Why?

>> Do it for your pricing page, right?

That's fine, right? Do it for your pricing page. Do it for your contact

pricing page. Do it for your contact page. Do it for your support page. Stop

page. Do it for your support page. Stop

doing it. It doesn't help Google, right?

It doesn't you you want most of your branded traffic to go to homepage.

Actually, if you're a big company and you have like 27 branded terms, you actually want to thread them out to different pages. So, like, for example,

different pages. So, like, for example, if you if you're an investor term, you want to actually have a specific page or subdomain, you want to actually farm that keyword out there. Um, you want to spread that so that you don't have it

all focused on one page. That gives you other pages that you can then launch topic clusters from. But if you're a new site and you start putting your branded name, you actually start those pages

will subreck and they'll screw with the CTR for your homepage. Uh they will also if your brand name or your domain name includes generic words you can really

exacerbate cannibalization.

>> That makes that makes sense. Well, it

makes sense for news sites or if you have generic words in your brand name.

But how about if you how about if you have >> they dilute your they dilute your page title.

>> Yeah. Even if you have them all the way at the end and you're targeting a longtail term.

>> I c I cannot think of a good use case for it. Right. Like if you're first of

for it. Right. Like if you're first of all your page title if you if your your page title should be used beyond the 65 character limit right it doesn't exist.

>> Um you are always going to rank for your brand name and you don't want to dilute the keywords any percentage. I'm not

saying it's going to harm everyone. I'm

sure >> you know so from my my perspective I always recommended it one because that's that's something that I learned on on day one at Densouius. So that was just

like from my training. But then like I I from from a critical thinking standpoint, I actually I felt like it actually made page titles stand out from

other page titles because I feel like it seems more professional and just this this from a human human perspective. So

if if you were going to search it, it it like it just looks it looks more professional and trustworthy. But that's

like that's an aesthetic thing and maybe that's incorrect and I'm wrong all the time. That was that was my reasoning

time. That was that was my reasoning behind it.

>> I that that makes sense. Um I think I would I would I would you know fire questions at that like well if they've never heard of you is it trustworthy?

Right.

>> I would so and I and I would say and I that's a fair question and I would say um I would say if other people are just straight up targeting the keyword and that's all the page title is. I I

actually would I think I would trust more um I think I would trust more a page title that had the brand name at the end of it separated with the pipe versus a page title that didn't. And the

reason for that is it's like this brand is proud of their brand.

>> Um so they maybe they believe in themselves and I also just I feel like uh I feel like the old like just the keyword as the page title and that's it.

Um, to me that's like old school SEO spammy. It It comes off to me as old in

spammy. It It comes off to me as old in the same way that an EMD might come off to me as old school SEO spammy.

>> Not to not to criticize people who do EMDs.

>> I mean, I I still think biz is spammy, right? Net and biz. And I think John

right? Net and biz. And I think John John Mueller actually said they are actually spammy >> here. He was quoted. Yeah.

>> here. He was quoted. Yeah.

>> Yeah. So,

>> was that was that on was that on the SEO subreddit? I I saw him write about that

subreddit? I I saw him write about that and I made a post. Yeah, he was he was talking about TLDDS >> and Yeah, >> I made a video about that.

>> You typically have the domain name in the brand. You also have the site name,

the brand. You also have the site name, right, which sits under the page title, above the domain name in the snippet that also has your brand name >> and Google will sometimes take it and put it in the page title. Yeah,

>> it and if you leave it off, Google will often do it. Yes, it it will. Um, and I just think like I don't think there's sometimes I think it it it just it does

harm sites, right? And and and um there there are a number of instances where we've taken it off and especially where you're on pages that you're again trying to compete with someone else and you're

trying to make sure you're 100% relevant to use every ounce of authority you have, it has it has to come out.

>> Okay. Um, and then in in extreme cases, which I concede are not all cases and they're obviously just isolated cases or they're just cases that I happen to pick

up on it. Um, they do cause um, cannibalization issues and multiple pages ranking for the same thing. But I

think that when you look at SEO and what its main purpose is, if you're trying to, for example, disrupt the CRM space

or the VPN space or the dark web space, people don't know who you are. They're

looking for what is a dark web monitoring tool.

They'll click on the thing that says this is what a dark web monitoring tool is. They may take six or seven visits to

is. They may take six or seven visits to even recognize your brand. Um that's why I say it's really interesting when you watch Microsoft clarity and you look at

how people are aiming are actually trying to disregard information right we think that by putting information in by giving everything into the system we're

optimizing it not really right like you'll watch people scroll down to icons for example like where where you see you know you get those icons like the three lines means like Wi-Fi and um an iceberg

means the dark web because like 70% of it's under and you can't see it. People

scroll to those pa in pages. They skip

all of the product management text and they scroll down and they start looking for basic concepts to pick up. Like we

found the most effective Google ads were just threeletter acronyms. So like I can remember the most the best ad that I presented to the board of directors and

it's like so geeky was like it had like TLS comma SSL comma TMG comma this and it was just three lines of 180

characters of threeletter because that's what CIS admins are sitting there. They

were going like does it do TMG? Yep. TMG

forfront. Yep. SSL offloading. Yep. And

they're just ticking it off and basically nobody reads the ad. they they

glance at it and they start looking like does it if I'm looking for an engine X load balancer and it starts talking about Microsoft IIS I mean I'm gone I'm dead it's it it cannot do the same

>> I say I say the same thing which is um I 100 I think I a thousand% agree with what you just said so number one is one of my favorite alltime threads on on Reddit just in general posts on Reddit

it's on the SEO subreddit and it's some guy and he's like I I put a TLDDR too long didn't feed right there at the top and my conversions increased by 33%.

What does that actually mean in practice? It means that for for blog

practice? It means that for for blog posts gave the answer right there when someone got to the page gave the answer right there for product pages said

exactly what the product is like like just very specific right there above the fold before people start scrolling conversions increased 33%. And then what you do is naturally you're going to go deeper on that topic on the rest of the

page and people who are genuinely interested in that, they're going to keep going down and you and yeah, so that's that's huge. I like you got to you got to give people what they're

looking for.

>> Also, when I do a lot of reviews, um because I work in the B2B space, a lot of re a lot of sales come in as leads.

Um, you know, the CEO will start every meeting with like, "Here's a list of people we we want them to know that we're US-based or we're this or we're this or this." And sure enough, he'll get on a call and someone will start asking questions and he's like, "This

should be in the landing page." I'm

like, "It's in the landing page, right?

They're just not reading it, right?"

Is the other thing, right? So it has to be. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the that's

be. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the that's the other thing like you said it's in and that's why that's why these the FAQ idea that have like actual um answers as

her own pages was so interesting because the logic behind it is you would like someone naturally maybe they would be looking on on the homepage for this but they're going to be looking they have to

they have to look through lots of information but people want their answers fast. So you have like a page

answers fast. So you have like a page that targets a single question with the answer right there. You get to the page, you get what you want and you're very happy.

>> Do you remember a podcast years ago? I

think Ran Fishkin was on it and they every Friday they reviewed >> whiteboard Friday pages.

>> It wasn't whiteboard Friday. It was it was a team of other people. They were

all like >> roast like roast my roast my landing page >> landing page. Yes. And every Thursday, people would submit landing pages and they'd roast them and they say like, "Oh, this is very nice, but this is too

pretentious." And it went design. And

pretentious." And it went design. And

then someone pulled up Salesforce's landing page and it looked like something out of front page. It was like three bullet points, a horrible form. It

was all in the top left and everyone, you could see all the hands going up.

Everyone wanted to turn it roasting it.

And Rand said, "Look, I know the guys and they have AB tested this a thousand times and it converts. Let's move on."

on and then I was like, >> "Yeah, >> this is the best image."

>> By the way, that this this what you just said is going it's it's been going viral now on X for like the last last year, which is these seemingly ugly landing

pages, but they're ugly because they give people what they want like right there. And I think um the the example

there. And I think um the the example that's always cited I think it's like icon.com or something and it's like it's like a million things right there above the fold. But those a million things is

the fold. But those a million things is everything that someone is looking for and it's right there and it's still clear enough for people to make out.

Yeah. my my boss and the co co-founder of Chem, Peter Malude, um came up with this brilliant landing page and I think it was built as a Marquetto form and all it was was a table and what we were

doing is we were trying to chip away at two big companies, F5, which is a billion dollar company out of Seattle that sold load balances and they were 10 times our price and Citrix who were like

9 and eight times our price. And

whenever you buy a product in corporate world, you typically come up with two other competitors. He say, "Here's the

other competitors. He say, "Here's the feature benefit list, right? The feeds

and speeds as we call it." And so what he did is he sat down one weekend and he built a whole table. And he listed F5's products range from expensive to load.

And we just put it in a table with no logos, no icons, no navigation. And if

you move the mouse, it just popped up saying, "If you enter your details, we'll email you a copy of the spreadsheet." And we got so many leads

spreadsheet." And we got so many leads from it because if you look at the person in the journey, they probably were told to buy an F5 or a Citrix.

Maybe they wanted a Citrix and they wanted to justify it by saying how expensive F5 was or vice versa. and uh

they never heard of Kemp and neither of those companies at the time published their prices and because it was a table Google published the whole top of the table in it and they included F5 Citrix and Kemp and it showed that we were

onetenth of the price and we were first and people clicked on it and then they got the table and then they had to enter the email and essentially one is we had done all their homework for them right so they had all the information they

wanted but now they had to go to the CFO and go like the camp has the same uh SSL offloading The camp has the same pages per second, can handle 3 million users a

second, but it's $4,000, not $44,000.

And uh yeah, we got a lot of sales from that. And it was the most ugliest

that. And it was the most ugliest spreadsheet ever.

>> But it was clear.

>> But it was clear.

>> Yeah. Clear.

>> It was >> It wasn't >> over Well, it went Well, it was clear in its data, but it went over the screen.

It went over, you know, it was a mass.

>> Yeah. But it was But but it Okay. But it

but it gave people what they wanted pretty fast. as Ron Seal, which is a

pretty fast. as Ron Seal, which is a British brand, um, oil for wood brand said, it does what it does. It's it does what it says on the tin, right?

>> Okay. I mean, that, you know, um, I made a you didn't like this thread. Um, and

that's like that's fine where my UX thread, my user experience thread on X, but um, one of the things that I wrote which was clarity above cleverness and, uh, yeah, that's something that I really

believe in.

>> And maybe I did like it. Maybe I maybe I wasn't clear. I I there's there's very

wasn't clear. I I there's there's very few things I don't like. So maybe I'll I'll have to revisit it, right?

>> No. I mean it it's it's but it's it's fair like everyone has it's it's fine if you didn't like it. It's um but no really I I like really like I'm open to

God. I mean you know we all you get a

God. I mean you know we all you get a lot of feedback. I get a lot of feedback. Like it's just it comes with

feedback. Like it's just it comes with the >> I got feedback just before the call where someone said that I shouldn't I I I I only rank in like number four number

five for SEO New York.

>> And I was like yeah but I ranked first for SEO agency New York.

>> Yeah.

>> And they're like you're talking about page rank. It's 2025. This is from like

page rank. It's 2025. This is from like 2012. I'm like wow it's still in the SEO

2012. I'm like wow it's still in the SEO starter guide. So then I just took his

starter guide. So then I just took his domain name and put it in Simrush and they had no rank position. None. Let me

ask you, why do you think cuz in the in the SEO community, it's just people attack each other so much. And I don't I don't really understand why it's so Maybe it's maybe it's like that in every

industry. And maybe it's just we're so

industry. And maybe it's just we're so deep into the industry that we see it more than other people. But I'm just like, how does that even how does that help?

>> How does it help? Um it's very common in it. Um

it. Um >> when I was an engineer in D and software engineers would become business engineers. It was like they were they

engineers. It was like they were they were cut out outed from the community.

It was a joke, you know. Um there's a there's a there's a thing about like choosing the best technology and being attached to it. It's a very tribal thing.

>> Yeah.

>> Um I I've had people come to me and say like why do old school SEOs still hang on to page rank? And I'm like you you don't understand. We can't change

don't understand. We can't change Google. It's the same as like um after

Google. It's the same as like um after HCU a lot of people would go to sub Reddits for for SEOs like big SEO, RSEO, tech SEO and say like it's time to give up on Google. They let us down. And it's

like I understand that you see us as your tribe, but we're not we're here because people go to Google. People

don't go to Google because of us, right?

We exist only because people go to Google. People stop going to Google.

Google. People stop going to Google.

We're not needed. But that's not the reason. we have no uh we have no ability

reason. we have no uh we have no ability to change direction, right? So, it's

pointless. You can come to Google and say, "Look, Google destroyed my lifestyle." And I empathize with that. I

lifestyle." And I empathize with that. I

think it's terrible. I I hate it. I'm

very sorry, but there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Um that's one angle to look at this, right? So, why is there so much infighting and why is there so much? A lot of it comes down to like this is where people make a living

from. And so when you take you know your

from. And so when you take you know your your monthly income check and you you tie yourself to look I want to be the best that deliver the best service I can it becomes very part of your ego and I

don't mean ego necessarily in the big you know in the sort of like expansive sense I mean like it you know your your critical function of survival >> people are afraid to people are afraid

to look uh to look incompetent because then they might they might not have as many clients >> and they actually try you know Like like some of the most stupid responses are when people go l you like like somebody

said like the most somebody gave advice is like just focus on your tech stack for SEO. This is the most stupid thing

for SEO. This is the most stupid thing I've ever heard, right? And I said like why? And they replied back lol capital

why? And they replied back lol capital was like as if you're either you're stupid or you're being funny stupid but you're stupid, right? So if you cannot

defend a a point of principle with empirical data or a sound logical argument and you're forced to go you're an idiot or

you're a or you're whatever all these horrible things, right?

>> You're not making a point. It's a bad look, right? You look stupid.

look, right? You look stupid.

>> Yeah. Absolutely.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Go ahead. No, sorry.

>> Oh, no. I was going to thank you for coming on.

>> Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. I

I hope I we get a follow-up cuz I've really enjoyed it.

>> I was I was going to say that too, like you're welcome back anytime and I I Yeah, I hope you come back anytime.

>> I I'm absolutely up for that and and I'm sure you have lots of other great guests and and I can't wait to watch those podcasts too, but I would love to come back for sure.

>> Thank you, David. You are you are a legend in the SEO community. Where

should everybody where should everybody find you?

>> Um you X is the best place to to come and find me. Um and and you know, I I I help I try to help out as many people as I can. If I can help you, I will. If I

I can. If I can help you, I will. If I

can't, I'll tell you. Uh, but I'm not here to make money. I'm here to help people. That's really what I say.

people. That's really what I say.

>> David will give you some great answers.

LinkedIn as well, right?

>> I'm on LinkedIn as well. Yeah. And you

could probably find me on on um Reddit.

I have a primary position SEO on Reddit.

>> That's your agency. I don't think we we mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Thank you. Thank you, David.

>> Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank

you so much.

>> Please um stick around. Stick around

though when I when I hit stop because this will have to upload.

>> Um Yeah. But for everybody, everybody who's watching or who's listening, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Edward Show. This is my daily digital marketing podcast. This is

episode 845. 845 days in a row doing this podcast. No days missed. So, thank

this podcast. No days missed. So, thank

you everybody and I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.

again tomorrow. Bye now.