Podcast With Craig Campbell

Avoid These Common SEO Mistakes – Craig Campbell Reveals All

Show Notes

🚨 Avoid These Common SEO Mistakes! 🚨 Join Craig Campbell as he reveals essential tips and strategies to help you rank your website number 1 on search engines. Whether you're a beginner or an SEO veteran, this step-by-step guide is packed with insights that can drive more organic traffic and improve your search engine rankings in 2024!

Welcome to another exciting episode of Agency Insight with your host, Navneet Kaushal. Today, we have a special guest, Craig Campbell, a seasoned digital marketing expert with over two decades of experience. Craig shares his personal journey, pivotal moments, and challenges that shaped his illustrious career in the SEO world.

In this video, you'll learn about:

• The evolution of SEO and how to adapt your strategies for 2024.
• Common SEO mistakes to avoid and why they can hinder your website’s success.
• Proven SEO strategies for maintaining high-quality content and effective link building.
• The importance of delegation, building the right team, and utilizing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
• How to leverage AI tools effectively without losing the human touch.

Discover how to achieve a #1 ranking by understanding the nuances of content creation, link building, and adapting to Google’s ever-changing algorithms. Stay ahead of the curve with Craig’s invaluable advice on utilizing the right tools and techniques to optimize your WordPress SEO guide for maximum organic traffic.

Ready to take your SEO game to the next level? Watch now and transform your digital marketing approach with expert insights from Craig Campbell. Don’t forget to subscribe for more episodes packed with actionable tips from industry leaders.

Want me to help you rank number 1? Stay curious, keep learning, and smash that subscribe button to stay updated with the latest in SEO and digital marketing! 🌟

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:40 - Pivotal moments that shaped Craig’s career

07:35 - Evolution of SEO definition

12:24 - Common misconceptions about SEO

18:53 - Budgeting $100 for website marketing

25:05 - Impact of AI on SEO strategies

29:04 - Importance of content and links for SEO

31:48 - Optimal content publishing frequency

33:01 - Top 3 essential SEO skills

40:37 - Staying ahead in SEO trends

46:57 - Strategies for scaling affiliate sites

50:10 - Influence of public speaking on career

53:40 - Balancing consulting, speaking, and projects

57:50 - Mentorship in the SEO industry

1:02:10 - Recommended SEO books

1:03:15 - Emerging digital platforms

1:06:40 - Exciting new projects and ventures

1:11:50 - Future trends in SEO and Digital Marketing

1:12:54 - Role of AI in SEO advancements

1:14:50 - Final advice for SEO professionals

1:15:50 - Outro

Transcript

Introduction

0:00 welcome everyone to another exciting episode of the agency inside I'm your host NAIT kosel and today we have a very

0:06 special guest with us he's a true success story in SE World a seasoned digital marketing experts with over two

0:13 decades of experience and a regular speaker in international conferences

0:21 [Applause]

0:26 [Music] please join me in welcoming Craig

0:32 kampbell Craig it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show thank you na

0:37 it's a pleasure and to be here yeah uh Craig we have known each other for years

Pivotal moments that shaped Craig’s career

0:43 and I've always been impressed by your expertise in both SEO and affiliate marketing plus not to forget your no

0:50 talks so uh so uh can you share with our

0:58 listeners what p moments or challenges have shaped your last 20 years of career

1:04 um yeah so a brief background of of where I started I am the same as

1:10 probably yourself and everyone else that listens I started out um blogging or or

1:18 pretending I knew what I was doing if you like you I was a hobbyist

1:24 SEO or web designer and I wasn't very good at web designs so SEO was the next

1:31 best thing and I started to to try and learn SEO and you know started out

1:38 taking on a few local clients and trying to H my skills and before I knew it um

1:45 you know I had a bunch of clients and I had to hire a web developer to to look after the websites I had to hire a

1:51 Content writer I had to hire a sales guy and before you knew it I had this

1:56 digital marketing agency and that grown um and and I went

2:02 with that for probably about I don't know 10 years something like that you

2:08 know I ran with a digital marketing agency now again many people will

2:13 resonate with this part of the story The I found it very stressful because I had

2:19 built myself into the business I wasn't working on the business so I had people

2:24 round about me but I was the Su guy in the middle of it all and obviously he's a young guy who had no business training

2:32 didn't really had never experienced anything had never been in control of anything I had done it all wrong um so I

2:40 wasn't delegating enough I didn't trust people enough I didn't have the right team surrounding me and for me that was

2:47 the the biggest problem because I was struggling to grow past a certain stage

2:54 um you know clients would fall off because the work wasn't being done properly um that's down into my

3:00 processes or the right staff or the right training uh not being in place so I found the agency model very very

3:08 stressful and for me that brought up you know is there an

3:15 easier way to make money online and that is where they kind of affiliate marketing doing YouTube you

3:22 know building a personal brand all of that kind of stuff came into play and

3:28 that is when why I went from agency down the the Avenue of what I done because

3:33 there was periods within that agency and having done client work for for you know

3:38 10 plus years I felt that I had done my apprenticeship in terms of SEO I was

3:44 able to then fully understand how to rank a website so I wanted to change it

3:50 why would I work for clients when I could work on my own projects I could

3:56 you know determine what income I was able to receive and essentially that's why we're all here it's all money driven

4:04 and is there easier ways to make money than just doing client work of course there is you know you've got so many

4:10 other opportunities to make money online H and I think for me that's where my

4:17 brain was like can I do this can I do that and you know can I try this can I try that and and it's took me to where I

4:24 am today so I've done the the agency model it wasn't for me personally and I

4:29 learned a lot from it um you know but when also to to be fair to myself when I

4:36 was doing the agency thing vas weren't as big a thing H as they are now and you

4:43 know delegation wasn't as big as it is now and processes Sops all of the stuff

4:48 that you've probably got within you know your H Corporation I didn't have any of

4:54 that and I didn't know about any of it and you know I think now everyone talks

5:00 about it you know people talk more in depth about problems or situations or or

5:05 just even how they function as a business and I didn't have that when I was doing the agency and that was the

5:11 the biggest problem I had I didn't have any local friends I didn't network with anyone and my knowledge was was

5:18 obviously there in terms of being a businessman and I think overall I've had to not just

5:25 be this SEO guy I love SEO and everything else but had to then become a businessman I

5:31 had to not basically utilize my skills I had to get people surrounding me to do

5:38 whether that be video editing whether it be you know link building whatever I think you know I had to narrow all of

5:44 that kind of down and get people to do it whilst I'm not there that's the only way I would get scalability and growth

5:50 so you have to think more like a businessman rather than an SE and that that's where I I really struggled and

5:57 had a lot of problems with growth so so that's the long story in a a condensed

6:05 version so up until one which year have you done your agency

6:10 business AG to affiliate Market H so I I moved to affiliate marketing round uh

6:17 affiliate marketing round about 2015 um is when I started to build my

6:22 own personal brand and do affiliate marketing um and and the inspiration for

6:28 that was a guy called Matthew Woodwards um you know I was a big follower of

6:34 Matthew and I loved what he was doing and I thought I want to be that guy um I

6:40 like how he's operating and making money and I want some of that so yeah I had

6:45 the agency um from probably about 2005 to to

6:51 2015 H but I was a freelancer prior to the agency you know I got in h doing SEO

6:58 from 200 one um but yeah you know had the agency for 10 years and I've been

7:04 doing this model for for 9 years now um so it's 200 2014 and I'm you know Still

7:12 Loving affiliate and I mean I'm I'm not enjoying all the Google updates and all the other crap that comes with

7:19 it um but yeah so I think you know it's been a a long journey but I am much more

7:26 personally satisfied with the model that I have now than I I did run in an

7:32 agency okay so so I mean of course I'm not going to ask you very cliche

Evolution of SEO definition

7:39 questions like what is new in SEO but I'm gonna so I'm GNA ask you you've been

7:45 in this industry for over two decades I mean honestly I I know only myself who is as

7:52 old in the industry as you so so so uh my question is how how

7:58 has your personal definition of ETO evolved over the years so you know this is a a question

8:05 that I find really tough to answer um and I'll explain why I don't feel

8:13 that it's it's strange when I see it SE has not changed that much but it has um

8:20 you know we know always content links are are really important now it has

8:27 evolved the type of Link building that we done 20 years ago is not the type of

8:33 Link building that we do now you know the level of competition we have the

8:38 sophistication of Google understanding you know we used to do social bookmarking and all the other crap back

8:44 in the day and that worked you know that was link building you don't do social bookmarket now you have to get good

8:50 quality relevant links from links that have traffic and and you know so the the goal posts have moved slightly so the

8:57 concept of SEO I've of course has changed slightly as well you know you've got again you'll know yourself we used

9:04 to be able to throw up a page of content and you know stuff it with keywords and boom the thing ranked whereas now you've

9:11 got to go through Surfer or something else to you know get the entities in so Google has become a lot clever in terms

9:19 of what it's looking for and how identify stuff um so we have had to move

9:26 the goalpost or the structure or the strategy but links and content are still

9:31 two of the biggest things out there now on top of that we also know that traffic

9:37 H engagement signals trust signals you've got eat and all that stuff these are all add-ons that that Google have

9:43 added to the algorithm along the way but as far as I'm concerned things like eat

9:50 EA eat as they now call it for example

9:55 it's links it's getting links on Authority trustworthy websites you know if if I want to be trusted by Google I

10:02 need to be on I don't know Amazon uh I need to be on the news and all this kind of stuff so it's still form of Link

10:09 building and so for me it's very very hard for anyone to argue that Su is that

10:16 much different although the the quality or the barrier to entry and you

10:22 understand this more than anyone nav when we done SEO back in the day you had a keyword Rich the main name you could

10:27 slap up a onepage we website and almost guarantee yourself paid one position one

10:33 we can't do that anymore you know Google doesn't weigh an exact match domain name the same it doesn't weigh that content

10:39 the same way it used to it's looking for other things so whilst it's changed it's not and and that is a very difficult

10:47 thing to to try and put across um to people because it's all these little nuances that are in there now that that

10:54 are the things that people miss out on you know it's not that SEO is fundamentally that much different but my

11:01 process is a lot deeper it's a lot more rigid even you know that one page website that I used to throw up it can't

11:08 be a one you've got to build that topical cluster you've got to put out more content you've got to do internal

11:13 links you've got to get links to it you know all of this stuff so it's a bigger job than it was and that obviously comes

11:20 down to the level of competition that we now have as well because everyone is an

11:25 SE now and every turn corner you turn someone's claiming to to to know SEO but

11:31 do they know really what they're doing is the the big big question and um so

11:37 yeah I think it's changed a lot but a lot hasn't changed if that makes any

11:42 sense I don't know how else to describe that it it makes sense I mean

11:48 only only way I see it it has become more challenging yes but interesting as

11:53 well it's it's not the entry barriers are high now nobody just can enter and

11:59 just overnight take over your site of course accept Google but that's how it

12:04 is yeah agree on so but also we've got AI now as well so a lot of the newbies

12:10 are coming in and they're just slapping AI content on the website and then come and go why why does this website not

12:17 Rank and you like do do you not understand so my next question is

12:23 something related to that only I mean there are often misconceptions about uh about SEO among businesses what are some

Common misconceptions about SEO

12:30 of the common ones you have encountered and how do you address them of course I know you are not in a client business

12:35 but you get get to speak at a lot of places so what are some of these common ones you

12:41 encounter common misconceptions um I mean I think you know having dealt with

12:47 clients and I do a lot of consultancy and stuff so I still deal with a lot of things people's perception of the cost

12:56 or what goes on with SEO is is the single most important misconception

13:02 that's out there you know I think a lot of people think it's a case of slapping up a page of content and all of a sudden

13:09 everything works they you know and and again I have always been the type of guy

13:15 who's quite transparent and I'm not going to tell anyone everything that I'm doing why would I um but you know I've

13:20 been fairly transparent in terms of what's required and and the money that that's required in order to to make that

13:27 happen and so we we do have costs for writing I'm not going to sit and write anyone's content we do have costs for

13:34 for links you know whether you do digital PR whether you do you do there's still a cost no matter what way

13:40 you look at it and potentially you know doing clickthrough rate manipulation or anything else there's a cost for sending

13:47 traffic to a website whether that be through Facebook ads or whatever it may be you've still get the cost of the

13:52 tools to audit a website and do the technical changes and and of course we've got

13:58 other costs uh you know for suffer or however you determine your on page SEO

14:04 is good so I think the cost against what some people are charging is is a big big

14:09 problem um that I see all of the time you know I've got people who come to me for advice and they like yeah Craig I'm

14:16 charging this guy H 200 bucks a month to rank for I don't know plumber in New York and you like like how and what what

14:25 the can you what what can you do for2 200 um and you're like dud you you

14:30 couldn't really buy that many articles you can barely buy a link

14:35 for that um and you know can you afford to use suffer or you know the the kind

14:42 of things that we need and so I think you know a big big thing is out there for most seos um we have costs for

14:50 everything including just the analysis tools you know your same rush or whatever it may be and I think customers

14:58 don't real iiz that they they think they're paying you x amount of money and that guarantees them your fulltime

15:06 commitment and you're like your your retainer barely pays the software costs

15:12 let alone anything else um so you know I think many SOS are under selling it to

15:19 to to clients or or mis educating clients they're you know we we all mo ah

15:24 refs is expensive where this is expensive um so there's there's a lot of ass cost with it's not down to just your

15:32 time right everything and and I think clients don't understand that and and

15:38 even newbies to the industry don't care about that they're just like yeah I can do your SEO for 200 bucks a month and

15:44 the minute I hear that I'm just like you can't you you just phys you can say anything you like you could be the best

15:50 technical guy in the world or whatever but you can't deliver for2 200 unless you're working for free um and you're

15:56 prepared to pay for all the software that who's going to do that so you know

16:01 I think that's a big big problem and that I see a lot of the time it's just misinformation undercharging H misleading people into

16:08 giving you money and not delivering the goods and we all know how much a

16:14 citation costs how much you know a link cost we we know how much all of these

16:20 things cost so that's where we at it and go you can't be doing that so you

16:25 know I think that's a big thing and it really still happens to this day you know I I I do a lot of consultancy as

16:31 well someone's like yeah my SEO guy you know he's claiming to do this and why is it not ranking you're like how much are

16:37 you paying them and they're like yeah 200 bucks 300 bucks and you're like what do you expect for that realistically so

16:44 I think there's a big disconnect there and I think a lot of business owners out

16:49 there really need to understand like if you want to turn over a million a year just a random figure realistically you

16:56 should be spending 10% of that million on your marketing if you want to achieve that if not more um so what are you

17:04 actually spending on your mark I'm not talking about just SEO I'm talking about overall marketing you you should be

17:10 spending a 100 Grand on that whether 20 of that's on Facebook 20 of it's in SEO

17:15 20 of it and something else paper click or whatever and you know that is realistically how you get to to go to a

17:23 million you can't go and spend a 100 Grand and make five million you know the chances of that unless you're in a very

17:29 niche market or slim so you have to cough up more for your marketing and again I think from a customer

17:35 perspective a lot of people think what we do in terms of marketing is peanuts

17:40 and and you're just not going to get the success it's just unrealistic if I felt I could pay a guy2 200 a month and and

17:47 put them on one of my projects and it's going to return me 10 grand a month or or whatever I'll give them the2 200 all

17:54 day long send them to me and I'll I'll hire them for my own projects um

17:59 if that was how it works so that's a big problem I think the problem main

18:06 came uh because people thought s organic traffic is free so anything which is

18:11 free should be cheap and that's where that thought process comes it I mean honestly I've seen people paying more in

18:19 Google ads spending more I mean 10 times in Google ads but not in an SEO because of this

18:24 mindset so that is right I think you've got to diversify your

18:31 traffic sources you know that's the the bottom line I'm not saying it's safe to throw everything into SE either I think

18:38 if you've got 100 Grand split that so that you're get traffic from other places and

18:44 then and then the question is how do I get more of this how do I get more of that how do I get more of that and your

18:50 budget increases so that's how it should be so so let's say if you have 100

Budgeting $100 for website marketing

18:56 Grands to spend now how would you distribute them keeping in mind today's uh search I mean today's scenario and

19:03 you have a website which is brand new and let's say even if it's in an affiliate space how would you spend

19:08 those 100 Grand in a year how would you allocate the budgets this is not a one answer fits

19:16 all and so I think it really comes down to the competition and what they're doing where where are their traffic

19:22 coming from is it on social paid ads is it from other Affiliates you know

19:28 certainly one of the the the businesses that I've got um I

19:34 understood um that organic traffic was important I leveraged other

19:39 Affiliates to get that traffic so I gave up a percentage of money to get them doing my

19:47 SEO which is a smart move so right you know there there are different ways but

19:52 you know you know if my competition I'm looking at it I've got an affiliate program and you know they've got 100

19:57 affiliate things up which is all driving traffic and if they're doing a bit of SEO and they're doing a bit of Google

20:03 AdWords and they're doing a bit of Social Media stuff I would split my budget up based on what the competition

20:10 are doing and the areas that I feel are weakest now is always going to include an element of SEO of course it is I'm an

20:17 SEO guy and I you know love SEO and Love Organic traffic it converts better blah blah blah blah blah and so the where I

20:26 would spend it would really depend now would I be against uh going heavy on paid ads at

20:33 the start to get the engagement the traffic the trust all of that working

20:39 absolutely not I think the long-term strategy would be to reduce the paid ads

20:44 and get more organic but I think it depends you know you've got to

20:50 be realistic so if I'm up against a a really competitive market am I going to

20:55 spend that that whole 100 Grand on trying to do and I might not get past the 3 four five

21:01 6 month stage um of being viable as a business so again you need cash flow to

21:08 make that business grow so where is the quickest cash flow forget about my SEO uh you know enthusiasm for a minute

21:17 how can I spend X and get y back it's all about return in investment so can I invest first in Facebook can I spend a

21:23 grand on that and get five grand back that is what I want to try so I would set up my campaigns very tight and very

21:30 broad uh across a number of different traffic sources and then what actually

21:36 works well for that Niche I would double down so if I can get a 1,000 spend and I

21:41 get £5,000 back on Facebook I'm going to then say I want to spend two three four how hard can I push Facebook and then

21:48 move on to the next one so but that's going to be very very different for every Niche um but again just to reans

21:57 that for just SEO if you said cig it's only SEO you're doing I think you know at the start of any new project

22:05 you're you know people will say build links first build content first whatever

22:10 I think it would pretty much be a 50/50 split um on a new website between content and links people may argue that

22:17 it could be 703 in favor of content but for me I want to be building links in

22:23 authority and building up the uh Dr of that particular website from the Geto

22:29 even if it's got five blog posts on it I I want to be building that up because we all know the the domain Authority is

22:37 what is going to make sure that your pages land higher so I think we've got that mix of content and links um from

22:44 the GetGo so hopefully that gives you a double answer to to what right my my

22:51 question basically was coming from are you doing something in terms of budget

22:56 allocation or spent or efforts are you doing something differently now than you

23:01 were doing let's say 12 months back keeping in mind the Google updates or is it same no it's pretty much the same um

23:10 I think obviously Google have had updates and and people have been slammed hard now the people that I've seen that

23:17 have been hit hard either lack Google trust signals such as

23:22 e or or they went in hard on AI content I am probably one of the only Su guys

23:29 who's never done a video um fully condoning AI content because I've always

23:35 been skeptical of I love it and I'd love to do things faster but I was always skeptical that if Google catches up and

23:42 they're going to you know the helpful content update and what is going to happen to my website and I've got

23:48 websites where I've tested it and I've seen the the the upwards trajectory H

23:54 and then I've seen it falling off a cliff in September 2023 so right you know I've tried tested it and and would

24:00 I try and test on my own website no um so again any of my real

24:06 businesses I would not test silly AI content on it until I am 100% sure I

24:14 know how to to game that system so my strategy in terms of what I do hasn't

24:20 changed now it cost me more it takes me more to do it but I don't have to worry

24:25 H sleeping at night if I'm going to wake up in all my traffic gone and and for me that's really important so and I'm also

24:32 quite well known for black hat strategies and talking about that stuff

24:38 I don't actually deploy that type of stuff on my own money websites because it could cost me an absolute Fortune I

24:44 love to know how it works I love to play with test websites and I love to see how far I can push the boundaries but again

24:52 would I employ that on a website which is feeding my family absolutely no way

24:58 so you know that's that's how I see it okay okay that's an interesting take so

Impact of AI on SEO strategies

25:06 the impact of AI on Su is a Hot Topic some sees it as a threat other as an

25:11 opportunity and uh I mean of course we you spoke about that you have not taken

25:17 but but because some of the people just think AI is chat GPT is more about content but it is not so one what's your

25:24 take and how can SEO leverage AI tools effec without losing the human

25:30 touch so I think you know as an SEO we know that AI can help us with the

25:37 biggest pain point that we have which is content so it would be perfect you know

25:44 to just put into chat GPT whatever prompts you put in and it turns out amazing content now the important part

25:51 of that process is the human editing part you know what goes on after that so

25:56 you can use chat GPT to to give you the skeleton of an article

26:01 um you can then run it through the likes of surfer to add in you know the the entities and the semantically related

26:08 keywords you can then run it through grammarly to make sure that it it reads

26:14 well um and then a human editor can go in and tweak it so that it's actually

26:19 you know got the call to action that gives the accurate information that you want to to give and I think a

26:26 combination of that process can work well for you but too many

26:32 people are lazy and they want the Quick Fix um now as an SEO we all know how

26:38 I've said at the very start content and links are two of the single most important things out there um people

26:45 skip the process when it comes to content and that is where they go wrong um and get hit with helpful content

26:52 updates now does AI help with other things in

26:58 business can you automate a lot of stuff can you build scripts to do H you know all these crappy tasks of course you can

27:05 you know I think AI is amazing for everything you know I can do my tweets

27:10 based on AI I can just get it to give me ideas so there's so many other things as

27:16 a a business owner that I can utilize AI for um but I can't use it for content

27:22 and the story it has to go through the the human editing process and it has to go through H you know Surfer uh

27:30 grammarly uh and all that stuff as well so that's kind of what the the process looks like and I just feel that too many

27:37 people are trying to bypass those steps for for Speed reasons and again

27:43 realistically if I thought I could go to a to and you know put out 100 blog posts

27:48 a day and that was actually going to get crawled in indexed and stay on Google I would do it absolutely I'd love to

27:55 do it but it doesn't work and and I've got case studies to show that it doesn't work um and you know

28:04 until someone can convince me otherwise and I've physically done this myself I know it doesn't work I can categorically

28:11 tell you it's not I think it doesn't it it just doesn't um so that is is my take

28:18 on how it works from an SEO perspective I just think you still have to do the

28:23 human editing but AI for everything else can you use it for social media can you

28:28 use it for this that and the next thing can I use it to transcribe my YouTube

28:34 video into a blog post and then go through that human editing process yes you know there's so many things I can

28:41 utilize AI for and and absolutely love it for so yeah it's a great thing so I

28:46 don't want to be seen as bashing Ai and you know stuff like that I just think

28:52 purely from my content perspective and and crawling and understanding crawling

28:57 and indexing how important that is right it just work just

29:02 yet okay so I me you spoke about of course two important part from day one

Importance of content and links for SEO

29:08 has been link I would say and content later on for SEO now given the current

29:14 emphasis on high quality content how do you approach content creation and optimization to ensure it aligns with

29:21 both user intent and S your best practices so I think you know you got to

29:28 do more research and you have to understand so even Sam Rush will give

29:34 you an idea of the intent of a particular keyword um but again you can

29:40 look at the competition who's winning what is there you know what are these

29:45 guys doing but I think when it comes to content people try and overthink all of

29:50 this too much sometimes I feel that you've got to throw stuff out there and see if it works

29:56 now every website out there 80% of your traffic comes from 20% of your pages

30:03 which effectively means that 80% of your content is and can be reoptimized

30:09 or tweaked or merged together so I think as part of the process and and

30:16 understanding whether Google like it or not or whether Google perceive your content

30:22 to be valuable for the intent of the user and what I think's for the intented

30:28 user are two very different things and that's where you need to throw stuff there see how it works and then adapt so

30:36 I would throw content out there and I'll look at it and and Google might just not like it for one reason or another now I

30:43 can go in and change some titles even changing the URL and Google will like it

30:48 but sometimes Google just doesn't like it and maybe I have to merge two articles together to make one big

30:55 article based on something um so I think too many people are focused on how much

31:01 content can they put out whereas what we would do is we'd put out content where we thought that you know based on

31:08 keyword research and everything else we would throw that out now the stuff that doesn't stick or doesn't perform well

31:15 what can we do to change it do we need to go in and change the whole content do we need to go in and add more subheaders

31:21 do we need to go and change the intent and and you know the the sales narrative potentially on that page um

31:28 and everyone always has the content writer going yeah they add 50 articles a month I don't care as long as the

31:35 content grows and evolves and ER and you even sometimes have to prune that

31:42 content off of your website so like I said that 8020 rule 80% of your content

Optimal content publishing frequency

31:49 doesn't do all for you nothing um could you delete it all and you know

31:55 read you know get more power to content works 100% And for me

32:03 again that is something a lot of people don't do um so how I do it is is you

32:09 know obviously I'm going to do the research and I'm going to do what I believe to be the best and obviously what the competitor what is working for

32:15 the competitors but it's how Google perceives that and and that's where the

32:20 the gray area comes in because we don't know how Google perceives stuff

32:26 until we actually try it um so that's where you've just got to not overthink it throw some at Google if it

32:33 doesn't work it doesn't work adapt and go again and adapt and go again and

32:38 through experience and through doing this you'll get a much better understanding of what actually works H

32:44 for for your Niche um so you know if I was iner on a niche and I didn't fully

32:50 understand that Niche um or or the kind of terminology and everything else that

32:55 is kind of the approach I would take okay so so let's talk about I mean uh

Top 3 essential SEO skills

33:04 you advised a lot of SEO professionals look up to you and of course wherever you go of you majorly go into SEO

33:11 conferences put it that way and of course so if if for those new to the SEO field what are the three most important

33:18 skill or areas you recommend they should focus on

33:23 developing and I I think most people focus on on page SEO I think a lot of

33:34 people are really poor at link building I think more people should understand link building too many people have this

33:41 thing where they say uh link building's bad and you know Google's going to reward you with

33:46 natural links for your amazing content that's a myth in itself um so I think as

33:52 an SEO if you work in a competitive market and you're

33:58 starting out now it's different because a lot of new seos hide behind a big

34:05 company who's got a dr85 it's very easy to do on page and get good results with that start from a

34:13 new website and try and compete with a dr85 You' have no option but to buy links or get links or whatever you do so

34:20 there's got you've got to understand how link building works and I don't care who

34:25 says what I know how link building works I know digital PR because I offer it as

34:30 a service I do guest posting I do Outreach we do um you know Niche edits

34:37 we do every type of link that that's on the market and for anyone to say we

34:43 don't buy links is a liar and that you know there's money Changing Hands

34:50 whether you want to call that buying or whether you call it you know an admin fee whatever you have to understand how

34:56 this game works where you buy that and how you're going to power up your website by hook or by crook um so I

35:03 think that's an area that a lot of people should focus on because most people I see are really poor at it um I

35:09 think uh other areas of focus is understanding the joining the dots from

35:16 a Google perspective when it comes to um trust signals you know eat trying to

35:22 trigger your knowledge panel um you know again I look at people's they don't have an about me page they then don't join

35:29 the dots and and when I say join the dots I mean you've got an about me page and my

35:34 about me page will link to my Amazon my crunch base my LinkedIn all my social media profiles you've got to show Google

35:41 that this cig cample that's on this about me page is the same one it's got Twitter Facebook whatever you have to

35:48 basically feeds Google your essentially they're not going to go away and find it for

35:55 you right yeah so that that is an area that's an absolute disaster when

36:01 I look at someone's website like no wonder you don't rank you know what are you doing man um so I think you know

36:07 those brand signals and stuff like that are areas of expertise and I think

36:15 another thing that that I would try and encourage people to do is don't H you

36:22 know a lot of people are scared to put the face to a business you know build

36:28 you into the business your brand you know make sure people know who you are and I think you know that for me a lot

36:34 of people out there don't understand the personal brand they don't understand the benefits of it and I fully understand

36:40 that not everyone wants their face to be seen but I think realistically if you want to sell more if you want to H get

36:48 people to buy into you now this SEO space I could deal with you uh I could

36:53 deal with someone in America it it's worldwide but you're never likely to do business with me unless you've met me or

37:01 see me or hear me and I think so many people don't understand that like we've

37:07 obviously met at at conferences over the years I think the first one was the same Rush one in in India be right yeah so so

37:17 Bangalore I had to go to Bangalore and and you know obviously I was speaking there for on behalf of Sam rush but

37:25 obviously I got to meet people like yourself and I met a few few other guys who I think I met in and well there's a

37:30 lot of guys I think there was about two 2,000 people there and but you network

37:35 we we obviously had a conversation in that little uh VIP room then I've obviously seen you other events and you

37:43 are potentially more likely to do business with me or trust me or even be open to doing consultancy with me based

37:50 on what you've seen and heard now if you're sat behind a website and no one can see your no one knows whether

37:56 you're good or bad um and and that is from a customer perspective as well if they go and do

38:04 research on you can they see you can they hear your vocabulary can you tell

38:09 that this person knows what they're doing um and I think that is another area where people get lost and and get

38:17 scared they don't want to do it obviously someone like yourself you're trying to do the podcast thing you're

38:22 trying to put yourself out there and I'm pretty sure you know if we were all air and that says to you na are you actually

38:30 comfortable doing a podcast you're going to say I would rather not if if push came show but I need to Market my own

38:35 brand you know I don't particularly want to to do it I don't like love it and I

38:41 can do it and and if that's what I have to do to to build trust and authority and everything else then that's what I

38:48 have to do and I think that's the kind of mindset that people have to have you have to step out your comfort zone H to

38:54 do things and uh try and you you might say you know what after 20

38:59 podcasts I'm fed up with that but at least people have seen your face talken to people you can refer people to

39:06 it and and you might never become the B best podcaster but people will say at

39:11 least you tried and there's a human being there that clearly knows what he's talking about and that is what SEO

39:19 should learn to do more is is try and do more of that because the most common question I get asked na me is how did I

39:26 get sales how do I get leads um how do I make money and and you're like how are

39:31 you getting leads just now um and people are hiding behind websites and not even

39:38 get a photograph of themselves on it so I think that also ties in with the whole Authority thing so that's a couple of

39:44 things that I think I would encourage people to try and double down on and learn more about or try it or

39:51 whatever right for the records I though I'm late to the party but I love

39:57 I'm I'm loving all this what I'm doing talking to you all you guys you know the best part is I get to ask questions

40:03 whatever I want so I love that the conversations are good and I try to make them so I am loving researching and I'm

40:10 I'm I I thought it's going to be tough but because I've been doing this otherwise talk also but yes for a newb

40:16 it might be scary but for me I'm enjoying it I'm enjoying talking to you I've always done enjoyed before also but

40:22 I I love the podcast but yes you right people have to put themselves in front uh so that that as a face of the brand

40:28 as well yeah because people at the end of the day says as human to human yeah

40:33 that's exactly right right so uh now how

Staying ahead in SEO trends

40:39 do you stay ahead of the curve I mean what resources or uh uh habits do you

40:45 recommend to others I mean of course you've been in this industry for so long

40:50 I so again it it revolves around other people and and you know networking and

40:57 and having friends in the industry so how do you stay ahead of the curve um you know I still travel to to events I

41:04 still hear people talk about areas that I'm weak on um I pay for consultancy um

41:11 you know for certain things if I'm if I'm at something let's say I was

41:16 at AI would I pay an AI guy to sit and show me what the he's doing and

41:22 how the hell he's doing it and 100% you know so if you've got areas of week and

41:27 this is up to you as a a person you've got areas of weakness I've got areas of weakness how do we overcome that you

41:34 either need to buy a course you need to pay the guy to jump in a call and say dude I can't get my head around what the

41:40 hell you're doing can you just show me how much does it cost um but on top of

41:45 that you know when you network when you travel you know you hear what other people are doing and you know you steal

41:51 a little bit from a guy here and go you know that's a really good thing that he said there I need to implement that

41:57 or that's a really good software there I want to check that out and see how I can add it to to what I do um and again you

42:05 know looking at you know I've got my own Mastermind where I've got h a hundred

42:10 other seos and business owners and agency owners and affiliate guys and and

42:16 we all go in there and we talk about different topics you know two or three time times a week so I think you know doing masterminds um actually testing

42:24 out is is also important um you know again if I I'm just looking at my

42:30 uh favorites bar on here and I've got like perplexity on there I've got video

42:36 video AI I've got all sorts on there that I'm just playing with so I think testing stuff and always trying to to be

42:43 ahead of the curve is what we all do and you know again I've got friends I've got

42:48 WhatsApp chats where they'll jump in the chat and be like oh have you seen this H and you know you know I think

42:55 surrounding yourself with the the right type of seos is really important and how do you make those

43:01 friends how do you get into those masterminds which ones the best one to go into all of these are questions that

43:08 I get asked all the time I have traveled the world for the last nine years um

43:15 making these contacts making these friends um and and that has cost a

43:23 considerable amount of money but it's an investment in me um is the way that I

43:28 see it and and I've learned you know from all there's people out there that have showed me things that they don't

43:34 know that they've showed me things it could be the smallest thing that someone said and it's and I've been like

43:39 oh you know I've got that problem as well and H and and then they they tell you how they resolved it and you're

43:46 like you know that's a lifesaver so we can't know everything about everything so that's where I think

43:52 networking traveling I've got a group of local friends in Glasgow who are all seos we we see each other once twice a

43:58 week and we we talk about problems we've got and have you seen this before have you seen that before and again you're

44:04 helping each other overcome certain situations or or whatever and that's

44:11 that's just it you know I think it's it's it's there's no one place where I can say go and buy this guy's

44:16 course and you know you're going to be super on point you know I might buy a course and I might grab one or two

44:23 nuggets from it but is that worth the 3 four 500 bucks or whatever I paid for it then aha you know I I think you have to

44:31 invest in yourself and so many people don't do that um and again I've got some

44:37 very very very experienced seos who will jump on a call with me they'll just pay

44:42 for an hourly consultancy rate and sometimes it's not even what I tell them

44:49 it's just they want a second opinion they need to hear someone else say yeah

44:54 I agree with you that's the problem go away and fix it now and is that worth a

45:00 couple hundred bucks to someone of course it is sometimes you just need reassurance because it's this can be a

45:06 lonely game if you're isolated from other people like I I could literally pick up the phone to most of the

45:13 renowned seos in the world and ask them a question no problem or Whatsapp them

45:19 and and obviously that has taken me a lot of time for for to learn but again you need to get out you need to Smo um

45:28 and stuff like that like when we met we've obviously uh you know connected in Facebook and you know stuff like that

45:35 you don't need to talk all day every day to these people but at least we've connected you remember me oh hi

45:41 and whatever you know you don't have to be all out there talking to everyone every day or anything like that but

45:47 again you're like you know for me H you know but with you for example you know

45:52 you came to the Sam Rush Event you took time out uh you know to can I talk to

45:58 you and I'm like yeah I respect that guy he he's obviously looking to learn and better himself or looking to get an idea

46:06 from me or whatever the the the conversation was um you know and again I

46:11 look at people I go I won't ignore that guy I've connected with him I see that he's came to the conference and he has

46:18 actually approached me in a a way that that is perfectly reasonable um so why

46:24 would I not try and and advice or or help so again you know I think most

46:30 people maybe think that SOS are not approachable most of the seos in the world will literally tell you anything

46:37 you want to tell them and even if you have to get them a couple of beers to get them

46:44 drunk so yeah yeah so now uh we running

46:50 a little short on time so we might have to do a little fast I don't want to have you say more so I just so uh with your

Strategies for scaling affiliate sites

46:57 experience uh in affiliate marketing what strategies do you find most effective for scaling and uh uh

47:05 sustaining affiliate sites right now um so affiliate marketing I think if I'm

47:14 being honest sustaining affiliate sites is slightly difficult and and I'll

47:20 explain the reasons why I used to do a lot of Amazon affiliate um and it made

47:26 me a lot of money now Amazon reducing the commission all of the time and the costs of content and

47:32 links and everything going up it came to a point where I was paying out what the

47:38 website was pulling in so for me Amazon affiliate kind of died I sold I sold the

47:44 websites and I moved on now when it comes to affiliate marketing um do you

47:50 need to go to the cost of all the content website creation and everything else no uh you don't uh you know you can

47:57 promote stuff in YouTube you can promote stuff in social media you can build an audience that way so you know

48:05 strategically I I built up a bit of a following in the SEO space can I do affiliate marketing across multiple

48:12 channels without doing the traditional blog post style of affiliate marketing

48:18 the answer is yes and that is something that I do a lot more of so I think you

48:24 know for me would I rather create a course a training course H for free to

48:31 to lead people in and offer value that way with a view to potentially making money off the affiliate on the tools and

48:37 the stuff that you need to buy which you have to buy anyway um is that a way to doing it rather than building a website

48:46 um and you know going to the cost of links and stuff like that so I think the

48:51 barrier to entry from that perspective costs a lot more so you know if I was advised

48:57 anyone getting into it you can't do Amazon because it's just not affordable but there's other things out there like

49:04 SAS products that will pay you 30 or 40% commission um and I think for that then

49:11 yes it certainly warrants a potential website could you go out and make a SAS

49:16 website um and rank it of course you can but again you're up against other people

49:21 like me who've got a Blog who've got YouTube who've got LinkedIn who've got Facebook you going to have to try and

49:27 move all of that out the Sip as well so you know that is where I'm like build a

49:35 brand build your socials build everything affiliate marketing can come from that and you're not then tied into

49:42 h a Content heavy website because in this day and age with AI with everything

49:48 else Amazon don't want Affiliates out there because they're too big now they don't want to pay you um you know that

49:55 is the bottom line so I think affiliate from a website only perspective I would be like uh I don't know I think there's

50:02 easier ways and quicker ways to do it now uh we spoke a little bit about of

Influence of public speaking on career

50:11 course a lot about personal brand so my question still there couple of questions I like for my listeners um so how has

50:19 public speaking influence your career and personal brand and what advice would

50:24 you give to a uh let's say aspiring speaker in the digital marketing field I think uh

50:32 overall to answer the question how has it affected my life and and

50:38 business massively massively impacted it you know it's given me a much bigger

50:43 platform it's given me more customers it's given me more exposure for my brand you know everything's positive from a

50:49 from a public speaking perspective there is a slight other side

50:55 to it where you also get get a lot of hate and a lot of trolls and a lot of and so just be

51:03 mindful but I think overall you know 99% of it is all positive um I think you

51:11 know for me I I think there's a lot of SE speakers coming out now trying to do

51:18 the same thing and I would highly encourage anyone who's prepared to do it

51:23 to do it um I think when you stand on a stage and deliver a a nice talk and give

51:30 value I think you obviously get a good sense of satisfaction for yourself but you know when people look to you and go

51:37 I want to talk to him I want his training course I want his consultancy I want his Services your earnings become

51:44 unlimited and not everyone wants to pay me to do their SEO they may want me for

51:50 guidance consultation mentorship and I think it just explodes

51:55 your product offering to to people so can I help anyone with anything digital

52:03 related I'll be able to help you one way or another even if it's just taking an hour on the phone to show you how to do

52:09 something um so I think you know you open yourself up massively to those

52:14 opportunities and and sometimes it can be hard to get the speaking opportunities because there's so many

52:20 speakers now but I think you know there's always someone canceling there's always a way to smooth someone and get

52:26 your your way in the door and I think you know when I got the first one the first one was really difficult to get

52:33 but I think once people seen uh me speaking and felt that I offered some

52:38 value the next one was easier and easier and easier and now I don't need to pitch

52:44 people invite me to conferences so it has that weird pivot where they're like can you come here and speak and and you

52:51 know you're you're in demand um and I think that's that's obviously a very

52:56 nice H situation to get yourself into but again I was like most other aspiring

53:02 speakers I was scared I was you know I was going to have stage fright I I was sweating all

53:09 of these things and that's all natural to happen and so you're being there done the more

53:17 you do it the the more you become comfortable with it and I think it's a

53:22 one of the best things you know in terms of pushing myself outside my comfort zone um I think is the best thing that

53:30 could have happened you know pushing myself to something I didn't really want to do but I had to do it for making more

53:37 money essentially and and getting more awareness so so how do you I mean you

Balancing consulting, speaking, and projects

53:43 speak a lot of places you of course you travel a lot so how do you balance your time between Consulting public speaking

53:49 and managing your personal projects so obviously I've got a team

53:55 who do a lot of the work behind me um so that part is covered in terms of time a

54:01 lot of people make this assumption that I speak everywhere and which kind of can

54:08 look like that on H on social media the reality is I spoke in Dubai in February

54:16 I spoke in Birmingham in May I spoke in Milan in June and I spoke in Amsterdam

54:22 last week so I've only done four speaking events this year um now obviously in social media you see

54:30 clips from different podcasts you see clips from different speaking events and then people just make the assumption

54:36 that you're speaking all day every day um now yes I have spoken at like 20

54:41 events last year or whatever it was H and I have done that consistently for for a number of years H and I am

54:48 absolutely exhausted with it so my goal now is to do I think I'm scheduled to do

54:55 seven this year seven it's only seven days of a year um you know in terms of

55:02 speaking so I've only scheduled to do seven and I only ever really want to do

55:08 five or seven a year um going forward you know I've done what I had to do initially to to you know build my name

55:15 out there but I think for me it is important that I am home looking after

55:20 my business and and seeing my family and all of that kind of stuff so trying to get that balance is something something

55:26 I didn't have while I was trying to build the brand people would say I was away more than I was home um but that

55:33 that has to change and the goal is to cut down the volume of events and and

55:39 try and focus in more quality bigger events to to just retain the the brand

55:44 awareness and uh and if I get to manage that then I think I'm I'm in a very

55:50 comfortable place where I've got time to do everything you know record videos do YouTube and and you know more of the

55:57 stuff that that I actually enjoy doing because traveling and I'm sure you're the same na sitting in an airport or

56:03 staying in hotel by yourself isn't always fun you know it's it's nice to see be in the sunshine or whatever but

56:10 even when I travel to India um here this is the God's honest truth I left the UK

56:16 on a Tuesday and it was it took me about 20 hours to get to India I had to go from

56:22 the UK to Dubai then there was a change over then Dubai to to bangalo I was on the ground in Bangalore for 17

56:31 hours I wasn't even there for a full day and then back home now tell me what part

56:36 of that's fun it's not it was lovely meeting the people but friends saying come out for

56:44 dinner with me come and do this come and do that can I meet you the day before I wasn't there to do these things and even

56:50 friends here said to me what was India like and I'm like I went and I I got picked up at the airport and Tak him to

56:57 the hotel where the event was at I really didn't see India um

57:02 which I'd regret and I'd love to come back but just be the way the flights worked and and obviously Sam Rush

57:09 organized those flights it wasn't me that was organizing them to Su my schedule they they basically had a management company organizing the

57:16 flights and everything they basically said you're flying from here to there that's your flight so you know traveling

57:23 to India to talk H for half an hour or whatever I was given to

57:29 talk and shake hands with a few guys and leave you know that that's not great you

57:34 know it's it's not great fun so not all of this traveling thing is actually that enjoyable and it's great meeting the

57:40 people though but but yeah but the travel the whole process is

57:47 not right so right so you you talked about Matthew

Mentorship in the SEO industry

57:53 uh who you look when you were starting urgency and someone who you look to it

57:59 but who have been your Mentor in the SE industry and how have they influenced your

58:06 career um I wouldn't say there's one specific person that would be that I

58:13 think there's a combination of people you know I've got a lot of friends uh in the industry James dly uh being one of

58:21 them and you know he's a guy similar in age to me he's been doing SE a long time

58:28 uh do we help each other have I been in his office helping him has he been in my office helping me has he you know have I

58:35 been able to phone him and ask for you know I'm in a shitty situation how do I get out of this what do you think of

58:41 this what do you think of that you know he's one of a number of people um you

58:48 know I think trying to to base it on any one person would be hugely unfair and

58:55 like I said I've got a good network of friends you know in the UK we probably

59:01 have maybe 15 to 20 of us in a group chat where we all talk and help each

59:08 other H that's just the UK obviously we've got other group chats where you've got your Charles floats and uh various

59:15 other um established wellknown seos you know you've got H Ryan Stewart in there

59:21 there's kale Ru you know various other guys and have I been able to learn from

59:27 a lot of those guys and and being able to reach out to them and talk to them and and have beers with them and

59:32 everything else the answer is yes so I think um selfishly when we meet these

59:38 people or when you have the contact details or whatever if I don't know something that that I don't know Kyle Ru

59:45 for example is really good at can I approach him and and you message them or whatever um of course I can and and you

59:53 know I'd like to think I've I've maybe helped some of the these guys back as well so I haven't had one particular guy

59:59 I've had a lot of the kind of well-known names um you know I've done masterminds

1:00:05 with dity and uh you know all of these kind of guys as well Matthew Woodward

1:00:10 there's just too many to mention but all of the kind of top names you would expect all do go and get involved and

1:00:18 participate in these masterminds and we help each other um come out of it and it's what you take from it because I'm

1:00:24 looking at these guys going I'm really at this so dity come here you're

1:00:30 really good at that tell me more about this tell me more about that so you need to be selfish um and pull out of that

1:00:37 that person might not realize what you're pulling out of them they might just be genely talking to you and you're like this is really good right not

1:00:42 all down um so I've been fortunate enough to surround myself with the the

1:00:48 kind of top dogs in the industry and I think that's what you've got to aim for and you know when did the last see you

1:00:54 were you in Dubai what the last event I met we were I Met You in changai last oh

1:01:00 changai right so why would you go to changai right and you know as a you know

1:01:06 I'm talking about a generalist SEO you've went to shangai because you've seen a a list of a level players that

1:01:14 are going to be there right and you want to go and you want to talk you want to listen to these guys and you know and

1:01:22 obviously that is what we all have to do um you know and and even you know I was

1:01:29 speaking at shangai but did I speak to people did I learn anything of course I did you know why I'm not just there to

1:01:34 talk on a stage I'm you know if I need to talk to a guy about I don't know Finding vas or whatever it might be then

1:01:41 I'm going to hijack that person and learn what the hell I need to know so again

1:01:47 you have invested in yourself to to be able to do that and

1:01:53 uh that that is what you have that when I go back to say investing in yourself you've taken the time to fly to a

1:02:00 country and and and do that and and be surrounded by those guys right so you've done exact same

1:02:08 thing so so uh uh can you recommend any books or resources that have

Recommended SEO books

1:02:14 significantly uh influenced you in terms of your SEO digital or

1:02:20 entrepreneurship I'm going to be totally honest I am not a book guy um I of

1:02:26 course have listened to a lot of podcasts and and stuff like that um based on business and and

1:02:32 Entrepreneurship and everything else and you know one guy if you want a recommendation is Dan paa um an american

1:02:41 guy who is a trillion who stays in Scotland who talks a lot about business

1:02:47 rather than SE specifically and I think just his mindset his approach to things

1:02:52 uh I'm not he's a crazy guy as well by the way um very crazy but I think you know when I'm listening to guys like

1:02:58 that some of what he says makes perfect sense and stuff like that so I do listen

1:03:03 to a lot of different business people and it's more podcast though than than reading a book I'm not a I hate reading

1:03:10 book so okay okay just final few questions I'll

Emerging digital platforms

1:03:17 just take five more minutes yeah yeah no worries so so which emerging digital

1:03:22 platform or Technologies do you think have potential to uh revolutionize digital marketing in future I'm I'm sure

1:03:30 you would say search GPT but maybe other and you know I would love search

1:03:37 GT GTP come out and challenge Google um you know I think Google needs

1:03:42 competition they basically got the whole pie and they can do what they like which I think's dangerous

1:03:50 um you know what else could come out and revolutionize things

1:03:56 it's a very very hard thing to to to try and come up with you know yeah I

1:04:05 think right yeah it it's just I think what what I do

1:04:11 feel happens sometimes is Google is clearly old and struggled to deal with

1:04:17 newer technology and and to figure things out and sometimes I see things happen in the SEO space where certain

1:04:24 websites win when they shouldn't be winning based on logic um and I'd love for something

1:04:32 to be done about that where it's just a bit more rigid and you know whether that be

1:04:39 a new search engine or Google updates their servers or whatever the hell the problem is is you

1:04:46 know as to why they can't keep up with technology you know my understanding of it is Google was built and and no one

1:04:53 knew how big this was going to get and so it's been built and then all of this stuff's just laid on top of it and laid

1:05:00 on top of it and laid on top of it and laid on top of it where it's kind of broken if you like to some degree um and

1:05:08 a complete rebuild is in order to to do things properly now based on you know

1:05:14 technology that was built whenever Google was built I think you know the biggest thing here is it's sometimes not

1:05:21 a playe a a a a it doesn't seem like a a playing field if you like H when we are

1:05:28 playing uh you know you're doing your job and you see these kind of little hacks working and stuff you're like me should I go down that route or should

1:05:35 I not and and you know that's the main frustration I have but again a new search engine I think would would

1:05:41 certainly H help with a lot of that and but I'd also like to see Google refine

1:05:48 their own thing because I think Google's been good H overall you know I think we can all argue that the updates that they

1:05:54 give are a bit sketchy but I think overall it's been a good platform to to work with and um stuff like that but in

1:06:01 terms of other stuff uh I'd like to see AI imagery being a lot better um you

1:06:06 know I think when we look at AI some of the images that it populates are just horrible um but again I I genuinely do

1:06:14 believe that in six months time or a year's time we'll be mind blown and you'll be like you know that that

1:06:21 is amazing so you know I think uh technology is moving fast and and none

1:06:26 of us know what we want or or what we can do with it I think I'm just happy to

1:06:31 enjoy playing with it and learning more about it more than anything and how to utilize it in terms of making

Exciting new projects and ventures

1:06:40 money right so uh so are there any new projects or Ventures you are currently

1:06:46 excited about or working on you can share I the answer is is no I don't have

1:06:54 any new projects now tell tell you the reason why um for the last few years I have taken on too many projects um and

1:07:04 what what happened as a result is none of the projects actually were that

1:07:10 successful because you know I was spreading myself too thin so at the T of

1:07:15 this year I decided to shut down five of those projects um and not get involved

1:07:23 you know I was planning to launch a Marketplace to buy and sell websites um

1:07:29 at The Beginner's level do know people that just want to get into affiliate marketing um right I don't time to do

1:07:36 the day-to-day running of it and and I don't have the anyone surrounding me who

1:07:42 can do the day-to-day running of it so of course I could promote it but I need

1:07:48 the processes and I need the the person to be able to manage it in a day-to-day basis so that kind of business fell

1:07:54 apart um and there was a couple of other Ecom stores and stuff that I was

1:07:59 launching which kind of H didn't get that far off the ground and it's just

1:08:07 down to time you know I've I've got h two big Ecom stores that make me a lot of money I do my Consulting I do my

1:08:14 YouTube I do uh you know I've got a link building

1:08:19 agency which just specifically Services links which I also run um

1:08:25 I I've got that and is that enough for me to to live off a of course

1:08:33 it is you know I can I can lead a very happy life but I'm not against if the opportunity is right for me what I've

1:08:40 done or here's the problem I find na I have people who want to leverage me

1:08:47 because I've got a good fallowing and I can get exposure in sales I need someone who gives me that

1:08:54 opportunity to be good good at running the day-to-day running of a business for that to work fairly a lot of people have

1:09:01 the idea but they also don't want to do the day-to-day running of the business so they want to leverage my brand but it

1:09:07 leaves that gap on the other side or lack of investment to pay for that person and am I am I going to pay for a

1:09:17 person as well as offering the brand it would as well been 100% my business if that's the case um so these are the of

1:09:25 things that I have gotten myself into over the years and and it just doesn't

1:09:31 work you know there's not enough cash flow to invest into the new business um

1:09:36 for it to operate and I'm I can't push it out there and say it's the best business because we don't have the

1:09:42 person to do the the stuff so I think a lot of the opportunities that that come

1:09:48 towards ano person are waited against us as the SEO we're the ones that have a C

1:09:55 skill and a certain audience and everything else and I think other people want to leverage that but they're not

1:10:01 prepared to put their money in and am I going to put my money in as well as offering all of the value no because

1:10:08 then what what is the other person doing and that is the the basics uh of a

1:10:13 business failure and and I've had a high number of business failures over the years H not every business goes and

1:10:20 makes a lot of money um you know I've had more failures than I've had successes U and it's just trying to stop

1:10:26 that from happening just now so if I can refine polish up the businesses that

1:10:31 I've got I don't need anything else um so no I I don't want H to to do any new

1:10:38 projects this year but if you came to me this year and you had an amazing tool or

1:10:43 something could I promote that and could you deal with the developer and the

1:10:49 management of that too 100% And that would be a kind of match made in heaven

1:10:54 if you like you know B where I'm leveraging you because you've got a good tool that I could never create because I

1:10:59 don't have the skills and I can use my marketing skills to help you that that is a joint venture or a joint business

1:11:08 win right yeah but most of them are never that you know that most of the

1:11:13 opportunities are you're really good at this you can make me a ton of money and and and it just doesn't always work

1:11:20 that way because if I get fed up very quickly if something doesn't make money I will very quickly switch often not put

1:11:26 as much time and effort into it so um and I'm sure you're the same as well

1:11:32 absolutely this juncture of our life or career we both I mean it becomes the

1:11:39 same thinking you you don't want to just keep on carrying somebody else you want somebody else to have

1:11:45 equal uh equal Equity or let's say equal yeah so my last questions uh is there an

Future trends in SEO and Digital Marketing

1:11:53 advice or final thought you would like to share with with our audience about the future of SEO and digital

1:11:59 marketing I think H the only really thing I can add in terms of the future is I think you have to be open to change

1:12:08 I think you know it's clearly uh changed a lot in the last few years with AI and

1:12:14 everything else that comes out and you still see people fighting it um I think

1:12:19 you've got to embrace the technology you have to learn it I think a lot of people are illiterate when it comes to AI they

1:12:26 don't know how to put in good prompts um they don't understand you know how you

1:12:32 can feed AI information either and these are important things you know if AI is

1:12:37 going to be a thing and it's pulling data from third party sources on information about me for example I need

1:12:45 that information to be right or shed me in a positive manner and so I I think

1:12:51 you've got to try and learn and develop those skills and we done a lot of testing and are still doing a lot of

Role of AI in SEO advancements

1:12:57 testing how we feed my branded data into

1:13:02 Ai and again it still comes down to links and you know content about you on third party websites but again we need

1:13:09 to understand how we manipulate that stuff because it is going to be the future um there is no doubt about that

1:13:15 in terms of research in terms of content creation for social media whatever else

1:13:20 so I think we also need to understand how we get our into Ai and uh again

1:13:28 what is SEO that it's not just determined to Google would that mean optimizing to get yourself into AI if

1:13:35 that's what we have to do in five years time H in order to rank because you know

1:13:40 SG and all that kind of stuff that that's potentially going to bigger then

1:13:46 we need to understand how the we manipulate that to get ourselves in there and how do we get that to rank and

1:13:53 so I think you know you're going to have to evolve open your eyes and and play and try and

1:13:58 test things you can't just rely uh on Google and because we're clearly getting

1:14:04 shoved further down the list H from a Google perspective no one can argue that fact so you know things like uh trying

1:14:12 to try different options and in terms of how we get our data into AI is something

1:14:18 I'm currently testing and trying I don't know the full answer to it yet and and stuff like that but and we can L use

1:14:25 something like perplexity which gives you citations of where it's pulling the information from so it gives us a rough

1:14:32 idea if I place an article saying this there then perplexity is pulling it from

1:14:37 there where is chat GPT pulling it from and and you know all of the other H

1:14:42 potential um AI out there so again we we need to figure out how we can manipulate

1:14:49 all of that right so that would be my advice learn AI learn how to manipulate it and

Final advice for SEO professionals

1:14:57 H right build a personal brand and stay invested in Su

1:15:03 or um I think it's still a great source of traffic I'm not ready to say se's

1:15:09 dead just yet um but I think um still a lot of traffic to be had from

1:15:16 it still converts the best and I think it's an important part of overall

1:15:21 marketing mix but yeah don't get too deep in it don't be out in SE traffic I think you're in a dangerous place at

1:15:28 that point all right Craig uh it's been an

1:15:33 absolute pleasure having you on the show uh thank you for sharing your incredible insights and experience with us I'm sure

1:15:40 our listeners have learned a lot from you today and to our listeners thank you for tuning in don't forget to subscribe

1:15:46 to the agency Insider show for more exciting episodes with industry leaders like Craig until next time stay curious

Outro

1:15:53 and keep learning thank you