Podcast With Karl Hudson

How Karl Hudson Built a 7-Figure SEO Business in iGaming, The Agency Insider Show

Show Notes

Discover how Karl Hudson transformed his passion for SEO into a thriving 7-figure business in the highly competitive iGaming niche! 🌟 In this episode of the Agency Insider Show, we dive deep into Karl's journey from starting SEO at just 14 years old to building a robust business empire. Learn the strategies he used to rank websites, drive organic traffic, and master search engine rankings—even in one of the most challenging industries online.

🚀 Wondering how to rank your website #1? Curious about the step-by-step SEO strategies Karl used to dominate regulated and unregulated markets? This video reveals actionable tips on scaling your business, leveraging paid ads, building effective links, and staying ahead of SEO trends. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced SEO pro, these insights are your guide to achieving a #1 ranking and driving lasting growth.

Karl also shares his thoughts on AI’s impact on SEO, the power of exact match domains, and the importance of diversification in your business strategy. Plus, find out how to create SOPs, build partnerships, and structure your agency for success.

Don’t miss this powerhouse guide loaded with expert advice, practical tips, and the proven techniques you need to conquer the SEO game!

💡 Ready to take your SEO efforts to the next level? Watch now and get inspired to build your own success story like Karl Hudson!

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:54 - How Did You Get Into SEO?

06:47 - How Have You Adapted Your SEO Strategies?

12:11 - Importance of Exact Match Domains in SEO

17:29 - Why is Active SEO Crucial?

20:15 - What Are Exact Match Anchors?

21:31 - Transitioning from SEO Expert to Entrepreneur

24:45 - How Has Entrepreneurship Changed Your SEO Approach?

35:17 - Diversifying Your SEO Business

40:50 - How to Form Strategic Partnerships in SEO

45:32 - Why Choose the iGaming Niche for SEO?

47:18 - What Are the Biggest SEO Challenges in iGaming?

53:19 - How to Break Into iGaming SEO Successfully?

55:20 - Link Building Strategies for Regulated Industries

57:25 - Can AI-Generated Content Replace Human Writers?

59:39 - What Tools Do You Use for AI-Driven Content and SEO?

01:01:10 - How to Create Effective Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

01:05:13 - How to Scale an SEO Agency?

01:07:42 - Speed Quiz: Quick SEO Questions

01:09:02 - Last Piece of SEO Advice

01:09:47 - Where to Find Karl Hudson Online

01:10:01 - Exploring White Label SEO Services

01:10:18 - Outro

Transcript

Introduction

0:01 welcome to the agency insider show where we talk to some of the sharpest minds in the digital marketing SEO and business

0:07 growth I'm your host Nabit Koshell and today I have an exciting guest who is an expert in the world of SEO paid ads and

0:15 I gaming card Hudson [Music] [Applause]

0:24 [Music] [Applause] [Music] Carl welcome to the show Hi Net how you

0:32 doing I am good How are you Yeah Yeah obviously always good It's always nice to get on podcasts and things Um

0:40 obviously it's a bit depressing out I mentioned earlier in the the weather in the UK although we have a sunny day

0:46 right now so that's very rare Um but yeah things are good Okay And for those

How Did You Get Into SEO?

0:54 who might not be familiar with your journey can you give us a quick overview of how you got into SEO and the digital

1:00 marketing space Yeah so got involved in SEO when I was 14 I'm 33 now nearly 34

1:07 Um kind of fell into it because of parents helping parents out and ended up

1:14 being on forums That's kind of down the journey I kind of met Charles later on

1:19 um ended up getting involved in affiliate marketing and made pretty

1:25 decent money back then for you know very young age and then ended up getting

1:31 involved in a gambling um like a white label gambling operator later on that

1:37 went really well for about seven years and then just recently exed out of that and then in in that timeline as well

1:44 created search and obviously I have plenty of other assets and things with

1:49 me main business partner James Okay Now uh of you started SU at the

1:56 young age of 14 So what actually sparked your interest in this field and how did you manage to learn and excel at such a

2:03 young age Yeah So what got us involved in it was primarily me my parents were

2:09 like self-employed like like life coaches or um NLP was the main term back

2:15 then but obviously now NLP stands for natural language processing or at least in this industry not neurallinginguistic

2:21 programming Um so they were doing a lot of like NLP training and stuff like this

2:27 And obviously the internet was very much you know it was still dialogue and stuff back then So like or it was just moving

2:34 slightly to broadband So like it was all very new and they realized that they

2:41 needed to try and rank higher Obviously um I was then tasked basically my

2:47 parents went you're very good at computers because I used to game a lot I used to always be on games You can learn

2:54 how to do this So they kind of just chuck me in at the deep end Um it

2:59 started just on forums I think at the time it was like Black Hat World Um oh

3:06 what's the other one Digital It's probably still going I'll have to There's like a digital marketing

3:11 form which was a very very old There was one more right And then there was web master world Right Web master world

3:18 Exactly And then like kind of just starting there in the deep end and then I went down the road of like automation

3:24 tools because obviously at that point you could very much just spam and you would rank Um so very quick success rate

3:31 when it came to the um it was digital point that was it digital right um so yeah I was very

3:39 active on all of them and then got involved in automation tools like sick submitter at the time I don't even think

3:45 that's a thing anymore Magic Submitter Zuma GSA you name it I pretty much tried

3:51 it Scrape Box I was running it And then obviously fast forward a few years

3:57 Penguin hit That was always pleasant I think I woke up to about 15 manual

4:02 action penalties for pure spam Um so that was fun

4:07 Um and then yeah I just learned obviously at that point you you didn't realize you were doing anything wrong

4:13 because it was kind of just the way the system was played and you and additionally if you were just pure white

4:20 hat back then you wouldn't like you didn't rank So it was kind of like you had to do what you had to do to win So

4:28 obviously changed the approach still very much involved with all of like learning the the whole new wave of SEO

4:35 and obviously since core rise and all of this it's been changing even more so obviously when it comes to like

4:40 semantics the algorithm leak and all of this um so yeah just forever learning

4:46 when it the amazing thing with SEO is it's all what I love it's all about testing data and improving user signals

4:54 on the site and that's something that we've always looked at doing obviously the better the user signals you know

5:00 ideally the better the customer on the website etc the more money you're making So that's kind of always been the

5:06 strategy The one weakness I've always had is like funnel optimization I'm very good at getting users onto a site but

5:13 yeah trying to keep them nurture them throughout the process is is a weakness I'm currently working on So that's yeah

5:21 that's kind of how I got into the whole game of SEO And um fast forward a few

5:27 years it was actually a friend was he'd got investment from a a big investor I'd

5:34 pretty much hadn't retired but I was very much not do I was 24 year old clubbing partying all the time And he

5:42 kind of said "Look you need to go and meet this guy." So I went and had a coffee with him and he owned these

5:47 casinos They were doing like negative 20 50k a month Bad bad bad numbers and

5:55 um essentially just didn't know or had an SEO in but you know it just wasn't

6:01 working So I kind of came in and started helping and then that transpired end up

6:06 having shares in the business and that kind of blew up to I think we got them at the peak when I was there was about

6:13 2.4 mil 2.7 mil a month somewhere around that Um so it was it was good numbers

6:20 Obviously primarily UK focused um because it was a regulated market So a

6:25 lot of people often come to me and start asking about you know the unregulated marketplaces Well I don't have a huge

6:31 amount of experience in them I do help some people rank but obviously I I tended to rank in the the regulated

6:39 markets Um and that then that's it Fast forward the journey and I'm I'm now here

How Have You Adapted Your SEO Strategies?

6:47 Okay Now now can you also share some of the most significant changes you have witnessed in SEO over the years and how

6:55 have you adopted your strategies to keep up I know you mentioned penguin but besides penguin hit all of us So yeah

7:02 Yeah So the main if I'm being honest my strategy has never really changed much I I was always

7:10 the the one key element has utilizing tools now in automation processes So

7:16 like for instance I used to have a change log for every single site that I worked on and that change log would

7:21 literally every single day would be date ordered It would track uh well manually track for the page you've edited what

7:28 you edited on that page and then there'd be a timeline of when you wouldn't retouch that page for at least seven

7:34 days You'd then see an check search console This was all manually Check

7:40 search console to see if that page had an impress impression increase And then

7:45 if it did great If it didn't revert the changes Try a different change If it did

7:51 let's continue with the changes maybe add more to it add more keywords on And that's kind of like what I was doing But

7:57 now obviously you've got the likes of SEO crawl or SEO testing.com like where

8:04 all of this is kind of the exact same thing but it's all you can very quickly lay it out and do a test like I I've

8:10 been annotated onto one of them and you know I've made this change and it will actually track it and email you to say

8:17 that was a a successful change or not It'll also tell you new keywords that

8:22 have emerged which was something I was always missing So like if it's them then picking up brand new impressions for new

8:28 keywords stuff like this So I would definitely say that part of the process has changed But in general you know just

8:34 you're still building links You're trying to get as good links as possible So whether or not that's from digital PR

8:40 whether or not it's from you know manual outreach to relative sort of sites Um

8:47 yeah that process hasn't really changed at all That's pretty much been the same process from day dot I dare say it's

8:53 maybe got a bit quicker with AI and the tools like pitchbox and stuff like that

8:58 Obviously originally it was all kind of just being done out of Gmails So it was

9:04 all very very slow and hard to track Um obviously nowadays it's all in pitchbox databases

9:10 I'm busy looking at developing some type of AI system to even automate that management side of the database and

9:18 continual connections with the website owners to update pricing and stuff like that Um so yeah I would say the the

9:26 game's changed in the sense that I would say content's more king nowadays but

9:32 backlinks still have a huge place Um at the end of the day AI obviously's made

9:37 content production really simple and really easy but the problem is going to be is the differentiating factor which

9:44 will be the back links Um so I do think like back links obviously are still

9:50 fundamental Most sites I build always get links sent to them They never ever

9:55 sit there for very long without any links And if they're not moving at all guess what I send some links and all of

10:01 a sudden it starts moving So that's kind of the approach in general So typically

10:08 start start a brand new website have the team do a topical map It's nowhere near the same level of detail as core is

10:17 Um I don't have that amount of time Usually I export as much as I can from

10:23 various different tools especially when it's a new site a new niche and I might not have access to say search console

10:29 data It's a lot easier if you do have search console data Um sometimes with

10:34 that in mind what I do is I launch the website and utilize Google paid ads and

10:40 a lot of them have like free coupon codes for like 2,000 pound or something Spend 2,000 get 2,000 So what I'll tend

10:48 to do there is just set up a very quick campaign typically phrase match and put

10:54 in the keywords that AHS is telling me to use and then wait and see what keywords come out And then that with you

11:01 know £4,000 worth of data you're kind of getting a very good picture of keywords

11:06 and what converts which is the key for personally for anything SEO it's it's

11:12 not it's not all about impressions and traffic It's about how are you making the money Where's the money being made

11:18 Right And then you can have the best You can have a a customer come to you a website owner or a company company owner

11:26 and you can get him ranking for all of the words under the sun but if he's not making money guess what He's probably

11:31 going to leave right He's going to be unhappy right And it's the same for any business owner You know you're looking

11:37 for that return on investment in the marketing spend Um and it also puts you

11:42 in a very precurious position because obviously as an SEO you're looking to do the best Let me

11:51 quickly mute that You're looking to do the best you can do Um when it comes to ranking and

11:58 obviously you might have done your job perfectly well but then the issue is yeah they're not making money

12:06 So it becomes an issue Right Now you have mentioned the importance of EMD

Importance of Exact Match Domains in SEO

12:13 exact match domains in some of your previous interviews Now how relevant do you think they are in today's SEO

12:19 landscape and what other factors do you consider crucial for rankings

12:24 Yeah so when it comes to EMD EMDs were like a

12:29 a fundamental crucial part of our gambling strategy Um it's still to this

12:36 day most of the AMDs still rank very well I would say when it comes to

12:42 website I tend to go for AMDs over any other because you just seem to get a

12:48 little bit easier ranking Um a little easier time ranking for the main

12:53 keywords especially if it is a exact match for the main keyword might be an LSI keyword which obviously might not be

13:00 the main target keyword but again you'd rank better for that LSI than you would the main target So I would say it's like

13:07 in our strategy it's quite fundamental Obviously with DY we're teamed up on a hell of a lot of local businesses and

13:13 most of these local sites are all um EMD style um domains and yeah we just see we

13:21 see rankings for minimal minimal RDS So So you've invested anywhere up to $1,000

13:28 on a domain in the sense of like building links to it and yeah you're

13:33 getting rankings you're getting um all the local pages shown up and it's starts

13:41 to generate inquiries within you know six to eight weeks It's pretty

13:47 um however when we've went strategies that I think the main thing for it is just time So if you're wanting to build

13:54 a brand and so for instance my brand search route that's something that's

14:00 been around since 2018 and it's just forever it's just a slog forever

14:08 building links forever trying to you know get digital PR trying to build good

14:14 content improve the user journey test like it's just very very difficult and guess what the brand is only it's search

14:21 room so it's not like an exact match like linkbuilder.io for instance whereas

14:27 they've came in they've came in pretty quick They've went quite aggressive and they ranked really quickly for a lot of

14:32 terms Um don't get us wrong like there's nothing wrong with that strategy I just personally in this space when it comes

14:39 to companies that prefer brand um and I think long-term the brands will win over

14:46 AMD When it comes to like the local side a lot of people just want a quick answer

14:52 And I think this is why AMD sometimes works Sometimes people who aren't the greatest with computers might actually

14:58 just type in and we do actually see this quite often is direct search So they

15:03 just literally type in um carpet cleaning manchester.co.uk and they've actually

15:09 just type that into their browser without even visiting your website like without knowing it's a website But they

15:14 just know it's aco.uk UK and not realized and then guess what your website loads Um and yeah so I would say

15:22 EMDs are pretty fundamental Obviously you've got um within gambling There's a

15:28 lot going on now with ODys and the expired domain market Now we do do a lot

15:36 within expired domains and you know acquiring something that can hack It's

15:41 all about saving the time right So we can start a brand new site and we can spend especially if it was say in the

15:47 gambling niche you'd spend thousands and thousands on links in the gambling niche because soon as anyone hears the word

15:53 backlink in casino the price goes up three times Um so yeah yeah you can hack a lot of

16:00 time and a lot of money there by acquiring a domain that might already have all of these juicy bits from all

16:07 the different sites uh like Forbes and whatnot and Wikipedia links and etc All

16:13 the links that are kind of like hard to get in gambling Um they're the sort of

16:18 big money uh domains that you kind of want to try and acquire because you're just getting those extra ticks And yeah

16:25 Alex at Odys big shout out to him He's been great for that Obviously we used

16:30 him for years in the gambling industry We still use him now for some of the affiliate adventures that we go go into

16:36 and sometimes team up with them as well If he finds a really good domain and he's charging a norm and a leg for it

16:42 then we sometimes team up Um but yeah it just all depends on appetite and you

16:48 know how quick I think anyone getting into SEO and expecting it to be like a

16:54 instant hit It's just not it's not like that anymore I think SEO like don't get me

17:00 wrong I've got like we just did something recently and it's like it it's been pretty instant the stuff we've been

17:06 doing recently but it's very few and far between stuff like that

17:12 It's very rare that you know you launch a website and out the box it indexes page one for like a pretty decent key

17:19 Like that is just rare That doesn't usually happen And then there's a there's a time

17:24 period of nursing it and building it up and all of the stuff that SEOs just have

17:30 to do people try to skip And this is the main issue I think of the industry

17:36 is I I go on quite a few consultancy calls and the amount of times I've been on a consultancy call and I'm like right

17:42 what's the SEO company that you've had for two years doing Like I've got access to say search console The search

17:48 console's on a negative trajectory for two years Impressions are going down Clicks are going down And he's like I

17:54 don't know I'm like well they're clearly not doing any tests because they should be testing each page with new page

18:01 titles new new elements on the page to try and improve those impressions to get the click and like if they're not

18:07 providing that data each month then what are they actually doing for the oh well I get I get a report and this is the

18:14 thing I hate So I anyone who does if I do consultancy by anyone I don't give

18:19 reports My report is we go into your search console you'll see impressions go up you see clicks go up That's that's my

18:27 job right That's that is what I do I don't give a 60page report trying to

18:34 fluff the client into why I've used an automated tool to do all of these meta descriptions and meta t You see what I

18:40 just I just don't do that That isn't my thing And yeah that's kind of like

18:46 that's the annoyance with the industry I think is that there's a ton of agencies out there like I know some agencies and

18:54 obviously not going to mention who but for nearly six to eight months they didn't even have they were selling an

18:59 SEO service had SEO contracts and had no active SEO in the business

19:05 Wow It's like I don't I don't get it It's just I I do not understand They

19:11 were giving the customer a nice report and obviously I I get it in the sense

19:17 that if that customer was doing paid ads which they were those paid ads are going to have positive user signals We

19:23 especially know that from the nav boost because of that obviously there is going to be an improvement in SEO You know the

19:31 two do sort of marry up quite well And obviously then they're giving them a nice glossy report which is showing this

19:37 improvement but actually very minimal SEO if any SEO has actually been done

19:43 It's all just because of the paid ads and what the brand would be gaining naturally from doing paid ads

19:50 anyway I I assume you've probably seen similar right It's like wow

19:56 it's just crazy what like some people I just I personally don't have the balls to do that to someone Like if I'm

20:03 working with them I'm working with them There's there's got to have some ethics obviously at that Exactly Exactly Um but

20:11 yeah I would say that's when it comes to like AMDs and stuff very very pro AMD

What Are Exact Match Anchors?

20:16 domains I know in recent years it probably got more difficult in the sense

20:21 that you know previously you you'd get it would be quite lenient Um when it comes to like anchor texts and things

20:27 I'm very much of the opinion um let's say it's carpet clean in Manchester

20:34 uh.co.uk The word carpet cleaner Manchester without any spaces would be

20:39 classed as the brand term and obviously.co.uk will be the URL If it

20:45 has the spacing I would then still class that as an exact match anchor and that's

20:50 kind of how I but there's lenience there So it's an exact match anchor but obviously there is still a connection

20:55 with the brand Um but I'm very much I focus primarily just on that and I I've

21:02 seen great success and I mean in some verticals where like like slot games verticals where we've launched a website

21:09 and we've built 70 RDS to it and it's I think it's still position one for it

21:15 8,000 search volume month in the UK It's Yeah And that's seven years on

21:21 So it's still going pretty strong and not much link building at all other than the initial stuff and then obviously

21:27 internal income on the back end So so let's let's talk a bit about

Transitioning from SEO Expert to Entrepreneur

21:33 entrepreneurship and business growth Now you have successfully transitioned from

21:38 being an SEO expert to a full-fledged entrepreneur What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during this

21:44 transition That's a to be fair it's a really good question Um so the main challenge that I

21:52 have and I still have to this day is I actually really enjoy the SEO work So I

21:58 actually just I love SEO I live and breathe SEO So then the problem is is like the

22:05 entrepreneur stuff Although obviously it's great for the businesses and the money at the end of the day I just want to sit in front of me screen in a locked

22:13 room no one disturbing us and just carry on playing with playing with me computer

22:18 basically Um I would say that's been the biggest challenge is coming out of my

22:24 show You've probably seen us on quite a few YouTubes and stuff nowadays doing some talks on stage and a lot of that is

22:31 I only do Q&As's primarily because I almost feel like anyone can prepare a

22:37 presentation and present Not many people can get up and on the fly have a big

22:42 group of people ask them any any question at all and I'll either know the answer or if I don't I'll say I I don't

22:48 know the answer but I can find out Um and I I like that approach because in my

22:53 eyes it feels like there's authenticity with the person whereas you know a company could just send a sales

23:00 representative here's your presentation here's the data The sales guy has no idea about any of it He's just reading

23:06 off the presentation might have a bit of flare but the reality is he is not an SEO And that's like it's kind of the

23:14 approach we've adopted is you know do podcasts with like the likes of yourself and um other players in the industry and

23:20 then at the same time go and do Q&As on stage you know share we're very much we

23:26 share a lot of knowledge We're in a lot of testing groups Um and yeah I would say that's the

23:32 hardest part that I struggle with is the having to go and mingle because I'm I'm

23:38 naturally introverted as most I think most are Exactly So it's very difficult

23:45 and yeah it's very difficult to I would say over the years as that's been

23:50 developing I've become more extroverted in the sense that most people would probably look at me and think "No he's

23:56 he's an extrovert." I'm definitely not is very much something I've learned and

24:01 have to continually learn and practice is um like for instance even this this

24:07 podcast I knew it was booked in it's like half nine I'm thinking oh can I get out of this is there an excuse I can

24:13 come up with like just because I'm nervous and don't want to go on a podcast it's crazy it's just how the

24:19 head comes in and starts sort of I don't know sabotaging yourself I guess is the

24:25 word you know but The funny part is once you get into it then you actually it's

24:30 just the start which you feel I could feel ah I have another podcast to do you get I'm just being honest then you

24:37 really enjoy doing it talking with the like-minded people and learning different stories so that's what I love

24:43 about doing podcast now so what made you what obviously I'm going to divert that question back to you as well like what

How Has Entrepreneurship Changed Your SEO Approach?

24:49 made you obviously successful business with page traffic and stuff like that obviously that's like an agency right

24:55 SEO agency How how have you went from SEO to entrepreneur and how's that developing

25:02 for you So I started SEO in back in 2002 So nice long long time ago Yes long

25:12 time ago And that's where I founded page traffic So the bad thing is this this is

25:17 my first job So I had never done any job I was just out of my B school and started doing the SEO Then people

25:23 started contacting from the US UK most of the agencies started white labeling services to me I didn't know how to do I

25:31 added up people But honestly I'm a bad bad boss Good SEO

25:39 Boss is SEO That's the problem So I'm still learning But uh so then I I

25:47 of course I started I was I am still an introvert but the only thing is I like enjoy talking specifically talking about

25:54 SEO So I spoke in a lot of conferences in India across I mean of course for 23

25:59 years you would have done everything Yeah Then I I I like doing it I like testing I I I still jump out of my chair

26:06 for a shiny new shiny tool Ah I'm going to try this So I don't know I have this

26:11 sometime at night I I'm just drum object syndrome we all have So

26:18 it's currently why I I I go down some rabbit holes with this stuff Yeah The

26:23 problem is you don't have the time a day So then it's distracted you down a rabbit hole that you should not be down

26:30 and there's a a pile of stuff building up When you come back out the rabbit hole you're like a for God's sakes

26:38 So I still have like I'm sure you also would have jillions of LTD lying wasteful on AppSumo We would buy Oh

26:45 we're going to try this I probably not even open it more than once

26:51 No I probably I've got that exact same problem My main crotch and I was just

26:56 actually chatting to Craig Campbell yesterday on a podcast and um my main

27:02 one is domains I hoard domains So we're a domain register in the UK as well

27:09 And I'm always every day the drop list comes Oh oh is there any good EMDs in

27:14 here Even if I'm not I have no intention of going into this niche I'm so new in

27:20 domains that I've every year went I'm going to build a website on that and just never ever built a website And I

27:26 mean I think I'm up to about over a thousand domains or something I know in our registar account we've got over

27:32 three and a half thousand but like personal domains that I own I'm about a

27:37 thousand of which I could probably say 200 maybe have sites on maybe a little

27:45 bit more than that and yeah but every year I still renew them every year is

27:51 renew something new exactly and then I know I know now what I'm doing is the

27:58 plan or what what I started doing last year was I just had the team whenever

28:04 they're quiet they just launch a site and then it got it actually got to a point it was really funny So there was a

28:10 um like a laser eye surgery website like a local one and all of a sudden one of

28:16 the businesses that I run started getting random inquiries for laser eye

28:21 surgery We're not laser eye surgeons obviously And I'm like I don't understand where these inquiries are

28:27 coming from but someone's put a number or email address on somewhere And then actually later on a few weeks later I

28:34 find out from the team we're ranking like number one for one of the main keywords in laser eye surgery And I'm

28:39 like ah And then it had the a redirect number which was to this other business

28:45 Like they hadn't changed out the number Like that's where they're

28:51 going So that's like just stuff that happens and obviously you just have to deal with that as and when it comes It's

28:57 obviously nice that it happens Um but yeah Yeah So so same been the case I

29:03 have I have ended up testing and optimizing for so many wrong keywords It's Instagram hack Instagram 50k hack I

29:12 don't even know what the hell that means Instagram 50k hack We we started ranking number one for that I mean every day

29:19 somebody will say my Instagram is locked Can you help me this lock I don't know I

29:24 for for fun if you if you type uh Google YouTube office India uh our office will

29:30 come up I'm scared of getting loads of like

29:36 people wanting support Yeah And my sales guy said "What the hell have you done?"

29:41 I said "Sorry I'm going to undo it all." Yeah That's not good That is not good

29:48 So done But it was just a fun testing I was trying Okay Can we get half a million extra traffic And imagine we are

29:54 a SEO agency and we were getting half a million monthly traffic Or should you

29:59 That's a crazy thing as well What what annoys me sometimes with the the agencies is like they don't even try to

30:05 rank The amount of like especially in the UK the amount of marketing companies that don't even rank for like their

30:12 terms or don't even try to rank and I'm like how can people go to someone who

30:21 doesn't rank their own stuff You see what I mean It's like uh I just

30:26 don't understand that logic Um yeah it's just it's just an

30:32 interesting interesting journey I think Yes So funny thing is when I meet people

30:38 in uh India a lot of people come to me and say when they were learning mine is the website they were

30:44 learning from and they would always why I don't lose my ranking So for almost 15 years we were number one for our term 15

30:51 years and I would I don't see it too much but I still show we still ranking top 10 for many of the keyword and

30:58 everybody would say we look towards you because why don't you move out every update and you're still there Well key

31:06 as well right is like some people don't understand that like in my head as long as you're on page one that's a good

31:12 result Um because page one obviously more factors come into play Like you

31:18 really need to be fundamentally on top of your user signals to be able to crack

31:24 you know top five Then when you're in top five to be able to crack top three it's all about user signals clickthrough

31:31 rates dwell time you know what I mean Like all of these signals come into play

31:36 Like that's great but sometimes you have to also remember is you also got another job to do which is all the customers

31:43 right So as long as you're on page one that means what Out of two million or

31:50 three million other SEO companies you're in the top 10 in the world Come on You

31:56 know what I mean Yes And that's kind of like the view that we took on the gambling as well Like I'm going to be

32:03 honest our gambling budget when I first started was I think maybe £2,000 a month to rank

32:10 for like online slots casino online casino like all these huge terms And we

32:16 did it but by god it was like it was hard It took so much time Eventually

32:23 obviously our budgets went up considerably I think at at the point of me exiting we were maybe spending 50k a

32:28 month on like links and SEO and stuff Um we were spending a way load I I

32:36 actually think to be fair the true scale in that business came when paid ads We

32:43 we got a good paid ads guy in who was like top top notch and he just his focus

32:49 was paid ads paid ads paid ads And the growth that we seen from doing the paid

32:54 ads from the SEO side as well as obviously a return on investment from the paid ads was just exponential

33:02 Um so I would obviously always advise like anyone who's planning on doing SEO

33:07 is almost you have like a a combined strategy even I would even say go for

33:13 less of an SEO budget initially especially if it's a new site and spend your money in paid ads because that data

33:20 is going to only help you work out where you make money quicker because the problem with SEO is it might take you

33:26 six to eight months so six to 12 months to rank for a keyword and guess what we've got you're number one but you're

33:32 not making any money whereas you could have found that out within two weeks on paid ads right Um so sometimes people go

33:41 "Oh yeah but it's big money to spend." Well yeah but that data is invaluable

33:46 and you might actually make money back from it straight away Like it could generate a good lead Um I know a guy

33:53 that um I help quite often a good friend of mine He's in like commercial gas

34:00 industry and man you wouldn't believe the CPAs that this guy has like as in

34:06 like 70 pound a click It's as high as sometimes And you think that that is for

34:12 a small business that is hard to compete That's like crazy to compete in And

34:17 obviously it's because he's up against the likes of British Gas and you know

34:22 all these other big giant com energy companies that just don't mind spending

34:27 a few million a month on paid ads right Um so that's been quite an interesting

34:33 journey for him is obviously he's now wanting with the data we've got going into the SEO route but it's took like

34:41 two years of collecting the data because he just didn't have the budget to be able to get high enough in the like the

34:48 ad rank because obviously everyone else is out bidding him So he was on page one but he was never really able to get

34:55 position one because it was just it was too much cost Um but but in time

35:01 obviously you take the data take what you can and then just learn from that and hopefully he's still getting enough

35:07 leads to make money from it if that makes sense

35:12 But yeah it's yeah it's been an interesting journey so far Okay now moving on Now in your

Diversifying Your SEO Business

35:21 experience what are the key elements of diversification that SEO professionals should should consider when expanding

35:27 their businesses one Of course you mentioned the pay-per-click but are there other areas as well Obviously it

35:33 very much depends on the business type So in the gambling we went down um TV So

35:40 we ran TV ads Um and again it just all depends on what type of business are you

35:47 I wouldn't necessarily say an SEO agency should run TV ads because chances are you're not going to attract very

35:52 interested people you know whereas the likes of say YouTube ads I I know myself

35:58 personally I spend a hell of a lot of time just with YouTube open I've got two screens here YouTube open on this screen

36:05 in my uh whilst I'm doing work If there's then a YouTube ad that

36:10 keeps popping up and it's of interest to us chances are it might actually be caught in So yeah it's just very

36:18 dependent on industry I'm very pro anything traffic So if you can get social media traffic if you can do

36:24 organic social media pin interest anything that has some volume of traffic

36:29 that isn't relying on Google So Reddit for instance you know if you can

36:35 monetize Reddit ads guess what You've got a business that is no longer rely relying on an

36:41 SEO instability of rankings Um and I think a lot of the time if you've got a

36:47 business that is fully relying on SEO you don't have a business right You have a bomb that is just ticking and waiting

36:54 to go off Um so if you are ranking really well fantastic let's now do a

37:00 paid ads campaign social media campaign retargeting campaign to try and drive

37:07 more revenue from other funnels because then that way it's like for instance a a guy I know very very well um he runs

37:15 like a like waste management business and there was a time a few

37:21 years ago he got hit big in an update and since then we've recovered but at

37:28 that time luckily died about 12 six six to 12 months but before that I told him

37:34 to start doing paid ads Okay And he literally said that saved his entire

37:39 business That advice of start running paid ads Yes It wasn't as profitable But

37:46 when he lost his SEO he didn't all of a sudden wake up and have to say to 10

37:53 staff members you're all sacked um like it's just helped him survive and

37:59 obviously now his SEO is coming back his paid ads are running like almost

38:05 perfectly So it's now it's he's got a bigger system of generating even more money and wanting to expand the business

38:11 into other areas of the country Um and that's kind of like the that's what you

38:18 anytime I've worked with someone usually I'm usually pretty good friends with them or at least become quite good friends with them That's always the goal

38:25 um for me personally is to see them succeed and like grow more than just

38:30 what this little SEO website is I almost see myself nowadays

38:37 is like a a marketing expert as opposed to just an SEO expert Like I will admit

38:43 I'm not You come to me for social media ads and I'll probably send you elsewhere because I'm I'm not the social media guy

38:52 but I I know people who are you know what I mean Like I obviously I'm in the circles where I happen to know quite a

38:58 few good social media ads guys but don't ask me to do it Like I I wouldn't accept

39:04 it Even if it was I would say go here At the end of the day it's an analogy that

39:09 Douly uses quite a bit You wouldn't get let's say you're building a house and

39:14 you need the roof done You're not going to get the plumber to do the roof You're going to get the roofer to do the roof

39:20 It's very much the same analogy I can do paid ads Again I can do paid ads probably on a lower level I'm not going

39:26 to go into like uh the Google shopping and stuff like that but I can do like Pmax campaigns and all of that sort of

39:33 phrase match all that sort of stuff But I just don't I haven't really done much with shopping ads So again if it's a big

39:40 e-commerce store who need to do shopping guess what I'm probably not the paid ads guy But if you're just a a lead genen

39:47 business who's wanting to generate some leads yeah I can probably quite easily do your paid ads stuff as well as the

39:53 SEO Like that's kind of the the root Obviously I don't take on a lot of um

39:58 with consultancy stuff I in general try to avoid it It has to be basically someone who a I like and b they will not

40:06 pester me if they pester me they very quickly no longer work with me Um and

40:12 that's kind of it's a hard it's sometimes hard for business people to like understand that But time's money

40:20 and at the end of the day if they're questioning what I'm doing they don't trust us So if they don't trust us guess

40:26 what There's there's no point in doing business together Give me three months I guarantee you'll see impressions and

40:32 clicks increase That that's simply it Like that's kind of the strategy I adopt

40:39 right now You've talked about of course you know somebody as social ads if you don't know the social media part Now you

40:47 also previously have uh in other interview mentioned the importance of partnerships in business growth Now what

How to Form Strategic Partnerships in SEO

40:54 advice would you give to agencies owners looking to form strategic partnerships

41:00 Um so with strategic part obviously just know I like to know the people So um

41:07 most partners that I have for instance Dulie I've known for it must be like 10 years now I've known him for a very very

41:14 long time We only became business partners in

41:21 20 2020 maybe 2021 It might be a little bit after that to be fair I think it was

41:28 2021 he came into into um the search room and then that's kind of where our

41:33 business partnerships kind of flourished We've got an investment company and stuff like that But you know that there was best part of five five six years

41:41 where I hadn't done business with them I've just been to various conferences masterminds out had a beer with him

41:48 multiple times I always laugh and say if you can't share a beer with someone you probably shouldn't do business with them

41:55 Um and I know some people I don't even drink much myself anymore So if you

42:00 can't sit and have a coffee and enjoy the company of someone you probably shouldn't do business with them And I

42:06 think that's that's sometimes trusting your gut is more important than anything

42:11 else If you have you know your gut intuition will just have a you'll have a gut feeling of whether or not this

42:18 person is good or bad And that's not necessarily that they you know in general they probably are a good person

42:25 It's just not it might not be a good match of mindsets when it comes to you

42:30 two working together You could have a you know banging heads a lot

42:36 Um and yeah I think also finding partners who who are strong at your

42:44 weaknesses that's like fundamental because like for instance Dulie is amazing when it comes to money and

42:51 business So he's he's the guy you want in the room who will three 4x a business

42:57 deal in terms of monetary value whereas I'm the guy who just wants to do the work So I'm very happy to not have the

43:04 the argument over the money Just let me get to work type thing So that

43:10 compliments Usually I go very quiet whenever money's being mentioned and he's the guy who stepped up because he

43:15 knows that's not a strong point of mine and I'm very much aware that that isn't a strong point of me either You know I

43:22 very much just roll over very quickly I'm I'm not very good when it comes to disputes Um but I think it that's again

43:30 what makes the partnership work It's what makes together you grow because I

43:36 will admit like I have got better at that since partnering with Duly learning from him Likewise he's probably got

43:43 better at actually you know getting structure in place SOPs in place for the

43:48 team to actually do the work and deliver Um so yeah I think that's the fundamental is you work out what you're

43:55 weaking and and be brutally honest with yourself as well because the amount of people I I've been to conferences and

44:01 they think they have no weaknesses and I'm like well that in itself is a major flaw and a weakness because you're

44:09 actually just overconfident which probably means you pour in multiple things you're just not willing to admit

44:14 it Um I think that's fundamental as well you know being honest You know what area

44:20 of the business chances are I think a good way of identifying that as well find something that takes you a long

44:27 time to do and you just can't be bothered to do it Like for instance we mentioned earlier with the podcast it's

44:34 like it's hard for me to do that But the problem with that is I can't outsource that to someone because I've got the

44:39 knowledge So I have to do that I have to grow and do that But guess what in your business If there's an area of the

44:45 business like for instance accounts that you just hate doing then get a

44:50 bookkeeper right Like and that's kind of like the approach It's like find what you dislike

44:57 in your business And guess what If it's a big fundamental part like with I I'd imagine with you and your agency you

45:04 know if you need someone who's just top-notch of paid ads and that isn't yours is SEO guess what part become a

45:12 partner with a paid ads guy who is going to run the entire paid ads side of the business He might take a commission

45:18 basis or like a percentage of profit basis He might just get physical shares in the company It all depends on you

45:25 know how how you end up structuring the company But that's how you would look at or I would look at doing it

Why Choose the iGaming Niche for SEO?

45:32 Okay Now uh let's talk a little bit about the i gaming niche which of course

45:38 you specialize in Now you built a sevenf figureure SEOd driven business in the eye gaming and casino industry which is

45:44 of course one of the most competitive space online What made you choose this niche

45:50 I like I said at the start I kind of fell into it if I'm being honest in the sense that um I was introduced by a

45:57 friend to the the main business owners right And then we ended up just getting

46:02 on and again I I like to sit and do the work So I sat and did the work for a few

46:07 months and they seen amazing results and that's kind of just how I kind of landed

46:14 in that industry I' you know I previously were primarily in like dating and health products I was never ever in

46:23 the gambling industry or bloody hell nowadays I'm even in the porn industry nowadays and not for the right reason

46:30 not for the right reasons you know what I mean But like you ranking websites I ain't I ain't in the videos like I'm

46:37 ranking the websites Um but like that sort of stuff is um yeah it's just crazy

46:43 So yeah it was kind of again put me put my money where my mouth was helped the

46:49 brand increase revenue from paid ads At that point it was literally me a content

46:55 manager and the two business owners That was it That was the size of the team We

47:00 had I think three websites maybe four websites and you know we built that up

47:05 to at me exiting I think we were at 45 or 46 websites online casinos and yeah

47:12 it was just all going very very well Okay Now uh what are the biggest SEO

What Are the Biggest SEO Challenges in iGaming?

47:20 challenges in I gaming you according to you and how should one tackle them

47:26 So it depends on what version of i gaming you're in So the biggest challenge in unregulated

47:33 markets typically is ISPs or Google themselves because they'll often ban the

47:39 websites or the web pages Um with that obviously that's when you're having to do like redirections and stuff to try

47:45 and mitigate the risk But again your redirection might only in some countries

47:50 might only be in play for a week or less and guess what The website's been hit the next website's been hit So you have

47:57 to be on your toes in those industries Whereas when it comes to the UK and like

48:02 Germany and like places like this where it's a highly regulated market I think the hardest part is the regulation

48:09 itself in the sense that sometimes you can't make changes to the page without

48:14 it going through a team of compliance officers Now anyone who knows SEO and

48:19 like you need speed You you need to be implementing changes is you want to be waiting to see the data as quick as

48:24 possible to then implement the next change When you're then having to wait you know anywhere up to six weeks for a

48:31 lawyer or the compliance officer to approve a sentence on a page

48:38 right It's it very much and I think this was like almost like the or will be the

48:44 downfall of the smaller businesses within i gaming in the regulated markets

48:51 is the regulation was becoming so tough that basically there's no real room for

48:57 small operators it's only the big guys who can kind of weather that time

49:03 period and because of that you almost lose that um competitive edge I think

49:09 that's what made us so successful at the start was we were able to go in go hard

49:14 we were hundreds of pages up and then all of a sudden down the line you know HR

49:20 compliance all of these things start changing and guess what it becomes very

49:26 very hard so I'd say that's the hardest part of gambling is the the elements you

49:31 can't control that is the fundamental parts of gambling that are difficult so you know

49:38 with foreign markets I would say negative SEO is also quite a difficult one in the unregulated

49:45 markets I've seen some very interesting negative SEO tax And you're not talking

49:50 just basic and someone doing a GSA spam of dodgy anchor texts You might actually

49:57 see someone doing genuine guest post outreach of targeted targeted anchor texts which sees a nice increase And

50:05 guess what you're never complaining when there's an increase in the rankings but it just he's grown and I've seen I

50:11 actually seen this happen in the UK and it wasn't a negative attack but the guy himself was just building

50:17 hyperaggressive hyperaggressive anchors like did not defer from you want to rank

50:22 for online slots The only anchor he was building was online slots That was it Online slots online And he to be fair I

50:29 think he got to position two or three in the SERs and he sat there for a good few

50:34 months and then an update came and then he was no longer in the SERs and like

50:40 that's sort of like that's the approach that some of these guys do on a negative SEO approach is you know they're

50:46 building links and you just especially if you're in charge of multiple brands or you know you're building a ton of

50:51 links you just accept that yeah that's fine you haven't really noticed the link and then you tend to notice them at a

50:58 point where it's too late and then at that point it's it's very difficult to recover It's like one of the brands we

51:04 also launched off the back of that was Backlink Doctor Not sure you might not have heard of it but basically it's a

51:09 link disavow brand where you know we do link audits That's all that brand focuses on We have probably the biggest

51:17 data set in the planet when it comes to disavows and what toxic links are Um

51:23 it's very much a partnership with Rick Lomass I don't know if you've heard of him that he was very much the one of the

51:30 first guys when it came to disavows Matt Diggity and all that used to recommend or still does recommend Rick but Rick's

51:36 obviously wanting to retire He's getting on a bit and he trained up the team to do all of the disavows and that's kind

51:42 of like where this idea came from It just gives us an amazing data set in

51:47 like the amount of links that get disavowed in I gaming is crazy like it

51:54 just you need to be on top if you don't do um one of the books we've just

52:00 launched I gaming SEO is coming out soon um and basically it's a amalgamation of

52:07 all of the top um I gaming SEO consultants and I'm pretty sure out of the TW I think there's 20 odd 23 24

52:15 almost every one of them says if you don't do a link audit you should not be doing eye

52:20 gaming but it's what's amazing with that is if you read the narrative online

52:26 people are like oh you don't need to do it Google Google knows what bad links are you don't need to do anything when

52:32 it disavow tool and all this in my eyes if Google really knew what bad links

52:37 were why why do they have a disavow tool the tool the tool wouldn't exist Like if

52:44 they could literally identify every bad link that tool wouldn't exist And I know

52:49 there's rumors of them terminating it and that's but that's also been the case for many years They've been saying that

52:56 for many years and I just I'm not sure they can I just don't think they want to terminate a tool that does obviously

53:03 help users especially when they're getting targeted with negative SEO Like what are you supposed to do if someone's

53:10 building thousands of links to your brand and you can't tell Google that you haven't built the links

53:16 right Um so yeah Okay Now uh for

How to Break Into iGaming SEO Successfully?

53:21 agencies that want to break into this niche where should they start Uh

53:30 um for agencies that are wanting to break into eye gaming I personally would

53:35 say you need to get you need to get some experience with actually trying to rank So whether or not that is build your own

53:41 asset and start to try and rank and understand the fundamentals of the industry because for instance like I

53:48 wouldn't trust any SEO agency to touch any one of our gaming brands if they

53:54 hadn't dealt with the compliance issues because I know all that's going to do is cause loads of headache when they send

54:01 changes or want to publish changes and we can't So they have to understand what

54:06 is compliant and what is not So obviously in the UK a lot of that was like you you're not allowed to suggest

54:13 that someone can win you know like guaranteed winnings stuff like this You have to be careful of childfriendly

54:21 images Well guess what Most of the slot games which is where a casino makes 95%

54:27 of its revenue are all bloody cartoon characters So how are you meant to use any images

54:33 um all of this sort of stuff is like yeah I would say that's how an agency in

54:38 my eyes earns its stripes Um yeah And maybe if you want to get

54:44 into it maybe he's even teaming up with like a smaller white label operator where you might have to go in at a lower

54:51 monthly but maybe on some type of deal where you earn a percentage of revenue

54:57 that can increase That could be a way in I'd imagine rather than because some of the the bigger boys in this industry you

55:03 know they've already got the likes of 888 and 32 Red and Virgin Games and

55:09 things on their books So um you just I don't think you'll make it into those

55:14 big boys without doing the stepping stones first

Link Building Strategies for Regulated Industries

55:20 Okay And uh how do you approach link building for a highly regulated industries like I gaming And are there

55:26 any specific strategy strategies you have found particularly effective Yeah

55:31 so um 301 redirects are great So in casino especially I found in the past

55:39 one of the strategies was build just a random article maybe a statistic article

55:45 might not even be necessarily about gaming but if you can make it about at least online gaming in some instance get

55:52 loads of digital PR press releases guest post all through to it and then guess what you're going to 301 redirect that

55:59 through to a blog post which has internal links to whatever main page

56:04 page That's like one of the key strategies we used to employ quite a bit or acquiring just through um expired

56:12 domains or age domains and 301 redirecting them in time That was another good strategy

56:18 um that we often did as well PBN's PBNs are definitely they definitely have a

56:24 space when it comes to I gaming Generally speaking the bigger the operator chances are they probably run

56:31 their own PBN network Um so they're often looking to acquire their own sites

56:37 and obviously build out their own networks So yeah I would say that's like the keys when it comes to regulated

56:44 markets Obviously if you're doing guest posting a lot of the time the content you're actually responsible for the

56:49 content that links to your brand So you have to make sure that the content being published on a third party is compliant

56:57 Um so you know chat nowadays that's quite easy to do like give it a list of

57:02 prompts that it has to ensure it's compliant like a compliant checking agent and it will tweak stuff Um so yeah

57:11 I would say that's the key fundamentals you know at the end of the day just have a big have a big budget and then

57:17 probably times that by two What you think is big times it by two and that's probably what you should be spending and

57:23 gambling Okay And uh let's talk a little bit

Can AI-Generated Content Replace Human Writers?

57:28 about AI Uh of course AI is shaking up the content in SEO industry Do you think

57:34 AI generated content will ever be able to uh replace the humanited content and

57:41 is it good to go to rank Yeah So we see

57:46 it like most of our websites now the new ones are AI generated We do obviously

57:52 have uh human editors who proof check but pretty much most of it is AI

57:58 generated now and then it's just um we check the facts basically fact check and

58:03 make sure it's correct but I think within a year or two everything on the internet's going to be AI it's all going

58:10 to be driven by AI and Google's even admitted it themselves you know that they're not against AI content just as

58:16 long as it's providing value and there's there's ways that you do that you know if you're an expert in an industry Guess

58:22 what Feed it any any good articles that you like in that industry any pieces you

58:27 maybe wrote yourself Feed it all that facts and data And guess what You can produce something that's probably better

58:33 than 80% of the articles out there Um and that's how you do it I think the

58:39 problem is a lot of people go on chat GPT and type write me an article on SEO

58:45 And that's the issue It's you've now just left there There's no parameters There's no knowledge base You're just

58:51 relying on what that AI is being that LLM's been fed from the millions if not

58:58 billions of users that have used it And guess what It's going to be garbage Garbage in garbage out You've gave it no

59:03 instruction You've assumed that it's an expert when it's not It's just a it's a

59:09 machine that's learn that's amalgamating loads of content and data points Um and

59:16 that's I think the fundamental flaw is that a lot of people just rely on chat GPT and basic

59:23 um uh prompts and that's the you know becoming a prompt engineer is vital I

59:29 think and especially in the next few years I think people who are becoming better of AI and better prompting the AI

59:36 will become a huge job in itself Yes Now what tools or platform do you personally

What Tools Do You Use for AI-Driven Content and SEO?

59:43 use for AIdriven content and SEO So uh AI content So we have N8N um which is

59:53 like a or like a flow a user agent flow where you create multiple user agents um

1:00:00 AI agents sorry and that allows us to customize content We have

1:00:07 um Visual Studio Coder which then allows us to tie into ADA but again it depends

1:00:13 on what for that we're not necessarily doing content we're doing like website builds or we might be doing plug-in builds like more tech stuff where we're

1:00:21 using um Claude for and set um obviously I believe Screaming Frog

1:00:28 which I haven't had a play with this yet Screaming Frogs just integrated with OpenAI Now I assume that's I haven't I

1:00:35 don't know if have you played with that yet I assume that's to be able to do meta titles and descriptions Yes I with

1:00:41 the with the 20 20 version of it We have played it with a little bit where you

1:00:47 can use the open AI uh uh API But yes I think for a pages which you have lots of

1:00:53 duplicate pages and content it's it's good I would recommend it for your key money pages but just to keep your site

1:01:00 clean not have too many duplicate titles or metas I think that's a good bet Yeah exactly So like that's like a prime

1:01:08 example of how we are using it So another tool that we use quite often but

How to Create Effective Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

1:01:13 at the same time we're now probably doing more manual prompting than using the tools auto blogging I don't know if you know um Webath

1:01:20 I know I met him a couple of times in Chiang as well right Yeah So we obviously we invested in that tool and

1:01:27 that's another tool we use quite often and that sort of compares the SERs what content they have creates outlines based

1:01:33 off the competition and then obviously produces the content using um I think

1:01:39 GPT4 um obviously don't quote us on that and at the time of this coming out it might be using GPT5 who knows it moves

1:01:46 so quick but obviously with each iteration of the eye like even when I'm I'm

1:01:52 actually currently coding right now I've got Visual Studio Code here and as I'm

1:01:57 coding now with I think I'm on 3.7 on Claude and like the difference is huge

1:02:03 like so much less errors You know before you might get stuck in a loop where you might be in that loop for about four

1:02:08 hours trying to break out the bloody loop But I'm not a coder So obviously if

1:02:14 you're I imagine if you're a coder and you're not scared of the eye oh my god like the opportunities are endless

1:02:20 because like it's getting I'm stuck on one error and I I don't know how to fix it because I I'm not a JavaScript

1:02:26 developer So I just have to keep on asking the question until eventually something works Um whereas you know a

1:02:33 code I could just open it up and go oh it's this line this is the problem fixed And I think just yeah open if people

1:02:41 just come to AI and just open open their eyes to it you know like it's not going to at the end of the day it your main

1:02:48 limitation with anything AI is your own brain right and this is like a conversation I

1:02:54 had this morning with a business owner you know he's trying to work out ways of integrating AI into workflows within his

1:03:01 business and his business is like a brick and mortars business he's wanting to do like a customer support and I'm

1:03:07 like oh that's cool You know you can have a knowledge base there of any questions you've previously been asked on emails and things Feed it all in

1:03:13 Here's all the answers And you can have a chatbot sat there which is full of knowledge that people can just get the

1:03:20 answers there and then done And like people think you know people think they're talking to a human

1:03:26 sometimes when actually it's not It's it is fully AI right Um but it's just

1:03:32 fascinating fascinating stuff Okay so we just uh coming towards the

1:03:38 end of our segments and uh I've overshot the time so I'm just going to hurry up now

1:03:44 Speed quiz Let's go I just I have to respect your time

1:03:52 Yeah So uh agency management and scaling Uh you mentioned the importance of SOPs

1:03:58 in your business and how you helped Duly on that as well How do you create and implement effective SOPs in an agency

1:04:05 setting So a lot of that is I do the job first

1:04:10 and then you if I'm being honest nowadays I'm quite lazy with it So I previously I'd be doing full

1:04:16 documentation flows almost like a if this then that um type flow um workflow

1:04:23 Um but nowadays I tend to if I'm being honest I tend to do just Loom videos

1:04:28 film myself do it then hand and delegate the responsibility of that task over to

1:04:35 whoever is getting that task and then it's down to them to refine it improve

1:04:41 upon it take full responsibility That's that's kind of the fundamental key with it now Like there's a lot of tasks if

1:04:48 I'm being honest that I don't do anymore And if you asked me to do them I'd probably have to watch my own video um

1:04:55 to relearn how to do it Um which is a good place to be But that's how I would

1:05:00 be doing it is you know make sure if you have to do a task that's repeatable film yourself doing it the one time and then

1:05:07 you should be able to figure out how to you know script out that process from there

How to Scale an SEO Agency?

1:05:13 Okay Now what advice would you give to agency owners looking to scale their

1:05:18 operations while maintaining quality Um so that's something that we're busy

1:05:26 doing at the moment within surgery And I think it's the fundamental is just knowing the work capacity of your staff

1:05:33 and almost having that like check-ins with them just to make sure you know stress isn't building up things aren't

1:05:40 starting to go like slipping And at that point if you feel you'll start getting

1:05:46 an idea on the call you know are they starting to get stressed here If they are you probably need to help you It's

1:05:53 probably a staff deficiency I would assume Or again check in with them check

1:05:59 if there's any issues happening If the same issue keeps on happening each time it's probably a process problem not

1:06:05 necessarily a staffing issue So then figure out whereabouts in the process it's going wrong and then fix that

1:06:11 element Guess what If that then works happy days It reduces that That's what I would be doing Okay And how do you

1:06:18 approach hiring and team building in the SEO industry where the landscape is constantly changing How do I what Sorry

1:06:25 team How do you go about hiring and team building

1:06:30 Oh hiring and team building Um we do a lot of our hires from

1:06:36 LinkedIn or from personal mentions So as in like you know staff members family members friends that's tends to be how

1:06:44 we do it because we find that they're a lot more a reliable b they don't want to

1:06:50 let the family or friend who referred them in down So we tend to do that route more than anything Um and also hire

1:06:57 locally So um our team we've got UK based and we have Philippines and we've

1:07:04 got some in South Africa And again in each of those geos for whatever job they

1:07:10 do So like that is what we hire for in that geo if that makes sense So you know

1:07:15 a lot of the the Philippines guys are doing a lot more technical SEO and on page stuff where I'm training them and

1:07:22 they're doing like following SOPs and stuff whereas the South Africans and UK guys are tend to be doing a lot more

1:07:29 interactions with you know customers or um face toface interactions sales stuff

1:07:36 like more top level stuff So that tends to be how we deal with it Okay Now uh

Speed Quiz: Quick SEO Questions

1:07:43 with that we come to the last uh uh segment of our show which is quickfire round So whatever comes first

1:07:50 in your mind you're going to answer and I'm going to call Okay Now biggest SEO myth you want to bust Link links don't

1:07:58 work Okay Favorite SEO tool right now

1:08:03 Ether SEO testing or SEO crawl Okay One of this is Yeah I heard both I

1:08:10 got uh um uh I think I got SEO testing guys on my podcast as well Oh wow

1:08:16 Excellent Yeah Yes I forgot the name but yes I I got there the manager He's a

1:08:22 good guy I forgot Uh Nick or I think Nick Yes Yeah Now uh

1:08:30 best decision you made in your business Um getting a business partner Okay one

1:08:37 book or resource that changed your approach I quite like the art of SEO but I also

1:08:43 like the daily stoic as well And that's like just a daily reminder to you know be wiser

1:08:50 Okay What's next for you in 2025 Uh build more assets Continue the growth

1:08:57 period that we're currently going through and build more assets Okay And before we wrap up Carl what's one

Last Piece of SEO Advice

1:09:04 piece of advice you would like to give to SEO professionals or agency owners who are looking to take their business

1:09:10 to the next level And like I was saying earlier don't be scared to add paid ads into the

1:09:16 mix I think paid ads is fundamental when it come and I think a lot of SEOs are very much like this is SEO This is all I

1:09:23 do And I think honestly you'll be very surpris I mean pleasantly surprised at

1:09:28 how much things become easier when it comes to ranking when you start utilizing paid advertising or other

1:09:35 forms of traffic and again those user signals just all help feed the data and

1:09:41 at the same time can help generate a return on investment as well So that's what I would be doing Okay And where can

Where to Find Karl Hudson Online

1:09:48 our listeners connect with you and learn more about your work Yeah So YouTube I

1:09:53 think it's just Carl Hudson Um Searcheroo also has a channel there And then um personal website carl

1:09:59 hudson.co.uk Okay And for all the agency owners and SEO consultants listening if you are

Exploring White Label SEO Services

1:10:05 looking for highquality white label SEO services to scale your business check out Page Traffic We have helped agencies

1:10:11 around the world deliver SEO results without the hassle of hiring in-house team Uh visit page traffic website to

1:10:17 learn And thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today Carl It's been a pleasure having you on the Agency

Outro

1:10:23 Insider Show Cheers Thank you Nevit Uh that's it for today's episode of the

1:10:30 Agency Insider Show Don't forget to subscribe leave a review and share this with anyone who wants to scale their SEO

1:10:35 business See you next time