Podcast With Chris M Walker

The Secret to Building a Thriving SEO Marketplace, Chris M Walker

Show Notes

Discover the inspiring journey of Chris M. Walker, the mastermind behind Legit, as he shares his SEO secrets and reveals how he grew from earning $16 to building a revolutionary platform that empowers businesses and Freelancers alike. 🚀 If you're looking for practical SEO strategies for 2024, ways to rank your website number 1, and insights into driving more organic traffic, this episode is packed with invaluable lessons.

Chris dives into his humble beginnings in tech support, his challenges navigating Google updates like Penguin, and how he turned setbacks into opportunities. Learn how he transitioned from affiliate marketing to client SEO, leveraged personal branding, and built a thriving community that transformed Legit into a leading B2B growth engine.

Curious how to achieve a #1 ranking, build a sustainable online business, or adapt to the latest search engine trends? Chris answers questions like:

• How do you recover from Google updates?
• What are the best SEO strategies for long-term success?
• How can you balance scaling a business while staying productive?

Whether you're a beginner or an experienced marketer, this video is your step-by-step guide to mastering SEO, boosting visibility, and achieving business growth in 2024.

Ready to take your SEO game to the next level and start driving real results? Don't wait—subscribe for more expert tips and actionable strategies! Let's make your website #1.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:23 - How Did You Get Into SEO and Legiit?

03:36 - What Services Did You Start Selling First?

05:52 - How Did You Come Up with the Name Superstar SEO?

06:32 - What Inspired the Name Legiit?

08:45 - When Did You Hire Your First Employee?

11:25 - What Was Your Hiring Process for the First Employee?

14:20 - How Did You Form Your Partnership?

17:25 - How Did You Attract Your First Customers and Freelancers?

20:25 - Why Is List Building Important?

22:15 - How Was Legiit.io Marketed?

25:32 - What Is the Impact of Google Updates on Legiit.io?

27:54 - What Are the Traffic Sources for Legiit.io?

29:46 - How Can You Recover from a Google Update?

32:26 - How Does Legiit Handle Duplicate Content Issues?

34:12 - How Do Google Updates Affect Legiit?

36:06 - What's Next for Legiit?

41:18 - What Is LegitCon?

44:44 - How Do You Keep Coming Up with New Ideas?

47:55 - What Are Your Book Recommendations?

48:55 - What Are Your Processes and SOPs?

50:55 - What Is Your Last Message for the Audience?

51:56 - End

Transcript

Introduction

0:00 welcome to the agency Insider podcast in this episode we are thrilled to host Chris M Walker a leading expert in SEO

0:07 and master behind leged a platform that has revolutionized the word of digital

0:15 [Applause]

0:21 [Music] services without Much Ado I will uh put

How Did You Get Into SEO and Legiit?

0:27 it to chis so well the answer everyone knows but tell us a bit about yourself

0:33 and how did you get into Su and then how did you went into legit from Su first of

0:39 all thanks for having me on I know you're just uh getting started and I'm honored to be one of your first guests as far as my backstory how I got into

0:45 SEO and then legit uh before I got into any of this I was working in tech

0:50 support I was doing it tech support Level One support for a real estate development company that I I hated the

0:57 job to be perfectly honest it wasn't I wasn't happy and I wasn't making the kind of money I needed I had a lot of credit card debt I wanted to pay off but

1:04 I didn't really know how and then one day I was reading a Blog that used to be a professional wrestling blog that was

1:10 now just one page of what the author was doing then and uh he talked about how he

1:16 was now making his living doing something called affiliate marketing which i' had never heard of to that point but it sounded really cool uh so I

1:23 started researching that I uh played around with it on my own I bought a course on uh off of the warrior for

1:30 called bring the fresh and that's what helped me to uh start my first site and that that site still exists by the way

1:37 and it doesn't make any money anymore though uh but I was doing pretty well with that and then around 2014 uh the

1:43 penguin 2.0 out update came out which for those of you that weren't around back then that was a Google update that

1:49 P that uh penalized sites for link spam which I didn't even know was what I was doing but apparently I was so that made

1:55 all my affiliate marketing stop working so I still wanted to make this work so I bought another course called Source

2:00 Phoenix uh where I started learning about the possibility of doing SEO for clients so I started taking CL taking on

2:07 some clients through uh most of them I found through cold email a couple I got through referral uh and I still had my day job

2:14 at this time so I was having to sneak around at the job to do this sort of stuff and that did okay but not wasn't

2:20 enough to quit the day job and then in 2015 I I sent up for a a Marketplace

2:26 that was new at that time and I started selling SEO servic and that started to really catch on for

2:32 me and started make me some money and then I got a uh a shout out from an influencer in the SEO space at that time

2:39 that really made that take off so that's when I started building my brand around that and uh started my Facebook group

2:45 and YouTube channel and things and that's where the SEO brand started to take off but then in like late 2017 that

2:52 site started having all sorts of problems and it would crash it would get hacked and eventually it just went away

2:58 so I had said I had made some uh relationships with the other Freelancers on it and I was just selling myself stuff through my own website at the time

3:05 to keep the income coming in and a lot of people there were asking me could they sell through my website I was like

3:10 well maybe I'm on to something here so I partnered with a developer that I had met at through that other freelancing

3:16 site and that's when we launched legit in 2018 uh which was just going to be like a side project for my SEO business

3:24 but within one month it was my biggest Revenue source and it's grown almost steadily for almost seven years now so

3:31 uh that's kind of the the backstory and how we got here okay so so the the the

What Services Did You Start Selling First?

3:37 first obstacle you faced was really the uh penguin update no I don't I wouldn't

3:42 say that I think the very first obstacle was not really knowing what to do and

3:48 not knowing who to listen to because as you know there's a lot of people you can or cannot listen to but yeah as first

3:53 the first setback was probably the penguin update because I didn't even realize what I was doing at that point was called SE I I thought what I was

4:01 doing was affiliate marketing and the way I was getting my my sites to rank was through a uh a link building tool

4:07 called Magic submitter uh which just made thousands and thousands of links uh you probably remember it and it worked

4:13 really well at that time but then after penguin it didn't and I had to figure out what I needed to do next it's like

4:20 those GSA blasts you do right yeah yeah kind of like that it was it was a little different but yeah same kind of thing

4:26 where it's just a bunch of different types of links and to me it was much more user friendly but all right all right so so that was when you got hit so

4:34 then you went to the that Marketplace what all services I mean you were doing Affiliates so when you moved to suddenly

4:41 client uh did you because you didn't had any idea about SE so what services you started selling first on that which

4:48 later on you got a shout out from the influencer so to back that up I was doing I did on by the time I started

4:54 offering clients I did understand SEO a little bit from couple of other courses that i' had taken I but as far as um

5:01 what I started offering on that other Marketplace first thing I did was and I don't recommend this now but was I just

5:09 found a service on Fiverr that I liked and upsold it it just doubled the price and upsold it uh and then that's kind of

5:16 one of them and then the next one was I I had bought a uh a shiny object basically but it was a link building

5:22 software called syn wire uh and what you could do was run campaigns so what I started doing was sell I had a lifetime

5:29 deal on it so I started selling campaigns from it for five bucks and then an influencer shouted that out and

5:35 I started getting flooded with orders and then all my other services started taking off like social signals and other

5:42 types of web 2.0's and I just kept adding more and more stuff to it and I still do that to this day ah all right

5:47 well not SRE that went out of business but I still do Marketplace services to uh till this day okay so how did you

How Did You Come Up with the Name Superstar SEO?

5:54 came up with your name uh the uh Superstar Su uh well I at one point what

6:01 I wanted to do was make a Blog that reviewed like JV zo products so I could get affiliate commissions off of those

6:07 because I hadn't given up on the affiliate marketing idea and I knew that I and I I never ended up doing that but

6:13 I I knew that I needed a name and I didn't really spend a lot of time on it and again I was really into professional

6:18 wrestling at the time and WWE calls their wrestlers Superstars so I just

6:24 went with Superstar SEO and it the whole thought process behind a business I've had for a decade now it took about 30

6:30 seconds to name it okay so uh from superar SEO you moved to legit so and

What Inspired the Name Legiit?

6:36 and how did I understood so how how did you came up with the name legit then I mean the name sounds very cool to me um

6:43 well what I wish the story was was that I'm a marketing genius and I knew that it would get people uh saying thinking

6:50 that everything on there was legit and people would say I'm Legit and stuff like that but the real story is we were

6:57 started developing it before we even had a name and it was two three weeks before we we could come up we couldn't come up

7:03 with anything ironically I I bought a gig off of Fiverr to get like name your business and what they gave me was just

7:10 absolutely terrible and then my partner stumbled on uh there used to be a site called brand Zam where you could buy

7:16 like brands that were no longer active and uh he stumbled on Legit and I we

7:21 still have the conversation saved but it was like I kind of like it he was like I kind of like it and I kind of don't and I was like yeah I can see people saying

7:28 stuff like I'm Legit so we just went with it and it's been here ever since and uh fun piece of trivia if you go in

7:35 the wayb back machine and look at uh legit.com back in like 2013 or 2014 it

7:41 was an Indonesian coffee shop was the what the website was so you bought it from the marketplace time like expired

7:48 yeah yeah exactly it was an expired domain I didn't realize it was an expired domain because I didn't really ever think to check it but yeah it was

7:55 so it didn't give us any kind of SEO benefit for those of you that are wondering the funny thing is I bought

8:01 page traffic in 2002 uh and I found it on after ni I and somebody was selling

8:07 it and I went on G Ed and it was available for registration the guy was still selling it so I bought it for two

8:13 years and before that it was a it was a pond site up till 99 so that kind of

8:20 there's a lot of uh like famous sites where if you do that you'll find that they were something else like a MySpace

8:26 in like 2000 was a was a hosting company really yeah I got bored one day and

8:32 started looking up like old like major sites and seeing what they used to be and that's the one that sticks out to me

8:37 the most is they used to be a hosting company which makes sense if you think about the name you know it's like space

8:42 so right right right right right right so uh so so when you started Superstar

When Did You Hire Your First Employee?

8:49 SEO you were just one employee like or how was it i' looking at growth of

8:55 number of people in yeah so in the beginning from 2013 when I first started

9:01 doing all of this all the way through late 2017 it was all just me now sometimes I would

9:07 Outsource things to like f like I was reselling but for the most part it was all just me until 2017 when I made my

9:14 first hire which was way too long if I if I'd have done that a year sooner I'd be 10 years further along now but that

9:21 that was my first employee who was still with me to this day I think you may have met him a time or two Georgie but but

9:27 and then from there you know I grew another one and another one and now between the two businesses we probably have around 30 to 35 people making it

9:35 all work okay okay so so 100% remote by

9:40 the way that's cool so so just for the people who are starting out obviously

9:46 most of us including me myself I also started from home just like you but so

9:51 so the hiring of the first employee and taking that was there a fear ever okay

9:57 I'm hiring an employee I'm responsible for someone their salaries how would it work if it didn't work because was there

10:04 any sort of any hesitations or something which you had as an entrepreneur usually

10:09 we have uh at that time I didn't have that concern I was more of the the more

10:14 concern I had was I can do all of this myself and I don't have to pay him you know that that whole thing right now

10:22 that that is something that I keep in mind all the time that people depend on me you know so like that that definitely

10:28 I don't want to call it a fear but it's definitely something that motivates me now responsibility I would say yeah

10:34 because not only do I have employees but you know thousands of Freelancers their entire income depends on on the

10:40 decisions I make so even it's weird because like even little things like uh I do boxing and kickboxing and stuff and

10:47 sometimes I worry if I get hurt I'm not going to be able to take care of them you know and I'm not going to get hurt that bad to where I can't work but like

10:54 I'm afraid if I slip on a piece not that it ever gets ice here where I live but slip on some ice outside and like ripe

10:59 my neck or something my point is that that does worry about me that I won't be able to take care of them but at that

11:05 time it was more about I just don't know why if I really want to spend that little bit of my profit of course it ended up being the best decision I ever

11:11 made it's interesting because the worst decision I ever made was not hiring sooner and it ended up being the best

11:17 decision I ever made to do it when I did you know so so to answer your question no I didn't worry about it then but now

11:23 I I do think about it so so how did you went out uh doing your first hire or or

What Was Your Hiring Process for the First Employee?

11:29 all the higher so is there uh certain methodology or is there something you specifically follow how does it work so

11:36 there for the first one I actually got a funnily enough I told you I was reselling a service from Fiverr in the

11:41 beginning which I don't do anymore just for the record and I haven't done for years but but I was working with one person

11:48 and he I actually got he found me off of fivr somehow and we started working

11:54 without working through Fiverr because uh you know [ __ ] them honestly part of my language cut that out if you need to

12:00 okay no it's okay okay but and then uh when I told him I got to know him and

12:06 then when I told him I needed someone you know full-time he recommended someone well actually let me back up he went on vacation one time and assigned

12:14 someone to like work in his place and then he went back to normal after that and then when I told him I needed

12:19 someone he's like what about that guy that you worked with before and that I was like okay fine and that was uh Georgie who I've now known for then

12:26 talked to almost every single day for the last I guess years or seven years whatever the math on that is and then as

12:32 far as now now like even now most of the people I've hired have been either

12:38 through referrals or through people in our community now that's not 100% true

12:43 but that's for the most part for example the second support person I hired she

12:49 worked support in my evening her daytime because she's in the Philippines since then she recommended our daytime support

12:56 person and which is her I think brother-in-law and then our weekend support person

13:01 which is her sister so and then georg's sister uh he works she works for us in

13:07 support too and that's like most of it has come through referrals so I call it shopping in your own closet uh so if

13:13 you're looking to hire people talk to people that already work for you and see who they know because you should be able

13:18 to trust not only their ability but their judgment yes yes so a good tip for somebody who's starting out when you

13:25 want first employee or some person it's good to look for a referrals and

13:30 continue looking for those I think so because uh the other traditional ways of hiring like remote or stuff like

13:37 LinkedIn and upwork and so on I found that the expectations that

13:43 people have are justu ridiculous hold on one second Alexa

13:50 stop for some reason my Amazon Echo started playing music but I music to

13:56 there music but anyway uh the people on LinkedIn I find have ridiculous expectations than

14:02 what think they're way more valuable than they are uh and I just never had much luck with like upwork but what I've

14:08 had what I have had luck with was taking good Freelancers from legit and making them full-time employees and then

14:14 finding uh employees through people that already work for me so so you mentioned you hired your

How Did You Form Your Partnership?

14:21 first employee then then you mentioned you found your partner also so what took

14:27 you to go to a partnership and not just remain solo well for one I don't know

14:32 how to develop uh I needed a developer and I don't know how to do that despite having a degree in computer programming

14:38 I don't have the skills needed but uh I knew him he was actually a customer on

14:43 that other Marketplace and I sold him a $16 service and through that we got to be friends and worked on a few things

14:50 and then I started with the idea for legit and I was working with some other people but it just didn't feel like it

14:56 was a good fit and I wasn't really asking him to like take part of it I was just kind of complaining about it one

15:01 day when I was talking to him and he eventually agreed to like take it on and

15:06 that's we've been working together ever since but I you know to answer your question I I didn't have the necessary

15:13 skills to uh to do it myself uh which is probably for the best because I would have if I did I would have tried and now

15:20 I'd be stuck doing the development and trying to grow the business if you're G to take on a big project I kind of

15:26 recommend the partner model because nobody can good at everything that you need to do right right so that's tip

15:32 number two coming today guys if you want to grow big don't always have your plate full it's good to share and that's much

15:40 more faster growth way of to grow right like for example if there was a bug or something today I would have I would

15:45 have had to spend my time fixing that rather than doing things like this that will actually help us get more customers

15:52 and grow and awareness and stuff right so as as as we all know as an entrepreneur what we get stuck in mundan

15:59 daily task as we say CEO of everything that's what we usually call and that's

16:04 where you are not focusing more on growth but focusing on a day-to-day operations so a lot of CEOs I talk to

16:10 actually get stuck in a day-to-day and including myself I am also was there everybody gets stuck in day-to-day

16:16 operations and then the focus gets lost so now because the thing is you get stuck then you get comfortable and then

16:22 you don't know suddenly what hit you I mean yeah there's there's a there's a dopamine trap there because like if you

16:29 give yourself a list of tasks and you start checking them off you get a little hit dope of me and every time you check

16:34 a check off a task but you don't really like the best use of your time as a CEO is not doing tasks it's using your brain

16:42 to figure out things that will help the company and making a few few decisions

16:47 that have a big impact through your team and through your systems and processes and so on so it's really easy to get

16:54 stuck in the the Trap of doing a bunch of tasks that if think about it really can wait or can be handed off or

17:01 whatever there's a difference between being busy and being productive and a

17:06 lot of a lot of CEOs fall into the Trap of being busy rather than productive and productive is things that move the

17:12 company forward because that's your job absolutely absolutely I absolutely agree

17:17 with you and I've been myself guilty in that I've been busy not productive I I'm

17:23 sure everybody would have so so coming on to legit when you when you built legit so how did you started attracting

How Did You Attract Your First Customers and Freelancers?

17:30 I mean first you have to have the Freelancers on it and the second part was you have to have clients were

17:37 looking for those services so how did these both part figure the so there's a

17:42 kind of a chicken and an egg problem there uh is what it's called in marketplaces is that if you have too

17:47 many Freelancers and not enough customers the Freelancers are going to be upset because they're not getting work and just for the record that

17:53 problem never goes away uh but then conversely if you have too many customers and not enough Freelancers they're either not going to find the

18:00 people that they need or they're going to the ones that can do what they need get overwhelmed because there's too much business so you you can't not only do

18:06 you have to grow both of those but you have to kind of grow them both at the same rate otherwise the thing is not

18:12 going to work now what worked out well for me was I had built supply and demand

18:17 I don't like when people use those terms to describe them because they're human beings they're not numbers but I had I

18:23 had managed to build distribution be before I built the product what I mean by that is

18:29 I had been taking my customers from that other Marketplace and funneling them into the Superstar SEO Facebook group

18:35 into my email list and into my website so I had different ways of contacting

18:41 them so I built up an audience of both people that did SEO and people that

18:46 could offer SEO which kind of sounds like the same thing but it's not exactly the same thing because like for you for

18:53 example you're both a customer and a seller of of SEO services so I built up

18:58 a list that way and then I brought in the people I first per that I knew well

19:03 enough to First have them Freelancers and then that just kind of spread and then from there Word of Mouth took over

19:10 more than any other marketing channel and then of course we still do SEO and ads and you know stuff but for the most

19:16 part uh having an audience to begin with is what helped it sounds kind of like it sounds kind of contradictory like not

19:24 contradictory but it sounds kind of like uh the best way to have an audience is to already have an audience kind of thing right so but if what I recommend

19:31 is if first of all don't start a Marketplace because it's it's uh it's a hard hard business the margins are razor

19:38 thin but if you're wanting to start any project the first thing I suggest is start building a personal brand around a

19:44 topic and that way whatever you end up deciding to do you can kind of drive it that direction so I'm not at these guys

19:51 level but some great examples of that are like Mr Beast and Logan Paul Mr

19:56 Beast started his Channel with just the idea of being a YouTuber and doing that and now he's taking it in all kinds of

20:02 directions with like chocolate bars and Beast burgers and and whatever and Logan Paul kind of the same thing he's a boxer

20:08 he has Prime and he's built they've built up personal Brands so they have an audience ready that they can take into

20:15 whatever business and I didn't know that that's what I was doing at the time but that's kind of what I did is I built up an audience and then once I knew what my

20:22 thing was going to be I had people I could sell it to right so here guy tip number four whenever you starts it list

Why Is List Building Important?

20:29 building is a very important part so most of the time we miss that part so if you start from day one you have your

20:35 list it always become easier and in today's days when I mean so much uncertainty around Google and Su it's

20:41 important that your list building is important and of course so uh and

20:47 personal brand of course in 2024 I mean everybody is more into personal branding with the Google which we're going to

20:53 come later and talk also uh so when did you came on this because honestly I've used legit few times but uh I used I

21:03 never came across you as such I mean I saw you doing much more you being more active in last couple of years or if am

21:11 I wrong I mean I feel that way I mean I thought I've been pretty active since even before legit but the fact that you

21:18 only picked up on me in a couple years means I wasn't working hard enough in those other years maybe I not browsing

21:24 enough well I mean it doesn't matter if you are or not it's you are I don't want to say you're my ideal customer but

21:30 you're somebody who should be aware of me so that kind of proves the point that I just made is that you know being out

21:38 there as much as possible now SEO tends to attract introverts at least that's been my experience who don't want to do

21:43 YouTube who don't want to do social media who just want to sit behind their computer and build links and do stuff

21:50 but if you want to attract business that that's just not going to work at least not it's not what's worked for me I there's probably people out there will

21:56 it work for me well of course but you you can't be shy and build a business in my opinion and it the personal brand is

22:04 like the absolute key to that and the fact that you didn't know about me until a couple years ago means that you know I've been figuring out on my own

22:12 so still there hello yeah hello there you are y yeah so in v in our office we

How Was Legiit.io Marketed?

22:20 use audit iio a lot so we we bought it

22:25 from appsumo I'll be honest so we use for quick Sur analysis yes we love that

22:32 software four five four or five licenses of those just to be sure one gets stuck

22:39 we don't know yes so so when you built legit so this was the one so did you did

22:44 any sort of marketing because I understand Freelancers and I understand but it's also important for you to put

22:50 marketing and I know you just came up with an ad which we're going to talk a little bit later but uh initially stages

22:57 I know it was Marketplace are hard but uh what actually you tried and what

23:03 worked when it comes to getting the getting the clients in the marketplace

23:08 uh community building by by far being active and it's funny because you just said you hadn't heard of me but being

23:14 active in the community that we create helping the Freelancers figure out how to run their business more successfully

23:19 helping customers what find what they need at and then just organic Community

23:25 Building more more so than anything now we also did did and still do paid advertising and

23:30 SEO and all that stuff and that that's important too but the reason that we succeeded where other people failed was

23:37 that we built a community that's very passionate about our brand and our business uh during the uh the pandemic

23:45 uh I was doing live streams every single day to the community and I built up relationships with people that I still

23:50 have to this day from doing that and that that that one particular thing would made a huge difference now I don't

23:57 know if that would work as well today because then you had a captive audience and everybody was stuck at

24:02 home the pandemic was I I hate to say this because it was such a horrible thing but it was actually very good for our business because we were able to get

24:09 even more even closer to our community community building is something I have experience in in general because even

24:16 before that I had already built up the Superstar SEO community and then I have it in my

24:21 background also I used to work in politics as a political field operative and what I did there was build

24:27 communities around candidates so they would come and knock on doors and make phone calls and pass out literature for

24:33 us community building is probably the most powerful form of marketing and paid

24:38 ads took a long time for us to figure out because it's not as simple as it is for most people where you can just send

24:44 people an ad to a website and they buy something like for us we don't control the inventory as it were so it took a

24:51 long time to figure out PID and the truth is I I never figured it out uh but I I have an agency I work with now that

24:58 does a good job with that and then the SEO I've done all that myself with until recently so okay okay so so you started

25:07 building communities and uh yes so and in my defense I knew you before legit

25:13 but I didn't knew you own Legend So oh really right I know Superstar SEO but uh

25:19 but I didn't yeah so I know you but not that way but yes uh because we my team

25:26 was buying things on Legit so yeah interesting coming back to this so community building is important but of

25:31 course so the SE and the PPC now now you've seen how how the how the things have been after this SG and Google March

What Is the Impact of Google Updates on Legiit.io?

25:39 update and of course Google helpful content update things so has has they changed in terms of uh because I believe

25:46 most of the services which you sell uh which is on your Marketplace are mostly related to Su right I mean it's our I

25:53 wouldn't say that most of them are but it's the biggest sellers our SEO okay so have seen a dip when it comes to because

26:00 when I talk to a lot of people and of course people are having less faith in SEO I mean you know a lot of people

26:06 talked about that se doesn't work lot of affiliate marketers quit last couple of months so has it changed in number of

26:13 volumes or in terms of Revenue if you are comfortable sharing that SEO Services still sell better than ever for

26:19 us what has taken a big hit was uh content sales and when chat gbt came out

26:25 I literally have a report that I made where I can literally from month to month to month to month month to month

26:30 after chat gbd came out see content sales declining it's starting to slowly affect Graphics sales as well not as

26:37 extreme because I I feel like I don't I don't know about other people's opinion but I feel like AI art isn't quite there

26:43 yet but it's definitely had an impact on that but as far as SEO sales it hasn't affected it at all so in last three

26:49 months no SEO sale has been affected with the Google the Google updates you haven't se not not on my platform okay

26:57 so guys one good thing as we all you people keep on asking is SEO going to be dead of course it's one of the favorite

27:03 question every year it is not I will say that I think that doing Niche sites the

27:10 way that people have been for the last five years or so I think that's dead I don't think that's coming back at least

27:16 not through SEO traffic yes yes yes as Chris mentioned initially the list building or the

27:23 audience building is important so as long as you have an audience uh you can of course

27:29 and there's also other traffic sources there's Pinterest there's Facebook there's Tik Tok uh but as far as just

27:34 like an in like a travel blog where you monetize it through ads and you get your

27:39 traffic through SEO and longtail keywords I don't think that's ever coming back absolutely absolutely so so most of

27:48 the leged traffic is driven with the the SEO I mean in if you have to rank them

What Are the Traffic Sources for Legiit.io?

27:54 is this hold on hold on a second sorry about that if I had to rank them I I think that

28:01 Facebook traffic is number one because we built those communities from it I I could be wrong I don't have the numbers

28:07 in front of me and then traffic would probably be number two and then YouTube

28:12 traffic is number three okay again I don't I could be wrong about that but so YouTube recently

28:19 when you started doing your Channel or has I've said my channel since 2016 sorry I'm sorry Channel's actually

28:26 older than legit all right okay okay but I mean there's also the legit YouTube channel and then other people talking

28:32 about legit on YouTube as well okay yeah if I if I had to guess I you know what I can actually look I'm not gonna show you

28:38 but I'll I'll bring it I'll look yeah yeah sure I got my eyes on your eyes I can read I I'll tell you over the last

28:46 90 days I'll tell you what our top three traffic sources were takes just a second for it to load

28:53 I use clicky I don't know if you're familiar with that but I myself used clicky no longer believe in Google

28:58 analytics uh direct traffic is number one so that doesn't really count uh searches were number two in social media

29:05 and then at paid advertising so I was wrong as far as the individual sources it's kind of hard to tell but it looks

29:11 like Facebook and then Tik Tok which is surprising and then YouTube and then it

29:17 doesn't it doesn't really tell you how uh Google fits into that but you get the idea right we're a little bit all over

29:22 the place but Tik Tok is surprising because I don't do any active Tik Tok okay maybe some guys are doing it must

29:30 be must be okay so that's good that's good so so so the guys the good thing is

29:35 that yes SEO is there but also important thing is to diversify your traffic sources as Chris gave us life examples

29:43 of course so that's another way so well before we move on to talking about SEO

How Can You Recover from a Google Update?

29:49 and penalties and stuff one thing in uh we were doing pretty well with SEO in until December 2020 update I don't

29:57 remember what that one was called but we took a massive hit from that and I don't know why even to this day we lost a ton

30:03 of our traffic then then and we've built it all Way Beyond what it was there but you know we I've had to fight through

30:09 updates on Legit itself too like that December 2020 update really screwed us we were number one for like SEO

30:14 Marketplace and SEO gigs and they dropped off the map and now we're back with those but we lost a lot of traffic

30:20 from that particular update so so so just just for the guys because you know with every I update sites live and die

30:28 and you don't need to really take it to a heart so what what went through I mean suddenly you lose traffic then did you

30:35 panic what did you no I just I just I mean to be honest there was never any good information on

30:41 how to recover from that update but I just I made sure that our other traffic sources were good and I start started

30:47 slowly fixing our SEO I did a few things like at that point our blog was on a subdomain and I moved that over to the

30:54 main domain that was a huge pain in the ass to do but it helped a lot and then I just started focusing on the fundamental

31:00 because like you know like the the categories and subcategory pages and things like that I think it was around

31:06 that time that I occurred to me that this was a lot like an e-commerce site and as far as SEO goes and I started

31:12 treating it right like that but as SEO it goes it's it's a big challenge because again I don't control all of the

31:18 content so what would happen was like a service page would start ranking for something and then the freelancer would

31:23 go away and the page would go away so we kept losing that or another time we used to sell some stuff that to be fair we

31:29 probably shouldn't have been but we were selling things like Google reviews and stuff like that and we ranked really high for those terms and then one day

31:36 PayPal told us they were going to shut our account down if we didn't remove those so we had to remove all of those uh and we lost all that traff so it's

31:43 been one challenge after the other SEO wise but now we've kind of gotten to almost like Authority mode we or like a

31:50 da70 or getting close to it now to where almost anything we post will rank so we we're we're doing pretty well but it's

31:56 it's been a big challenge it's not as it's I'm I do like the way I do SEO normally is not that exciting like I

32:03 don't do a lot of fancy stuff I just do good content good URL structure and links and that that works for most

32:09 situations but what legit is a bit more complicated so I had to I've had to figure out as I went and I've had some

32:15 good help along the way I had help from uh Gregory Ortiz and Charles float and a

32:20 couple other people M Kamar have helped me figure it out figure it all out so now uh one question because you

How Does Legiit Handle Duplicate Content Issues?

32:28 interestingly mentioned market place is like an e-commerce and it is very true so the common common uh issue which we

32:36 find while doing e-commerce SEO is the the products are same and you do not or a Marketplace you do not have a control

32:42 of the content which your freelancer is putting so let's say I'm a freelancer I

32:47 go on Legit I put the same content on 20 different websites kind of creates a duplicate duplicity issue so did you had

32:54 anything did you face this or if yes do you have any checks and balances to what

32:59 I found is if a lot of people try a lot of people list not exact same services

33:05 but basically the same service and do the SEO similarly Google just picks one of them and that that one wins like

33:12 basically there's not much I can really do beond that some of them aren't going to like to hear this but I have gone in

33:18 and like when I saw there was one that was ringing like number 14 and it was just through accident and they hadn't

33:24 really FCO optimized it I've gone in and changed people's listings to make the more SEO optimized and make it show up you

33:31 know I think if they get pissed then they get pissed but you it's it's better for them it's better for us it's better

33:37 for everyone okay okay but no I mean to answer your question when there's a

33:42 bunch of like Services it seems that Google just picks one and to me as far as I can tell it's completely random you

33:48 would think it's the one with the best SEO but it's not always right right right I think it's

33:53 something to do with your website Authority also so as long as you have an authority and lots of pages I think you

34:00 can see yeah but I mean still it's it could sometimes it's a brand new page it picks that's not optimize well and then

34:07 other times it's the one you would expect for it to pick so it's [ __ ] if I know so the the let's talk the Google

How Do Google Updates Affect Legiit?

34:14 recent update March update and the and the uh my and of course there's another

34:19 one which came in June also spam update which is going on right now as we speak so so with these type of updates a lot

34:27 of SEO Community I mean there are two sites to you one is a freelancer one are client so does those Freelancers get

34:33 worried how How am I'm going to run my business or do they do they Panic what do they come to you what happens so I'm

34:40 sure some of them do because Freelancers are I love them but they are not the

34:45 biggest picture thinkers in my experience they they think very narrowly I think if there's a Google update that

34:52 affects a lot of sites that that's an opportunity for people that sell SEO because people want to get that traff

34:57 back so they'll do things to try and fix it and I think my my sales numbers the last few months definitely prove that to

35:03 be true because we're having a killer year if they I guess your question is that do they Panic Le I don't know how

35:11 to say this without sounding bad I've learned to tune out Freelancers that complain because I get I get some a lot

35:18 of complaints that aren't necessarily worth my time but if it was something if somebody came to me and says I'm worried

35:23 about the future uh you know there's these Google updates and they're affecting SEO what do you think as like

35:29 I would think that Google updates that Mak somebody won somebody else lost and that person that lost is not going to

35:35 quit usually so they're going to need you more than ever is is how I would

35:40 explain that now do I think longterm the SEO might at least Google SEO might

35:46 be on a bad trajectory absolutely I think the surf results right now are the worst I've ever seen them in the last 10

35:52 years and they don't seem to give a [ __ ] they seem to be more interested in making profit today than making profit

36:00 long term uh but that's a whole other conversation I guess yes yes yes yes so all right so so

What's Next for Legiit?

36:07 Uh, in recent time of course seeing all this so when you had your Marketplace I believe it was primarily the SEO. Now

36:15 you say the content, so is there another feature or another set of categories

36:21 you intend to launch in near future?

36:28 So what we're doing is moving away from being just a Marketplace and we're transitioning into being a full B2B growth engine, which is the only one of its kind. We have software built in

36:35 now that you can just put in your website and then our AI will go out and figure out what things you need to do,

36:42 what things you need to improve, what you're ranking for, what kind of backlinks you have, you can connect analytics and

36:47 do a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't reveal just yet, but you will get to see at our event, and then

36:52 that will tell you not only what you need to do but connect you to people that need to do it. So the biggest

36:58 problem we found from our customers — like feedback from our customers — is: "I don't know what I need" or "there's so

37:04 many options I don't know what to buy." So that's one of the ways we're trying to solve that. And as far as other

37:10 categories, we're focusing less on appealing to everyone like, uh, like the $5

37:15 marketplace does, and we're trying to focus solely on things that businesses need — web design, marketing, SEO, what

37:23 else? Consulting, things like that, that business owners need, because I don't really want to appeal to everybody.

37:30 The $5 marketplace — I, I'm always reluctant to say their name because I don't want to get in

37:35 trouble — they, you know, they have one of their biggest services or gigs as they call them is a guy that looks like Jesus

37:41 who will make a video of him holding a sign or saying whatever you want. That's perfectly fine; there's a market for that.

37:47 I want to focus on growing businesses because I think businesses are what feed the world and I want to help be a part

37:53 of that. And our goal is to have every business on Earth using our B2B growth engine and have it be the center of

38:00 their business. So that's the direction we're going with it — to give them the tracking, training, tools and stuff that

38:07 they need to grow.

38:12 Okay, and so this is where you—

38:19 Just, uh, I had a look at your ads by the way, that's a very funny ad you had. So is

38:25 this the ad supposed to go—and I mean towards that growth engine, that B2B, to

38:31 some extent?

38:31 Yeah, like a lot of people, what we haven't done a good job of is a

38:37 question that I [ __ ] hate is, "How are you different than Fiverr?" And see, I did say their name. One of the ways that we

38:43 want to be different is that we focus on business also. I want people to stop thinking of us as just being for SEO

38:48 because a lot of people still have that perception that we're just for SEO. I wanted to get out the message that we're

38:54 here to support businesses, but I also wanted to do it in kind of a fun way because that's kind of my personality is,

39:01 I'm at least I think it is. I try to, you know, and put a little bit of humor and a little coolness into things, and

39:07 plus one of the advantages we have of not being a publicly traded company like a Fiverr or an Upwork or something like

39:13 that is I don't have to answer to any shareholders so I can be a little more playful, a little feistier in my

39:20 marketing like that commercial is. And hopefully you'll link to that so people can see it, but uh that, uh that

39:27 commercial was the idea that I told you, we have an agency that does our ads, same same people uh created that for us and

39:33 running the ads to it and it's just a really fun concept. It's, I don't know if you remember, but uh a few years ago

39:39 there was a product called Squatty Potty and they had a a a video that went viral.

39:45 It was like a unicorn and it was like pooping rainbows and it went viral, and that's kind of the con—no, not literally

39:50 the same concept but we wanted something that would be viral and be memorable and be catchy and I think I think they

39:57 nailed it to be honest.

40:03 Yes, it's absolutely quite uh unique and refreshing than the kind of ads you see

40:11 out there. When you said it's an ad I expected it's something talking a a jingle about Legit but it was totally

40:17 different and I love the ending. Yeah, by the way I went there on location for the filming of that and I

40:23 was blown away by how much goes into making something like that because that spot is like 90 seconds I think and it

40:28 takes 16 hours to record all of that with different lighting changes and

40:34 different takes. For example, in the first scene she, you see her and she's like, "Mom, I thought you said you

40:39 took Finance in college." She said that in the morning and then her mom responds, "I took all the financing they would give

40:46 me," and it looks like it happened all at once but those two scenes were filmed like four hours apart. But like every

40:52 one of those scenes is like that and it's just it was fascinating to see behind the scenes of—

40:57 Yeah, so if anybody ever like wants something like that, first of all I can recommend you to someone but understand that it's going

41:04 to be expensive because it's the what you see is the end result and not the a

41:11 full day, 16 hours. Well, that doesn't even count the time of like scouting a location, hiring actors, hiring producers,

41:18 costume—you know what I mean? It's it's a ordeal. It made me have a lot more respect for, uh, like TV shows and movies

41:23 and stuff.

What Is LegitCon?

41:19 just uh you are coming up with your event legit life right tell me more

41:24 about it what what exactly how did the idea of Freelancers customers

41:30 Marketplace how does it so what exactly it's going to be so well you give a

41:35 little backstory and then we'll get into the event itself the backstory is I have hated events for most of my career I

41:41 feel like I felt like that people used them as an excuse to take a vacation that everything that was said was just a

41:47 sales pitch and that there really wasn't any value like the networking was overrated and stuff like that and then

41:53 uh last year Harry Samuels I don't know if any body knows Terry but he invited me to speak yeah speak at SEO SP spring

42:01 training I was like yeah why not uh so I went out and I spoke at that we had a great time uh you know spoke met some

42:07 cool people made some connections then later that year Gregory Ortiz uh invited

42:12 me to speak at an event there in Florida and I met some good people there and did some more networking and found it was

42:19 positive and then earlier this year I spoke at another one through uh Michael Marino and Brock mezner at SEO at the

42:25 beach and after that one I had a great time again and made some good connections again and I started thinking

42:31 you know maybe first of all maybe I was wrong about events but also maybe this is something we should have because

42:37 people have been asking me for years when I was going to have a conference and I just blew it off but we started thinking about it and I put it in we

42:44 have a slack channel for ideas and like I put it in there and instantly Jim my partner he agreed with it and we've been

42:50 planning it ever since now we wanted to do something a little bit different because most conferences are there's a

42:56 hotel and then there's a conference room and then people speak and it's over we're having ours at an event a place

43:01 separate from the hotel that has that I have a personal connection to and I'm going to tell that story at the event

43:08 and then uh I wanted there to be more than just one type of person what I mean

43:13 by that is I don't want to be an SEO event I want it to be something that helps people in a lot of things so uh we got people that do ads and then do

43:20 business and stuff they're going to be speaking as well along with a lot of seos because frankly that's still L A

43:26 lot of my audience and a lot of my contacts are uh and then we're also going to be revealing or like unveiling some new things for legit that nobody

43:32 else will get access to uh until later on that people there will get so it'll

43:38 be that and plus where I live I'm I'm blessed to live in a place that is fun to vacation in so if people do want to

43:44 make a vacation out of it they can one one guy's coming from all the way from India to speak for us I think you I

43:50 think you might be familiar with him too I think I heard about him yes I'm coming all the way from India I'm very excited

43:57 to join you guys there myself is kind of introvert but yes I've spoken in a more

44:02 than 100 uh uh conferences in India and I've covered a lot of conferences in the

44:08 US not as a speaker but yes I've covered a lot of conferences I got a lot of press passes saving me $2,000 each time

44:15 yeah well that's that's another thing I want to point out is that uh please don't take this wrong way but a lot of

44:20 folks here may not be as familiar with you and I want to I don't want it to just be the same lineup of people over

44:27 and over again I wanted not there's anything wrong with that but I wanted to have some some people that maybe not everybody knew and could get something

44:34 from you know what I mean so that was another reason that I picked some of the speakers that I picked right right right

44:40 right I saw it's a good good mix of speakers uh so you get so much going

How Do You Keep Coming Up with New Ideas?

44:45 what what gets you going I mean how do you keep coming up with these ideas I mean as an entrepreneur there a lot of

44:52 things we have in our head we want to do it so how do you keep tab of it and how do you I mean do this so if you I guess

45:00 there's two parts to that question was how do I keep coming up with ideas and then what keeps me going and coming up

45:06 with ideas I I want to say I read a lot but I don't read in the sense that I open a book uh I walk a lot and I listen

45:13 to audio books while I walk and that's very I learn a lot from those the Steve Jobs biography inspired a lot of the

45:19 direction that we're going now uh and I'll I'll cover that in a minute so and then I listen to like a lot of like Alex

45:26 Heros type content uh you know a lot of a lot of influencer stuff I don't listen to because it's usually just but you

45:33 know him he I think he really has some high value stuff uh on Facebook Alan sultanic I get some good information

45:39 from on like copyrighting and things like that uh so just and then just like paying attention to the world around you

45:45 and seeing that for uh Trends and things that you can in other industries that

45:51 you can apply to your own industry those things help me a lot and wanting to be different another one I learned as I got

45:59 into this that marketplaces are a dime a dozen there's literally a community called called Everything marketplaces

46:06 that has like 10,000 Marketplace owners in it so I wanted to do something different so that's why we started building some software into into the

46:13 platform and I got that idea from a book called modern monopolies that talked

46:19 about how the biggest companies in the world now are platforms rather than just products and that that really inspired

46:26 me to change legit from being more of just a Marketplace into a full platform and I got recommended that book from TY

46:32 Lopez of all people because I was in a a program at his for a while and then um

46:37 you ask me what keeps me going is like the money is great like I'm not going to lie but I it's not just the money like I

46:44 could make I could make more just doing consulting like fris could make more just doing consulting than I then I pay

46:51 myself as the owner of legit V right while the money is important because it fuels the growth it's not the money uh

46:58 again going back to that Steve Jobs biography one of his goals was to put a dent in the universe and that's kind of

47:04 what I want to do is I want to do something that genuinely changes things

47:09 and makes the world better I want people having businesses has changed my

47:15 life in ways that I never thought possible and I think it's the key to

47:20 making everybody's lives better is having good businesses and I want businesses to have all the things that

47:25 they need to grow and I want them to get it from me so like I want people to be

47:30 able to sign up to legit plug their business in and know everything and be able to do everything through us and

47:37 that's my big goal is to have every business in the world doing that through us and getting step a step every day

47:42 closer to that goal is what keeps me going so guys we have a link down in the

47:48 uh uh description for legit if you want to sign up and definitely I use legit as

47:54 well so you uh interesting thing is that you as reading keeps you going and of

What Are Your Book Recommendations?

48:00 course audiobook is as good as reading so so you do read a lot and I would so

48:06 you said Steve Jobs biography influence so are there any other books you recommend for our listeners yeah

48:12 definitely depending on what your goals are and what level you're at of course but um the Steve Jobs biography

48:18 absolutely any Tech CEO biography is really great Elon Musk has two of them

48:23 uh there's a Bill Gates one any of those that you can consider are good uh and then uh modern monopolies I can't I'm

48:30 terrible with author names but the book modern monopolies was a big game changer for us and then if you're at more of a

48:37 beginner to intermediate level I would say the two Alex her Moi books hundred million doll offers and 100 million

48:42 dollar leads will give you some great Insight that's off the top of my head that those would be the first ones that

48:48 I would recommend and then from there it depends on your particular specialty whether it's marketing or copyrighting or

48:53 whatever all right so so just some closing questions so when you started

What Are Your Processes and SOPs?

48:59 the Superstar SEO and now you have leged so did you a lot of people talks about

49:04 Sops and processes so did you had those before or do you have them now or how

49:10 did when it's definitely not my strength personally uh I tend to be more of a I

49:16 just can store everything in my head like I don't mean that brag but like my memory is good enough to remember how to

49:21 do everything just from my head but that doesn't work with employees so they have kind of come up with their own systems

49:28 and for a while it was all over the place but now it is Consolidated in to a few places where I it I don't want to

49:35 call them Sops but like this is where you go to learn how to do this thing in the company you know what I mean and

49:40 then I give people the freedom to do it a little bit on of their own but uh we

49:46 do have SS and procedures and it it's it helps to be organized like that if it

49:51 was up to me it wouldn't have ever happened so I give credit to my my team for that because I'm

49:57 I'm good at I'm a good leader I'm not a good manager so but that's what counts there are

50:03 sometime the good leaders are good manager but tend to be a bad leaders yeah yeah and that's a a distinction

50:09 that a lot of people don't understand the difference between so let me clarify that a a good manager manages tasks and

50:16 makees sure that the checklist that we talked about earlier gets done a good leader just tells people what they want

50:22 done and comes up with the idea and expect lets them go do it and it's gives them the support they need to get it

50:29 done like empowering the people yeah yeah definitely the most common answer to a question I I give is what do you

50:36 think we should do because most of the time people already know what they should do or they suspect what the what

50:43 they have an idea what they would do but they want you to like okay it or they want you to be the one that give it to

50:48 them and just say what do you think we should do and then just say yes unless what they want is really bad just say

50:54 yes and let them go do it uh all right all right okay so I think we crossed our

What Is Your Last Message for the Audience?

51:00 1 hour just I mean honestly speaking with you the time just flew by it just not right right so it was an interesting

51:08 talk with you and I will mention all the books which you have in our description below and anything else you would like

51:15 to tell our uh listeners other than buy stuff from me uh I would love you if you

51:20 would do that more than that at the end of all of my live streams and some of my videos I always say uh figure out which

51:27 you want out of life and go out and get it because you owe it to yourself and you owe it to the world I I mean that so you know figure out whatever it is that

51:33 you want to do figure out the end first reverse engineer what it'll take to get

51:38 there and then just start making sure that everything you do takes you in that direction and your life will transform

51:44 in ways that you never thought possible right that's absolutely wiser words I

51:49 completely agree with it thank you might not be following it all the way but yes that's how it should be right right

End

51:57 all right Chris thank you very much for joining me today here all right thank you for having me yeah all right then

52:03 thank you all right have a good one