Podcasts about seomoz

Cooper Schwartz: Monetizing Content: How Top Publishers and Brands Maximize Reach and Revenue Impact“The brands that win aren't just the ones with the biggest budgets—they're the ones that strategically align performance and brand marketing to maximize reach and revenue.” That's a quote from Cooper Schwartz and a sneak peek at today's episode.Hey there, I'm Kerry Curran, Revenue Growth Consultant, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.Every episode, I sit down with top experts to bring you actionable strategies that drive real revenue results. If you're serious about growth, hit subscribe to stay ahead of your competition.In this episode, titled Monetizing Content: How Top Publishers and Brands Maximize Reach and Revenue Impact, Cooper Schwartz, Head of New Business and Growth at Money Group, shares his expertise.In a crowded digital landscape, content alone isn't enough. Brands need a strategy that turns visibility into real revenue. Cooper and I discuss strategies for leveraging publisher partnerships to create high-impact, holistic, cross-channel digital programs that drive both reach and ROI.We dive into the winning formula for balancing performance marketing and brand strategy—and how to dominate non-branded paid search while outmaneuvering your competition.Stay tuned until the end, where Cooper shares actionable strategies to optimize content for revenue growth. Let's go!Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.107)Welcome, Cooper! Please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and expertise.Cooper Schwartz (00:07.534)Hi, Kerry. Thanks for having me. My name is Cooper Schwartz, and I am the Head of New Business and Growth at Money Group, a portfolio company that has been around for about 11 years. We own notable brands like Money.com and ConsumersAdvocate.org, as well as proprietary technology like NavChain. I'm also one of the founding partners and have been with the company for 11 years.I was actually the first employee. I originally came from a therapy background—my mother is a therapist, and I thought I would follow in her footsteps. However, two of my close friends—one with 10 years at Google and the other at SEO Moz—convinced me to jump into affiliate marketing and help build this company. So here I am today, still finding opportunities in the market and excited to talk with you.Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:02.843)Awesome, thanks, Cooper! I had no idea about your therapy background. We could totally pivot and have a different conversation! I always say marketing is a lot like psychology—it plays a strong role in what we do, so I'm sure that background strengthens your expertise.Anyway, I'm excited to have you here because I know you have a ton of valuable platforms.Cooper Schwartz (01:09.484)Yeah, yeah.Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:29.617)You have a range of brands and technology under Money.com, so I'd love to hear more about how you're helping brands navigate their business challenges. When brands or agencies reach out to build a partnership with you, what are they typically looking for?Cooper Schwartz (01:51.672)You're right—Money.com is a strong domain. Before it became Money.com, it was Money Magazine, a 50-year-old brand that people have nostalgia for. It was all about planning for the future and sharing insights on managing finances.Today, brands still want to be aligned with the Money brand. But we don't just offer content alignment—we provide a variety of campaigns and marketing opportunities. Many brands approach us saying, “We love the brand, we love the content—how can we work together?” That's a great starting point for the many solutions we offer.From non-branded paid search to placements across our ad network of about 150 publishers, we help brands engage with their audience in unique ways. Some of these publishers might be seen as competitors, but in reality, they're “frenemies.” We help brands leverage content, align with our brand, activate paid search strategies, and secure placements on other high-authority sites, all while simplifying the management process.Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:37.691)That's great. It sounds like brands really value the partnership and brand equity you offer. Can you walk us through how you start these relationships and build custom strategies to increase their awareness and authority?Cooper Schwartz (04:03.192)Sure! There's always an initial “interview” process—almost like dating. Not to take it back to therapy, but it's about getting to know the brand:What are their needs?Who is their target audience?What are their expectations?What are their key performance goals?We get a lot of inbound interest because money impacts nearly every industry. But we have to ensure alignment goes both ways—not just that they align with our audience, but also that we can effectively reach their audience.At our scale, we also consider resources. Can we accommodate the brand in a way that sets them up for success? We prioritize enterprise-level partnerships that move the needle for both companies. That often means ensuring the investment in a given category can be six or seven figures annually—we need to create impact on both sides.Once we've established alignment—brand fit, budget, resources—we dive into which marketing channels make sense:Are they already running paid search? If not, why?How can we help them expand their shelf space on Google?Is brand awareness the priority? If so, we can integrate them into our franchise content like Best Places to Live, Best Hospitals, Best Colleges, which reach wide audiences.Are they struggling to get placements in high-authority content? If so, we can help them secure placements on Forbes, NerdWallet, CBS News, CNN, and others.Kerry Curran, RBMA (06:53.058)That's great! I love that you have such a wide portfolio of solutions that are fully customized to each brand's goals.So, let's say an enterprise brand comes to you for a rebrand, product expansion, or new launch. You work with them to align with the right publishers and strategies. Can you share a specific example of a successful partnership?Cooper Schwartz (07:39.918)Sure! One that I'm especially proud of is our partnership with ADT.We've worked with ADT for about eight or nine years, originally in non-branded paid search—helping them reach high-intent consumers who were still undecided. Over time, our relationship evolved into exploring additional channels.Last year, we launched a sponsorship activation for Money's Best Places to Live, working closely with ADT's PR, media acquisition, and marketing teams. The goal was to integrate ADT's branding into content about protecting the best places to live.This was a multichannel activation that included:Social media campaignsVideo contentTargeted PR effortsWeekly performance check-insThe result? A high-impact security hub on Money.com featuring ADT across 100+ articles. It was a strategic, elegant execution.Not only did we secure ADT placements on our own sites, but we also helped them get featured on CBS News, The New York Post, and other major publishers. This is the kind of holistic strategy that allows brands to gain visibility across multiple trusted sources.Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:34.345)That's an excellent example! It really demonstrates how brands can layer multiple channels—from paid search to PR to content—to create a unified, impactful strategy.Let's shift gears to AI and Google's generative search results. How do your strategies help brands compete with AI-driven summaries at the top of search results?Cooper Schwartz (20:43.342)Great question! One core belief we've held is that editorial integrity matters. We prioritize keeping a human voice in our content while leveraging AI in strategic ways.Here's our approach:Investing in real writers & editors – AI can assist, but human oversight ensures depth and quality.Creating content clusters – Instead of one-off articles, we develop deep, interconnected content that builds expertise and authority.Partnering with already-successful publishers – Instead of relying solely on our content, we collaborate with trusted media brands that are already ranking well.The reality is, the pie is big enough. Rather than fighting for every ranking, we focus on working with the best—helping publishers monetize better while delivering results for our partners.Kerry Curran, RBMA (25:25.383)That's a smart approach. So, for brands listening today—what's the first step if they want to explore this strategy?Cooper Schwartz (25:40.910)Start by researching who dominates your industry's review space. Look at organic rankings, paid search, and media partnerships. If you see competitors investing in multiple touchpoints, that's a sign they're onto something.Then, reach out! You can contact me at cooper@money.com or find me on LinkedIn.Kerry Curran, RBMA (26:07.537)Awesome! We'll include those links in the show notes. Cooper, thank you so much for your time and insights today!Cooper Schwartz (26:20.098)Thank you, Kerry!Kerry Curran, RBMA Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. If you're struggling with flat or slowing revenue growth, you are not alone. That's why Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast, brings you expert insights, actionable strategies, and real-world success stories to help you scale faster.So if you're serious about your revenue growth, hit follow,  subscribe, and drop a five-star rating. It helps us keep the game-changing content coming, as we're dropping new episodes regularly—and you don't want to miss out.

Rand Fishkin is the co-founder of Moz, SparkToro, and Inbound.org. When it comes to SEO and digital marketing, it's hard to find someone more knowledgeable than Rand Fishkin. His popular blog, hundreds of keynotes, and 2 hyper-successful SaaS businesses are a testament to his skill.Rand Fishkin was the founder and former CEO of Moz, a leading SEO software for marketers created in 2007 that grew out of the active followers of Rand's popular SEOmoz blog. Moz grew quickly to over $30 million in revenue by 2013, having raised $30 million in venture capital investment. This Post is Sponsored by ALL IN ONEPlay the Euro 2024 Predictor Game and beat the leader.Think you've got a crystal ball for the beautiful game? Can you sniff out surprise victories and predict the heart-stopping moments that make the Euros unforgettable?This is your chance to go beyond cheering from the sidelines and become a Euro 2024 champion (well, kind of).Introducing All in One Euro 2024 Predictor Game.Join for FreeWhere to find Rand Fishkin:• Website: (9) SparkToro: Overview | LinkedIn• LinkedIn (8) Rand Fishkin | LinkedInWhere to find Hadi Radwan:• Newsletter: Principles Friday | Hadi Radwan | Substack• LinkedIn: Hadi Radwan | LinkedInIf you like our podcast, please don't forget to subscribe and support us on your favorite podcast players. We also would appreciate your feedback and rating to reach more people.We recently launched our new newsletter, Principles Friday, where I share one principle that can help you in your life or business, one thought-provoking question, and one call to action toward that principle. Please subscribe Here.It is Free and Short (2min).

Rand Fishkin is the founder and former CEO of Moz, a leading SEO software for marketers created in 2007 that grew out of the active followers of Rand's popular SEOmoz blog. Moz grew quickly to over $30 million in revenue by 2013, having raised $30 million in venture capital investment. When growth slowed in 2014, the company faced many internal difficulties and Rand dealt with mental health challenges, causing him to step down as CEO. Rand left Moz in 2018 and later that year published his popular book about his difficult startup journey, “Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World.” He described in detail the growth of Moz and the exciting growth years, but he also revealed the painful challenges he and the company faced in their later years. In this podcast discussion, he is frank about the pitfalls and brutal realities of big VC funding for founders and the companies they created.  Rand created his second software company, SparkToro, in 2018 with an approach that was opposite to the funding, growth, and staffing he used at Moz. We discuss the benefits of practical funding and sustainable profits to create healthy software businesses that support the goals of founders, employees, customers, and investors. Learn more at PracticalFounders.com. 

In this interview, I spoke with SEO expert Cyrus Shepard about his career and insights into search engine optimization today. Cyrus shared how he accidentally fell into SEO while trying to market his own websites in the early days. He started by doing SEO for his wife's company, then got a job in customer support at SEO Moz, working his way up to become their lead SEO. Your SEO deals from SEOSLY:⚡️25% OFF Cora: https://seosly.com/cora

Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, and formerly of Moz speaks with Spencer in this revealing conversation about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Rand started out as an SEO enthusiast writing about increasing organic traffic through his SEOmoz blog, and then realizing that his expertise had the makings of a business, he began consulting and then developing Moz into a SaaS. Rand helped grow Moz to more than 130 employees, with over $30M in revenue, and traffic reaching 30M visitors per year. Rand is known for his marketing videos, public speaking, and his book Lost and Founder, in which he reveals with incredible candor his struggles with depression.  Rand Fishkin is an investor in dot.LA. 

The Google Sandbox is a hypothetical effect that applies to new websites. It prevents them from ranking in top search results, even if they have high-quality backlinks. There are theories that the sandbox effect is stronger or exclusively reserved for highly competitive keywords and phrases. Is the Google Sandbox penalty real? The term was coined by the community, and most authorities from Google either remain silent or deny the existence of this effect. Google's John Mueller suggests that it could be a by-product of its need to carefully evaluate the quality and legitimacy of a website. The sandbox effect "doesn't seem to be borne out by experience," says author David George. Experts and officials from Google appear somewhat divided on the subject. Rand Fishkin of Moz fame claims that SEO Moz was a veritable victim of the Google Sandbox. Some experts have asserted that there is a "reverse" sandbox effect in Google. New sites seem to have difficulty getting into a competitive position for the first several months of their existence, but a sandbox penalty (as popularly understood) isn't likely to be the culprit. It takes time for Google to crawl your website and properly index all of your pages. If your site is experiencing ranking volatility, jumping up and down in rankings on a regular basis, it could be the result of a separate Google algorithm update. Other Google repercussions The Google Sandbox effect may truly exist, or it might not. If it applies to your website, there's nothing you can do to remove the initial delay in rankings. Buying an established domain with moderate domain authority can effectively "skip" the sandbox and begin ranking normally. More info about what is the google sandbox effect? how new sites can get out of the sandbox:    https://seo.co/google-sandbox/   Connect with us:  SEO Agency Service // PPC Agency // DEV Agency // WEBSITE DESIGN Agency // RECRUITERS Agency

A good content strategy brings in more traffic, which then brings in more customers. But content marketing isn't JUST about traffic…Welcome to the 29th episode of The Growth Booth Podcast, a show focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, towards achieving lifestyle freedom through building successful online businesses.In the 29th episode of The Growth Booth, Aidan explores what makes up a content marketing plan you can leverage to bring in traffic, the different channels and strategies you can employ, the FOUR steps you need to follow to kickstart your own content strategy, and why simply building a website won't make customers magically appear…Whether you're looking for step-by-step strategies to start building an online business, simple game plans to grow your business, or proven lifestyle freedom frameworks, you're in the right place.Stay tuned and be sure to join the thousands of listeners already in growth mode!Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:08 Why Content Marketing is Important04:23 How Content Gives Value08:03 Four Steps In Starting Your Content Strategy16:25 Episode Sponsor17:16 Getting Clicks to Stick22:40 Scaling Your Content Marketing Plan26:42 Usual What-Ifs28:48 OutroLinks Mentioned:Cartzy - https://thegrowthbooth.com/cartzyGoogle Keywords - https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/Quora - https://www.quora.com/Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/AnswerThePublic - https://answerthepublic.com/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/Apple Podcasts - https://www.apple.com/ph/itunes/podcasts/discover/SEO Moz - https://moz.com/Ahrefs - https://ahrefs.com/Hootsuite - https://www.hootsuite.com/Google Podcasts - https://podcasts.google.com/Spotify - https://www.spotify.com/About Our Host:Aidan Booth is passionate about lifestyle freedom and has focused on building online businesses to achieve this since 2005. From affiliate marketing to eCommerce, small business marketing to SAAS (software as a service), online education to speaking at seminars, the journey has been a rollercoaster ride with plenty of thrills along the way. Aidan is proud to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn their first dollar online, and coached many people to build million-dollar businesses. Aidan and his business partner (Steven Clayton) are the #1 ranked vendors on Clickbank.com, and sell their products in over 100 countries globally, as well as in 20,000+ stores across the USA, to generate 8-figures annually.Away from the online world, Aidan is a proud Dad of two young kids, an avid investor, a swimming enthusiast, and a nomadic traveler. Let's Connect!●  Visit the website: https://thegrowthbooth.com/ ●  Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aidanboothonline ●  Let's connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aidanboothonline/ ●  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGrowthBoot

How do you feel about the “succeed on a massive scale or die trying” model? Other unconventional routes to building businesses, including independent funding, crowdfunding, and bootstrapping, are now better alternatives. If you've ever thought about building a profitable company instead of raising cash, stay put… this episode is for you.Today we are joined by Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, former CEO and Founder of Moz, and Author of Lost and Founder. He shares practical advice on how to build a non-venture backed company that is long-term profitable using the lessons he has learned from his experience as the founder of several companies.In this episode, we discuss:How Rand raised funds for SparkToro (HINT: no VC was involved)How SparkToro is different from MozWhat to prioritize for long-term business survivalThe role of audience research for sustainable growthInstructions on how to rate and review SaaS Origin Stories on Apple Podcasts can be found here.

In this episode, Rand Fishkin and A. Lee Judge discuss digital marketing, SEO, audience research, and more!Rand Fishkin shares his expertise on how to attract the right audience by creating content that converts and shares tools that every marketer should be utilizing for the best ROI.In this episode of the Business of Marketing podcast, Rand Fishkin and I discuss how using specific software tools and research can help marketers create the right content to attract an audience and/or find the right audience to send content to.Conversation points: You went from a Blog, to a Consultant, to a Software Business. So, take us back to 2003 and SEO Moz and tell us about the journey to Spark Toro. Is this still the most popular topic that you are asked to speak about and are there things more important that marketers should be thinking about right now? Can you share with us a couple of the reasons our content strategies may not be working today? What do you think are some of the best ways to determine the impact of long-form content like podcast audio? Tell us more about why SparkToro and/or "this" type of discovery is useful and who is the tool targeted toward? A. Lee Judge is the host of The Business of Marketing podcast.Please follow the podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform.This podcast is produced by Content Monsta - A leading producer of B2B Content.

The first social media conference I ever attended was a Search Marketing Expo event back in 2007 or 2008. While it was being put on by a search-focused company, it was all about social media. I thought it would be a good place to learn and listen and see if my ideas on this emerging space could hold water to others thinking about it. But because it was run by search folks, the roster of speakers included a bunch of SEO folks. And one of those was the founder of a little upstart company in Seattle called SEO Moz. Rand Fishkin grew that company into a rebrand to just MOZ. Today, it is one of the most successful SEO and SEM data and services companies in the world.  I'm a customer. I've also taken a lot of their courses. Knowing SEO helps my day-today. I was lucky to have met Rand then and have followed him through the years. In 2018, he left MOZ, though he's still on the board, I believe. Now he's started a new company that is focused on helping brands figure out what influences its prospective customers. SparkToro is a platform that scrapes public profile data from social media accounts, then analyses it to offer consumer insights to its customers.  It's part market research. Part data analysis. And part influence marketing platform.  And yes, I said influence marketing platform. In fact, I even ask Rand during our conversation if SparkToro is the software version of the philosophy we talk about here on Winfluence … that we're in the business of influence marketing, not influencer marketing. Wait until you hear his answer. I invited Rand to chat with me over on Digging Deeper, my interview series for Cornett. But the conversation was super relevant for us here on Winfluence, too. So I've pulled that out and have it her for you today.  We talk to Rand Fishkin of SparkToro about what influences people, how to find out and what to do with that information today on Winfluence. Don't forget to drop Winfluence a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Also, if you'd like a deep dive on an influencer marketing topic every so often, subscribe to my email newsletter at jason.online/subscribe. I send it every 4-6 weeks and go deep on a topic to make your influence marketing smarter. Want to make a future episode of Winfluence awesome? Ask your question about influence or influence marketing that you want my answer to or take on. Send me an email to jason@jasonfalls.com. If you're feeling adventurous, record a voice memo on your phone and email me that file. I'll let you ask the question right here on the show using the recording. Regardless of how you ask it, I may use your comment on a future episode or your question to inspire a show topic. If I do, I'll send you a signed copy of Winfluence the book as a thank you! Today's episode is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing platform. Get a demo to see if Tagger is right for you at jason.online/tagger. And don't forget our big offer from LinkedIn! Get $100 in free ad credits just for listening to Winfluence. Go to linkedin.com/winfluence to sign up and get your C-note for LinkedIn advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wanted to do something a little different today. Since I didn't see much that was really newsworthy - the usual rumblings about a potential algorithm update, and some ongoing Twitter drama about SEO in general. I thought I would talk about a book that should speak to most of us. The book is Lost and Founder by Rand Fishkin.The full title: Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World, is really just that, Rand is brutally honest, to the point where you can feel his pain in his words. If you listen to the audio book, he narrates himself.This book is really for anyone who is an aspiring startup founder, an entrepreneur looking for insider tips, or just anyone fascinated with the world of business and especially how venture capital ties into that.The book really talk to you about investors and how the wrong ones can be devastating for your business. How a transparent office culture can make or break a business. And what happens when you take shortcuts.Rand started out like so many of us, doing small projects and then took the leap to starting his own company to do it full time. His story feels like the untold story of most startups, a lot of money issues, wrong moves, over-extending. But Rand had built a name for himself and his company. His “whiteboard Fridays” were the stuff of SEO agency legend, many companies would stop all work and watch, just because they were so insightful and well done.SEO Moz, or now just Moz, was really one of the first SAAS (software as a service) companies for SEOs. It started in 2004 and finally found itself around 2017, it took nearly 13 years for it to become a stable profitable company. At the time of publication, the company was bringing in 45 million in annual revenue.What I find fascinating about his next area in the book is talking about the success of companies, which 5% of venture backed companies actually become profitable, is market research. His new company Spark Toro does exactly that and I can see how his identification in the book here and his years of experience led him to starting that company. For example, Uber used search trends for “taxi” to determine their markets to move into.Once you get about half way through the book, you start really disliking venture capitalists, and I understand his frustrations. The push for large returns is never ending, and only three in ten venture backed companies will yield even minimal returns.Rand gives several scenarios where Moz simply failed internally, from how it catered to employees with unique needs to its racial diversity. He takes a long hard look at how he led the company and how it was hard to recognize the changes that needed to be made. Once made, he saw huge changes and attributes that new culture to the success of the company.The big takeaway from his book for me:Don't let the hype about superstar startups lead you down the wrong path. Consider very hard what types of investments you are willing to take and what that means to your ability to grow the company. Be transparent and honest with your employees and your customers.If you are starting out on your own, even just as a freelancer, this is a good book to give you an idea of what the next stage might look like. Rand does go into a lot of detail about his early years building websites and optimizing them as a small business of 2 or 3, and the insights are still valid today.Thank you - I hope you found this interesting.Have a great day and see you tomorrow.

In a time where advertising costs are going up, we might be annoyed with people talking about their products and services to anyone in hopes of selling to someone. In this episode, we talk about what is the new way to find the relevant people and centers of influence where you can identify and understand your clients more. If you could take the time to speak on the right channels with the right message that is of high quality and relevant, you can grow your business fast and with low cost. Rand shares his ideas on how to attract leads, serve clients and scale your business. Rand Fishkin is the cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, a software startup with a goal of enabling high quality audience research for marketers, PR folks, entrepreneurs, and product builders without the need for expensive, time-consuming, inaccurate surveys or impossible-to-scale manual research. He was the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a leader in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources & community. He has spent his career helping people do better marketing. This emphasis on helping businesses improve their marketing function highlights Rand's enthusiasm for the industry, as well as how fundamental marketing and marketing technology is to the greater business model. Listen out for: Where to start when you want to pick a niche The truth about Paid advertising and the lost opportunity How "center of influence" marketing is the golden opportunity to scale at low cost Learn how to get started now to connect with relevant influencers Bonus: Learn more about the tool Sparktoro.com to accelerate your research Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. Share this with your friends on Instagram or Twitter. Go to Sellingwithlove.com for video access to the show or directly to youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5VaR6Z3wfElWFZn64ugOBw New to Selling with Love Podcast? I'd love to connect with you. You can find me, your host, Jason Marc Campbell on the following Channels: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonmarccampbell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmarccampbell/ *Selling with Love Podcast was previously known as Superhumans at Work by Mindvalley.

➡️ Like The Show? Leave A Rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/successstory ➡️ About The Guest Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of audience research software startup, SparkToro. He's dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder.  In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world's most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, the company (Moz) transitioned from consulting to software and Rand took the role of CEO. Over 7 years as CEO, Rand grew Moz to 130+ employees, $30M+ in revenue, and traffic to 30M+ visitors/year. He raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. Rand stepped down as CEO in 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. Rand was also the co-founder of Inbound.org alongside Dharmesh Shah. The site was sold to Hubspot in 2014. In 2018, Rand founded SparkToro and published, with Penguin/Random House, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. Rand previously co-contributed to two books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO. He's been profiled in the Seattle Times, featured in Puget Sound Business Journal's 40 Under 40, named to BusinessWeek's 30 Under 30, written about in Newsweek, The Next Web, the Inc 500, and hundreds of other publications.  ➡️ Talking Points 00:00 - Rand's story. 04:58 - Arbitraging Pokémon cards. 09:54 - How Rand built Sparktoro. 16:21 - You don't need to raise VC money. 24:18 - Bootstrapping vs. VC money. 40:40 - Product led growth, engagement and recidivism. 56:36 - The issues with startup culture. ➡️ Show Links https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/ https://twitter.com/randfish ➡️ Podcast Sponsors 1. True Bill—Control Your Subscriptions  https://truebill.com/successstory 2. Express VPN — Protect Your Online Activity https://expressvpn.com/successstory 3. Get Abstract - Summarizes and Rates Thousands of Books https://getab.li/success 4. Hubspot Podcast Network https://hubspot.com/podcastnetwork

Entrepreneurs are drawn to stories of successful start-ups, but in reality, creating a business from scratch is more grueling than they anticipate. Today, Rand Fishkin tackles the mythology surrounding tech start-ups, exposing the ups and downs of start-up life and shares his hard-won lessons. Rand is the co-founder and CEO of audience research software start-up, SparkToro. His book Lost & Founder openly discusses frustrations and low points as an entrepreneur, ultimately leading to a transparent and thorough celebration of his lessons and accomplishments. Gain a fresh perspective on the most crucial role of a business leader and what a start-up founder would like to see improve in the venture capital ecosystem.Episode Quotes:Criticisms on the Venture Capital world.There are three outcomes that I really dislike from the venture-backed world. This is in no order particularly, but the first one is biasing entrepreneurs and founders and people who want to join startups and participate in that ecosystem, just as employees or as customers even, that there's one correct way to build a company. Right? And that way is to raise a seed round, and a series A and a series B and a series C and a series D and go public, or get acquired for something north of $500 million or a billion dollars. And become a unicorn or to make that attempt and die trying. And I don't mean die personally, but to sacrifice much of your time, energy, attention, the rest of your life in pursuit of trying to become one of those, because that is the only worthwhile goal. I disagree fundamentally with both sides of that equation.The second outcome I really dislike is the massive way in which it furthers income inequality. Right? I mean that a little bit less in the way that it's often brought up in politics where it's sort of individual income inequality, and a little bit more in the way that macro economists might look at it in business outcomes. Right? So essentially, Google and Facebook and Amazon exist because they were able to, yes, create a lot of value, but also suck a ton of the wind and oxygen out of the room in terms of small and medium businesses that previously existed. And even multiple large companies that existed were competitive in a market.And then the third one of course is who gets funding and it is Gregory. You notice almost exclusively people who look like you and I. And it is brutal. I mean, we are talking about more funding going to men named John over the last 20 years than all women combined. We are talking about less than 1% of all venture funding going to any founding team with a black team member.Thoughts on productivity.There's this mythology that is driven by, again, that same element of Silicon Valley culture that I despise, which is that your whole life must be consumed by your work and your business. That is not only untrue, it's also counterproductive. The emerging research on this is that in fact, putting 30 or 40 hours of very thoughtful, high quality work a week into a project, into a company, is both more sustainable and more likely to be successful than 80 hour weeks.What is the main role of a start-up leader?To me, that is to make great decisions. It's not about, did I write the best blog post, or was this email perfectly composed? Or did I reply to all my emails within five minutes or less? Or, I don't know, send a bunch of tweets or write the most code? No. It's did I make the best decisions on who to hire and let go of? Where to contract things? What direction to take the strategy of the product? What to do in marketing and not?— that's the really crucial part of a leader's job.What have you learned from switching roles with your customer?The big takeaway that I talk about in Lost and Founder is empathy for your customer. I got to sit with Sears' team for a full week, build a bunch of relationships with people who lived and breathed the work that they were doing with our product, and seeing a lot of gaps between what we should be doing and what we were not doing and seeing why their consultants were at the time already switching to different products in the market. And that was a very eye-opening experience.Time Code Guide:00:01:14 Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World00:03:52 The Myth of Success in the Venture Capital Ecosystem00:07:54 The Start-Up Math00:13:11 SEOMoz startup story00:14:13 The reality of stress, pressure, and debts in building a business00:14:59 Creating value for a consulting business00:16:58 Passion alone is not enough to run a business00:18:57 Thoughts about productivity00:20:12 The main role of a startup founder00:21:34 Building unconventional management structures00:24:23 Minimum Viable Products00:27:22 When a CEO switches roles with a client00:29:15 Learning empathy for customers00:33:07 Building the company from customer and employee feedback00:34:14 Addressing a business leader's blindspot00:36:43 Sacrificing profit for core values00:39:53 Emotional maturity in leadership and business00:42:32 Creating a culture of open communication and empathyShow Links:Guest ProfileRand Fishkin BioRand Fishkin on LinkedInRand Fishkin on TwitterRand Fishkin on InstagramSparkToro Official WebsiteMoz Official WebsiteHis WorkLost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup WorldThe Art of SEOInbound Marketing & SEO

Bonus Episode! Transparency Report: Behind the Scenes Numbers Normally I do interviews, but today I'm doing a solo recording sharing what I call a transparency update.  If you're open to it, think that it's good idea to share some numbers from your business. It can be good for accountability, it can be good to be authentic, and it can help with trust. I think there's a lot of positives to doing it. I got this concept from Rand Fishkin & SEOmoz. You can see the video of this episode on YouTube at youtu.be/YZ7jF4SFvjI

Leader in the field of search engine optimization tools and CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin joins Kurt and Di today to share his story about how he went from university drop out to becoming CEO of the worlds biggest SEO empire. Together, they discuss how to improve your Google ranking, defining your own goals and how entrepreneurs have the opportunity to create a brand new business world. KEY TAKEAWAYS Working with family can present itself with many challenges, particularly if you live together. You may find that you only ever talk about your business and rarely have time to switch off. These days many businesses are beginning to outsource their staff such as contractors, consultants and agencies. Usually consultants and agencies will ramp up a lot faster than regular employees. Training someone inhouse takes longer than hiring a consultant since many jobs require a large skill set. When you want to improve your Google ranking you need to evolve with the platform. The search engine has grown and rather than only using keywords,  you need to ensure that your content solves the searchers query ten times better than anyone else. Over time, you would eventually rank higher. Google would figure out the signals that it needs to ensure that your brilliant content ranked the highest. When creating high ranking content, have empathy for the person that is searching the query. Imagine the searcher has a question they need answering, they reach your content and it solves their original question as well as the new questions they may have thought of whilst reading it. When you define your own goals for success you also want to carve out some of the road map that you want to use to get there. Make that fundamentally different to how others do it. A lot of people and a lot of businesses are all competing with each other. This works terribly when you have a few monopolies who are influencing the world. As entrepreneurs you have a chance to participate in the world that you want to see exist. BEST MOMENTS “I think that humility and that lack of confidence actually helped build a big audience.” “In retrospect, I deeply regret it.” “I want to prove to the world that you can build an alternative fundraising model, your own fundraising model and be more successful statistically.” “It was a very, very challenging time.” ABOUT THE GUEST Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a leader in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources & community. In 2009, he was named among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 by BusinessWeek, and has been written about it in the Seattle Times, Newsweek and the New York Times among others. Rand has keynoted conferences on search from Sydney to Reykjavik, Montreal to Munich and spoken at dozens of shows around the world. He's particularly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by tens of thousands of search professionals each day. In his miniscule spare time, Rand enjoys the company of his amazing wife, Geraldine. https://moz.com/community/q/user/randfish https://sparktoro.com/ https://www.instagram.com/randderuiter/?hl=en   ABOUT THE HOSTS Kurt Wilson - Entrepreneur, Internet Veteran and Property Investor with multiple 7 figure businesses and property investments in the UK, GI, LT, BY and GR. CEO and founder of advansys (www.advansys.com) a global eCommerce, web development and online marketing agency headquartered in the UK. Di Forster - Entrepreneur, Property Investor and Mum with exceptional grit. Expert in all areas of Online Sales and Marketing (SEO, PPC and Conversion). Quit corporate life and now enjoys working with and helping others grow and scale their businesses. CONTACT INFO INSTAGRAM.COM/KURTWILSON.UK    INSTAGRAM.COM/DIFORSTER.UK     WWW.ADVANSYS.COM  KURT@ADVANSYS.CO.UK  DIANE@ADVANSYS.CO.UK    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Rand Fishkin. Rand is the Co-Founder and CEO of SparkToro. He has dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his blogging, videos, speaking, and his book, ‘Lost and Founder’. When Rand’s not working, he’s most likely to be in the company of his partner in marriage and (mostly petty) crime, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you feed him great pasta or great whisky, he’ll give you the cheat code to rank #1 on Google.Rand dropped out of the University of Washington in 2000 to work full-time at his mother’s small business marketing firm as a web designer. In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world’s most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of SEOmoz, Inc (now called Moz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog’s success. In seven years as CEO, Rand grew Moz from seven employees to 134, revenues from $800K to $29.3m, and traffic from 1 to 30m annual visitors.In 2018, Rand founded SparkToro and published, with Penguin/Random House, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. See review below.Robert and Rand spend an hour discussing the state of play for digital and Rand’s insight into how to run a successful agency.Robert and Rand discuss:Are there secrets of success?What did you learn from the Moz experience?What are the myths of start-up/business growth?SparkToro– why? And why another ‘start-up’?What have you done differently this time?What separates the successes from the failures?Rand then answered questions from our agency owner friends. This is a bite-size version of the hour-long video. To watch the rest head over to GYDA Member Hub

Where is Rand Fishkin after SEOMoz? What is his new company Sparktoro about? And what does he see in the future of digital marketing?

Where is Rand Fishkin after SEOMoz? What is his new company Sparktoro about? And what does he see in the future of digital marketing?

Rand is the creator of Moz, formerly a blog and online community where SEO experts could share their ideas and expertise and now provides a range of SEO solutions that are widely used around the world. More recently, Rand founded SparkToro, a market research and audience intelligence tool designed to better inform business' advertising and content strategies.  His journey into SEO started as a matter of necessity when he couldn't afford SEO professionals for his web projects, so had no other option than to learn how to do it himself. It was his frustrations from his own learning journey that inspired him to start his own blog, SEOmoz, with the hope that he could make SEO easier for others. Since then it has reached millions of people and has grown to become Moz as we know it today.  In this episode, Rand talks about his journey of founding both Moz and SparkToro and discusses what exactly he attributes to their success and how these tools have been able to help eCommerce businesses enhance and fine-tune their marketing strategies. In this open and honest episode, Rand also discusses the personal and financial challenges he has had to face since building his businesses. He also touches on how to tackle your team's and of course, your own mental health as a business owner during the current lockdown. Want a smarter way to market your business? Of course, you do. Join us this week to find out how, from one of the most influential people in online marketing. 

Show Notes:Welcome to the Quest for Questions podcast, today's guest is a digital marketing dinosaur who dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his blogging, videos and speaking engagement all around the world.Rand has co-founded SEOmoz(now called Moz) and over 7 years as CEO grew it from 7 employees to 134, revenues from $800K to $29.3mm, and traffic from 1 to 30mm annual visitors.Currently he's the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro - a digital PR tool, that you will hear more about in the interview.According to his bio, if you feed him great pasta or great whisky, he'll give you the cheat code to rank #1 on Google. winkThe 3 main questions me & Rand are exploring today:What kind of business you should start as an up-n-coming entrepreneur? Product-based? Service-based? Something else?Which matters more, idea or execution?How do you figure out what does your audience pay attention to and where to market to them?This is Konrad Yerba Mate Addict and here's a conversation with the author of Lost & Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World... the one and only Rand Fishkin - Enjoy!Links Mentioned In The Episode:SparkToroRand's LinkedInLike the show? Please subscribe & leave a review -- (even one sentence helps):Show WebsiteSubscribe on YouTubeSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifyIf You Have a Question or Feedback, Email Here

On this episode, Seth Price is joined by CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin. Together the pair discuss the evolution of SEO and how Google's monopoly as a search engine is impacting marketing strategies. Listen along to learn how Google is evolving to include new features and products to maintain its growth and answer questions like – why isn't Google more strictly combatting spammy listings in the local pack? How does the state of link-building today impact rankings? Is digital PR the trick to outranking competitors? Rand also gives his predictions for what search results will look like in the near future.

Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro https://sparktoro.com/ @randfish My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is a man who needs no introduction. Rand is one of - if not the most recognizable personalities in SEO. He is the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro. Previously, he co-founded SEOMoz, which later rebranded to Moz, along with his mother Gillian. Moz is one of the most important brands in SEO. From Whiteboard Fridays to the Beginner's Guide to SEO to MozCon and all the impressive tools Moz has created, Rand has been at the center of this incredible company from the start. Rand resigned from his board position at Moz in October 2020 just after we spoke. You can learn more about his personal journey and that of his company in his incredibly impressive book, Lost and Founder. I'll spend some of our conversation talking about the book, but honestly, I could've talked to Rand all day about it. I couldn't recommend a book more strongly. It's not just for SEOs! It's not just for entrepreneurs. It's an incredible human story. Rand courageously tells all the great and gory details of his entrepreneurial life. I'm going to start our conversation talking about his new company SparkToro. I'll get Rand's reaction to some use cases for Local SEOs and pick his brain on a post he wrote titled, “Six Ways SparkToro's Early Customers Use Our Product.” Grab something cold to drink and join me for a conversation with Rand Fishkin. We talk about the importance of core values in business, how to become less reliant on the duopoly of Facebook and Google, why he chose to make canceling a subscription with SparkToro easier, and we'll spend a little time talking about his love for pasta and al pastor tacos. Listen to Suds & Search Podcasts: Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9teXNvdW5kd2lzZS5jb20vcnNzLzE1OTUzNTQ3MjgwNTZz Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suds-search-interviews-todays-search-marketing-experts/id1526688363 Spotify Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ALxRpeDgIvg63bK6eoUTe SearchLab 1801 W Belle Plaine Suite 107 Chicago, IL 60613 (312) 256-1574 Catch SearchLab on these platforms: https://www.linkedin.com/company/searchlabdigital/ https://www.facebook.com/SearchLabDigital https://twitter.com/SearchLabAgency https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3kf-yP3bwhI6YvFFeKfegA Suds and Search Video Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSrUsIw8Jit8A6IwPpFw7IPKuuyGF0Ii Local Search Tuesdays Video Series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSrUsIw8JiuxY0eDWZr7Us_WgNNP-GDnSubscribe to Suds & Search | Interviews With Today's Search Marketing Experts on Soundwise

Rand Fishkin dropped out of the University of Washington in 2000 to work full-time at his mother’s small business marketing firm as a web designer. In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world’s most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of SEOmoz, Inc (now called Moz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog’s success. Over 7 years as CEO, Rand grew Moz from 7 employees to 134, revenues from $800K to $29.3mm, and traffic from 1 to 30mm annual visitors. He raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. Rand stepped down as CEO in February of 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. He remains chairman of Moz’s board. In 2018, Rand founded SparkToro and published, with Penguin/Random House, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World In this episode, we discuss: How Rand got into SEO How Rand built his blog How to find topics to create content about The similarities of building an audience for a service-based company vs. a software company How Rand has built a dedicated community around Moz Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, The Marketing Memo, here: https://www.gattozzicollective.com/the-marketing-memo Find the show notes here: https://www.gattozzicollective.com/podcast-episodes/rand-fishkin --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/how-to-build-an-audience/message

Recently I was asked by Rachel Pedersen what my favorite books are and why. So I wanted to share three that I’m loving right now. On this episode, Russell gives you his top 3 book recommendations and explains why they are so important to him during the phase of life that he’s in right now. ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson, welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I'm going to drop on you some of my favorite books that I'm reading right now. Hey, everybody hope you guys are doing awesome. So we're getting closer and closer to Halloween, depending when you're listening to this. Halloween was my favorite holiday for basically my entire life. I went trick-or-treating until I was 21 years old. And those who are like, "Wait Russell, weren't you on a mission when you were at 19 and 20? And the answer is yes, and yes, I dressed up as a Mormon missionary going door-to-door, because I already had the costume on. I got free candy. It was awesome. Oh, it was the good old days. Anyway, I love trick-or-treating. I love Halloween, love everything. In fact, when my kids were born, I was like, "This is the greatest thing in the world. Halloween was amazing before, it's even more amazing now." And went trick-or-treating every single year until about three years ago. Three years ago was when I bought my Batman suit. We launched Expert Secrets, our affiliate prize was to give away these Batman and Iron Man suits. I got my own custom-fitted, it was so cool. And I was so excited because that Halloween I was going to be Batman, legit Batman. And I was going to put on the suit and I was just so excited for it. And I remember it was a long day at the office, I got home as quick as I could, and I was trying to… oh, and the kids had wrestling practice. We got wrestling practice and come back. And kids gets home and I'm getting them all ready, giving them dinner, because I have to race back to the office to get the Batman suit on, which is an hour long project to get that suit on. I'm so excited. Feeding the kids, about to race back to the office and all of a sudden doorbell rings. And I go to the door and it's one of Ellie's friends. And friend's like, "Hey, is Ellie here?" I'm like, "Yeah, but what are you doing here?" She's like, "I'm coming to go trick-or-treating with Ellie." I was like, "What?" I'm like "I trick-or-treat with my kids." Ellie runs over, "Oh, bye Dad, I’m heading out.” I'm like, "No, you can't." And Collette is like, "Why not?" Because this is my holiday, you can't take my daughter trick-or-treating. And Ellie took off with her friends, she was gone. And a few minutes later the boys got calls from their friends and they're like, "We're going, we're going trick-or-treating." And they took off. And I remember, I wasn't ready for it. I don't know, it's like the kids leaving home, only worse. I wasn't ready for it. And I remember they were all gone and it was Aiden and Norah. Norah was tiny at the time, she was maybe two at the time. And so I didn't get my Batman suit on. We go out to the car and got Norah's suit and everything and put her in the car seat. By the time we got in the car she passed out and she was out cold. And so it was Aiden, me and Collette. So we drove to this neighborhood. Aiden got out with Collette, started trick-or-treating, and I passed out in the car. And that was the saddest day of my life. I miss Halloween. Anyway, I come to grips with it now. My kids are awesome. They can have friends. It was just, I wasn't ready for it. You know what I mean? You're planning your kids are going to leave the house someday, and then all of a sudden they just leave, without any preparation. Anyway, so Halloween was my favorite holiday until that year. And now my favorite holiday is 4th of July, because I spend more money on 4th of July than any sane human. And so because of that, everybody comes to me. And I'm doing that to compensate for Halloween being stolen from me by kids. Anyway, that's how I really feel. I'm just joking. Anyway, that's a true story. So 4th of July is my new favorite holiday, but it always was Halloween. And so as Halloween gets closer, I still get excited. I'm not going to lie, I love the leaves falling and the seasons changing and pumpkins and candy and just all the things. So anyway, one of our family traditions is every year for Halloween we go to Albion, Idaho, where there's this old college campus. It's in early 1900s, there was a thriving college here. In 19, I don't know, 1920 or something, it went out of business. So it's been vacant for 100 years. And a couple of years back, this family bought it and they renovate the whole thing and turn it into, one of the dorms they turned into a bed and breakfast. And then the rest of it, they turned to haunted houses. There's a zombie house, a clown house, and it's these old creepy buildings from the early 1900s. And anyway, it's insane. So we go every year. This year we took two of our friends, Rachel Peterson and her husband, Paul, and they came with us, which was really, really fun. So anyway, on the trip down, Rachel asked me, says, "What are your favorite books you're reading right now?" Everyone time someone asks me that question about books, I always freeze, because there's so many. I'm obsessed with books. I have more books than anybody I know. And I buy them every day and tons more. And I don't read most of the books, I listen to most with audio. But I buy the physical book too, because I like having physical books. Anyway, all sorts of turmoil. I sat there like a deer in headlights thinking. I kept thinking and thinking and I realized right now ... And it's tough, because you know how it is, different seasons of your life there's different books and all those kinds of things. So anyway, I'm in a season of my life I'm actually really excited for. I'm preparing, not really, I'm mentally thinking about my next book. I think I told you guys before, my next book. I bought the domain bootstrap.com. So the book's going to be called Bootstrapped, and it's going to be the ClickFunnels story, how we did it. It's going to be different, because all my other books have been how-to books, right? How to get traffic, how to build a funnel, how to write copy, things like that. But this book's not going to be how-to, this is the story of it. And so I've been obsessed, listening to books about companies and people telling their story about how they built the company. And so I've been listening to a lot of those lately just to understand how to write that way and how to tell stories that way that's different, right? It's different than how I've typically done things. So for me to be able to write this book, I'd have to change my skillset. And this hopefully is a side lesson for everyone. A lot of times when we have to do the thing we want to do, we have to learn something completely different, right? A lot of you guys, if you were a business before and you come into our world, you're like, "Oh my gosh, business is different online." We have to change how we think. And so for me it's the same way. For me to write this next book, I have to learn how to write differently. And I understand that and respect that. I'm paying attention to it, I'm trying to learn it. So anyway, so I've been listening to a lot of books about companies, about their stories, because I want to hear how people tell their stories. And so my three books I want to recommend to you today are all books about people with companies. And they're good for a couple reasons. Number one, they're fascinating books. Number two, they're really good storytellers. The way they tell their story was fascinating, where I was sucked into the book and I couldn't stop. In fact, two of these books I've listened to twice, and one I will probably listen to again. I just finished it yesterday, so that's why I haven't listened to it twice yet. That's rare for me. I don't normally read things twice, because I have so many books coming in. But two of the three books I have already listened to twice, which is a testament of how good of a story that they actually are. So with that said, in no particular order, I'll give you my three books. Number one book. And this one I'm nervous to tell you guys about, because it's the dark side of entrepreneurship, okay? A lot of times you hear stories about, "Oh, here's how so-and-so built their company." And it's this positive thing and there's ups and downs and trials and tribulations. But for the most part it's a positive experience, right? This is actually a book about a website called The Silk Road, which is a website that's on the dark web that sold illegal drugs. And so it's the negative side of entrepreneurship, but it's one of the best stories ever. So the book is called American Kingpin, okay? American Kingpin. And the premise of it is there was this kid, think he's 22, 23 year-old kid, he's libertarian and he felt that people should, if they want to do drugs, they should be able to do drugs. If they want to do it themselves they should be able to do it, right? And so he talks about that a little bit, and then he had this idea for a website where it's the type of site where people can come and buy and sell drugs on the dark web and he'd take a commission of every single sale that happened, right? And so that was this idea. Now the problem is that he didn't know how to code and it was illegal to make what he's trying to make, so he couldn't go hire coders on Script-Lance or oDesk like we would, it's illegal. So he had to teach himself coding. Then he started building the site. And it's crazy. I don't want to ruin the story, but it is amazing. He basically ends up building this empire. And he had every government agency coming trying to take him down, from DEA, FDA, FTC, all of them were trying to come and get him and none of them could figure out who he was. And so the story is just so fascinating. The way it's told, oh, it's so good. And one of my favorite parts is there's a scene where he's in downtown San Francisco, he's walking around, he's looking at all of the tech buildings, right? These huge companies worth billions and billions of dollars. And he's walking around by himself with a backpack on looking at these buildings and realizing that his company was worth more than any of these buildings, but if he told anybody about it, he'd have to go to jail. How cool is that? Even though everything he was doing was illegal, he was still an entrepreneur, went through the same trials and problems and ups and downs that we have to go through. And so I love this book. It was amazing. It's called American Kingpin. And it is the first one that I wanted to recommend. Also, the writer who wrote it is ... I literally, I tried to message him like, "Hey, would you want to write my book for me? Because you are such a good writer." At the end of the book, he tells about how he did it and talks about the tens of thousands of hours of research and all the papers and documents and court cases he had to go through to write this book. And he went on to say that on top of him just going and actually writing the book, he didn't just be like, oh… he looked at, what was the weather in San Francisco on that day? What was happening here? Happening here? When he's telling the scenes of the story, it was actually like what was really happening at the time. Oh, anyway, it's so good. I listened to it twice. I'll probably listen to it again, it's that good. I think they're going to make a movie out of it. Apparently there's a documentary made about it, but the documentary is horrible. Don't even watch the documentary about Silk Road. Just read the book, because it is insane and it's worth your time. So there's book number one. All right. Before I open up to book number two, I've got a secret message here about a cell phone number. And I want you guys all to text here in a few seconds. So I'm going to take a pause and do a really quick promo for the community, my texting community, and how you can get on it right now. All right. By the way, I'm having fun with the texting community. I've been sending out cool stuff every day, at least I think it's cool. Audio messages every morning, giving motivation ideas, inspiration. So if you're not on it yet, go and get in there. All right. Book number two. You guys ready for number two? Number two is a book called Lost and Founder. And this is a book by a guy named Rand Fishkin. And I love this book for a couple reasons. Rand started a company called SEOmoz, and he started about the same time I was getting started. So I had a chance to watch what he was doing. And Rand, I have so much respect for him. I think we both look at the world differently. I think he would disagree a lot of things I believe, I disagree with things he believe, from how to run businesses. But man, I have so much respect for him. And I remember watching, because I went the whole, bootstrapped, build a company through ads and funnels and things like that, and he went the other way of building a really good product and raise money and things like that. And it was interesting because looking at the outside, I never knew if I was right or if I was wrong, "Should we be taking out money? What should we be doing?" And in fact, in my book, Bootstrapped, there was this chance meeting where Rand actually came to Boise and spoke at an event. I showed up to the event. He told the story about Moz, how he took on money, his whole thing. And I remember listening to the story. In my head I'm like, "Okay, the next step for ClickFunnels is for us to take on money." And when he got done, normally I would leave something like that, I'm too introverted and shy, but one of my friends, BJ Wright, was there with me. He was like, "Let's go talk to Rand, let's go talk to him." I'm like, "Oh, okay." So BJ pulled us up there and BJ asked him, basically said, "Hey, you took on money, was it worth it? Tell us the real story." And Rand was very raw and honest and like, "No, it ruined everything." He went on, he's like, "I suffered depression." He's like, "I had to quit from CEO." He's like, "I don't even have my own car. I don't make that much money." And just going into the whole things. I remember when he got done telling me this whole thing, I remember getting in my car and voxing Todd and everybody on my team, "We are not taking on money no matter what it takes." He literally diverted me from taking on money. If it wasn't for him saying that, the next phase for ClickFunnels was to take on money. And so, because of that we didn't. And it was interesting, because publicly in his presentation, where he's telling the story about taking on money, but then privately, he literally told us don't do it. And I remember always thinking about that and wondering how he felt. And after he left Moz, a couple of years later he wrote a book called Lost and Founder. And Lost and Found founders is him telling a story. And in his book he explains the dangers of VC money at a level that I have never understood before. It was so clear and concise and oh, I'm so grateful for that book. Grateful for Rand, first off, for steering us in a different direction. But second off, the book is such a good illustration of why. And I hope you guys, especially my world, where we're talking about how do you go funnels, bootstrap things, man, that book was one of the best to show the opposite side of that, what happens when you do take on money and the scary side of business that a lot of us aren't aware of until it's too late. So Lost and Founders is book number two, super well written. Rand's an amazing writer, and just someone I have a ton of respect for. So that's book number two. All right. You guys ready for book number three? My third and final choice today is the book I finished last night, which is called Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. And a Shoe Dog is the story about Nike. And I've had so many people who told me to read this book over and over and over, and I kept fighting it, fighting it. And finally, it was actually interesting, Dean Graziosi told me I had to read it. And I was like, "Oh yeah, I've heard that by a lot of people." He said, "No, you need to read it for a different reason than everybody else." And I was like, "Why?" Dean and I talk about our kids a lot, and Dean and I both have children that we had butt heads with and struggled with sometimes. And he said that there's this part in Phil Knight's story where he had two children and he said that one of the kids he never could figure him out. It's like this puzzle, could never figure it out. And he always just struggled. Said his son would not wear Nike's. His son, whatever his dad wanted, he wanted to do the opposite and just, it was really hard. He said eventually, I think his son was 28 years old, he ended up passing away in a tragic accident. And one of the things he said in the book, he said, "Man, if I can do my life over again, I would've focused more energy on trying to understand the puzzle of my son". Oh, I'm getting emotional. Anyway, so that was the reason why ... After Dean told me that, he's like, You should read it, because I think for both of us ... " He's like, "We need to spend more time trying to understand our kids that we struggle with." And so I said, "Okay." And so I started to read the book and oh, so glad I did, for so many reasons. Number one, just helped me to understand that and put more focus on my kids, which I think is so important. And number two, it's just a fascinating story of the story of Nike. I didn't know all the story, how it happened and all the things he went through to make it possible. And anyway, it was such a good book, and I hope you guys have a chance to read that one as well. So there are my three books. Number one, American kingpin, number two, Lost and Founder, number three, Shoe Dog. All amazing books. Again, it's so hard to have a comprehensive list of all the amazing books in the world. But I thought three that are telling stories of companies, they will inspire you, they will motivate you to get you ready to build your company or give you ideas for the next steps in your company. And then also, how it relates to your life and your family and things like that. I think those books are amazing. Hope you enjoy them. With that said, I appreciate you guys all. Please, take a picture. If you enjoy this, take a picture of it, post it on Instagram or Facebook, wherever you post it, and then tell me your favorite books in the comments and tag me. And I'd love to hear what books you're reading so I can decide what to read next. Thanks everybody. And I'll talk to you soon.

Founder of SEO Moz and more recently Spark Toro, author of Lost and Founder, investor and entrepreneur, Rand Fishkin joins Sarah Parsonage to answer this series one question, is short-termism killing industry? 

Today’s guest on the Majic for Life Podcast is Rand Fishkin Rand is the author of Lost and Founder:  A painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World.  After building and growing  SEOmoz, In 2018 he founded Spark Toro A software that helps you Instantly discover what your audience reads, watches, listens to, and follows. Rand is known for his popular blogs and regular Whiteboard Friday series, watched by tens of thousands of marketers each week. We are super excited to have him on the show today.   Check out sparktoro and find out more from Rand using the links below: https://sparktoro.com/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/

Gillian Muessig is a serial entrepreneur noted for her ability to form indelible brands, claim critical markets, sustain fiercely loyal customers, and attract investors and best-in-class talent. She co-founded and built SEOMoz.org into Moz.com, turning it from a blog site and directory to the world's leading provider of marketing applications and metrics reporting software and the global hub for digital marketers. A thought leader in the startup industry, global keynote speaker, author, Gillian enjoys a global reputation for her ability to forecast trends in technology in established and emerging markets. She also helps companies understand how to develop and package new and existing product lines to nudge and ride those trends and successfully navigate these new markets. She is a sought-after counselor and has guided companies and inspired audiences as a keynote speaker in 50+ countries. Gillian serves on boards of directors of technology, biotech and global marketing firms on four continents and she was a former advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In this episode… One of the best pieces of advice Gillian Muessig has ever received is "Listen, lurk, and learn". She learned the benefits of observing what other leaders did and learning from it before engaging into her own work. This advice has enabled her to grow her businesses and succeed in industries dominated by men. Gillian has a great passion for investing in women-led tech startups and advises women on the best techniques for growing, leading, and scaling globally competitive companies. She has the ability to connect women to each other to help improve their businesses and the companies they lead. Gillian Muessig, the CEO of Outlines Venture Group, gets interviewed by Andrea Heuston in this episode of Lead Like a Woman about how women can successfully manage and lead global companies. Tune in as she talks about founding and scaling Moz, an SEO company, leading a top venture capital firm, and her advice on finding the best companies to invest in.

A special thanks to Mongoose for making today's conversation possible. Check out their new guide  to help you determine what kind of chatbot your school needs at www.mongoooseresearch.com/enrollify He dropped out of college in 2000 to work full-time at his mother's small business marketing firm...In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world's most popular community and content resource for search marketers.Today, he is one of the most respected voices in the industry on all things SEO, Market Research, and Audience Intelligence. On this week's episode of the podcast, Zach sits down with Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, and Co-Founder and CEO of SparkToro, to discuss the future of brand building, SEO strategy, and market research in higher ed. For 51 minutes, one of the world's most renowned marketers becomes and enrollment marketer...you're not going to want to miss this one folks!

Ruth Burr Reedy, VP of Strategy, UpBuildhttps://www.upbuild.io/@ruthburr Today's guest is Ruth Burr Reedy, Vice President of Strategy at UpBuild. I first heard of Ruth when she was working at Moz as their Lead SEO. Veteran SEOs know that Moz used to be called SEOmoz. Ruth took on the daunting challenge of overseeing the SEO for that rebrand. She's now living in Oklahoma and I start our conversation asking about her journey to UpBuild.Ruth is an in-demand speaker who's presented at all of the major industry conferences including Ungagged, Mozcon, SMX, and State of Search. In an industry that is very analytical, what I like most about Ruth is that her content is rich with empathy. She's extremely good at challenging our industry to be a little more human. I'm definitely going to ask her about one of her most popular sayings, "It's called show business, not show friends." She's written brilliantly about burn out, remote work, and running a profitable business with low client to consultant ratios.Grab something cold to drink and join Ruth and me for a conversation about avoiding employee churn, developing company culture with a 100% remote workforce, and what it was like growing up as a theater kid.

Vandaag het gesprek met Rand Fishkin. Rand is the cofounder and CEO of SparkToro. He's dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his blogging, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder.  When Rand's not working, he's most likely to be in the company of his partner in marriage and (mostly petty) crime, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you feed him great pasta or great whisky, he'll give you the cheat code to rank #1 on Google. Rand dropped out of the University of Washington in 2000 to work full-time at his mother's small business marketing firm as a web designer. In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world's most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of SEOmoz, Inc (now called Moz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog's success. Rand grew Moz from 7 employees to 134, revenues from $800K to $29.3mm, and traffic from 1 to 30mm annual visitors. He raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. Rand stepped down as CEO in February of 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. We talked about all this and more and what you as a small business owner can learn from this. Rand shares for example his tips on staying healthy and why he loves to pay taxes. Enjoy the insights with Rand. Let's get started… More on Rand Fishkin: sparktoro.com@randfishInstagramwww.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin Rand's book: Lost and Founder Wat ik leerde van Rand VC is niet het juiste middel, investeringen in je bedrijf helpen je om sneller resultaat te breiken (hier vind je zijn uitleg over de investeringen). Duurzaam.Jezelf leren kennen, weten waar je goed in bent en niet goed in bent.Stress voorkomen, slaap, beweging, eten, medicijnenBouw een klein lijst en leer alles van je (potentiele klanten), bouw een netwerk, bouw je marketing, bouw je bedrijf. "Build your expertise before you build your network, and build your network before you build your company."Bouw sociaal, betaal belastingen, (duurzaam), Maak content en bouw een community die past bij de schaal van je bedrijf. Niet te veel content wanneer je een klein aantal klanten nodig hebt, tenzij je het heel leuk vindt net als Rand en ikzelf

Vandaag het gesprek met Rand Fishkin. Rand is the cofounder and CEO of SparkToro. He's dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his blogging, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder.  When Rand's not working, he's most likely to be in the company of his partner in marriage and (mostly petty) crime, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you feed him great pasta or great whisky, he'll give you the cheat code to rank #1 on Google. Rand dropped out of the University of Washington in 2000 to work full-time at his mother's small business marketing firm as a web designer. In 2004, he created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world's most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of SEOmoz, Inc (now called Moz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog's success. Rand grew Moz from 7 employees to 134, revenues from $800K to $29.3mm, and traffic from 1 to 30mm annual visitors. He raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. Rand stepped down as CEO in February of 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. We talked about all this and more and what you as a small business owner can learn from this. Rand shares for example his tips on staying healthy and why he loves to pay taxes. Enjoy the insights with Rand. Let's get started… More on Rand Fishkin: sparktoro.com@randfishInstagramwww.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin Rand's book: Lost and Founder Wat ik leerde van Rand VC is niet het juiste middel, investeringen in je bedrijf helpen je om sneller resultaat te breiken (hier vind je zijn uitleg over de investeringen). Duurzaam.Jezelf leren kennen, weten waar je goed in bent en niet goed in bent.Stress voorkomen, slaap, beweging, eten, medicijnenBouw een klein lijst en leer alles van je (potentiele klanten), bouw een netwerk, bouw je marketing, bouw je bedrijf. "Build your expertise before you build your network, and build your network before you build your company."Bouw sociaal, betaal belastingen, (duurzaam), Maak content en bouw een community die past bij de schaal van je bedrijf. Niet te veel content wanneer je een klein aantal klanten nodig hebt, tenzij je het heel leuk vindt net als Rand en ikzelf

Rand Fishkin, founder and former CEO of Moz (SEOmoz) came on today to share some must listen to advice on how you exponential growth for your business! Not only does he share his advice when it comes to digital marketing but he also reveals some critical tips for your pandemic playbook. Stick around for story time because Rand gets brutally honest about the challenges running a multi, multi million dollar businesses. 

Rand Fishkin started his career on a bold note: Instead of finishing college, he dropped out and launched his very first business, SEOmoz. His journey as a serial entrepreneur since has been a rollercoaster, and Rand has come out a total business badass. From working with family, to choosing mental health over status, Rand's story is exemplary to every entrepreneur. On this episode of TLWR, Rand tells all about his newly released book, Lost and Founder, and about the success of his newest venture, SparkToro.

Rand Fishkin is the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, a company that helps marketers, PR folks, entrepreneurs, and product builders to get audience intelligence without the need for expensive, time-consuming, inaccurate surveys. Before co-founding SparkToro, Rand is also the co-founder and former CEO of Moz, a company he founded with his mother after dropping out of the University of Washington 2 classes away from completing his degree. The company, which started as a blog called SEOmoz, attracted 30 million visitors annually and grew into a consulting business and now a software company.  He is the author of the book Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. In this episode… When the name Rand Fishkin comes up, many are quick to think him as the co-founder and former CEO of Moz, the multimillion-dollar software business. But what you may not be too familiar with is that Moz was built during a recession. Having come through the trenches, Rand knows all too well what it’s like to grow a company in the middle of a recession. And with the increasingly negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, businesses are also facing the same challenging times as Rand did when he started Moz. Rand has learned many things during his time with Moz and one of them is how to best handle the direct and indirect impacts of building at a time of recession. He has since sold Moz and he founded and is currently the CEO of SparkToro. In this episode of INspiredINsider, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Rand Fishkin about behind the scene stories of building Moz through a recession, why he had to step down as CEO of Moz, and the new challenges that he faced while building SparkToro. He also talks about what makes SparkToro unique in the industry and what it can do for businesses that no one else can. Stay tuned.

Let’s analyze six of the most important off-site SEO factors you should always pay attention to, based on the rules by which Google — and other search engines — want us to play the SEO game. Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Google Guidelines Guest blogging helps link building On-site content for SEO Moz’s Open Site Explorer Domain Authority or SEO rank Questions to ask before launching a marketing campaign Leave Some Feedback: What do you want to hear more about? What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Connect with Timothy Carter & SEO.co:  SEO.co SEO Blog Twitter SEO.co  LinkedIn SEO.co Timothy Carter on Twitter Timothy Carter on LinkedIn SEO Podcast

Rand Fishkin is the ex-Founder and CEO of Moz and the current founder and CEO of SparkToro. A leader in the field of search engine optimization, Rand is also an author of the bestselling books “Lost and Founder” and “Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog”. Some of the notable achievements of his include: i. In 2009, he was named among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 by BusinessWeek ii. Co-founded Inbound.org along with Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot iii. One of the early introducer of SEO as an Industry iv. He has raised close to $30 mil in Venture Fund v. A big name and influencer in the digital marketing community In the early 2000s, he started the SEOMoz blog which was the precursor to its consulting business and then eventually the Moz Software. Avlesh speaks to Rand about building and scaling a startup, navigating the world of VC funding, understanding the need to create a personal brand for Entrepreneurs & so many more topics that founders talk about! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/webengage/message

Published Nov 16, 2015 CONTENT MARKETING TRENDSSearch Engine Ranking Factors Moz Say "No" to SEO Agency Smoke and Mirrors MeMedia Google Warns Webmasters Again: Do Not Use Sneaky, Mobile-Based Redirects Search Engine Land Google Confirms the Real Time Penguin Algorithm is Coming Soon Search Engine Land What is the Google Penguin Update? Google: Next Penguin Update Should Happen By End of 2015 FAQ: All About the New Google RankBrain Algorithm - A new piece of Google technology helping deliver its search results - Search Engine Land Google's App Interstitial Giant Ad Penalty Is Now Live The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors - Search Engine Land Comprehensive Beginners Guide to SEO - Moz

Lots of marketers talk about the importance of backlinks, but few have solid processes for earning them at scale. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Liam Martin digs into the details of the backlinking process he's been using to 10X organic traffic to his business websites, including Time Doctor and Staff.com.   If you're serious about SEO and understand the importance of backlinks, this episode is for you. Liam gets into a lot of specifics about how he hires his team of researchers and linkers, what they're paid, how they're incentivized to get links, and how he tracks performance. He also shares the copywriting formula he uses to convince other sites to link to his.  So many actionable takeaways that anyone can use to build their own backlinking strategy! Highlights from my conversation with Liam include: At the time Liam started building his backlinking strategy, he'd been blogging for three or four years and had a domain ranking of around 60. Today, his sites have a domain ranking of 80, which is a significant improvement and an impressive ranking in its own right. They had been focusing on on-page SEO for quite some time and realized that if they were going to get serious, they'd need to do more off-page SEO.  Liam rebuilt his entire team to be able to focus on off-page SEO and today, he has a sales team focused specifically on getting links.  Liam is the CMO and has two people (an Editor and SEO Manager) who report to him. Under them, there are writers, researchers and linkers. Once they identify keywords they want to target, their researchers try to find the content that current ranks at the top of the search engine results pages for that keyword, and identify the email addresses and names of the authors of that content. They will not carry out a backlinking campaign unless they have at least 500 emails. Once the emails are identified, they are sent to the team of linkers, who are the people that conduct the outreach to the authors that they would like backlinks from.  His team has a 15 to 20% conversion rate on the emails they send out. To incentive his team, Liam developed a compensation system that rewards linkers based on the domain authority of the links they get. He has found that listicles and statistical articles get the most backlinks. Because his team is remote and located all over the world, Liam spends time each quarter auditing some of the emails they are sending out to make sure they are on-brand.  In the two years that Liam and his team have been executing this strategy, they've gone from getting just a few links a month to getting hundreds of links a month, all while improving domain authority and organic traffic considerably. Resources from this episode: Check out the Time Doctor and Running Remote websites Subscribe to the Running Remote YouTube Channel Connect with Liam on LinkedIn Follow Liam on Twitter Join the Running Remote Community Group Follow Liam on Instagram Get in touch with Liam at liam@timedoctor.com or liam@runningremote.com  Listen to the podcast to get the step-by-step backlinking strategy that Liam Martin and his team use to build domain authority and grow organic traffic. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. My name is Kathleen Booth, and I'm your host. This week, my guest is Liam Martin, who's the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor, Running Remote Conference, and Staff.com. Welcome, Liam. Liam Martin (Guest): Thanks for having me. Liam and Kathleen recording this episode together . Kathleen: I am excited to talk to you because I got an email from somebody who said that you had increased your organic traffic from 12,000 to 120,000 in under two years, which is a big jump. When I hear things like that, my first thought is "I want to talk to this guy and find out how he did it." About Liam Martin Kathleen: Before we jump into that, though, I want to hear a little bit more about you and your journey, and how you wound up where you are today, and talk to me about what these various companies and events are all about. Liam: Sure. Well, first of all, before we get into that, I didn't do it. Other people did it, which is actually the only way that you can do this, which we can talk about later on. So, human being, more specifically, human being on Planet Earth, more specifically in Canada, I am a co-founder of, as you said, Time Doctor, Staff.com and Running Remote, and those all kind of tie into a singular concept, which is we really want to empower people to be able to work wherever they want, whenever they want. So, we personally have a hundred remote employees in 32 different countries all over the world, and we believe that working remotely makes people happier. It reduces global suck on Planet Earth, and that's really why we do everything that we're currently doing with Time Doctor, Staff and Running Remote. Kathleen: I have to just say before you go on to the next thing, I so wholeheartedly endorse that because I have been working remotely for the last two years at a company where 60% of the team is remote, and I manage a team of eight people, and I think five of us are remote. It has not been detrimental at all to our effectiveness. So, 100% agree. Liam: It will even get better once everyone goes remote. There is a, what in the industry we call a double silo effect, or founder magic problem, which is if you have a physical office, and then you have remote employees, a lot of those remote employees feel disempowered to be able to make the same decisions as the local employees, because they're closer to the decision maker. That's actually really problematic, which is why I'm in one of my crash pads right now. We used to have eight. Now we have two because they were just so ineffective for us in terms of having office space. Even when there's four to five people in this office, and we're going to do a meeting, we all do meetings on our own Zoom accounts. So, we all meet separately to be able to make sure that everyone has the perception that we are all separate, because those remote employees will definitely feel left out if everyone's kind of around me, who is the decision maker. It creates significant long-term problems in terms of your business. Kathleen: I love that, because it puts everybody on an even playing field, and as somebody who has been remote, I can speak to that, the power of that, absolutely. It makes a huge difference. Liam: But we're here to talk about SEO. Right? Kathleen: Yes. Liam's SEO strategy Liam: So, basically, the entire SEO content strategy came from our belief that you can effectively build a content team with remote workers, and they can be as effective, if not more effective than an in-house team. So, we had basically been kind of playing around with blogging for maybe three to four years, and we had built up to maybe a DR, I'd say 60 sites, and for everyone that maybe people don't know, DR is domain rank on Ahrefs and SEO Moz. You'll be able to- Kathleen: 60 is really good. Liam: Yeah. 60 is pretty good. I think we're an 80 now, so we definitely moved up a few pegs, and it's all exponential. So, a 60 to a 70 is 10 times harder than a 50 to a 60, as an example. So, we had built that site up to about a 60, and then we realized, well, we need to get really serious about this. One of the things that we weren't paying attention to fundamentally was our off-page. So, we were doing a whole bunch of on-page. We knew how to optimize for that, and again, for anyone that is not really knowing what the heck I'm talking about, on-page is basically where you change the on-page factors of a website, and off-page is where you bring in new backlinks to a particular web page. So, we had basically rebuilt the entire team off of that premise. So, we built a sales team, which instead of getting deals, they would get links. We implemented a technology stack behind that. So, fundamentally, the way the team is structured right now is I am still the CMO, so I review two individually that directly report to me, which is the content editor and the SEO manager. The content editor has a team of about 20 writers that we all have on contract. Me, the SEO manager, and the content editor, we meet every quarter to be able to define all of the different keywords for the next quarter. We identify those keywords through Ahrefs. That's what we use to be able to do all of our SEO research. Then those particular keywords are sent out to the writers. We pre-vetted all those writers, so we know exactly what kind of quality of work they can produce. Those articles come back to the SEO manager. Then the SEO manager has his team, which is we have linkers and researchers. So, usually we'll have one researcher to every two linkers. The researcher will identify... Let's say I'm trying to rank for online collaboration tools, which we're number one for, which is about a $36 click. We also identify very clearly when we're trying to figure out our quarterly numbers or our quarterly keywords, what are we looking for. So, we may not be looking for the end traffic number. So, if we really wanted to, we could probably get a million clicks coming to the website per month, but they'd be really non-valuable clicks for us. So, online collaboration tools is a $36 click, which is very expensive, and I think it has about 2,000 searches a month. That one keyword probably does $60,000 to $70,000 worth of traffic value to the website per month. We identify that keyword. We get our researcher to basically go in and identify who are the top people in the SERPs, and then who are those top people in the SERPs that other people are linking to. We do not proceed on a keyword unless we have about 500 emails that are contextual, that are all set up. The email then goes to the linkers. So, the researcher basically researched the data, and then the linker is kind of the closer. They'll go out and say, "Hey, I need to... Hi, Kathleen. This is Liam from Time Doctor. Really excited about chatting with you today. I saw this article about X, Y, Z, about online collaboration tools. I saw that you linked to it in this context. I think I have a better link that I can redirect to you, or I would love it if you linked to my website as well, to this web page as well. However, we've looked through your site, and we've identified that you're really trying to rank for Starbucks coffee cups," as an example. "It looks like you're ninth for that, and we just happen to have an article about Starbucks coffee cups, and we put you in it. Here's the link that we gave you." Then that is really the big jump that we basically had, which was I get about 40 to 50 of these a week, of people that are just doing cold outreach emails. Fundamentally, the success rate on those, because we used to be doing those, were about 2% to 3%. Now we get about 15% to 20% success rate, because what we've done is we're actually giving out a link. So, we're telling them, "Listen. We've given you a link. Here's the context of that link, and more importantly, I'm going to make this super easy for you. We'd love to be able to be in this article. Here's the paragraph that we've already pre-written for you. So, if you want to just cut and paste and throw that in, you can absolutely do it. If not, you can write something else." Those definitely work for what I would define as the DR 50-plus range, because there's two different categorizations of the way that we do outreach. So, if someone has a domain rank of above 50, it's probably a multi-email exchange, so basically, those linkers need to act like salespeople. So, they need to be able to communicate very clearly through email. The average exchange for us is seven email exchanges before we actually end up working on a partnership. So, it's pretty intense, but it definitely works. As I said, it's a 15% to 20%, basically, conversion rate. Kathleen: Wow. All right. I have so many questions for you. This is really interesting to me, and to back up, backlinks is a topic that I think is fascinating as a marketer. I've been in this business for a long time on the agency side. I've worked with some really savvy marketers, and it has been very surprising to me how many of them give little to no credence or effort to backlinking strategies. They either discount- Liam: I mean, they're in trouble then. Kathleen: I know, I know. They discount the value of backlinks altogether, or they understand conceptually that they're valuable, but they don't put any effort into it. They just sort of wait for backlinks to happen organically. In some cases that happens, depending upon the type of content you create, but in other cases it doesn't. It's always been interesting to me because when you read online about backlinking, there's a ton of content about why it's important. There's not a ton of content about how to actually go about doing it well. So, this is why I'm really interested to dig into this. Liam: The other part that's really important that's connected to this is you can run these campaigns, but at least in my experience, I see the majority of them fail. So, if you go to an agency, a DR 50 link is going to cost you about $500, generally, $300 to $500. Our cost is, I believe last month it was $36 per DR 50-plus link, so a significant cost reduction, and that's just, basically, I know that agencies are running these links, and they're acquiring them for $36, but then they're selling them on for $300 to $500. So, it's actually very profitable to be able to do this type of work, but you're right. There's isn't that much value inside of it because I think a lot of people try and fail. How Liam holds his team accountable for backlinks Liam: So, what we did, which was different, is we didn't just implement these processes. We also made everyone accountable to these processes. It was very difficult to be able to get the right measure in place because, as an example, let's just say I said, "Well, I need to find out how many backlinks you're going to get. I'm going to measure your success by how many backlinks you get." If you're a linker, what you're going to do is you're going to approach a whole bunch of DR 10 sites, because those are really easy to be able to get backlinks on. We just got a backlink last week from Salesforce. It's a DR 89 site. It's very, very powerful as a backlink. It's probably worth a thousand DR 10s, as an example. So, how am I supposed to reward someone for working on a month-and-a-half to be able to build a really, to be able to link to a DR 89 when instead you could probably, in that same amount of time, get 10 DR 10 backlinks? Well, what we implemented was cumulative domain authority. So, in essence, what happens is at the end of the month, we count up not how many backlinks you got, we look at that measure as well, but then we also measure the amount of DR you got inside of all of those links. So, if you got a backlink from Salesforce, which was 89, you'd get 89 points, and then if you got a regular website that was a DR 11, you'd get 11 points. So, 89 plus 11, that's now your new score. You got 100 points, and let's keep going on through the week and the month. Then we just pay that out based off commission. So, literally, the top linker for that month gets a cash bonus, which they're always fighting for. What type of content is most likely to get backlinks? Kathleen: I bet. So, I want to back up for a second. You start, you identify the keywords that you want to rank for. You're creating all this content. Are there any particular types of content that you find perform better in terms of other people being willing to link to them? Liam: Yes. So, as an example, Time Doctor is a time tracking tool. It's pretty boring. No one really wants to link to time tracking blog posts, so it's very... We also have another category, which is our golden list. So, we usually have a floating list of five pages that if someone owes us a favor, we'll ask them to link to that. So, it might be something super boring, like maybe one of our integration pages, and we want to rank number one for Asana time tracking. That would be an example. No one really wants to link to the Asana time tracking page, so we would throw that up there. But outside of that, listicles, those are the ones that end up converting better than anything else, and they're very easy to be able to get links for if you're doing direct outreach. Outside of that, however, there are the statistical articles, which are basically just link juice. So, we do a lot of articles, like we tracked 10 million work hours, and here's what we found, that type of stuff. You don't even really need to do link building for that, primarily because, number one, they're going to acquire links on their own, and number two, it's very difficult to be able to optimize them for a particular keyword that we would end up seeing as a purchaser's keyword, as a buying keyword, which is a little bit unfortunate. But you can write those types of articles to basically raise your general domain rank, but you're not necessarily going to rank for anything in particular. So, you might write 10 of those, as an example, and maybe your domain rank will go from 80 to 82, whereas if you had written 10 very focused keywords for conversion, you might get an extra 50 customers a month, but your domain rank is not going to go up. Kathleen: Yeah. That makes sense. It's interesting you talk about kind of data-packed articles, because in my experience, the type of content that we've seen perform really well from an organic backlinking perspective is infographics, and that tends to be because they have a lot of data behind them, and they're easy to share, and people like to pop them into other articles and things like that, but yeah. Building a backlinking team Kathleen: So, you create this content, and then you have this team of people. You mentioned having researchers and linkers. Can you talk a little bit more about how you found those people, and what kind of a profile are you looking for? Liam: Sure. So, for anyone that kind of wants context on this, I would suggest you read From Impossible to Inevitable... Aaron Ross is the author. From Predictable to Inevitable. Darn, can't remember the name of it. Kathleen: One of those two. Liam: Just Google Aaron Ross, and read his book. He was the guy that took basically Salesforce to a hundred million a year, and his model was to divide... His big kind of aha moment was dividing a sales rep from a lead generator. So, that was a big, huge sort of moment in sales, which was people that talked to other human beings should generally not be doing the research to be able to find those leads, and by dividing those two tasks, he was able to significantly improve the productivity of his team. I'm just implementing the same thing for SEO. So, we have a researcher that literally goes out and identifies not just, as I said before, let's say the top 20 on SERP results for a particular keyword, but we'll use a tool like Ahrefs to go into those SERPs or into those links, and we'll see who linked to those people, and that's where we amass our list. We do not proceed with running a campaign unless we have a minimum of 500 emails to work with. Kathleen: So, let me pause you for a second. Let's just, for argument's sake, say your keyword is remote work. I'm just going to make this up. So, you have this keyword, remote work. You've created content, and then you say to your researcher, "Go do your thing," and they take the words remote work, and they're looking at who is already ranking for that keyword phrase. Is that accurate? Liam: Yeah. So, I'm just going to use the direct example that you just sent me right now. Kathleen: Awesome. Liam: So, the first article, or the first URL for remote work is We Work Remotely, who's actually... We know these guys. They're good friends of ours. They have a DR 74 site, and they have about $250,000 of monthly traffic value. So, they have to their main page 1,200 referring domains. Kathleen: And you're seeing this all in Ahrefs, correct? Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, all I would do is I would then grab that list, I would identify everyone that has actually linked to that base domain from that list, and then I would load it into another tool that we have called BuzzStream. BuzzStream is basically the tool that we use for outreach. So, we load everyone into that, and then it gives you the context of all of the conversations that have occurred. So, once we load those new 1,200 people into BuzzStream, we might identify that we've already actually spoken to about 273 of those people, and here's the context of one of those linkers that interacted with them. So, I can also give you context, which is, "Hey, Kathleen. This is Liam. I know that you spoke to John a couple months ago about link X, Y, Z, but I would love to talk to you about link A, B, C," so that people have that context, and they know, "Oh, okay. I'm actually being listened to," and that just allows us to be able to automate the process a lot faster and easier. So, once that's actually all loaded in, then we'll usually have some templates that we've already worked from, but usually inside of those templates there's customization that goes into every single link that goes out. We do not let a non-customized email go out for anyone that's below a DR 50. We've just found there's kind of... That's the line that we've drawn, which is there are people that get these emails all the time, like me, and there are people that don't. Usually, the ones that don't are pretty easy to be able to knock off, and the ones that are a lot more difficult, you need to have context, and you need to be able to float above everyone else, because think of... I'm that person. In my inbox today, there were probably about... I think I saw about a dozen of these types of cold outreach emails, and none of them really work because they're asking for something, and they're not giving me anything in exchange. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm that person, too. I get a lot of those emails, which is part of the reason I was excited to talk to you, because I'm like, I want to talk to somebody for whom this is actually working, because I know most of the ones I get, it doesn't work. But to back up for a second, you get the list from Ahrefs of domains that are linking to, in this case, We Work Remotely, and you're putting... Am I correct that you're putting those referring domains into BuzzStream? Liam: So, what we'll do is we'll find out who is the author that actually linked to that particular article. Kathleen: Oh, okay. Liam: So, did it come from a blog post, or did it come from a base domain? Wherever the link came from, we try to hunt down who the author was, because we want to talk to a human being, and then we redirect that back over. So, that takes a while. That's why you need researchers to be able to do that. I would probably say a good researcher can knock out something... Let's say we're just going to take all that data and crunch it into BuzzStream. Out of those thousand people, BuzzStream will probably only figure out about half, and then the other 50% will go through them and will throw out people that are DR 10, as an example, because it's just fundamentally not worth our time. We'll pay very special attention to everyone that's a DR 50 and above, and we'll do two to five minutes of research per person, and we'll just identify who they are, what we think their email address is, and then we'll do that outreach. Kathleen: So, talk to me a little bit more about how you find these researchers, and what kind of experience or background or profile are you looking for? Liam: Sure. So, we generally find these guys all over Planet Earth. Our researchers don't necessarily need to be good in the English language. They need to be good at doing research, so a lot of attention to detail, data entry people, data work, those are the people that we really look for. Fundamentally, we're looking for people that are excited about the grind, because it's a grind. I'm not going to tell you anything different. If you go to any sales floor, you'll have closers and you'll have SDRs. Right? SDRs are the people that are basically developing the lead for the closer, for the actual salesperson, and they're doing the research on that. Those people grind out every single day. Usually, they'll do that for a year or two, and then they get upgraded to being a closer. So, we do the same thing inside of the company. Everyone has a passion for SEO, and that's actually another big just basic requirement, is a lot of people will come in and kind of say, "Well, I know how to do SEO, and I ranked this local," I don't know, "this local coffee shop for coffee in Timbuktu," or something like that, and they come in a little bit cocky, but then within a week or two, we just realize very quickly that they're somebody that should be a researcher, and not necessarily a linker as of yet. So, they'll spend about three to six months... Generally, some people, if we're trying to develop them as a linker, we'll usually have them be a researcher for the first three months, just so that we can see that they can do the grind, because if they can't, they're generally not going to stick around that long even as a linker. Then some people love to stay there for... We've had people that have worked with us for years as linkers. They love the job. Kathleen: If somebody's listening, and they're like, "I want to do this," how much should they expect to pay for a researcher? Is this an hourly job or... Liam: So, it really depends. We pay a base, and then we add a commission structure to the amount of researched individuals that end up actually converting, not converting, but that are actually legitimate. So, we'll do this research, and then someone will say, "Hey, it's definitely Kathleen, and this is Kathleen's email address," and it will end up bouncing, so that counts against their rate. So, generally for us, our researchers are all above 95%. I believe no one starts to get into commissions until they're above 97%, but that's generally the way that we run it. Those people would be anywhere from, I would say, 500 to 1,000 US per month per linker, and those guys are generally going to be found in the Philippines. You're going to be able to find some in Indonesia, maybe some in Bangladesh. However, in my opinion, you're going to pay a little bit more for people in the Philippines, but they are way more effective than people in those other countries in Southeast Asia. Kathleen: So interesting. Thank you for sharing all that detail. That's really helpful. Okay. So, we've talked about the researchers and what they do. So, they identify the opportunities, they find the email addresses, and then they turn that over to the linker. Correct? Liam: The linker, yeah. Kathleen: Got it. Liam: So, the linker the is very different from a researcher. They must have a very solid grasp of the English language because they can't just send a template. They have to be able to edit those things and communicate in the way that our target market, our target demographic, would actually communicate, which are generally people in Western countries. So, they would not say something like, "Hello, ma'am, Kathleen." They would say, "Hey, Kathleen. What's up? This is Liam from Time Doctor. Saw this article, thought it was really cool. Listen. You made a huge mistake. You didn't link to my article. No problem. I can totally solve that for you. Here's a paragraph of exactly how to link to me, and by the way, we saw inside of your site that you really want to link to Starbucks cups, and we know that we can totally figure that out for you. We already set up that link to be able to send out. Hope you're having a great day. Would love to be able to chat with you about the link," as an example. That would be the way that you would communicate, and that's going to get a much higher response rate than the over-formalized communication that generally you'll find with individuals from Southeast Asia in particular, and to a degree, sometimes in Eastern Europe. So, that team is actually a lot more distributed. We have some people in Southeast Asia. We have some people in Eastern Europe. We have some people in California. We actually have just implemented a much more serious team in Lagos, in Nigeria, for any of you that maybe have gotten this email a couple years ago or 10 years ago. You know, the Nigerian prince emails? Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Liam: So, that doesn't work anymore, but these guys are email ninjas. They're absolutely amazing operators at figuring out how to be able to get a response from someone and communicating clearly. So, they're amazing, and a lot of them kind of want to go legit. So, they will work for a company like ours instead. Kathleen: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, a lot of those guys did get people to respond to those Nigerian prince emails, so- Liam: Generally, it would be a .004% response rate, but that response rate would end up being something- Kathleen: Paying for the whole thing. Liam: Exactly. So, that's something that... Even with these direct emails outreach programs, they still do work, but they only have a conversion rate of about 2%. You want a convert rate of 15% to 20%. We found that we're a lot more cost-effective. I've spoken to some agencies, and they probably work out a link to about a hundred dollars per person, and it's because they just don't take the time to be able to build context. The other added advantage to building context is you don't just get one link from that person. You may get five or six over two years, because you have that personal context, and I've got all that context in BuzzStream, so I can bring it up whenever I want, and Kathleen remembers this interaction that we had seven months ago, as an example. How to conduct backlink research Kathleen: So, you talked about when you do this outreach to... Let's say I'm your recipient, and you do this outreach to me, and you say, "I know that you're trying to get found for terms like Starbucks cups." Who is doing that research, how are they doing it, and how are they identifying that that's the goal of the recipient? Liam: So, I would slot your domain directly into Ahrefs, and I would identify what are the top links that you're trying to work for, and there's two categories. There's kind of like a top three. So, usually people that rank first to third, you're not really going to be able to change their lives in any significant way in terms of that particular keyword. It's usually quite competitive, or it's a branded term. The ones that we really like to go after are the seven-to-10 space. So, those are the keywords that they're probably working on, and maybe they actually only launched that article three months ago or six months ago, and they're trying to work on it, and we can see they're trying to work on it, because let's say there's five or six referring domains into it, and we'll say, "Yeah. We'll just put a link in there. We'll just link from our site to your site." They understand the value of a DR 80 link, which is actually quite funny because a lot of the times we get outreach from, let's say, a DR 65-plus website, and my first response is, "I'm interested, but I'd love a link back." The smart ones say, "Of course," and the stupid ones say, "Well, I don't have the authority to be able to do that." Well, just for anyone that's listening, do that, because that's going to convince me... You're talking to an SEO person, and I'm not going to link to a DR 60 if I'm a DR 80, if I'm not getting anything back. Right? So, that's really something that I just don't understand that's not happening in the industry, because for us, we're very happy to be able to give out those links. We see that as kind of just... We do it before we ask for anything back. In that introductory email, "By the way, here's a DR 80 link. Really happy to see if we could work in a deeper way," and if they don't want to work with us, that link stands. Asking for backlinks Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. So, there's that element of reciprocity. Okay. So, they have this data, they know what they're trying to link for. You've talked about how these emails are crafted. I'm curious. You talked about sometimes it's seven emails back-and-forth. What's happening in those seven emails? Because it seems like the way you're putting these emails together, it's fairly straightforward. You've laid out all the context. You've given them the paragraph of text. I mean, at that point, it would seem to me, as somebody who gets these emails all the time, that they either say, "Okay. Yeah, I'm going to drop it in. Here it is," or, "No." So, what happens in that back-and-forth? Liam: So, there's a couple main kind of categories of things that happen. One of the things that happen, particular on really powerful sites, is, "Hey, Kathleen. Not a problem. Links are $500 a pop, and here's the context." Then we have to go back saying, "Listen. We don't pay for links. We're just looking to be able to have you link to our website, and we've already linked to your website. Here's our stats." So, we literally pull in, "Here's our Ahrefs data. We'd love to be able to see if we could work on a deeper partnership together." That's one major category. Kathleen: Got it. Liam: Another one is no one really has the authority to be able to make that decision. So, sometimes we actually contact someone who is, let's say, a blogger that's maybe done piecework for that blog, and they say, "I don't care because I wrote that article six months ago, and thanks for reaching out, but I don't really care." Well, then we have to say, "Well, do you know who's in charge right now? Could you let me know?" Then we're going to get access to that person. Then we, in essence, send the same email. Then the other ones end up actually just turning into larger partnerships. So, we'll actually say, "Well, maybe we shouldn't just work on this link exchange. Maybe we should also do a webinar together, or maybe we should do something else together." So, all of the linkers have full authority to be able to build at least the framework for those partnerships, and then it gets approved by me. Keeping the team on-brand Kathleen: Okay. So, this is super interesting. You have all these people distributed all over the world, and you're giving them, really, a lot of leeway in terms of the way they communicate with these other domain owners or authors or bloggers, et cetera. My first question is, do you ever worry that the way that they communicate or the things they say are going to kind of go outside of your typical brand voice or have some kind of negative ramification on your company or your brand? Liam: Absolutely. So, we do spot-check auditing on all of the emails that are going out, and we're really fast and responsive to... We have a lot of linkers on the team. I think we have dozens on the team altogether at this point. So, a friend of mine said, "Well, do you know who this person is?" I said, "No, I don't know who that person... It doesn't ring a bell to me." "Oh. Well, they just emailed me from Time Doctor saying they want a link." So, we need to be mindful about that, and he actually said, "This is probably one of the best cold email outreaches I've ever gotten," which was great for us, but I need to be able to be mindful of that context to make sure that there aren't negative implications on the brand. So, the way that we do that is audit the process. So, I'll even do randomized auditing of just... I'll look at every quarter maybe 10 emails from each linker, and that doesn't take me more than a minute or two to kind of float through, and then our SEO manager also makes sure that all of this stuff is being monitored properly. We're also really looking at... So, we're always trying new things, new titles, new copy templates, and we share that information amongst ourselves. So, in that process, a lot of this... We had an article just recently, or an ad just recently that went out that got really good attention. It got a really fantastic click-through rate, but it also got a lot of hate. So, we have to understand what's the difference between trying to get someone's attention and trying to get someone's attention and then hating it. We need to be able to draw that line. Tracking backlink performance Kathleen: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that was going to be my next question, was how do you keep track of it all, but it sounds like you've got processes in place, you have a team in place. Liam: Yeah. We do the quarterly audit. We make sure that our SEO manager is managing all those linkers very quickly and efficiently, and then we're always exchanging information. We literally do a weekly meeting about what's all the new split tests that we've tried. So, every linker is also responsible for implementing a test every week, I believe, inside of their copy. So, they're basically always optimizing their outreach, and then we come back, and we do some more learnings. We also make sure that everyone's reading all the industry news for SEO and all that kind of stuff, so that if there are some interesting new insights, we can implement those as well. The impact of backlinks on SEO and traffic Kathleen: Interesting. So, I'm fascinated by this whole process, but I want to shift gears for a second and talk about results. You've touched on this a little bit in terms of response rates and things, but let's just go back and recap now. So, this is a process you've been doing for how long? Liam: We've been doing it for about two years. I think if anyone actually wants to jump into Moz or Ahrefs, you'll pretty much see the exact point in which we started doing it because we were going from getting, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred links a month to getting, or sorry, getting a couple dozens links a month to getting a couple hundred links a month. So, we literally just- Kathleen: Can you send me a screenshot of that? Because I would love to put that in my show notes. Liam: Yeah, sure. No problem. Kathleen: That would be awesome. So, you've been doing that for that amount of time. Talk me through, again, your response rates, what this has done to traffic, how the links have grown. Liam: Yeah. So, the bigger thing that we've really seen is general increase in domain authority. That's been the thing that's allowed us to... So, as an example, if we talk about remote work on Time Doctor, Google's generally going to give us the benefit of the doubt. So, they're automatically going to say, "These guys blog about this stuff all the time. They really are a trusted source in that particular niche, so we're going to give it more traffic than we would a DR 10 site that's never written about remote work or outsourcing ever before," and that's really the huge advantage, is a lot of this stuff is quite disingenuous when I discuss it because we're currently at the point in which the snowball effect has really taken hold, so Google already really trusts us. If you're a brand new person with absolutely no links whatsoever, I'm going to tell you, this is going to take about six months before you really start to see dividends, but however, I would say, and this is a bold claim, but I would say over a 10-year period, so if you plan on owning a business for more than 10 years, SEO is the absolute best cost-per-dollar advertising method known to mankind. It is better than, in my opinion, viral traffic, because those are spikes, whereas this is continuous long-term traffic that is going to be so cost-effective, it is probably 60% of our overall funnel, and we spend as much money as we possibly can on Facebook ads and everything else, and we just constantly come back to SEO because it's just such a return on investment. Kathleen: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, and I would agree with that. That's one of the things at IMPACT that we're really fortunate... We have a tremendous amount of organic traffic, and it has saved us a lot of money in not needing to advertise. Liam: I almost see it as it's an investment that produces dividends, whereas a Facebook ad, as an example, is you're going to get conversions now, and those are going to be great. You're going to get a conversion this month. Those numbers will probably work, right? You put in a hundred bucks, and maybe you make 110 bucks. But with SEO, you're going to put in a hundred bucks this month, and maybe you're going to get a dollar back this month, but then next month you're going to get two, and then four, and then eight, and then 16, and if you continuously put in that hundred dollars every single month, you're going to start to create fantastic dividends. Kathleen: Yeah. I always talk about it as the difference between renting a house and buying a house. When you rent your house, you stop paying rent, you get evicted, and you got no value. Liam: Yeah. Well, you're renting the traffic. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah, exactly. So, fascinating. All right. Well, so interesting. I could talk to you about this forever, and I love the amount of detail we've been able to go into, but we're going to run out of time. So, two questions that I always ask all of my guests, the first is... We talk a ton about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really doing inbound well right now? Liam: Yeah. I thought about that quite a bit, and my original response was HubSpot, just because their SEO game is so strong, and they blog about everything. If you throw them into a tool like Ahrefs or Moz, which is generally how I see websites today, they will blog about kitchen utensils, as an example. They just want traffic with a big capital T. So, I've recognized that has been really interesting. The other website that I would talk about, which is relatively new, and it's not really a website, but it's more like an app, is Wish.com. So, I don't know if you've ever encountered that e-commerce site before, but they've, in essence, built an app that's gamified e-commerce. So, think of it almost like an Amazon, but it's a video game. So, it's Amazon, but it's a video game, and what they're doing is they're doing a lot of SEO traffic to be able to bring in a free lead, and then they are doing a lot of retargeting into the game again. So, they'll say, "Hey, webcams are 95% off today only," and it's a Facebook ad, and when you click on it, you're brought into the Wish app. So, it's a very interesting process, and they've, in essence, taken the architecture and the mechanics of the video game world for mobile games, and they've moved that into an e-commerce platform. When I look at their numbers and how much money they're spending, it boggles the mind. I think that they are doing the same thing that Amazon did back in the early 2000s where Amazon bought... I mean, they were the number one customer for Google, I believe, Google Search, for eight or nine years. They did that because they knew there was such a massive arbitrage opportunity to be able to shift all of that traffic off of Google, which honestly should've built their own e-commerce platform, and they're moving it into Amazon, and now they've built one of the largest companies on Planet Earth. So, I would check out Wish.com, even just install the app, and then just see how they interact with you, because I think it's genius. Kathleen: So interesting. I can't wait to check that one out. Second question, the thing I hear from most marketers is that the world of digital marketing is just changing so quickly, it's really hard to keep up. There's so much information coming at you. How do you personally stay up-to-date and make sure that you're still kind of on the cutting edge? Liam: I hire experts in every domain who think about this stuff morning, noon and night, and I pay them a ridiculous amount of money to talk to me for about an hour or two a month. Kathleen: I like it. Liam: So, I have one client, I have an SEO consultant, and I pay this person $2,000 a month, and we have a one-hour conversation a month. Kathleen: Oh, my god. Can I get a job doing that for you for one hour? Liam: This guy is the guy that does- Kathleen: That's a great deal. Liam: ... industrial-level SEO. He's built sites that you would definitely know of. He's managed teams of hundreds of SEOs in single shops, and he's someone who's very passionate about this particular subject. So, for me, I can then take the context, and I usually have myself, my SEO manager, and my content editor on that call, and then he looks at what we've done over the last month, what the goals are for the next month and in the next quarter and in the next year. He's also able to make course corrections that we are not mindful of. So, as an example, let's say our yearly goal is we want to get 10,000 referring domains. Let's throw that out into the air. I think we've got about 5,000 active referring domains, and we have 11,000 historical referring domains right now. So, we want to do 10,000 active referring domains within the next year. Well, what do you need to actually get to that target? Then we identify what we need to do to get to that target. Okay. Then at the end of the day, he'll boil it down to, "Well, you're currently doing 10 blog posts a month. You need to ratchet up to 68 blog posts a month if you want to hit that particular target." So, what's the architecture that we need to be able to implement to be able to hit that target? That's the kind of stuff that I am somewhat not very mindful of, and I should actually be a lot more. As the CMO, I should really be directing the ship in that type of direction, but these consultants that have done it before, they're the ones that I really go to for that type of expertise. Kathleen: Yeah, makes sense. Liam: Yeah. How to connect with Liam Kathleen: Well, this has been fascinating. I have learned so much. If somebody is listening, and they have a question, they want to learn more about you, the work you're doing, or they want to check out some of the companies that you're involved with, what's the best way for them to do that? Liam: You want to check out Time Doctor, go to timedoctor.com. If you want to talk with me, this is another kind of side idea that I have, which is I think that YouTube is actually probably going to be the next place for SEO, so I'm doing some experimentation on YouTube. So, if you go to youtube.com/runningremote, you'll be able to find me, and you'll be able to find a whole bunch of videos. All of our stuff from our Running Remote Conference is free, and we just post everything up there, so you can consume as much as you want from it. But if you put in a comment, I will interact with you within the hour. So, that's the source that I really want to kind of put all of my eggs into because I believe that YouTube is Google 10 years ago, and there's a massive opportunity right now. It's the second-largest search engine in the world, and people actually, instead of just getting a blog post and someone looking at it for 35 seconds, even if they're looking at my stupid face for 35 seconds, it gives you more context, and it allows you to know, hey, this is who I am. You might want to buy some stuff from me in the future. Kathleen: I feel like next year I'm going to have to reach out to you again, and we'll do another interview on the results of your YouTube experiment. Liam: For sure. Kathleen: Awesome. Well, thank you for all of that. I will put all those links in the show notes, so if you're interested in reaching out to Liam, check out the show notes, and you should be able to get in touch with him there, or check out Time Doctor. You know what to do next... Kathleen: If you're listening, and you've learned something new, you liked what you heard, please leave the podcast a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That is how we get found by new listeners, and if you know somebody who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, please tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because I would love to interview them. Thanks so much. That's it for this week. Thank you, Liam. Liam: Thanks for having me.

Rand Fishkin is one of the world’s leading experts on SEO. But it wasn’t always that way for him. In 2000, he dropped out of the University of Washington to work at his mom’s marketing firm as a web designer. In 2004, he started a blog called SEOmoz, which eventually became moz.com, an SEO software and data company that he co-founded with his mom. Since then, he’s stayed pretty busy, helping Moz grow into a $45 million/year business. That’s not all, though! In 2018, he founded SparkToro, an under-development software company focused on audience and influencer intelligence. He also published a book, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World, where he gets real about what most startups actually look like. With lots of experience under his belt (and plenty of insight from those experiences), Rand shares helpful tips and tricks to start — and grow — a successful business.Support the show (http://buildingabusinessthatlasts.com)

Last week an announcement from Google stated that podcast episodes will now appear in Google Search Results: Starting today, when you’re searching for a podcast about a topic on Google, such as “podcasts about Awkwafina” or “Instant Pot recipe podcasts,” we’ll show you playable episodes in Search results alongside web pages, news, images and videos. We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s understanding of what’s being talked about on a podcast, so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form. Soon, you won’t necessarily need the term “podcast” in your search to see episodes, making podcast discovery simpler across Search. Where Do You Think People Search More Apple or Google? With Google adding episodes to search results we need to ask the question, where are people going to find my podcast? According to a Jacobe media report, 70% of people find shows via word of mouth and only 11% search in an app. Another study from Edison Research and prominent podcast producer WNYC Studios states that: 84% of WNYC Studios listeners report having recommended a podcast to a friend, while 78% overall report having recommended a podcast to a friend. And one in three WNYC Studios listeners share podcasts on social media, at 32%. Podcast listeners also report having discovered the medium in the following ways: 17% via their smartphone, 15% via public radio programming, and 13% from an article or program. Getting a Grip on SEO The minute I heard Google was taking podcasting more seriously, (and that the Apple search was not great) I started studying SEO. Here is my limited knowledge after a few months. Always write for humans.  You need to know where your site ranks Find some keywords that fit your audience, and your website ranks high enough to show up in search results.  Showing up for less popular keywords gets you more results in Google which can lead to higher rankings.  SEO is like Bowling or Golf, LOTS of moving pieces and trying to master it us exhausting.  Some resources I've used: SEO for Podcasters from Daniel J Lewis ( $199) SEO Marketing from Juergen Berkesse of Polymash Skillshare has two classes (and intro and advanced) by Rand Fishkin who started SEO MOZ (one of the top if not THE top sites on SEO) Mangools is a Suite of Tools to help you determine the best keywords and track your progress (free/paid) Ubersuggest from Neil Patel (a free tool that gives you tons of data). WPCRafter has a tutorial that walks you through it.  Yoast SEO Plugin For Wordpress Monster Insights Plugin For Wordpress (Google Analytics) Because of My Podcast, I Got a Press Pass To Comicon Seth/ZAndrex from Geekville Radio (who I just reviewed on the Podcast Rodeo Show) explains how his podcast was enough of a credential to get him a press pass to the Comicon event in Chicago.  Check out his podcast at geekvilleradio.com For more "Because of My Podcast Stories, check out www.becauseofmypodcast.com Are You Making ANY Money With Your Podcast? I'm working on the book "More Podcast Money" and conducting more interviews for the book. If you are making ANY money with your podcast, I'm trying to interview more podcasters to better identify strategies, and what is and is not working. If you'd like to be considered for the book please contact me Question of the Month What was the last thing you shared (that wasn't yours) and why did you share it? Be sure to mention your podcast and website. Go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question

While we were at Social Media Camp in Victoria, B.C. this spring we had the chance to sit down and talk with Rand Fishkin who is the Co-Founder of Sparktoro.com.  Rand Fishkin was also the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a leader in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources & community. In 2009, he was named among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 by BusinessWeek, and has been written about it in the Seattle Times, Newsweek and the New York Times. Rand was very generous with his time and sat down with us to talk his thoughts on startup life, growth hacks and the state of online marketing. It was a great conversation!  Show notes:  The Next Era of Web Marketing presentation from Social Media Camp 2019  Rand's latest book: Lost and Founder Rand's new venture Sparktoro.com Follow Rand on Twitter @RandFish Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to follow Tara at @missrogue & Carlos @carlospache_co  You can also check out Tara's YouTube channel, it has over 200 videos on digital strategy and online audience building.  Truly Inc. is a digital strategy and insights agency based in Toronto, Canada. Visit our website: https://trulyinc.com  Anatomy of a Strategy podcast is recorded in Toronto, Canada in the offices of Truly Inc. Produced by Carlos Pacheco and Tara Hunt. Podcast editing by Joe Pacheco 

Moz is hands down one of the best, if not the best resource online for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I had the privilege of talking with the CEO of Moz, Sarah Bird. We took a deep dive on why this is the “Golden Age of SEO” and we discussed Sarah's dynamic leadership style. Our conversation kicks off with women in tech and why she prefers not to be called a "Woman CEO." Please enjoy my insightful conversation with Sarah Bird.

Moz is hands down one of the best, if not the best resource online for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I had the privilege of talking with the CEO of Moz, Sarah Bird. We took a deep dive on why this is the “Golden Age of SEO” and we discussed Sarah's dynamic leadership style. Our conversation kicks off with women in tech and why she prefers not to be called a "Woman CEO." Please enjoy my insightful conversation with Sarah Bird.

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 163, originally published in August 2014. Brian Carter is the Founder of the Brian Carter Group. He joins the show to discuss how Facebook can revolutionize an organization if they use it effectively.  Brian Carter is respected as one of the elite internet marketing experts in the world. His hands-on business experience, cutting edge insights, background in improv and stand up comedy culminate in a speaker and trainer who leaves every audience not only entertained, but armed with powerful strategies and tactics. Brian is co-author of the bestselling book Facebook Marketing, and author of the forthcoming book, The Like Economy. He also has authored an ebook called How To Get More Fans On Facebook. Brian has 12 years experience with Google, Twitter and Facebook marketing, both as a consultant and marketing agency director. He has trained and managed Gen X and Gen Y employees, in addition to the more than 5,000 students of his FanReach Facebook marketing online course. Brian develops strategies and builds search visibility and social marketing fanbases for companies of all sizes, including well known entities such as Universal Studios, The U.S. Army, Hardee's and Carl's Jr. He is quoted in the book Twitter Marketing For Dummies and has been quoted and profiled by Information Week, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Brian writes for two of the most popular marketing blogs, Search Engine Journal and AllFacebook with a combined readership of over 400,000. He has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and an overall reach of more than 50,000 fans through Facebook, LinkedIn, and his other social marketing channels. A speaker and trainer for top marketing conferences such as SEOmoz, SMX, Pubcon, The AllFacebook Expo, Socialize, The South Carolina Society of Association Executives and The American Marketing Association to name a few. Brian is a seasoned expert and most entertaining presenter in Internet marketing. Website: www.BrianCarterGroup.com

Today's Flash Back Friday takes us back to Episode 43 from December 2011. Join Jason Hartman and Facebook Marketing 101 guru, Brian Carter, as they explore the best practices to get the most out of marketing your products or services on Facebook. Brian explains how Facebook compares to Google AdWords and SEO, and how to use Twitter as well as an enhancement. He talks about the difference between a group and a page and how to decide which one to choose. He also discusses how to use Facebook inexpensively and with the biggest impact, describing how to engage with your targeted audience and how to promote your page to get more fans. Brian shares many incredibly useful tips and breaks down the process into simple, easy-to-follow steps. Brian Carter is a respected elite internet marketing expert around the world. He is known for his hands-on business experience, cutting edge insights, background in improve and stand-up comedy, which has made him a much sought after speaker and trainer. Brian is the co-author of Facebook Marketing, and has authored an ebook called How to Get More Fans On Facebook. He also offers a training program, called Facebook Marketing 101. Brian develops strategies and builds search visibility and social marketing fanbases for companies of all sizes, including Universal Studios, The U.S. Army, Hardee's, and Carls' Jr. He has been quoted in Twitter Marketing for Dummies and has been quoted and profiled in such publications as Information Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Brian also writes for Search Engine Journal and AIIFacebook. He is a speaker and trainer for top marketing conferences, such as SEOmoz, SMX, Pubcon, The AIIFacebook Expo, Socialize, The South Carolina Society of Association Executives, and The American Marketing Association, among others. He is the CEO of The Brian Carter Group. Website: www.BrianCarterGroup.com

A short lesson Russell learned from his time at spam school… On this episode Russell explains why he dabbled in being a spammer and how it went. He also talks about why he no longer makes decisions based on SEO stuff. Here are 3 fun things to listen for in this episode: Why Russell used to feel like he was running away from the cops all the time, and it made it hard to sleep at night. How much money Russell paid to go to Spam School, and why it was valuable even though spamming ultimately wasn't for him. Why Russell says instead of hiring a person over a long period of time to teach you things, you should hire the person who is best at it and suck all the information from them in a really short period of time. So listen below to find out why Russell used to be a spammer, but why he isn't any more. ---Transcript--- Hey, everyone, this is Russell Brunson, and welcome to another episode of Marketing In Your Car. Hey Everyone, so today is a cold, rainy day in Boise, Idaho. It's Friday so I got a couple big things trying to get done, and then I'm going to go see … I'm really excited for this, Rand Fishkin, the CEO and the founder of SEOMoz is actually going to be coming to Boise and speaking which will be cool for a couple reasons. First off, last … how many years ago? Five or six years ago, maybe longer, I spoke at ClickBank Exchange and Rand was speaking as well which was cool. I felt bad because I had the big stage and then Rand had this little, tiny room. I went in there, and that dude is brilliant, so smart, it was awesome to listen to him and loved it back then. Just been a big fan of their stuff for a long time. I'm excited to go hear him speak, and I'm not sure if he's speaking about SEO stuff or other things, but regardless, it'll be fun to go and get some cool stuff from him. It's interesting … He has a different philosophy on business than mine. I remember a little while ago, reading this huge article he wrote about how they raised all this crazy amounts of money, and all these things, that for me seem ludicrous, some of the worst business decisions in the world yet they're having success. There's different paths and different things. It'll be fun, I'm excited to hear what he's got to say and see what's going down in the SEO world nowadays because it's been a long time since I focused on it. I used to geek-out big time. For a while we had twenty, thirty people all in Peru doing SEO stuff for us and it was awesome. We were getting ranked for all these really difficult terms and it was amazing. We were very, very aggressive and so it was awesome because you could get really cool things to happen fast … But then the problem was when Google got smarter than us then we started losing everything. It was this thing where I always felt like I was chasing my own tail. We would go and we would be running, it felt like we were running away from the cops all the time. It felt like, we used to call it … I'm not going to brag about this, but a little while ago, a few years back, we dabbled a little bit in spamming and trying to learn that game. It's the same kind of thing, it was hard to sleep at night because it felt like… we used to call it the “smash and grab”, where it felt like you were walking in, smashing a window, grabbing a TV and running down the road while the cops are chasing you. That's what it always felt like with SEO and with spam. We got away with it for a little bit, but eventually they always catch you, you can't always get away with it. I hated it, a little while ago, we quit the spamming thing really, really fast. More so, I wanted to understand the psychology of it so I hired this dude, I was like, “How much would you charge me to teach me how to spam?” He's like, “Twenty-five grand,” I'm like, “Done.” I recorded all the sessions, and I remember I called it ‘Spam School'. It was like eight calls or something like that. I'm like, “Okay, I got Spam School today,” it was awesome. We got up and running, we had to buy all these servers, and these tunneling servers, and all this intense stuff. I know the process now, and I'm sure it's evolved since we kind of played with it, but back then we were totally geeking out on it and within two weeks of starting the process, I realized I hated it and so we stopped. I'm not a spammer, I was someone who was intrigued spam and dabble, but we gave up pretty quick after those feelings. In SEO we tried a lot longer, probably two or three years. We focused, we built it up, and we'd get these rankings for amazing words and the traffic started flowing, flowing, flowing, gone. I remember we kept making all these huge business decisions based on SEO, and I remember one day, coming to the office and being fed up, and slamming my hand down and said, “We will never, from this point forward in this company, ever make a business decision based on SEO. Anything that happens from SEO is like a nice gift, but it will not ever be our focus again.” That's been my philosophy for the last three years, and so it'll be fun though to hear what's happening. I think, if you guys have been listening, we hired Neil Patel a little while ago and flew him out for a day. Paid him twenty-five grand for a day, and learning from other people and I think there's going to be a time I'll get back into more and more SEO, just because mostly I think the SEO and social. There used to be a big divide between the two business models, but now that line is blurred or maybe even gone. That's why I'm excited, I'm hoping he's going to talk about that today because that's kind of my understanding and kind of the results we're starting to see from it, is that it's a blend of social and SEO. I think if it's not happening now, logically, the only thing that makes sense for SEO is no longer to base stuff on linking because we can spam linking. The only thing it's smart to base it off of is social interaction because that's harder to fake. Anyway, I'm excited for that. I hope you guys got something out of that, and hopefully the only thing you got out wasn't that Russell's a spammer. In fact, the lesson I hope you got out of that, and this is really, really important, is… this is key, and I hope you guys all get this, is that you can learn a lot from someone in a really short, finite period of time. I remember a couple times I hired some employees because they were amazing, on paper, and they'd done these amazing things so we hire them, pay them a ton of money and salary, and all these things. What was interesting is they come, in the first thirty to sixty days, they would have all these amazing things that would transform things, and after that they were kind of useless. They use up their bag of tricks and they were gone. I feel like everyone's got that. I've got that. For some reason, they come in… I've got my bag of tricks and things I know how to do to grow a company really, really quickly, but then after that, I don't have as many things. I think my skill set's a little deeper than most people, but for most consultants, they've got a one-trick-pony. They got that thing, and so we learned a while ago, instead of hiring employees who are really good at something, hire the dude who's the best, but for a short period of time. Have him come and teach you because you'll get ninety percent of the value out of him immediately. That's kind of my philosophy, it's like Neil Patel or I'm like, “Hey, we're going to start blogging. Who's the best blogging dude?” Boom, Neil Patel, twenty-five K, sucked everything we need out of him, now we've got a game plan to go run with. Things like that, it's finding out who's the best and then just buying an hour or a day, or whatever the time. Last night I was hanging out with one of my buddies, BJ Wright, and we were talking about a site called clarity.fm, and if you haven't ever heard that site, you should, it's awesome. It's all these dudes and ladies who are amazing, who you can buy time with them per minute. He was talking about this app he was going to build, and he was like, “Hey, this is the dude that launched,” what was it? That mafia game on Facebook, and the dude's like two bucks a minute to call, and he's like, “If you invest a hundred bucks you get thirty minutes of this dude's time. You can pick his brain on whatever you want.” It's just interesting. So, I think my Christmas gift to myself this year is going to be… I'm going to look at the three or four things I'm really focused on in my business. Obviously we're a SAS company, so that's one. We're doing growth hacking and stuff like that, so three or four things that I'm focusing on and then go to clarity.fm and find the best one or two people in each of those categories and buy thirty minutes, an hour of their time and just get all their info. Get it all in a condensed, quick, fast period of time, and that's how you can press decades into days, days into minutes, and it's really, really cool. That's how I learn, people always ask me, “Russell, how do you learn now?” It's honestly getting harder and harder. The more you progress in this or any business, the harder it is to get new things. It gets harder. The way that I'm progressing myself, my knowledge base, outside of funnel hacking the crap out of everyone I can because I love watching what they do, even worse than what they say, but number two is that. I hope that is a value to you guys. Give yourself a Christmas present, go to clarity.fm and find someone you want to learn from and buy an hour, and just suck their brain and I think you'll get addicted to it. You'll find that, again, it's way better than reading a book, just hire the author and be like, “Hey, just tell me what I should do. Based on all this stuff you got, like, what would you do in this situation?” You can get there a lot quicker. I hope that helps, that's what I'm going to be doing a lot more of, this upcoming year. It's pretty amazing how inexpensive you can get some of these people's advice and ideas which is cool. That's what I got for you guys today. Hopefully you got some good out of it besides Russell used to be a spammer, other than that, I appreciate you guys. Oh man, this is going to be transcribed, so I better be careful what I say. **Note: Russell is not a spammer. If you want to see the transcripts of this show, or any of our shows, go to marketinginyourcar.com and I think I got an outro thing, we added this cool little music outro now. I think the music outro after this is also going to push you there, so go there, check it out, and if you're not part of the Marketing Quickies Show, go to marketingquickiesshow.com, install the periscope app on your phone and we can be hanging out live every single day. I do quick, five to ten minute periscopes once a day, sharing marketing quickies and they are awesome so if you are not on that yet, go to marketingquickiesshow.com and come hang out with us there as well. That's it for today guys, appreciate you all, and we will talk soon. Bye!

Brian Carter is the Founder of the Brian Carter Group. He joins the show to discuss how Facebook can revolutionize an organization if they use it effectively.    Brian Carter is respected as one of the elite internet marketing experts in the world. His hands-on business experience, cutting edge insights, background in improv and stand up comedy culminate in a speaker and trainer who leaves every audience not only entertained, but armed with powerful strategies and tactics. Brian is co-author of the bestselling book Facebook Marketing, and author of the forthcoming book, The Like Economy. He also has authored an ebook called How To Get More Fans On Facebook. Brian has 12 years experience with Google, Twitter and Facebook marketing, both as a consultant and marketing agency director. He has trained and managed Gen X and Gen Y employees, in addition to the more than 5,000 students of his FanReach Facebook marketing online course. Brian develops strategies and builds search visibility and social marketing fanbases for companies of all sizes, including well known entities such as Universal Studios, The U.S. Army, Hardee's and Carl's Jr. He is quoted in the book Twitter Marketing For Dummies and has been quoted and profiled by Information Week, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Brian writes for two of the most popular marketing blogs, Search Engine Journal and AllFacebook with a combined readership of over 400,000. He has more than 30,000 Twitter followers and an overall reach of more than 50,000 fans through Facebook, LinkedIn, and his other social marketing channels. A speaker and trainer for top marketing conferences such as SEOmoz, SMX, Pubcon, The AllFacebook Expo, Socialize, The South Carolina Society of Association Executives and The American Marketing Association to name a few. Brian is a seasoned expert and most entertaining presenter in Internet marketing. Find out more about Brian Carter at www.briancartergroup.com.

Join Jason Hartman and Facebook Marketing 101 guru, Brian Carter, as they explore the best practices to get the most out of marketing your products or services on Facebook.  Brian explains how Facebook compares to Google AdWords and SEO, and how to use Twitter as well as an enhancement.  He talks about the difference between a group and a page and how to decide which one to choose.  He also discusses how to use Facebook inexpensively and with the biggest impact, describing how to engage with your targeted audience and how to promote your page to get more fans.  Brian shares many incredibly useful tips and breaks down the process into simple, easy-to-follow steps.  Brian Carter is a respected elite internet marketing expert around the world. He is known for his hands-on business experience, cutting edge insights, background in improve and stand-up comedy, which has made him a much sought after speaker and trainer.  Brian is the co-author of Facebook Marketing, and has authored an ebook called How to Get More Fans On Facebook.  He also offers a training program, called Facebook Marketing 101.  Brian develops strategies and builds search visibility and social marketing fanbases for companies of all sizes, including Universal Studios, The U.S. Army, Hardee's, and Carls' Jr. He has been quoted in Twitter Marketing for Dummies and has been quoted and profiled in such publications as Information Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Brian also writes for Search Engine Journal and AIIFacebook.  He is a speaker and trainer for top marketing conferences, such as SEOmoz, SMX, Pubcon, The AIIFacebook Expo, Socialize, The South Carolina Society of Association Executives, and The American Marketing Association, among others. He is the CEO of The Brian Carter Group.

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