Olga & Dave
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the SEO Podcast by #SEOSLY, the best SEO podcast for professionals like you. I'm your host, Olga and SEO consultant, bringing you the latest developments, essential news and experts insights from around the SEO world. Tune in to stay up to date, learn actionable tips, and get ahead in this competitive landscape.
[00:00:23] My episodes include weekly recaps. Interviews with other SEO experts, discussions on money in SEO, and so much more. I usually publish two episodes per week. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Check out my website for show notes and sponsorship opportunities if you like.
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[00:01:11] So let's dive into the world of SEO together. Hi everyone. It's Olga Zarr from SEOSLY. Welcome to the SEO Podcast by SEOSLY. My today's guest is Dave Schneider. Dave, how are you doing?
[00:01:29] I'm doing really well. Uh, thanks for having me on the call, Olga. I know we like tried to schedule this a million times and Yeah, for the most part I kept pushing it back for various reasons and now I'm here, so it's good to kind of like fulfill on that commitment. I mean, I reached out to you so it's like, I felt like particularly embarrassed at sort of like reaching out to you and then canceling a million times.
[00:01:47] But I think I also canceled once or twice. I, I don't even remember. So we are like both even equally. Yeah, even. Cool. So where are you based at the moment? I'm in Philadelphia. That's where I've been living the last couple years. Uhhuh, it's still capital of the world. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Not really, but it's, but there's a few of us.
[00:02:08] Okay. So if. If there are people who don't know you, can you briefly introduce yourself? Like who are you, what are you up to? Sure. Yeah. Um, so, uh, as I mentioned, yeah, Dave Schneider. I'm currently the CEO O of shortlist. Shortlist is a digital marketing agency. We specialize in seo. Uh, but prior to that, I've.
[00:02:25] I've kind of done a number of different things. Um, some people know me from Ninja Outreach. It was an influe influencer marketing software that still exists today, but I was one of the original kind of founders, uh, of it and kind of built it, sold it type of thing. Um, and then just, you know, little things here and there in the kind of digital marketing community.
[00:02:43] So I've also done extensive traveling. I was a backpacker. Uh, for many years, uh, as well, like kind of a digital nomad style, so kind of backpack for five years. But now I live a more sedentary life in Philadelphia with my wife and two kids. Okay. Okay. That's cool. Okay, so I want to, uh, I want to learn a lot about, more about your SEO story from the beginning.
[00:03:06] So like, when did you start? What was the beginning? What's, what's what, what happened that you landed in the SEO world? Yeah, for sure. Um, I, I, I like, I, I like to think it's like a little unique. Um, a lot of the people that I come across who are kind of OG SEO people, they were like doing stuff back in like the nineties when it was very easy to kind of manipulate search and stuff like that.
[00:03:29] And I was like on a very different. Path. Honestly, I wasn't ever thinking about digital marketing or anything like that at all. Um, I was very like academic focused, so I was just really mm-hmm. Working hard in my studies and wanted to get into like a good university and stuff like that. Um, and then I did, and I went to and got a job and then about.
[00:03:45] Two years into that job, I was working at Capital One as a business analyst, as a credit card company in the us. Um, I realized I really didn't like it. Uh, it was boring. Uh, and my girlfriend and I at the time were like, you know, we really want to go travel. Let's go travel. Let's kind of save up as much money as we can and blow it.
[00:04:03] Um, so we did that and we started a travel blog. Um, At, you know, nice, like, yeah, like, uh, un never, never heard of, like, never been done before. Right. Like a travel blog. Um, so we decided to start a travel blog, uh, to detail the journey, but we really wanted to like, earn a little bit of money while we were, while we were, uh, traveling and working just because we hadn't saved up quite enough to last us for as long as we wanted to go for.
[00:04:27] So we started to kind of look into ways in which we could, uh, earn money online, uh, and. One of the, uh, things that we stumbled upon early on was that, uh, was link building basically, was that companies would pay us, like our travel blog to be linked from it as a way of, you know, getting like more search traffic and improving their rankings.
[00:04:50] And I didn't really understand, I didn't know this was a thing. Um, and I didn't really understand exactly kind of what was going on. But as we kind of. We're doing our travel blogger stuff, people started to reach out to us and offer money in exchange for a link. And I was like, this is the easiest money like I've ever made.
[00:05:04] Like somebody would just give you $200 and all you had to do was like a little H T M L, like an A A H T M L type tag, a h rough type thing. So, uh, we started doing that and I started to learn more about, um, what factors of a website made it more valuable. You know, like, Page rank, which doesn't exist really anymore.
[00:05:24] Mm-hmm. But basically at the time, like that was what everybody was looking, it was like all about being like a PR three or a PR four. Um, and so kind of going down the path of content marketing, SEO, to sort of improve the travel blog that we were on. And then that just kind of opened up the whole world and I started to sort of see what people were doing online as a business.
[00:05:46] And I started to come across. Um, marketing sites like Flip a, uh, where all these businesses were available for sale and people were sort of making money and buying and selling and stuff was happening. This whole world kind of like got opened up. So, um, years down the line. We continued as digital nomads.
[00:06:04] Um, the trip was supposed to be about two years and ended up lasting about five. And, uh, somewhere in the middle of it I got the idea to pursue software, which was like another space I knew absolutely nothing about and had no business doing anything with. And I'm not a developer or coder by. By trade. Um, but I guess I thought like that I could do it.
[00:06:24] So I started Ninja Outreach and Ninja Outreach. Ninja Outreach was an infl influencer marketing tool, but people used it for like content guest posting. There's, there's always like an SEO component to it, and we did a lot of. SEO to sort of build up the traffic and build the top of the funnel for it. A lot of content marketing, you know, blink building, that type of stuff.
[00:06:44] Nothing, uh, like, uh, crazy, crazy sophisticated, but just like the fundamentals and essentially, you know, from then on I just sort of, I guess, have sort of. Grown in this role of a digital marketer, and now I have this agency which offers SEO services and I've done some other products and stuff like that.
[00:07:01] And so that's kind of the, and that, that encompasses like 12 years basically is what I just kind of covered in like five years Uhhuh. So, so you started this, uh, this, uh, travel blog around 12 years ago, right? Yeah, we were like, uh, we were just a few years outta college, so I was probably like 23 and now I'm like 35.
[00:07:20] So yeah, about 12 years ago. Give or take. Yeah. So, so yeah, so we are the same age. Okay. Well I, you look better than I do. Thanks. That's ok. I, so yeah, so it looked like we started around the same time because like around the same time I was also creating blogs, blogs, blogs, and. All I did basically was, uh, Google Ads Sense and selling links because I was getting a ton of, a ton of requests for four links.
[00:07:49] Similar like you. But can you tell me more about this blog? How, how it grew, how many pages it, it had? Like what was the traffic? Does it still exist? I'm very curious. Yeah. That was the thing that was always like so weird. It was always so shocking to everybody I was talking about was that the site never really had that much traffic.
[00:08:07] I mean, you know, a little bit maybe at its peak, right? It had something like, I don't know, 10 or 15,000 pages a month. Like not really all that much. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean like more than just. Like a real basic blog that nobody's ever promoted, but by no means like really well trafficked, but like at its peak of income, the blog itself was able to earn, you know, 10, 20 grand a month, mainly like selling links and stuff like that.
[00:08:32] And, um, you know, so. Like the site, you know, we, we continued mainly to just sort of write about our journeys and, and stuff like that. But then there was sort of more and more sponsored content that kind of went on the blog and we were always trying to kind of be, uh, very, um, what's the word? I don't know.
[00:08:50] Very clever. By like maybe hiding the sponsored content, like not on the homepage and sort of like putting it into like more inner pages so that the normal audience wouldn't see it because, you know, you still kind of are passing SEO juice as long as the links on the site. Doesn't have to be sort of on the homepage.
[00:09:05] But anyhow, um, you know, bottom line is it was a medium site, uh, low traffic, medium authority, something like a DA 40 45, but travel, uh, the travel niche in particular. Usually commanded like pretty high rates, like mm-hmm. In just, mm-hmm. In terms of what people would spend on link building. Like, it depended obviously on the company.
[00:09:26] I mean, there's always a wide range, but there were people that would spend, you know, $300 or more, like just for a backlink on a site like that. Um, I don't think that's the case as much anymore, but back then, you know for sure. And then one of the things that happened, Um, which I had left out in my original kind of story, um, was Expedia, uh, got caught for buying links, um, which, you know, Expedia a very well known company, and essentially they lost a lot of their rankings and traffics and that, like, that ripple effect went out through the whole industry.
[00:09:57] And all of a sudden everybody was kind of, Getting in touch with me and saying, Hey, like, can we have our link removed because our client doesn't want to be here anymore and they're worried. And it was just harder to get deals. And that was like the first time that I had ever kind of seen like a business go up, up, up and up and then just drop off a cliff like in a matter of like a couple months.
[00:10:16] Um, so that was something that always really kind of, It left like a strong impression on me, and it was one of the reasons why I started to look into software was because I wanted to, to have like a product and like, uh, and to have customers. And I had been like concerned about sort of just, just that purely selling SEO in that way.
[00:10:36] Um, but then of course we still utilized SEO as part of the way of growing our tool, but, um, it wasn't as much of the service that we were selling, if that makes sense. Yeah, sure. And coming now come like full circle. Yeah. Yeah. And I like to have an SEO agency where like we also do back land buildings, so here, here we are, but in a, but I guess in a bit different way now.
[00:10:54] Uh, such a, I'm on the other side of things. Uh, yeah, the, the other side was better actually. I always should've stayed where I was easier, way easier. Yeah. It was, was a lot easier. Yeah. Cuz uh, you were just the provider as, as opposed to sort of the client on the, you weren't really uhhuh client facing, now you're client facing and Yeah.
[00:11:11] And coming back, back to this site. For, for just a second. , was the site penalized by Penguin Panda and those early algorithms that changed so much in that it, it did receive a penalty at some point, and I forget exactly which one it was, you know, one of the early panda type one s I think, and it was, Like for a time removed from the search uhhuh, it still retained its, um, domain authority and things like that because when sites are penalized, they don't lose like that metric.
[00:11:40] So it was still kind of interesting to a degree, like clients were still sort of interested in being linked from it, but it couldn't be found in the search. But then I think what we did was we went. Back and we, like, we sort of undid a lot of the link building that we did, and then we kind of applied for readmission and now, now it can't be found and it still exists.
[00:12:00] Mm-hmm. It's called a couple travelers.com, but we don't really actively write on it. It's more of like a memorial these days. Um, but yeah, uh, we did, we did eventually get caught. Okay. Okay. I need to take a look at this site and for, yeah, we went to Poland. There's a country. Yeah, there's a whole thing about Poland there.
[00:12:16] Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. So how many countries did you visit? Uh, I think like 50. Oh, give or take, yeah. We were kind of traveling like a new place every month, you know, for about five years. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's nice. It was cool. It was a really good time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. Okay. And, um, and regarding your next project, uh, Did you like become like a developer?
[00:12:45] Did you do it yourself or did you hire people to help you? Uh, what was the process and like, tell me more about this. Yeah, so the next one after that was like a, you know, ninja outreach. Like I mentioned, this influencer marketing tool still exists to my knowledge, although it has changed hands multiple times, so I can't speak.
[00:13:05] For it, uh, as sort of a representative or ambassador of it. Um, but um, originally, originally I was looking for some sort of building, some sort of content SEO style tool. I was just trying to kind of do what I knew. Um, and, but I didn't have the developer skills as you kind of mentioned. So I kind of had to find somebody and um, I sort of.
[00:13:28] You know, I went on a podcast like this and I was talking with the, uh, the host and I was like, Hey, I've got this idea for like this content tool. And he was like, you know what? I've got that idea as well. And we've already got like a little bit of a prototype. Okay. Like, do you want to come on? And I've got a developer too.
[00:13:42] So I ended up being like the three of us, me, this guy Mark, um, this other guy, Paul, and. Paul was the developer, and Mark and I were kind of marketer types. And basically we kind of went to build this tool that sort of competed with site with tools like BuzzStream or mm-hmm. Inky B or Group High, if you're familiar with any of those tools in that class.
[00:14:03] So basically like blogger outreach tools. So, um, started kind of building that, um, million things happen along the way, but that. Business was, it was so different from the travel blog because the travel blog was sort of me and my wife, like doing what we do. We had our website and we were writing content and we were talking with clients, but there was no team.
[00:14:25] There was no, uh, there wasn't even really so much of like a. Like a product or, and there wasn't really customers, it was very different. It was sort of more like an exchange of money was happening. Uh, but with Ninja Outreach, you know, we started to learn about, um, outsourcing and building a remote team and what it's like to have people fill certain roles and to interview people for different jobs and to.
[00:14:49] Set goals and directions and priorities for the year. And it was a very different style of business, um mm-hmm. That I, you know, I really loved. Um, and that, and so that kind of helped give me like the foundation that, you know, that I have sort of now to, to, to go on to other things. But, you know, that, uh, business we, we ran for like about four or so years.
[00:15:09] And then, uh, it's just sort of like every, every couple years I run into some sort of, uh, Earthquake, uh, level, uh, seismic interruption into the market that I'm working in that just like totally worries me. So with the travel blog, it was this kind of, this Expedia, you know, link building is not, is dead type of a thing.
[00:15:28] And then with Ninja Outreach, it was, um, gdpr. And when that kind of came out, GDPR was like the European, um, hey, we privacy and data, um, laws and as an email outreach tool like where we, we harvested emails. From the web so that people could go through the database and find leads and, and reach out to them to maybe pitch them on like guest posting and stuff like that.
[00:15:53] So I got very concerned about, uh, the introduction of that law and essentially that was one of the reasons why we kind of decided to, to sell it and move on. Um, and then obviously, like looking back, it's so funny you look back, right? Like because, um, link building, like everyone's still doing it. Um, you know, these outreach tools like.
[00:16:12] Million of 'em. Way more than there were at the time when I was there. Like, yes, there's like GDPR and stuff, but like somehow these things have just become like a part of everyday life and like business has like continued. So I don't know, maybe the third time this happens, I'll actually not. Like, just leave my business and just stick with it.
[00:16:29] You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally, totally. So your third , project is shortlist? Yeah. I mean, go ahead. Tell me more about this, like Sure. Yeah. There are a couple like random failures in the middle there. But I mean, if we're talking about kind of like major milestones then, then yeah, shortlist is kind of number three.
[00:16:47] And do you want to share, sorry to interrupt those failures. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, I would love to. Yeah, it's just like, oh, it's always like little things. Um, so for example, um, after Ninja Outreach, I had bought another software, uh, called Less Churn. It was a churn reduction tool. Um, and I bought it for a relatively small amount of money, and I thought like it was gonna be my next big thing.
[00:17:08] And I was like, oh, like churn reduction, like, I love this space. I was actually trying to kind of move away from like, Content and SEO to be like totally honest. Um, and just to try, like to get involved in some other stuff. Uh, but that tool just, it just just kind of flopped. It was like too niche and it was too complicated to, um, kind of integrate into the products which had to be done.
[00:17:30] And, you know, basically after some months, like I ended up kind of selling it to profit. Well, um, they bought it. Uh, so that was kind of like a semi. Semi failure. Uh, and then, um, and then I, whatever, I did some consulting or something, you know, something like that. Uh, just kind of like bonding my time. Um, so after that, um, I, the goal, the goal was that I really, I really wanted to be doing more stuff with software.
[00:17:57] Um, and, uh, I was looking to, uh, start some new products like Les Churn and others, and I needed to do link building for them to kind of get them known and to build up. Sort of the authority. Yeah. So I started to kind of, this little, it was like, not even, it's barely like a service, but I was kind of said, Hey, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna write some articles on, uh, on peoples' blogs.
[00:18:20] Does anybody wanna be featured in those articles? And maybe it'll gimme like 50 bucks or something if you get like three people. You know, then you kind of have enough money to kind of like fund the article creation and kind of pay the blogger and stuff like that. So I was, I was trying to kind of get, like create a service that would get links to my products, like free of charge.
[00:18:40] You know, I wasn't really necessarily trying to make a lot of money with it, but just something that kind of worked, uh, to cover that. But basically, I ended up having more traction and success with that service than I did with my products. So as that service started to kind of grow and more people were interested in the link building side of things, and they were interested particularly in like the quality sites that we were working with, um, you know, this was, again, this was like 2018, so we're kind of going like four or five years ago or so.
[00:19:10] But, uh, a lot of the providers at the time who were providing links. Pretty much all they looked at was like domain authority, which in and of itself is like an SEO metric. Is, is is nice, but like it, it rarely tells the whole story. Yeah. Um, you could have a domain authority of like 50 or 60. Right. Which is high.
[00:19:28] Uh, you know, I know your audience like, probably knows like, stuff like this, but like, it's on a scale of zero to 100 and the, the higher it is, kinda like the better it is. Right. Um, but you could have a site that has no traffic. You know, I mean, the two things are mutually exclusive. So basically, um, I felt that there was a lot of link building providers in the industry like four or five years ago who would say, Hey, I'll get you like a DA 40 site or a DA 50 site.
[00:19:50] But the sites were just really crappy and they, some of them didn't have traffic or they didn't have like, trust flow and citation flow, and they just, they just weren't really good stuff. Some of them were maybe expired domains that somebody had bought and then like put a site on it. So it just like really.
[00:20:04] Real junk. So, uh, we started to kind of build the service at shortlist that was like, you know, quality links, honestly, that, you know, sites that had real traffic and real authority and stuff like that. And so that kind of caught on a bit. Um, people were interested in that. Um, and you know, that essentially became shortlist, the agency.
[00:20:22] And it was, you know, it was really kind of focused on this kind of, Productized service of, you know, you pay SX and we give you Y links. And we kind of do that every month. And then we started to expand into some other services and I said, Hey, wouldn't it be cool to be like a full service digital marketing agency and to do paid advertising and affiliate marketing and design dev and all this different stuff?
[00:20:46] And then as we started to do that, I realized. Like, it wasn't really that cool at all. Mm-hmm. Um, it was, we, we kind of lost our identity and we lost our competitive advantage and we lost kind of like the thing that we did better than other people. So after we experimented with this idea of becoming like a full service digital marketing agency, we backtracked and now, and since then we've been focused really just on.
[00:21:08] SEO related services. So now we do link building Sure. But we do, we do content marketing strategy and we do, uh, design and development, which is mainly like onsite optimizations, audits. Mm-hmm. Some user experience stuff. So really trying to kind of just stay with SEO related, um, services. And I've been running that for about four or five years.
[00:21:29] Um, the whole team is pretty much in Macedonia, um, because I have just sort of, Developed, uh, over time a nature of kind of, uh, working with remote teams and, and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. And it's been going generally well? Yeah, generally well. Okay. So how many people are there in the team? It's around 20.
[00:21:48] Okay. So that's a lot. That's a lot. And do, yeah. And do you like specialize in servicing, like specific types of websites or do you like service all websites? Because like some agencies like focus on, for example, like lawyer, seo, dentist, the C, whatever. Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I experimented with this idea of like, Got specialization and nicheing down.
[00:22:13] That's what everybody always tells you to do. Yeah. You know, like come up with a focus and, and that stuff. And I don't, I'm not saying that that's bad advice, it just, I've just always struggled to kind of make that work. Mm-hmm. So for example, for a period of time shortlist was, uh, focus on health and wellness sites.
[00:22:30] You know, that was the niche that we were sort of targeting. And then kind of we realized that like, We were getting inquiries from people from other types of businesses, you know, other types of niches and, uh, different business models, e-commerce, SaaS services, whatever it was. And the nicheing just, it just didn't work for us.
[00:22:51] Mm-hmm. We just found ourselves often kind of, uh, not able to present the right angle that we wanted to, to the client we were talking with. So we're pretty general at this point. We work with kind of all different types of, of businesses, you know. Around. Okay. Okay. And can you share some challenges you've been having as an owner of the.
[00:23:12] SEO agency because I am like a newbie owner of SEO consultancy. So I will be, I I would love to learn a little bit Sure. From you. Yeah. I've got a million mistakes. Um, so I mean, in no particular order. Some, some things that I, I've, I've noticed. I mean, so firstly, uh, speaking about like SEO in general, because I know that's really the theme of, of the podcast and stuff like that.
[00:23:36] Um, SEO can be kind of a tricky service, I think to run. Um, firstly, like results generally don't come like immediate, right? Like in most cases it can take like a couple months at best to start to sort of see maybe traction movement, you know, progress. Um, and. So number one, you know, you're sort of asking this sort of commitment of faith on the customer and for them to kind of commit to several months to be able to basically, um, provide them with some results.
[00:24:03] Number two, it's, it can be difficult to, um, uh, To relate the SEO work that you're doing and the results that you're getting to kind of like business r o roi. And you know, a lot of owners are always like, Hey, like, but you know, but what, like, how, what is the return on this investment? And like, what am I, you know, what am I really kind of getting at the end of the day?
[00:24:23] It's a very fair question. I mean, like, as business owners, we do have to sort of be, uh, prudent in sort of making sure that like the money that we put in that like we're. That is doing something for us. But on the other hand, marketing by nature often just is, is a little bit disconnected from the bottom line.
[00:24:41] You know, like you do campaigns, you know, and it's not just seo, it's so many different things like PR commercials and advertising and different things where you know, you, you can't always tell exactly what the return on that work was. So that can be. Quite challenging as well, uh, to be able to kind of convince people with that service.
[00:25:01] And so sometimes the service ends up not being like that sticky in, in and of itself because you have an issue where clients are sort of not getting results right away. And then when they do, they're not really sure kind of what they are getting forward. So, you know, one thing that we've been trying to do is to.
[00:25:17] Try to bundle some services together. Um, so for example, um, including maybe some content marketing and strategy and including, uh, maybe yeah, some website design and development, like performance optimization, user experience, like different things that I think, um, are more likely. That if the customer is, is utilizing a few different services at once, they generally are kind of more sticky and kind of more connected.
[00:25:42] Um, easier said than done, but that's, that's kind of one, one thing, uh, uh, that, that's kind of out there. Um, obviously, you know, with SEO there are million, like, like okay, maybe not millions, but there are many, there are many providers. And finding like a way to differentiate yourself I think is, is very important.
[00:25:58] Um, And I don't think with differentiation, like it has to be this over the top, um, uh, statement. But there's gotta be like something like with Ninja Outreach, you know, when we had that software, um, and we first kinda launched it, the thing that was different between Ninja Reach and things like Buzz string was that you could do prospecting and outreach all in one tool.
[00:26:19] Mm-hmm. Like originally, like tools kind of did one or the other, and you had to kind of use multiple to kind of make the whole thing work. So our thing was, we'll do both of them together and. There you go. That's why it's better with shortlist. Um, you know, we focus a lot on, I mentioned like the quality of the links.
[00:26:35] And a, again, I know quality is, uh, an overused sort of statement as like a differentiator or a, or a U S P or whatever. But, um, You know, if you can actually show to the metrics that you're using, you know, the different metrics that we use and that the other agencies do not, and why they matter and stuff like that, it starts to lend a little bit of credence to what you're actually saying and give some truth to it.
[00:27:00] So I think finding that differentiator is very important. So some people have, you know, found that with by saying, as we talked about earlier, like we market to this type of. A business, you know, by sort of their target customer, that's their differentiator. As I've said, that never really worked for me. So I have to find ways in the service itself, in the way we deliver it, or what we deliver.
[00:27:20] That can be a differentiator. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. Totally. Yeah. So that's a couple things. Um, and then, like I said, offering too many services at once, uh, was definitely, uh, a negative for us. Uh, it just was kind of, Too much to handle and basically, uh, you know, uh, basically, yeah, it just didn't really work, work out that well.
[00:27:45] Um, and then, you know, I think marketing in general, like as a service, you know, running an agency and or other marketing services, like you tend to be more exposed in economic downturns because usually when, uh, stuff is looking not so pleasant, right? Not so positive, like macro, globally. The things that people cut are like, growth, like they're, they cut, like growth of labor expenses.
[00:28:08] Those are like the first ones. So that is just kind of, and, and I'm seeing that now, like I'm seeing that now in like today's environment. I, I feel like there's just more apprehension about spending money and committing the growth. We've had probably more cancellations than we usually have. A lot of times the calls that I have with clients, like the sales cycles are longer.
[00:28:28] So I was just like giving this example the other day. Mm-hmm. But like, I had a couple calls with. Two different people. One was like a chief revenue officer and the other was like a VP of digital marketing, nor these are, you know, relatively like high level positions. So normally on a call like that, like that person would have the authority to like sign off on a contract mm-hmm.
[00:28:46] And say, yeah, we're gonna work with you. But in these cases, both of these people sort of referred me to like the c e O and said, okay, but he's the one, or she's the one who's gonna, like, make that final call. So I'm just seeing a lot more, uh, of that type of behavior and response. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, Again, it's b basically what, so what do you do?
[00:29:04] Well, I mean, you have to sort of just sort of be aware of your, uh, your metrics, like your profitability, your cash flow, um, in just a business as a whole that is robust enough that you haven't over-committed or over-leverage yourself so that when you run into these cyclical downturns, um, you don't kind of collapse because.
[00:29:25] Marketing services and businesses are typically gonna be the ones that get targeted. You know what I mean? , yeah. Right. Great tapes. , sure. And can you walk me through the, , like the criteria you're using, , when selecting links to build or to links to, to make outreach for?
[00:29:41] Mm-hmm. I'm very curious, again, to learn. Yeah. So, um, if, you know, if, I'm just gonna say this in general, uh, not trying to overly plug anything, but if you go to shortlist and if you go to the pricing, uh, services and pricing. So one thing that I always wanted to do, uh, with my agency, you know, agencies kind of sometimes have like a bit of a negative reputation.
[00:30:02] Um, I, in my, my experience, my opinion, yeah. And I, I think that some of that reputation has come from, um, People sort of taking advantage of customers who often don't really know what they're signing up for. A lot of people don't know, like SEO and marketing, they like, they know that they're supposed to do it and they know that they want like growth in sales, but they don't really understand what they're paying for and that like knowledge gap.
[00:30:28] Has empowered, you know, agencies over time to kind of like disrespect their clients. And in many cases, I've seen a lot of instances where, and I'm not naming names, I'm speaking in general in the industry where I feel like agencies will often like put their clients on some sort of like monthly retainer.
[00:30:44] Yeah. They'll have the clients like sign on for like a minimum of 12 months and then they kind of are doing like the bare minimum, you know, and I'll like talk with somebody, like a friend of a friend or something and they're like, They're like, they run like a dental office or something. They're like, yeah, we work with this like SEO agency.
[00:30:59] We spend like a thousand dollars a month and every month they like update our metadata. It's like, but, but you don't really need to be doing that every month. Like, you don't, like, that's not necessary to update every month. Like in fact, it shouldn't really be changed every month. Right. So, you know, tho or in, oh, and they charge us like $500 for hosting, you know, and it's like, oh, you can get hosting for like 20 bucks a month or something.
[00:31:18] Like, there's like a lot of that type of stuff that I've seen. Yeah. So when we kind of like, uh, built shortlists. I wanted to do stuff that maybe isn't optimal for growth, but like I felt ethically, you know, just sat well with me. Mm-hmm. Where basically we don't work off of any contracts that we impose ourselves.
[00:31:37] Like everything's like month to month and, you know, uh, at least what we deliver, um, is, you know, we're not just sort of like, uh, putting customers on sort of these autopilot campaigns of just like not really giving them much and charging them a lot. Um, Back to your actual question though, about like the link building and stuff.
[00:31:54] Oh, so what? Yeah. Why did I go on that? Like tangent. So that is a very interesting tangent. So, yeah, but in the, the, it goes, speaks to the last thing that I, I had originally mentioned. Cause I was talking about going to shortlist pricing page and stuff. And one of, one of the things that I feel like is. Not, also not common in the industry.
[00:32:10] It's like people don't look prices, uh, on the, on the page. They usually kind of hide that. Like you've gotta schedule a call to kind of learn about it and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. So again, we custom each campaign to the client, but we do put prices on the website because I want people to have a general idea of like where, what we, what we're looking for, like what, what they need to kind of commit and stuff like that.
[00:32:32] Um, so again, just like ways to kind of show that like, Yeah, we are kind of an agency, but we're trying to do things in the way that like many agencies don't, more transparency, more ethical marketing, stuff like that. In any case, so you mentioned about the, uh, the link building criteria, and I was saying that if you go to, uh, shortlist.io and you go to the link building, uh, in the services section, there's a pricing page and there on hover.
[00:32:56] Of the different links we have mm-hmm. A couple different tiers of links. It will showcase a few of the metrics that we are incorporating to, um, determine, uh, what websites we work with. Um, some of the ones that are included are, are obviously domain authority, organic traffic, um, trust and citation flow, spam score, um, how many external back links it has, how many referring domains it has.
[00:33:22] So essentially, Um, you know, I mean this is, uh, SEO is like a bit of an art, right? It's like not exactly a science is not exactly a definition, a universal definition of like what makes a good site and what makes a bad site. But, you know, I wanted to kind of go into what I thought were kind of like the leading tools in the space, like MAs Majestic, H Refs, and say kind of what are some of the metrics that they have that I think are kind of like unique to them that qualify like a good site.
[00:33:53] And then we sort of, you know, took from, from all of those. So website has to kind of pass like all of the standards from all those different tools. Mm-hmm. And again, it's, it's not, it's not to our benefit to do that because we end up excluding a lot of sites that we could otherwise work with and that a lot of other agencies do work with.
[00:34:11] And that makes our costs generally higher as an agency because we have less. Optionality in terms of who we work with. But again, like I said, I said to myself like, as much as I can be, like, I want to try to do this in a way that I feel comfortable about the service that we offer. Because it is one of those things that like sometimes, you know, you work with a client and it just doesn't work.
[00:34:31] Like, you know, not it's, it's not, it's not always successful. Um, you know, generally we've had like good results, but sometimes, you know, we've got a client. And they pay you money and then like a couple months later, like, it just hasn't worked out for them. And so I just, you know, and it sucks. Like, I mean, you don't wanna, you know, we all, we all wanna like, do good results for the clients.
[00:34:48] So I just kind of wanted to try to build a service in a way that I felt, um, was, uh, You know, relatively guilt-free, that if things didn't kind of work out, I knew that at least we had tried to kind of give them the best that, that we could do, like within the business model. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:02] That's great. Yeah, sure. Okay, so can you tell me, like, in your, in your job right now, what's your, what's the favorite part or what's the favorite part of o which you enjoy the most? The favorite part of seo. What I, what I, what I do like is that as an industry, it is, uh, evolving and changing like relatively rapidly.
[00:35:25] Um, and that, that's kind of a, for better or for worse type of thing because it does force you to sort of always be like up to date. And I'll be honest, like I am not always up to date personally on every, um, Google algorithm change and every update and stuff like that. Um, less so now, because now I I, I'm a bit more like in the business owner seat and I, I can't necessarily be the best s e o um, you know, all the time.
[00:35:52] I'm, you know. Mm-hmm. Maybe I, I used to know more about those things, but you definitely have to kind of keep up the date on trends and stuff like that. And so, like lately a huge trend is, was like ai. And, you know, and you, I, we, I know we talked before the recording, you're like, oh, chat G G P T. And I was like, oh, I'll find a way to mention it.
[00:36:08] And this is, that's is totally natural actually. It's just honestly just generally true. Uh, but that there's just a lot of tools and software that have come out leveraging, uh, chat, G P T and other uh, Other software, you know, leveraging that api, you know, the Jaspers of the world and stuff like that, that are basically creating content, they're creating copy, um, and they're doing all those things.
[00:36:29] And that's a core part of our business, right? Like we do a lot of guest blogging for link building. We do content marketing and strategy and stuff like that. So, you know, it's, it's nice to be forced to be. Aware of the stuff that's kind of going on because, uh, if not, like you're gonna get passed by and someone else is gonna kind of, you know, uh, take, take your stuff from you, you know, you, you sort of have to always be sort of up to date.
[00:36:53] So I think that that is a nice, um, you know, Effect of, of being in the SEO industry that, you know, and you're not, I I don't wanna say you're on the forefront of technology, but like you're generally, uh, in the early adopter area with like yeah. Stuff, you know. Totally, totally true. . So tell me now, what does your normal day look like?
[00:37:14] Uh, it varies. I kind of try to fill the role that's like needed on the day uhhuh. So just try to kinda see where I'm the most helpful. Um, so that could be, uh, working on proposals for a client, um, or maybe doing client, a client call. I do more, I'm, I'm more on the sales and the biz dev side. Mm-hmm. I tried to move away from, excuse me, like individual campaign management and stuff like that.
[00:37:38] Um, And just generally, like just looking in the business and trying to see how it can run better and how the processes can be improved and how it can communicate better, and how it can make it more enjoyable, like for the people that work there and for our clients and just improve the experience. So, you know, I just kind of, just trying to look for ways to improve things, uh, on, on the regular, like whatever that is.
[00:37:59] So, uh, for example, um, you know, recently, like for the last couple months, uh, we had an employee. This is the first time this has ever happened, but like, uh, she got pregnant and she gave birth. Mm-hmm. And so she took like a leave, you know, for a couple months, like three months or so. Uh, and this was one of those things, like shortlist didn't have like a mm-hmm.
[00:38:20] Uh, a policy for, you know, a maternity policy. So we had to kind of come up with one that we, that kind of work just. Probably not the best, but it's not the worst, you know? But I, we did what we could. Um, you know, it's a small business startup type thing, so it was a couple months paid and whatnot. And then while she was gone, like, I was filling in for her role and she was kind of like a branding project manager.
[00:38:40] And so, um, it wasn't the only thing that I did all day, but it was definitely like, um, a significant part of my week was kind of like taking on some of her responsibility. Mm-hmm. But it gave me the opportunity to dive deeper into that department and that service and think about the way that we do, uh, yeah, client onboarding and deliver the service and how we calculate, you know, the cost of the service and, um, being able to build out that landing page better and build out some case studies and improve our portfolio and stuff like that.
[00:39:10] So, um, you know, they always kind of say like, Try not to work like in the business work, like on the business. Um, but sometimes I think once in a while it is good to get in the business, but just to make sure you don't stay in one part for too long that you in the business in a particular role. Mm-hmm.
[00:39:25] And then you kind of get out and then you join somewhere else. So I kind of, yeah, I kind of hop around. Okay. Okay. And how many hours per week can you, can you estimate you work or how many days per week? Uh, yeah. Uh, I'm a, I'm, I'm kind of a weird sort of person in the sense that like, For me, I guess work and life is like very fluid.
[00:39:47] Um mm-hmm. So I don't mind doing some work in the, on the weekends and I don't mind doing work in the evenings, but I also will sometimes have a break between like 12 and two and I'll just kind of like, whatever, do whatever, go to the gym or something. Mm-hmm. Um, do different things. Um, so, uh, you know, the agency.
[00:40:04] Fluctuates, uh, in terms of how much it, it requires, uh, you know, sometimes not so much, sometimes more, but I've never been the type to basically, uh, put in more than like a 40 hour work week. Um, I'm not like a 60, 80 hour type of guy. Mm-hmm. Especially not these days. I have like two young kids, like both under three, so I can't really be doing that type of thing.
[00:40:26] So I, I spend a lot of time working on. Delegation and systems and processes and stuff like that. Um, and then, you know, if things at shortlist are not, and then I'm always trying to kind of like, Uh, get a couple other projects and stuff going, um, just because I kind of, I'm more of like a serial entrepreneur and I'm, I like to kind of have a different, couple different irons in the fire and I'm always worried also about like, the potential collapse of any one business.
[00:40:50] So I just wanna make sure I have like a few other ones, like just in case. Um, so I have a couple software products like I'm working on as well. Mm-hmm. One of them is in the employee engagement space, is called Inspi R, and the other is, In the kind of goal setting, uh, operational management. It's called Focus.
[00:41:05] And I'm trying to kind of build these tools to like Focus is your tool. Yeah. It's called, well, but you might be thinking of another focus. There's like mini focuses. This one's called this one, the website's called use focus.co. So it's probably not the focus you're thinking of. That's true. This is not that well known.
[00:41:22] Um, but uh, I'm trying to kind of build, uh, these tools that. Provide that work for companies that are like the ones that I run, like these remote teams of like 20, 30, 50 people, whatever, like stuff that kind of enabled those types of companies to do more. So anyway, I, I, I don't know. The short answer is I don't really keep track, like of my, of my weekly hours.
[00:41:42] Like it definitely varies and I just try to kind of like fit it in what I can. Yeah, sure. And talking about focus and time management, productivity, can you share some insights, some tips for business owners, orAG, agency owners? Yeah, sure. I mean, I don't know if this anything's gonna be kind of revolutionary here, but I would say, uh, I mean, first of all, like basic stuff for my own sort of productivity stuff is.
[00:42:07] The, the biggest thing is honestly just like having a very clear to-do list, and then what people will also say is not just to have a to-do list, but to actually like bucket that time on your calendar and say like, mm-hmm. If you have a task, like assign a time for it to be done because I. That is what really like, makes a commitment to saying like, this is gonna be done now.
[00:42:28] So, you know, uh, some people operate without a to-do list. I don't know how one does that. Um, but if you do kind of have a to-do list, try to then, uh, keep like a well-managed calendar and find a way to sort of incorporate like those tasks into different days and times. But then, you know, honestly, at the end of the day, like a lot of it does come down to like delegate delegation, you know, and like building like a good team and people that you can kind of count on because like no matter how.
[00:42:52] How efficient and productive you are. There's just no like, like substitute for another human being doing the work. Like there's just, there's just no, nothing beats it. You know? Uh, yeah. And, and, and, and when you incorporate like, outsourcing and the relative, you know, the relative differences in cost of living and stuff like that, um, it's like a, no, it's kind of a no-brainer.
[00:43:14] Um, of course, you know, there's. There's, there's a, a, a tier that you have to get to where you kind of have enough maybe funds to be able to hire somebody because even somebody from Eastern Europe or Asia or whatever, like they don't work for free. Like they still need to be paid. And that could be like a thousand dollars a month or more, or whatever it is, but in which, you know, can be a lot for, for many people.
[00:43:36] So it's not to say that like, uh, everybody should just do it. Um, but it's definitely once you get to a point where you've got things kind of running, You know, with shortlist and with Ninja Outreach and pretty much any business, I started, like, I always took the approach of sort of accepting a lot less money early on to try to build the team Uhhuh and to kind of, and I was sort of just chilled like that.
[00:43:57] And then once the team, uh, was in place as awarded me generally more freedom of time, you know, So time, the money. Okay. Okay, great. So any final tips or things to avoid for, for, again, for su agency owners? Yeah, I mean, I mean, uh, hopefully everyone is kind of, uh, you know, uh, Doing, doing, doing well out there.
[00:44:21] I know, it's like, yeah. I, I would say personally, uh, not the easiest time to maybe be an agency owner. Yeah. Um, and I, I think it's, you know, it's good to kind of be honest cuz sometimes you get on these podcasts or whatever and it's like everyone's talking about how great they're doing and stuff and, and you know, I think, uh, I honestly think we'll have like a down year, you know, like, I don't think that we will do as well as we did last year.
[00:44:41] But, you know, when you've been in business for a number of years, like you, you get used to kind of more ups and downs and like that, that's kind of. The nature of things, but sometimes a lot more, uh, opportunities, uh, come out of, of down years than, than up years, you know? Mm-hmm. There's a lot of things that we were doing last year that honestly, like, maybe we're not that smart or that optimal, but it was just so much easier to like, maybe get clients and stuff like that, that you almost didn't notice it.
[00:45:08] And now that, you know, things are harder, that it's harder to get clients and stuff like that, I'm starting to re-look at. Our proposals and the story that we're telling to the clients and the vision we're presenting. And I'm seeing like so many opportunities, um, that I'm thinking, man, if I can't believe that we did, we done all last year and we were doing it like this, we should have been doing it like that.
[00:45:27] So all those learnings I think are really good. So hopefully, you know, if we kind of continue to improve ourselves even during a down year, then when we do have the wind at our backs, you know, which eventually happens, you'll, you'll kind of soar even more. So, yeah, I would just say, you know, just kind of stick with it.
[00:45:44] Yeah. Awesome. Uh, is there someone you want to give a shout out to? Um, I don't know. You, I mean, you kind of like put up with a lot of, uh, lot of like time changes on the thing and then you even followed up today, you're like, are we talking today? Like, is this actually happening? So, uh, yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure.
[00:46:02] Um, thanks so much for having me on the show. It's a pleasure. It was very nice and, one last thing. Can you tell me where can people find you? Sure. Um, anyone can shoot me an email. It's dave shortlists.io.
[00:46:14] I'm not that big of the social media to be honest. Uhhuh, you know, I'm on LinkedIn, but like I don't check it that often. Okay. So emails is best. Okay. Okay. Awesome. So thank you. Thank you so much. Cheers. Thanks everyone and see you on the next episode. Bye-Bye.