I’m currently an SEO specialist at an agency and I can say this guy is speaking the truth. We do small things like optimize H1s and meta descriptions and title tags and “optimize” blog posts and then we buy backlinks from high authority sites and then send them AI content for them to put a link in and then call it a day. I’m watching this video to try and figure out how to do it the right way but if your wondering this guy is spitting facts.
So I started with this podcast (#21) as your recommendation for begginer's. Where do I go from here? What would the roadmap be? Great podcast by the way
I found your channel while scrolling another forum and listened to 3 videos this morning. My first thought was "Wow, finally someone is making sense"! I mean, it's succinct, to the point, and it's obvious that you back this up with experience. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I subscribed and hope to learn more from you. You strike me as someone who is direct and I LOVE THAT! Your delivery is great and it even makes me chuckle. Wishing you great sucess with podcasting, too.
Great information. I think I'm FINALLY starting to understand. My background in coding, in to affiliate traffic, in to paid ads, and now finally into SEO -- which is an awesome source if you can understand it.
I agree with all of this 100%. I've seen the wildest things in my few years of working in SEO. Mediocre content and websites ranking so high that you start questioning whether you're doing everything wrong or not. Here's my question though: How do you establish the authoritativeness of a website accurately? Is there a specific method you use?
Great question and thanks for listening. There is no way to PRECISELY establish the authority of a website since Google no longer publishes PR. The only "official" measure of authority is known by the search engines, and they aren't telling. So what I do is combine the readily available metrics. DA and PA. CF and TF. PR and UR. If they are CONSISTENTLY HIGH, it's probably authoritative. If there is a big range between them, for example, DA is really high, but TF is really low, maybe it's not actually that authoritative. I will compare all of them and look for big difference between them. If they're all low, it's probably low authority. If they're all high, it probably actually has higher authority. If they're all over the place, then I'd be less certain about it's authority.
Just found your podcast and im here for the no bs straight to the point method. Do you have an audio only option on podcast networks? Also, I started SEO about 2 years ago focusing on local businesses and have some friends who own businesses as my clients that I charge very little (I also do their web design) while I hone my skills. Do you have experience with local SEO or be willing to do an episode on strategies for it? Keep up the good work!
Thanks. All podcasts are available on Spotify and iTunes as well as here if you want audio only. There's no episode on local SEO yet. That's a good idea.
Amazing Podcast, have heard a few of your episodes and i agree 100%! In this one you comment on episode 14, but i don't seem to be able to find it anywhere, did you remove it?
I have four websites but I haven’t done SEO for it. I am a novice I’ve been doing this for a year and I took too many projects on my belt, but I don’t want to quit on them. What should I do in this situation. I want to start a career in digital marketing and specialize in websites specifically design and SEO
What are your websites about? You can do SEO on them to get a better feel for how it operates. I'm not sure if you can specialize in web design AND SEO. SEO is a pretty full time thing. I don't know tons about web design, but I assume it is, too.
@@GrumpySEOGuyhey I’m on a different account on my phone but damn that’s tough to hear I guess I have to choose between the two thanks for the response
@@GrumpySEOGuy also my 1st website: jiu jitsu academy (published) 2nd: Massage Therapy Website (Unpublished) 3rd: Car Apparel E-Commerce Website (Published) 4th: Podcast Website (Unpublished) I’m just stuck in this wall not gonna lie but obviously you can’t give me everything away for me I was just wondering if you have some pointers because I have a hard time understanding this concept.
I am trying to listen to your podcast because you do have some good information, however, it feels like a lot of being talked down to. That's great you had lunch with CEO's of companies. You should be proud of the work you created, I don't need to hear it 50 times that you did though OKAY? (You also say okay a lot)
It's your choice to like this or not but OMG... ITS FREE and it's his opinion on the matter. Say thank you and shut up! You clearly don't understand how hard it's to find knowledgeable individuals who are willing to share with us, the know-nothing!
Episodes 37 and 39 talk about different kinds of backlinks. Episode 5 talks about how to do backlinks yourself. Episode 49 shares how to get backlinks.
We aren't selling backlinks to the public. When we do provide backlinks, we first do a detailed assessment that takes about a month to figure out what is going on, if SEO is doable, and many other things we need to know.
This is great info… but how does this apply to a local service based business? This content seems like it is only for bloggers sitting on their keyboard all day long writing about baking cookies.
I've been ranking for years without building any links so I'd have to disagree. Links only become important when you're competing for top 3. Sites that got crushed by HCU had THIN content with garbage outlining.
To start with, if what you are doing is working, then keep doing it. That said, we have never seen any evidence ever that content is a ranking factor. EEAT is not a ranking factor (this is next week's episode). HCU wasn't about content. If you are ranking without building links, you are either 1) still getting the backlinks from somewhere; maybe you're site is popular enough that other sites link to it, or 2) you have no competition. If you want to email me your site so I can verify that you are "ranking" "without... links" I'd be happy to check. I have never seen a site rank without backlinks, ever, unless something else is happening, like we're talking local SEO or some specific TLD, etc. Content is not a ranking factor unless you have a keyword stuffing penalty. Good content and bad content do not exist. How would the search engines tell? They wouldn't. That's why they use authority as an analogy for "helpfulness," because good content probably gets better backlinks than bad content.
@@GrumpySEOGuy I guess we have to agree to disagree. I have 15,000 hours in this field and have worked with over 100 clients. I've built and sold affiliate websites for 6 figures and I've never built links. NEVER. I ONLY do on-page and no, these pages aren't picking up links naturally. I'm not saying links aren't important, but to say that is only ranking factor is an absolute dogwater take. Have you ever considered that you simply don't understand on-page? HCU was definitely about content. The C literally stands for content. It heavily penalized websites with THIN content, not just at the page level, but sitewide. I don't think you know what thin means. I've recovered over a dozen websites from HCU by fixing this. Rankings will naturally drift down even if you don't refresh content too. Most of you whining about HCU and content really don't grasp what "helpful" means. It doesn't mean beautiful prose written by industry experts, it means having specific elements, organized in a certain way, with certain types of quantification. You have to reverse engineer what is already showing, that's all I'll say about it. The fact that you openly brag about holding clients hostage with links that you will remove if they stop paying you, is incredibly dishonest and unless you have that built into contracts, I hope former clients you've done this to, sue you. I will agree with you about one thing, this field is littered with fakes and scammers and you're at the top of the list.
Any links that are not monthly subscriptions are scams. I literally have an episode explaining why this is the case. It is not a sustainable business model otherwise. Do you pay monthly for your cable or cell phone bills? Ongoing payments guarantee ongoing service. Every client we have knows beforehand it's monthly. Because this is how real SEO works. I've never seen a site like you describe, EVER, that ranks without backlinks. If you want to email it to me so I can verify it has no backlinks and is ranking for competitive terms, I'm happy to look at it. I've never seen this.
No problem. No one has ever shown an example of a website that ranks without backlinks when there is also competition to the website. This is when the "content is king" people get quiet. I'd even sign an NDA if you want. I want to be very clear, I would REALLY LIKE to see a site that ranks with just content because I think that would change the industry AND make the internet better. Building authority is annoying. Anyway, your other comment appeared 4 times, and I deleted the first instance, and all 4 seem to have disappeared. Weird. I saved a copy of it. I'll post it into this thread if it doesn't reappear.
If you're not ranking, it's usually because you don't have enough authority. You don't rank because you have good content, or because you paid some professional content writer to write you really good content that the search engines prefer. Authority comes from backlinks. Therefore, yes, "get backlinks" is the answer to people's issue of not ranking. But they have to be quality, anyway.
"portfolio of authoritative blogs" - what differentiates that from a PBN? And you say this doesn't cost much? How does that work? What authoritative blogs do you have in your portfolio for dental offices in Boise, ID, or authoritative blogs for performance mods for VW GTis? I mean, this sounds like what you are saying is that there is only one effective SEO approach and you are one of only a handful of agencies on the planet capable of delivering that service. I mean, it sounds like you're nothing more than a backlink broker with a financial interest in downplaying any other form of SEO. Sorry, but the more I listen to this podcast, the more it came across as snake oil.
A PBN is a network. A network means the blogs are connected together. A portfolio is a group of blogs that are not linked to each other. Episodes 3-5 explain exactly how to do it and answers your next questions. I'm not selling anything so I'm not really a broker. But there are actually 4 ways to get backlinks. 1) do nothing and wait for people to link to you (this doesn't work when you don't already rank because no one finds you). 2) buy backlinks from vendors; most are scammers. 3) do guest posting and link outreach. This may work, but can be a waste of time, ineffective, or dangerous. See episode 14 more more information about this. 4) Build your own portfolio of authoritative blogs and use those. We explain how to do this in episodes 3-5. You need to get backlinks to get authority, and you need to get authority to rank. These are your 4 choices for getting backlinks.
@@GrumpySEOGuyWhat do you mean by "portfolio of authoritative blogs'? Are these blogs you create yourself, or are these relationships you build with existing bloggers?
@@GrumpySEOGuySo, in order to get one website to rank higher, I need to create a couple of blog website that also need to be seen as authoritative? And since authority comes from inbound links... I would need to create an infinite number of sites in a giant pyramid scheme of blogs. This doesn't pass the smell test one bit.
Listen to episodes 3-5. It explains how to do it. You buy expired domains that already have authority and make the portfolio with those. There's no infinite number of sites. The other option is to create brand new sites with no authority, and spend time raising their authority. You are either going to spend time (starting over) or money (buying domains) to get your authoritative portfolio. There's no pyramid.
The entire concept needs to be introduced slowly. First you learn about authority. This episode explains why authority is important. Episode 49 explains the 4 ways to get backlinks.
We didn't make the podcast to get new clients, but we may be able to offer advice that will help. The email address is at the end of every video (and the beginning of few).
I’m currently an SEO specialist at an agency and I can say this guy is speaking the truth. We do small things like optimize H1s and meta descriptions and title tags and “optimize” blog posts and then we buy backlinks from high authority sites and then send them AI content for them to put a link in and then call it a day. I’m watching this video to try and figure out how to do it the right way but if your wondering this guy is spitting facts.
Thanks for sharing how it works, and thanks for listening to the podcast!
So I started with this podcast (#21) as your recommendation for begginer's. Where do I go from here? What would the roadmap be? Great podcast by the way
I found your channel while scrolling another forum and listened to 3 videos this morning. My first thought was "Wow, finally someone is making sense"! I mean, it's succinct, to the point, and it's obvious that you back this up with experience. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I subscribed and hope to learn more from you. You strike me as someone who is direct and I LOVE THAT! Your delivery is great and it even makes me chuckle. Wishing you great sucess with podcasting, too.
Thanks for the kind words!
Im starting to learn SEO and this is the most fun I ever had learning about SEO great job man your content is GOLD
Love the insight, love the opinion. Definetely taking notes.
Thank you for the kind message!
Great information. I think I'm FINALLY starting to understand. My background in coding, in to affiliate traffic, in to paid ads, and now finally into SEO -- which is an awesome source if you can understand it.
I agree with all of this 100%.
I've seen the wildest things in my few years of working in SEO.
Mediocre content and websites ranking so high that you start questioning whether you're doing everything wrong or not.
Here's my question though: How do you establish the authoritativeness of a website accurately? Is there a specific method you use?
Great question and thanks for listening. There is no way to PRECISELY establish the authority of a website since Google no longer publishes PR. The only "official" measure of authority is known by the search engines, and they aren't telling. So what I do is combine the readily available metrics. DA and PA. CF and TF. PR and UR. If they are CONSISTENTLY HIGH, it's probably authoritative. If there is a big range between them, for example, DA is really high, but TF is really low, maybe it's not actually that authoritative. I will compare all of them and look for big difference between them. If they're all low, it's probably low authority. If they're all high, it probably actually has higher authority. If they're all over the place, then I'd be less certain about it's authority.
@@GrumpySEOGuy Awesome! What tools do you use to get a better idea of those metrics? I assume something like Moz/SEOQuake?
ahrefs, semrush, majestic, moz
Very good to hear this take. It certainly matches with my personal experience of SEO so far.
Thanks for listening and good to hear you found it useful!
Just found your podcast and im here for the no bs straight to the point method. Do you have an audio only option on podcast networks?
Also, I started SEO about 2 years ago focusing on local businesses and have some friends who own businesses as my clients that I charge very little (I also do their web design) while I hone my skills. Do you have experience with local SEO or be willing to do an episode on strategies for it?
Keep up the good work!
Thanks. All podcasts are available on Spotify and iTunes as well as here if you want audio only. There's no episode on local SEO yet. That's a good idea.
Wow, you deserve way more subs
I appreciate that!
Amazing Podcast, have heard a few of your episodes and i agree 100%! In this one you comment on episode 14, but i don't seem to be able to find it anywhere, did you remove it?
It's still here.
Quality content.. Now how do I find quality backlinks?
I have four websites but I haven’t done SEO for it. I am a novice I’ve been doing this for a year and I took too many projects on my belt, but I don’t want to quit on them. What should I do in this situation. I want to start a career in digital marketing and specialize in websites specifically design and SEO
What are your websites about? You can do SEO on them to get a better feel for how it operates. I'm not sure if you can specialize in web design AND SEO. SEO is a pretty full time thing. I don't know tons about web design, but I assume it is, too.
@@GrumpySEOGuyhey I’m on a different account on my phone but damn that’s tough to hear I guess I have to choose between the two thanks for the response
@@GrumpySEOGuy
also my 1st website: jiu jitsu academy (published)
2nd: Massage Therapy Website (Unpublished)
3rd: Car Apparel E-Commerce Website (Published)
4th: Podcast Website (Unpublished)
I’m just stuck in this wall not gonna lie but obviously you can’t give me everything away for me I was just wondering if you have some pointers because I have a hard time understanding this concept.
You can always email me using the email address in the podcast if you have specific questions.
@@GrumpySEOGuy ok thank you
I am trying to listen to your podcast because you do have some good information, however, it feels like a lot of being talked down to. That's great you had lunch with CEO's of companies. You should be proud of the work you created, I don't need to hear it 50 times that you did though OKAY? (You also say okay a lot)
thanks for the comment and the feedback! I am new to podcasting and am learning as I go. I do say ok a lot. I need to be more aware of this.
It's your choice to like this or not but OMG... ITS FREE and it's his opinion on the matter. Say thank you and shut up! You clearly don't understand how hard it's to find knowledgeable individuals who are willing to share with us, the know-nothing!
@@GrumpySEOGuy Personally I like your style. It’s authentic and raw and we need more of this
@clairelc6 I’m here because this guy knows what he’s talking about. Go be a miserable Karen somewhere else … wtf.
Can you please tell how to build Backlinks to build authority .
Episodes 37 and 39 talk about different kinds of backlinks. Episode 5 talks about how to do backlinks yourself. Episode 49 shares how to get backlinks.
@@GrumpySEOGuyyou a real one! Thank you 💯🫡
This is Gold, thanks
Thanks for listening
any chance you can give out your agency's name? Desperately looking to rank my website.
No. But if you email me we might be able to help with specific things.
How many websites in your portfolio for backlinks would you say a person needs?
Episode 66 talks about this.
You need way more Subbs
Thank you!
Thanks
Thanks!
If someone starts a new blog and don't have a list of authoritative sites, also don't have money for hiring SEO agencies, then what should they do?🙂
Guest posting, link outreach if you have no money. It can work, it's not the best strategy, though.
Soooo... how much does it cost to buy backlinks from you?
We aren't selling backlinks to the public. When we do provide backlinks, we first do a detailed assessment that takes about a month to figure out what is going on, if SEO is doable, and many other things we need to know.
@@GrumpySEOGuy Do you have an episode on what kind of things you guys assess, and what determines whether SEO is doable? Thanks
Hey there,I am new to this website making and Seo stuffs and in desperate need of advices.Can you help me?
What do you need help with? You can post a response to this comment.
This is great info… but how does this apply to a local service based business? This content seems like it is only for bloggers sitting on their keyboard all day long writing about baking cookies.
Yeah, local SEO is a bit different. Local SEO involves NAP, GMB, proximity, reviews, and authority. We may discuss this in the future.
Brilliant Podcast, How About E-E-A-T?
Episode 46 - EEAT is Not a Ranking Factor
I've been ranking for years without building any links so I'd have to disagree. Links only become important when you're competing for top 3. Sites that got crushed by HCU had THIN content with garbage outlining.
To start with, if what you are doing is working, then keep doing it. That said, we have never seen any evidence ever that content is a ranking factor. EEAT is not a ranking factor (this is next week's episode). HCU wasn't about content. If you are ranking without building links, you are either 1) still getting the backlinks from somewhere; maybe you're site is popular enough that other sites link to it, or 2) you have no competition. If you want to email me your site so I can verify that you are "ranking" "without... links" I'd be happy to check. I have never seen a site rank without backlinks, ever, unless something else is happening, like we're talking local SEO or some specific TLD, etc. Content is not a ranking factor unless you have a keyword stuffing penalty. Good content and bad content do not exist. How would the search engines tell? They wouldn't. That's why they use authority as an analogy for "helpfulness," because good content probably gets better backlinks than bad content.
@@GrumpySEOGuy I guess we have to agree to disagree. I have 15,000 hours in this field and have worked with over 100 clients. I've built and sold affiliate websites for 6 figures and I've never built links. NEVER. I ONLY do on-page and no, these pages aren't picking up links naturally. I'm not saying links aren't important, but to say that is only ranking factor is an absolute dogwater take. Have you ever considered that you simply don't understand on-page? HCU was definitely about content. The C literally stands for content. It heavily penalized websites with THIN content, not just at the page level, but sitewide. I don't think you know what thin means. I've recovered over a dozen websites from HCU by fixing this. Rankings will naturally drift down even if you don't refresh content too. Most of you whining about HCU and content really don't grasp what "helpful" means. It doesn't mean beautiful prose written by industry experts, it means having specific elements, organized in a certain way, with certain types of quantification. You have to reverse engineer what is already showing, that's all I'll say about it. The fact that you openly brag about holding clients hostage with links that you will remove if they stop paying you, is incredibly dishonest and unless you have that built into contracts, I hope former clients you've done this to, sue you. I will agree with you about one thing, this field is littered with fakes and scammers and you're at the top of the list.
Any links that are not monthly subscriptions are scams. I literally have an episode explaining why this is the case. It is not a sustainable business model otherwise. Do you pay monthly for your cable or cell phone bills? Ongoing payments guarantee ongoing service. Every client we have knows beforehand it's monthly. Because this is how real SEO works. I've never seen a site like you describe, EVER, that ranks without backlinks. If you want to email it to me so I can verify it has no backlinks and is ranking for competitive terms, I'm happy to look at it. I've never seen this.
@@GrumpySEOGuy Definitely not sharing anything with my competition. Enjoy this new core update. 🤣
No problem. No one has ever shown an example of a website that ranks without backlinks when there is also competition to the website. This is when the "content is king" people get quiet. I'd even sign an NDA if you want. I want to be very clear, I would REALLY LIKE to see a site that ranks with just content because I think that would change the industry AND make the internet better. Building authority is annoying. Anyway, your other comment appeared 4 times, and I deleted the first instance, and all 4 seem to have disappeared. Weird. I saved a copy of it. I'll post it into this thread if it doesn't reappear.
You don't sound that grumpy, i'm pretty disappointed.
You are not the first person to say this!
this was recommended on reddit, its a bit shit. "get backlinks!" yes alright mate
If you're not ranking, it's usually because you don't have enough authority. You don't rank because you have good content, or because you paid some professional content writer to write you really good content that the search engines prefer. Authority comes from backlinks. Therefore, yes, "get backlinks" is the answer to people's issue of not ranking. But they have to be quality, anyway.
"portfolio of authoritative blogs" - what differentiates that from a PBN? And you say this doesn't cost much? How does that work? What authoritative blogs do you have in your portfolio for dental offices in Boise, ID, or authoritative blogs for performance mods for VW GTis? I mean, this sounds like what you are saying is that there is only one effective SEO approach and you are one of only a handful of agencies on the planet capable of delivering that service. I mean, it sounds like you're nothing more than a backlink broker with a financial interest in downplaying any other form of SEO. Sorry, but the more I listen to this podcast, the more it came across as snake oil.
A PBN is a network. A network means the blogs are connected together. A portfolio is a group of blogs that are not linked to each other. Episodes 3-5 explain exactly how to do it and answers your next questions. I'm not selling anything so I'm not really a broker. But there are actually 4 ways to get backlinks. 1) do nothing and wait for people to link to you (this doesn't work when you don't already rank because no one finds you). 2) buy backlinks from vendors; most are scammers. 3) do guest posting and link outreach. This may work, but can be a waste of time, ineffective, or dangerous. See episode 14 more more information about this. 4) Build your own portfolio of authoritative blogs and use those. We explain how to do this in episodes 3-5. You need to get backlinks to get authority, and you need to get authority to rank. These are your 4 choices for getting backlinks.
@@GrumpySEOGuyWhat do you mean by "portfolio of authoritative blogs'? Are these blogs you create yourself, or are these relationships you build with existing bloggers?
Yes, they are blogs you create yourself. The process is described in episodes 3-5.
@@GrumpySEOGuySo, in order to get one website to rank higher, I need to create a couple of blog website that also need to be seen as authoritative? And since authority comes from inbound links... I would need to create an infinite number of sites in a giant pyramid scheme of blogs. This doesn't pass the smell test one bit.
Listen to episodes 3-5. It explains how to do it. You buy expired domains that already have authority and make the portfolio with those. There's no infinite number of sites. The other option is to create brand new sites with no authority, and spend time raising their authority. You are either going to spend time (starting over) or money (buying domains) to get your authoritative portfolio. There's no pyramid.
He’s rambling on about authority but doesn’t explain HOW to do it.
The entire concept needs to be introduced slowly. First you learn about authority. This episode explains why authority is important. Episode 49 explains the 4 ways to get backlinks.
Do you offer SEO services. How do I contact you?
We didn't make the podcast to get new clients, but we may be able to offer advice that will help. The email address is at the end of every video (and the beginning of few).