The Brian Dean Method (Ep. 317)

Key Takeaways

I'm crazy, right? So, like, I am not going to let anything go that's not at this ridiculously high standard. Brian Dean did something that probably less than 0.01% of you will ever achieve. He built his site to a staggering DR 90 on Ahrefs. And look, I'm not saying this to insult you, but just to give you an idea, here are some of the brands that backlinko.com has more authority than lenovo.com, the spruce.com, nba.com, and the sun.co.uk, a national newspaper. And the crazy part is he did this mostly alone. While the brands I just mentioned usually have decades of existence, hundreds, sometimes thousands of employees, and niches much wider that make it much easier to acquire links than the marketing niche. Yet, he beat them. And last year he sold backlinko.com for an undisclosed seven-figure amount. But his new project is skyrocketing in the subs even faster than backlinko did. Exploding Topics went from 1,200 organic visitors estimated by Ahrefs at the beginning of 2021 to over 250,000 today. So, that leaves us with the question I was asking myself all the time while preparing this interview. Did Brian Dean get lucky twice, or is there some method to his madness? And that's what I set myself to discover during this one-hour interview I had with him today. And as you will see, I had to challenge him a little bit sometimes to get the answer I wanted. Among other things, I wanted to figure out the exact process that he uses to create content because his hit rate is very, very high. I also wanted to know how he builds links in 2023, and I wanted to poke him a little bit and ask him some cheeky questions like, what kind of tactics did he recommend at the time of backlinko that he would not recommend you follow today? I also got him to talk about topics that we really never heard him talk about like the future of Google with SGE or EEAT. Overall, there are a lot of subtle things that he shares in this interview that made me want to change the way we create content. So, let's jump into the interview, but before we do, don't forget to like, subscribe, and click the bell. We're putting a lot of effort into YouTube these days, and the one thing that keeps me going is your comments and subscriptions, so go crazy. And while you're in the comment section, let me know who you'd like to see next in the podcast. All right, enough talk, let's get started. Everyone, welcome to the Authority Hacker podcast. Today, we have the only one, the legend, that Brian Dean. Welcome to the podcast, Brian. We've actually only met once in real life, so I think it's going to be an interesting talk. And I know everyone's interested to hear your takes on like SEO and all of that, so I think it's going to be an interesting thing, but for people who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself in two sentences? Uh founder of Backlinko, co-founder of Exploding Topics. All right, that's that's that's good enough. I think everyone's seen Backlinko anyway. And talking about Backlinko, that's where I wanted to start the interview actually. So, you sold the site in January 2022, so it's been 1 and 1/2 year to SEMrush. And according to Ahrefs, following the sale, the the traffic started declining a little bit until last April, when it just went back basically. And I know you're still working with SEMrush. So, I wanted to know um like a lot of pages have been updated, etc. I've checked it out on Ahrefs. Do you still work on Backlinko? Did you Did you actually uh did you Did you actually do do the SEO and did you recover the site basically? I can't take responsibility for the turnaround. I wish I could and say it was me, but it really had it had nothing to do with me whatsoever. It was just a matter of, you know, when they bought the site, figuring out the next best steps, what to do with the site, and and how to get the most out of it from their perspective. And I think, you know, once they made a decision, then they put that into place, and I think that's what you're seeing. Pages getting updated, new content being published, and sort of maintenance things that help obviously make a big difference when it comes to organic traffic. Okay, I wanted to know because obviously like you when you make these kind of exits, you tend to work with the companies for a certain time, and quite often you with that, but not really much on Backlinko. Okay, cool. Um, what's the plan with it? What's the plan for Backlinko? What's going to What's going to happen? Cuz I It's like, given the probably pretty high price they've paid for it, I just don't see the return now at the in its current form. So, I'm just curious to see like if you can tell anything about this. I would. I don't really know exactly. I just know for the most part it's it's a traffic play to get people to come to the site and rank and it control a property that ranks for a lot of keywords that SEMrush wants to rank for already does rank for. So, then you can have multiple spots on the first page. How you go from that to getting people to sign up for SEMrush? I think that's something they Yeah, that Well, that's that's a big mystery. I think they'll be able to figure it out with like subtle messages, retargeting, cuz they can put a a pixel on there, building the email list. I mean, they already optimized the email They already used the email list to get people to their SEMrush Academy. Um, they use that very effectively since they bought the list. Getting people from the list to sign up for free courses, they get exposed to SEMrush, and they sign up. So, I'm not super involved with Backlinko, so I'm probably not the best person to ask like what's going on and what they're trying to do with it. I It's like it's you've worked with them. I'm sure you keep an eye on it a little bit. Like, you know, when we sell sites, it's like always it's like, you know, how the project in Ahrefs is going, and how it's going, etc., and how the new ones are going. So, I'm sure you're doing the same thing. Like, yeah, it's like my last Look at that on Instagram. Exactly. And then you you just look at it and they're they're a bit different, but still the same. And you know, yeah, but like, um, do you feel like it was a a smart play by SEMrush? Like, how do you feel now a year and a half later like about you and about SEMrush basically? I think it was a smart move on their part from Because you have to understand for us this is like a lot of money, but they're a publicly traded company, right? For them it's like a rounding error, but it's it's not how So, for them to be able to get an ROI on that, I think they can do it because look at it from their perspective. They could rank try to rank for backlinks, on-page SEO, keyword research, link building. How much will that cost and how in the meantime, you're not getting that traffic if it does even work versus like that, you get all those rankings. Now, it's not as valuable like you you mentioned, Gail, which is a good point. It's not directly to Semrush. That traffic ain't going directly there. So, you have this sort of intermediary you got to get there, but that can actually be an advantage because you can use it almost like a review site that you own and control and for like best SEO tools, Semrush is number one. Best keyword research tool, Semrush is number one and it's easier to rank a third-party independent site than their own. So, if they haven't already got, you know, their money's worth, I think they will in the future. I think so, too. I think the the the link equity is is quite powerful cuz one thing that you achieved with Backlinko, which I think 99% of people building websites will never achieve, is reaching a very high level of authority. Like I we use the Ahrefs metrics beyond 90. A little message to SEO Merch, by the way, on the way. They should probably include the authority metrics in their keyword magic tool that would help me actually use the numbers a bit more often. But, I followed you quite closely. I mean, I think I followed you for since the days you were on Wicked Fire. Uh we like it which was a forum for people who joined the industry a bit later where a lot it was kind of grayish at SEO, but there was a bit of everything. And a lot of people who did well actually were there. Like Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening was also a very big member on Wicked Fire and now he's just tweeted he's going to make 30 million in sales this year with his website. So, he's doing really well. Um but like yeah, you started all this way and I feel like there was three phases in Backlinko. Like I kind of like divided it like in in backlinkology, I I put three time periods in how you run it. I put the first period which was like the blogger which is when you started alone and you were releasing kind of like these big guys and they were kind of like a mini event and you tried to make a mini launch every time you launch the blog post and your focus was very much on growing your email list through his content upgrades I would say. That was kind of like V1 of Backlinko. V2 was like I think when you established an editorial team and you had some help so you started having some graphic designers, editors, etc. and building a process still around you. I think at that time when you did an interview you were like I still write everything on Backlinko. Um and very much for still uh focusing on the same format so large guys, etc. And you feel like the third phase which is the last phase before you sold, you kind of like abandoned blogging and you became a utility site and you were just releasing these content hubs like SEO hub, content hub, then there was the YouTube hub as well. You have a few of them, etc. Uh and you kind of like became almost like a bit of a wiki and your top pages started being these pages. Um like is that is that how it went or did I forget some some steps in the process? Well, you just made it sound a lot easier than it was. Yeah, it I I There was a lot of hard work through those three phases. I can tell you that. It wasn't like flipping a switch. what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how it happened and how you transitioned between each phase basically cuz I think that's the interesting part on how the industry evolved and how you adapted to it actually. Yeah, and and you're right. Um yeah, a big part of these changes was reacting to industry changes and just user behavior changes over time. Like when I first launched Backlinko in 2013, blogging was still a big thing. Like you followed blogs. There were blog rolls. You would have pingbacks. You you know, there were like it was a really different time where you would follow these individual bloggers and when they publish a post you get it on your RSS feed reader and go to their site. And eventually that sort of shifted. Those communities, those conversations moved to Reddit, to Twitter, to YouTube, to other platforms and it wasn't so much this blog was the this mini universe, it was just a node in a giant universe. Like you were one planet in a galaxy. So, I had to adapt to that and that's one of the reasons that I switched to this hub model because I realized that the goal is really just to get organic traffic to your site and there are a certain number of people who will follow every post that you publish and be like, "Oh, there's a new post coming out. I need to read it and comment right away." But, that was diminishing. Yeah, it just was diminishing and I realized, "Why am I putting all my effort into these mega guides that are getting, you know, lower and lower or diminishing returns when I could put it into 20 pages in a hub and get 10 times the amount of traffic over, you know, the long term?" Yeah, that makes sense. I think one thing that we could notice this on was the comment section. It's like, I would say like when when you start I think we started like I think we started like two or three years after you, something like this. Like we're a little bit behind you. Um but like when you publish a blog post, you'd get like hundreds of comments within 48 hours or something and it's like I you made a point to reply to everyone. I did not. Yeah. Congratulations to you cuz it was a lot of work. Um but like eventually that kind of like tarnished, I felt. Like it's like for us to the point where I I even completely removed the comment section on our sites because it felt like there was, you know, like most people would comment because they tried to get a link back even if it's a nofollow link off the WordPress comment system and the value the value of the debate was I felt low or what was left over basically. And uh and one thing is like we all thought that, "Oh my god, the comments matter so much for SEO. It helps you, etc." Uh no change when we removed the comments personally. So, it's like is is that something that you've also given up? Like kind of like UGC on your site cuz I feel like social media is a better place for it. Yeah, I I agree with you. I've noticed the same trend happen and with Exploding Topics when we started that blog, my first rule of thumb was have no comments. I'm like, "Comments are just a pain. You got to moderate them. There's so much spam." And then yeah, that like WordPress has some built-in spam things, but it's just so much for every one good comment there's 10 spam comments and then there's like 10 kind of like you said those people that want their nofollow link this it's not technically spam but it kind of might as well be. So, yeah for me like if I was just I started another blog from scratch and I have no comments and I think I would I would do that again if I was starting a different blog I would also do no comments. One thing that surprised me though is the way you structured Exploding Topics. It's still a blog. You haven't done the hub thing. Like you kind of like moved over with Backlinko and you have you came back with Exploding Topics to like a blog system. Why? Well, I mean there isn't really a hub of like you know a topic we've we've really gone into that's like oh this would be perfect for a hub because for a hub to work it needs to be a pretty meaty topic like like you mentioned like yeah we have the SEO hub, the YouTube hub, the content marketing. These need to be like gigantic topics in order to justify having 30, 40, or 50 entries into the hub. It would be so my topics haven't really discovered that big high-level topic that would that would require a hub. So, in the meantime we're just doing the blog. I'm not opposed to doing it. It's just for that like if you were in fitness you need like a bodybuilding hub, a protein hub, you know cardio hub. You like you had to be huge topics and just haven't really come off cross one of those. But like the thing is like you most of your content on Exploding Topics is like trends and statistics etc. And like couldn't you categorize them for example? So your blog hub like your blog page almost would be like oh like here's the tech the tech trends, here's the the fitness trends, here's the whatever etc. and then you could like essentially build hubs around what these pages are about basically. And you'd go into They're just that but the the challenge there is that they're they're kind of about different things. So you have like fitness trends and business trends. They're both about trends but they're totally different like Yeah yeah but your your blog is trends like you're like the same way you were SEO you are trends. Yeah pretty much. And now it's like you need to categorize it. Yeah, okay. But like can see why you did that. It's a good idea. It's just something that I haven't been able to like I haven't found a topic that would perfect for a hub with Backlinko. Found a couple. We even have a templates library, which turned that into a hub, and that brings in a ton of traffic. Um that's been a goldmine for traffic for Backlinko. Yeah, yeah. It's like that's the I was just interested to see how you moved over from blogs on Backlinko, and you kind of came back to it. Well, you know, explaining topics. I was like, well, I think that was an interesting thing uh to look at. One thing I wanted to talk about as well is like how you put your content together, cuz I think a lot of people are interested in your SEO tactics, but I think your SEO would never do that well if the content was not so well put together. And I think it's like it's a bit more difficult to talk into specifics about that, but I think one thing that characterizes content written by you, and quite often I can open a page and tell like you worked on it even though um I don't see the author's name or like who owns the website, is like uh there will there will there's like a ratio of words and sentence lengths to number of images, for example, that you have. Like the number of images you have on content is very high compared to most people. The your paragraphs are very short, and they kind of like jump from one to another, and they they read like a a bit like a Buzzfeed story. Uh no not in a bad way, you know what I mean? No, I know what you mean. In the engagement part, you know? And um and also I think your your content width is also very narrow usually with a large font size. Um like is there anything else on like how you put your pages together that makes them more engaging that would help people you know, essentially drive more engagement without changing anything to their content. Yeah, I think two things. So one is that like yeah, you use a lot of images, but the images should tell a story and help someone move down the page. So with the way I looked at images was for tutorial stuff, how to do something, which is most of the content on Backlinko. Could this exist without the text? That was the goal of the images. If you could just see the images and follow along, maybe not perfectly, cuz that's what the text is for, but if an idea of what to do or what I'm talking about, then the image does its job. And that goes within the image itself. Like it's not just an image. Like it should be a tight screenshot of that section with the important part highlighted with arrows and examples. That's really the main thing with images. Now, with non how-to stuff like explaining something, that's where visuals come into play. But it's sort of the same idea that people are visual creatures and the text is obviously the main part of your content. But images should play like as important a role as the text itself. Do How do you Do you like still write all the content yourself? Like how do you teach people to write like that? Because it's Personally, I'll tell you in our editorial team, it's very difficult to get people to do that. Like freelance writers, they like to write a lot of content. They like to put lots of fluff in there. How do you get someone from Upwork, which you mentioned you hire a lot of writers as well, to write like that? Well, I don't I don't have to write like me. Like for explaining topics, it's it's the different style. Like it's more B2B. And there's no how-to stuff. a little bit of that still. There's still a little bit of like that concise message. There's definitely Oh, those that stuff is universal. Like even if you go to the McKinsey blog, for example, McKinsey has some of the best B2B blog content online. And if you look at their stuff, they use the same things. Big margins, so that the text is squished within the small area, short sentences, big font, easy to read uh serif font, and that and a lot of images. Like they follow the the same rules as Backlinko, a totally different style. So you're right, Kel. Like the the approach that works I try to do that for everything that I contribute to, but the writing style, like the "Hey, here's the deal. You know, for example, like you shouldn't be doing that unless that's really like you." No, yeah. Um I agree. No, it's not like the conciseness, etc. It's like how do you get How do you get your writers to to basically say the same thing in half the words? And and and like Do you have like some kind of editorial process that you go through? Like how do that like How do you How do you go and and probably transform what you get that's not perfect to a what ends up on the side basically? A lot of comments on Google Docs. Honestly, this suggests So, I will go through personally when we we take on a new writer and the main thing I'm looking for, Gail, you pointed out exactly is say message fewer words. Sometimes I will just change sentences and just put say message fewer words. And I'd say that's when I edit, my editing is mainly focused on reducing the words with while retaining the same message. Everything else like there's some things about clarity, word usage when you edit. But, for the most part for me, it's trying to condense that message into as few words as possible and and as few, you know, sentences as possible. Really get it down to the nitty-gritty. And you're right, the it's actually the opposite of how most freelance writers approach it. They try to do the opposite, flowery language. So, you have this internal conflict that's like and sometimes it just doesn't work out. So, that's why when I hire writers, I usually have a test project and I send them our guidelines, which are very simple. Um and it's basically like really concise writing, blah blah blah. And And if they're on the right track, then I'll work with them. If it's totally off and they're just using like wacky examples like, "You know, when you're doing marketing, it's kind of like being a heart surgeon. You have to be careful like when you do it that sort of stuff, it's like you're too far gone and I can't help you." Um but, for the most part, if you've done your screening questions and seen their writing style, but you're right, there's always this eternal conflict between me trying to get down to the media stuff and them trying to fluff up a bit. Yeah, I see. It's uh that's that's what's interesting because like that's how your content like kind of like distinguishes itself from like the average piece of SEO content that would come out. And what's interesting when you think about that is uh I and the question that comes from that is do you use a any kind of like on-page tool like Surfer SEO or something like this? No. No, I was going to say because essentially this also conflicts with the writing style you have. Uh and so, you're getting great results. Yeah, that's one of the reasons I don't use it. Yeah, exactly. You probably hate it, right? You probably use it and it asks you to put all these words and then you're like, "No, I want I want it more concise and I want to do all of that." Exactly. I mean, when I hire like for writers now, I don't even mention SEO to them. Mhm. Here's the topic, cover the topic. Don't mention keyword placement, uh Surfer SEO, H2. I don't even do on-page SEO. It's just create the best piece of content on that topic and publish it. That's it. The only on-page I say SEO is put the keyword in the title, in the URL, and then a couple times in the content. Which you 99% of time happens automatically. So, I don't even do on-page SEO basically anymore. And how about um checking your competitors for like essentially like what's on the page, like making sure you there's no information gap, etc. Do you do any of that or you just go like, "You know what? I'll do the page my way." Rather just go right for it. Okay. So, it goes against everything most people say, but I think that's interesting because obviously people can go check Explaining Topics you're doing really well. Um so, it's like obviously that's proof that this approach works and and I think that's nice because it's like it feels fresh when you read the content as opposed to like a lot of like rehashed stuff that you might find on the subs. Um which it's it's kind of like something that's rarely talked about how the way you put content together, but I think that's probably one of the most important traits of why you're doing well. Um it's just a bit more difficult to talk about it. Um talking about Backlinko, I have a bit of a trick question. What kind of tips that you gave to people across the years you run it, would you say they probably shouldn't follow anymore? Wow, that's a good question. Um yeah, I think a lot of on-page SEO stuff that was really important back then is less important now. That I would basically say, I mean, the stuff probably on-page SEO is one of those things where unless you're doing like shady stuff or crazy stuff, it can't hurt you probably and it can only help. For me, it's more of a resource and focus thing. Like I'd rather just have my writer focus on creating the best stuff as as to worrying about on-page SEO and being like, I need to put this in there, I have to cover this, and content gaps, and all this stuff. Um so, yeah, I would say a lot of on-page SEO stuff probably is a bit outdated that I that I had at the time because it was important then, maybe not as important now. well, right? Google has changed a lot since then. So much. So much. We're talking about 10 years, which in SEO terms is like a century. So, when I first started, if you didn't do all this stuff, you had you would struggle to rank. Now, it probably doesn't matter as much. Same with a lot of link building stuff, like I was advocating cold outreaching people and just asking for a link. I wouldn't recommend that anymore. That doesn't work anymore. Like, there's a probably stuff I'm not even thinking of. There's a laundry list of things that as industry changes, as the world changes, things don't work anymore, and I, you know, published them. They worked at the time because that's that's basically my goal with Backlinko and with my YouTube channel now is just trying stuff, sharing what I learned, and what worked, and what didn't. And, you know, that obviously changes as time goes on. Yeah, I think it's nice to see you like you kind of like simplifying your approach. I think as you kind of like gain experience, you realize that a lot of gimmicks maybe are not as needed as they used to be or like, you know, they they kind of like training wheels to build the right habit sometimes. Uh and it's like you probably do a lot of on-page SEO without thinking about it now to the point where you don't necessarily have to have the guidelines, etc. Uh and it still works okay. And also, I think your sites have pretty high authority, so usually the higher authority, the more forgiving Google will be. That's a good point. So, that helps. But like, you know, for example, when you say don't do outreach, I would temper that a little bit in the sense that if you have a brand new site, and no one knows about you, and you don't go talk to anyone, few people are going to come talk to you. It's going to be hard to actually get yourself out there. So, I think I mean, I don't know what you think, but I think for beginners, there's still probably a place for outreach, but it's nice to kind of like have that shift of gear at some point where you're like, you know what, I'm going to build assets that will do that for me instead, you know? Yeah, good point. Yeah, of course. I I'm not saying don't email anyone, just sit in your in your basement in your underwear and hope that people link to you. It's more than if that's your like cornerstone strategy and if you expected cold email 100 people and get 10 replies, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. Versus when I first was when I was doing that, I was getting like an 8% conversion rate on those outreach emails, which is unheard of now. So, it's more about expectations are different. And maybe now you're better off DMing someone on Instagram or you know, maybe there's like different stuff like that where we're creating a short video on YouTube Shorts about that person to get their attention, right? Like how great they are. So, there's you know, things evolve and things change. But yeah, you're right. If you just like hoping people link to you, it's never going to happen. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like you I think that the problem people have is they start with some tactics to get some success and they struggle to switch gears. They struggle understanding like, okay, I've reached that point where this tactic like now is linear growth and it's like an extra 10 backlinks to my site doesn't do as much of a an effect as it used to and I need to shift to tactics that will generate like maybe take more time to get going but generate more links over the time eventually as they get going and compound actually. Like getting that compounding effect that you can get through manual work. Yeah. Um that the hard way. I mean, when I was when backlinko started to get traction, I would email 150 people every time I published a blog post. Actually, before I published a blog post, I would say, "You shared this thing about on-page SEO. I have a thing coming up on-page SEO." And I would I did that for like way longer than I should have where it didn't make any sense. I had the email list. I had all this stuff, audience and I was still doing it because you're right, you just get into the habit and even though it didn't make sense, I was just like "This is what works." Like a zombie. I got to do this. I got to do this. And you're right, there needs to be a point where you assess and say, "This doesn't really make sense anymore." It's the switching gear moment. It's quite difficult. There's lots of these moments I think in SEO. It's like it it's quite hard to give a cookie-cutter tactic to people because it really depends on what they are at actually and what they do. Um you said on my Diggity podcast that you didn't care too much but not podcast cuz you did only one, but you didn't care too much about content clusters or even topical authority at the time. Uh, topical authority, I don't know if you follow the SEO industry, but has gained a lot of ground since then, which is basically the idea of like if you are like fully covering a topic, you're more likely to rank for the keywords, basically. Like, how do you feel today about that stuff? Did anything change? Um, and do you have any personal stories to share? Yeah, I still don't I think it's a it's overrated in that sense. I think Google obviously considers you an expert on certain things and for certain entities, but that's more related to links than you publishing a bunch of content. Because, for example, let's say that you have a site and you've never written about um video games before. And you're like, I want to be a topical authority on video games. So, I'm going to do like I'm going to do a whole bunch of posts about the Xbox, PlayStation 5, Steam Deck. It doesn't mean you know anything about those things. Anyone can publish 20, 30, 50 pieces about anything. It doesn't mean you're an authority or have any topical anything. What Google wants to look at is links. So, I'll give you a couple of examples from uh, exploring topics recently where what we realized like one of our topical authorities was uh, related to trends in Google Trends specifically. And every time we published something about Google Trends, we ranked like that. And it's because we're linked to as Google Trends alternatives, other places to find trends. Has nothing to do with we published like we published one thing about Google Trends ever before that point. So, it's less about what you're doing and more about how Google sees you in the ecosystem and sees what you're an expert on. And that mainly comes from links. But, obviously, to get links to that sort of stuff, you need to publish content on it. So, I think there's a little bit of a chicken-the-egg like, oh, I published all this content about this thing, therefore Google sees me as authority. But, if you look at it logically, there's no reason Google's going to say, wow, this guy published 30 articles about making banana bread. He must be an expert on that. Doesn't make any sense. Especially with AI, right? Yeah, especially with AI, you could do that in 5 minutes. So, it's all about the links and and that you're getting to your site and how Google's understanding you as an entity. So, yeah, definitely and and I've learned this myself with Exploding Topics like we try to publish stuff outside of our wheelhouse like in totally different just experiments and they sometimes don't do that well. And I think port and and I when I say don't do that well, targeting a keyword with like almost no difficulty and ranking 50th. And that's just because Google doesn't see us as an expert. I don't think publishing 20 of those is all of a sudden going to magically get those two appear. it's not based on the content on your site, it's based on like what other people say about you. Exactly. And but the content on your site will represent what people say about you. So, there is a relationship there, right? Like if Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just eventually because the content is there. People mention it and therefore you become the authority. But I think one thing that I pointed out in the video we published the other day we were recording is that the problem with topical authority in SEO world is that uh SEOs you try to achieve that using a keyword tools only. And the problem with keyword tools is they have a massive lag between what people are talking about today, which Google sees in real time, and what you see in a keyword tool. So, I took the example of the Apple Vision Pro, you know, the the headset that they released. You put Apple Vision Pro in Ahrefs, for example, they will show you 30 searches per month. And it's like there's nothing. It's been released 2 months ago. How can you establish yourself as an authority in the eyes of Google that sees all this stuff in real time if you have an Apple site that hasn't talked about the Vision Pro because the only place you pick your topics is your keyword tool. Um and so actually really really good opening to talk about Exploding Topics by the way. I didn't really think about that, but I think it makes sense. But I think the problem with uh topical authority as well is that SEOs think like SEOs and that they don't really they they they do the tools they always did with and they kind of like limits their ability to actually achieve that true status of authority in the eyes of Google because they're missing what is trending in their niche if they only pick SEO topics, basically. Yeah. Do you How do you use Exploding Topics for that? Like do you use it for that? Do you use it for for content ideas? Cuz a lot of people ask actually when they ask on social media. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's one of the use cases. I mean, our main use case are VCs and investors and e-commerce. Those are the two big ones are people that are VCs investors and people that have e-commerce sites or selling on Amazon. But, we do have some content people, too. Um The The only challenge with that is that sometimes if you have a really niche if you're writing like a niche tiny niche this is not a lot of trends. Like, we'll find them if they exist. So, sometimes you will reach out to us be like, "You know, what are the biggest windshield wiper trends in Russia?" It's just like, "Man, I don't know. There's like one maybe a year." So, you know, so that's why VCs and investors are tend to be our best customers because they want to know a wide range of stuff. They want to know what's happening in e-commerce. They want to know technology, food, CPG, all those industries. Same thing with e-commerce. Like, they want to know what the big next instant pot's going to be, the next air fryer's going to be. Um and for content, if you have a like one of our clients runs one of our customers runs like they're publicly traded and they run a bunch of websites. I can't say who, but they're a good use case because they have a bunch of different sites in different industries, sports, technology, gaming, movies. So, for them that's it's Red Ventures, but uh I can't say. I'm a I I've I don't know how many public companies how many public companies run a bunch of websites right now. There's not that many. Like, there's that that Dash maybe. There's like Red Ventures. There's like five or six only. So, it's like it's one of these basically. Well, yeah. I It makes sense for them. I agree. For small sites, it's quite it's quite difficult and probably I'd probably just stick to Google Trends if you can only get one uh one year or something. It doesn't make sense. If you only write about like vegan baking, I mean, yeah, you'll find we'll have trends in that for sure, but I don't know about enough to justify it. It's probably not a good use. Makes sense. But, like for larger issues, I think it can be quite useful. Um like for example, I had a golf site and there's like um there's lots of uh clubs releasing at the beginning of the year usually and lots of new models trending. It's quite interesting to to what to review on your site because the keyword tools will not pick that up. Um but this kind of trends tool actually helps you know which like what the community is talking about, etc. So it's quite easy. Mhm. I want to talk about something that is somewhat related to what we talked about. It's one thing that you did towards the end of Backlinko where you released lots of statistics pages which felt like the prequel of Exploding Topics basically. Um But what was interesting to me is like how wide you went with that because like Backlinko was an SEO website, let's say, online marketing like I think you touched a bit on email marketing, etc. But like you have statistics pages about iPhones, Roblox users, Uber, Amazon Prime, Coinbase, Peloton, etc. You went very, very wide and I was surprised to see you go this wide. Can you explain why you decided to do that on Backlinko? I mean, first of all, those ranked, didn't they? Yeah, yeah, they did. Absolutely. Peloton on the site, nothing about Uber, nothing about Amazon, nothing about these ranks. They all ranked. Which is why the topic of authority is interesting because essentially we talked about ah Google needs to see as the authority. Yet you've done well with these statistics pages and they've got you a lot of links and I think they contributed a lot to you getting to this level of authority on SEO tools like DR 90, etc. on Ahrefs. And so like I'm I'm curious to see like how wide you're comfortable to be on a website uh to cover these topics to to acquire links basically. Yeah, I mean, recently I've sort of ti- tried to tighten that up with Exploding Topics because what happens is you create these stat First you you go in your industry and you create all the stats pages that you can and then you're like, "Nah, this is kind of related." Then you just like mental gymnastics to justify how Peloton is related to SEO. It's kind of text so it's kind of okay. Sometimes I think about SEO when I'm on the Peloton so that seems like a good fit. You just do whatever mental gymnastics you need. So recently with um Exploding Topics, we deleted a stats page because I realized I just don't want to go this route. We had a page out about texting and driving and how it was dangerous and stats about how dangerous it is. And it was just like, you know what? This just isn't us. Let's just get away from that stuff and we deleted the page. And I think that and then I tightened it up. From now on the guidelines are like the stat has to be about business or technology, basically. If it's about business or technology, it probably works, but I'm trying to tighten that up and just not go those crazy like like with Backlinko at the end shot. We had Spotify. I mean, Roblox was a was a stretch for me, you know? Roblox is a lot of technology, right? I guess. Yeah, okay, but it's like a it's a game for 4-year-old kids, you know, 4 to 6 years old. I was like, okay, Backlinko, Roblox, I don't know. Yeah, but but you're right. It's it's something that I've been like concerned about and really like And And the point is like say, you know, on we get this texting and driving page. If it does get a lot of links, will that even help that much because it's so unrelated? That's my next question. And don't want to And don't even want to risk that. Like, why poke the bear when you don't have to? So, if you run out of stats pages, you run out of stats pages. I'd rather have that than just say, let's just do open it up to anything and start doing heart disease stats and stuff like that. Now, I found a lot of these on technology sites that already have these stats pages and that's why I found some of these topics. And my thought process was, well, they do it. Like, how bad could it be? And then now I'm saying I'm like, you know what? When I saw after it was published for a couple weeks, I'm like, this is bothering me. So, let's just delete it. Okay, yeah. I think that I think that's interesting on because obviously, you can't deny it has worked. And it's like, especially on a site like Backlinko, etc. It has generated lots of links for you, etc. But at the same time, you have Google that's like, "Oh, you should stay in your lane. You should really focus on your stuff, etc." And it's like I I was looking at that and felt like the illustration of not staying in your lane. But at the same time also, you have large sites that like publish about everything as well. So, in a way, they're all breaking that rule. So, it kind of makes you want to jump especially when you're at this level of authority, you know? Um but my next question about this page is like, okay, they get you traffic and links, but do they make you money? Uh not directly, but through internal linking, they can, you know, increase the money page, speaking of the old the old days. They can increase the money page rankings really nicely and increase your domain authority overall. Um, and if you have good like site navigation, that authority can just flow through a site generally and then you can target it if you want to. So yeah, if you in terms of like ROI, you're going to really have a hard time saying I paid this much and I'm making this money from any piece of content, but especially a stats page like Tesla stats. Yeah, it's it's tracking the ROI on a single content itself is quite tricky. I mean, we we do some of it on uh on our site so like we can see based on the opt-ins and like we track all the way to conversions. So we get an idea of like which pieces of content make us more money, the value per lead, the value per conversion on the pop-ups, etc. per page, etc. So it's kind of like you can do that, but it's a pain in the ass to set up. It's not fully accurate. And the value you get from the links I think is is is very worth it. You talked about internal linking for these pages, like how do you how do you do that? Basically, once you have the page there and it's getting links, you look at pages on your site that are real closely related and then link to them. That's usually how I try to do it. So I don't go so much like this page needs a boost because then then again you're going into your whole like mental gymnastics trying to make it work. In this case, I have a I have a you know, we have a stats page about like um the most visited websites for example. Well, we should link to our web our you know, stuff about traffic and about online marketing. Stuff that's that's more directly related. So I just tell we even want to ask writers to internal link. I just tell them link to the stuff that makes the most sense for the user and usually that's content that's related. Okay. Yeah, so like it's within the copy, right? You don't have any kind of widget or anything like that. At the end, if there sometimes if it doesn't make sense to include in the copy, it's not possible, at the end in the conclusion we'll just put if you like this, you know, we have a let's say we have social media stats, you'll here's our post about social media trends. Being at the bottom of the page, the link probably isn't as valuable, but it's still it's better than no link. say it's still okay. Yeah, fair enough. How long until you start you start you think the static is going to be saturated? Cuz like a lot of people are doing statistics pages right now, so it's like uh Yeah, it's definitely more competitive, but it's still not that competitive because it doesn't have that like a fast turnaround time in terms of results. Like you publish one, it could take a month for it to rank, six four months for it to rank, then you get a link, then you get your next link a couple months later. Like it's not one of those strategies that's like boom, you get all these results. So, I can't see it taking off. Plus, most people choose keywords that are way too competitive. And by nature, those are competitive keywords, right? Because everyone's just getting links to those pages. Like you look at the keyword competition on some of these keywords that get like a thousand searches a month, it's like 85, 90. It's because everyone's getting links to these pages. Not they're not competitive in the traditional sense. So, the the real magic of doing this is is finding those keywords that aren't competitive, but are stats pages. And maybe they don't they're not even don't even use the word statistics. Like we have one on the site about users. Like we we created one about how many users ChatGPT has. We published that soon after ChatGPT came out. Um and we've got like dozens of links to that page within a couple weeks. And because when it came out, there was really no competition. Yeah, makes sense. Um are you not afraid of Google SG kind of like swallowing this eventually? Like when Google will have like a massive chunk of content above all the results and like you know, people will essentially it will essentially take everyone's stats, put it on top, and give the result. Like do you think that's going to affect the tactic? more reason to publish them now. Get them while you can. Yeah, yeah. I think that's one thing that you've done well actually. It's like I think you you clearly see these things coming, but you also don't forget what's working today. And it's like it's it's quite important because the the wins you get today, they help you tomorrow. As you grow your authority, as your links, etc., they'll still earn you traffic in the future, even if maybe the tactic works less, I guess. Um so, I think I I think that's like that's what we've seen through you transitioning through these different models on Backlinko for example. I have another cheeky question. I mean the first one is like what are you the most proud of when it comes to Backlinko? I think honestly the most thing I'm proud of is how many people I've helped decipher SEO and get and do something with it. Because before Backlinko came around, your best bet for learning SEO was either like the Grey Hat forums or Moz basically. Those were your two options. I hopefully presented a third option which is like here's some tactical stuff you can try. Practical. But it's also by the book. Exactly, practical. So that was really what I'm proud of because over the years I've received a lot of messages from people saying I helped build my business this way thanks to your course, thanks to the blog I was able to build my business. So for me it's I'm proud that I was able to create something that so many people found valuable. Okay. Now the the cheeky part of the question, what are you the least proud of when it comes to Backlinko? Oh man, that's a good question. Least proud of? Probably in the early days I was really focused on being too actionable to the point of like anything that someone could do, let's do it. Like I found for example in the early days a post that I deleted was about I forgot exactly what it called, it was like authority funneling or something. And the idea was you create a profile on a site with a link back to your site, but it wasn't your typical profile page because if you were active on that site it would create internal links back to your profile and you get authority that way. Like even when I you know I was something that I was like yeah, was this going to make a huge difference in your rankings, but it was actionable. Like that's kind of what I was focused on. And then over the years I realized like I sort of but back then I was just a random guy writing in my freaking you know apartment. Then when the site got authority I was realized like Spider-Man great power comes with great responsibility. So I went back and I changed and deleted all that stuff that I thought wasn't really you know something that represented what I wanted to represent. Yeah, I mean to be honest, it was pretty much an extension of you know, at the time people were selling mostly PDFs of four forums where you can make a profile to do back in back in your site, right? Of course I remember that. Of course I remember that. Of course I remember that. Of course I remember that. Of course I remember that. Of course I remember that. Of course I remember that. From Warrior Forum. Every week it would be like yeah. Then it would be VAs that specialized in Paul and Angela's links, yeah. It's like that was the the good old times, right? In your interview last year with Madgicity, you said that you wouldn't focus on building a personal brand anymore. Yeah, here you are building up the brand in YouTube channel again. What happened? Well, it's the time time to pause and reflect. When I went on Matt's podcast, the only episode like you mentioned, right after I sold the site. And and to give you context like for 2 years I was running two businesses at the same time. Now, Backlinko was sort of on maintenance mode, so it wasn't like high growth or anything like that, but Exploding Topics was growing really quickly. And then you add a you know, as I'm doing these two businesses, you add a third business, which is selling your site, which is a ton of work, ton of sites that a ton of work to sell a business. You have to get all your financials, all the contractors you worked with, get all that stuff together. And then you sold it. It's like you got this sigh of relief finally, I don't have to do that stuff anymore uh that you don't want to do. And when I went on Matt's show, I don't remember exactly when it was, but it was pretty soon after cuz I remember I was exhausted. Um but I just did it cuz I'm Matt's a great guy. But I was probably in this like tired I just want to move to the mountains and drink yerba mate and look at the trees all day sort of phase of my life. Having time to chill and reflect and now I'm like, you know what? The YouTube channel, if I do it a different way, it could still be fun. Um as a but it's not really trying to build any sort of personal brand. It's just creating videos that I want to create and that I enjoy. Okay, cool. And then makes sense. It's just it was funny to like I was reviewing that when I was previously preparing the interview. And uh I did that. And as I reviewed all your videos, uh one of the things you explained is that 90% of your content is template driven and that you basically give that template to a writer and then they just keep writing about the same topic I mean not with the same template again and again, right? And that allows you to scale content these days. Like how do you identify content formats like when you do your research and your planning? I mostly look at competitors and what they've write for and even if it's just one like format I'm always looking at can it scale up. Like the first one format template that we really nailed with these startup list posts and I discovered those from built in.com which is a site. Please don't link to them in the show notes cuz they compete with a bunch of us. Anyway, I you can I don't care. But the point is they have like tons of startups about education, fintech, whatever and I realized man they just that's the whole website is one template. Like that's all they publish. So we can do that too and I've just basically tried to look for if I look at a topic I can only cover it once it's probably not really worth all that time and effort. So always looking for templates and actually right now we're sort of on the hunt for like a new template cuz we've run out. Like we published 450 posts I think on the blog at this point and at that point it just kind of run dry and then you'll find one and be like oh god this is another 50 right here but it'll come out of nowhere. Cuz you find one you realize oh we can spin that up into 50 or 100 and you're good for a while. So it's a little bit living paycheck to paycheck like trying to find templates and then you run out and then you're forced to find another one but that's sort of how we've lived. So amazing basically looking at the competitors, right? Once you've built a template how like how much do you stick to it versus adapting to whatever you see for that given keyword. I guess you said you don't look at the competitors but do you really not look at them or and follow your template exactly every single time or do you adjust? Follow the template 100%. Now look at the look at the competitors just to get a certain tent for how much content do they want for example. So for a startup list post do they want 10? Do they want 20? Do they want 50? Do they want 100? That can help inform that decision, but the actual content is going to be exactly stick to the template. Okay, makes sense. It's like that's something that we've been a bit guilty of is like we've adapted our templates too much and that makes editorial a lot more painful. So it's like that I wanted to hear your answer on that. Um how do you maintain the content quality when you give the same template to a writer again and again? It's like I find that there's kind of like a cycle of quality with freelance writers where it's like they'll be great at the beginning and it's going to be good for a while and it's just going to slowly decline in quality or they'll find corners to cut. And if if it passes editorial, if they don't actually get caught doing that, it just gets worse over time. How do you maintain the quality and and the motivation, I guess? The motivation's hard because I'm still basically editor in chief of the blog. So it's a both like the answer is I'm personally viewing everything that gets published and because the you have that same cycle with the editor and like you said, if the editor's having a slow day and they're like, "Yeah, it's fine. Like publish it." That writer learns, like you're saying, that writer's like, "Oh, wow. Oh, I can get away with this." But if it's me personally on every post, I'm crazy, right? So like I'm not going to let anything go that's not at this ridiculously high standard. Not scalable at all. I guess it's scalable to a point cuz we publish four posts a week, but to I don't know how sustainable it is cuz uh you know, I still love working on content and SEO and growing the blog, but I just don't know like 5 years from now if it makes sense for me to be reviewing like some review post that comes in or some startup list post that comes in. So that's your personal challenge basically, like find a way to get out of this position while not dipping in quality. But it's really hard, man. Like even with Backlinko, that's one of the reasons that, you know, we never really took on other writers except for a couple small a couple select projects was the standard is so high, it's hard to find someone that will meet that standard and then you have to find an editor that understands it and like it just for me it's just like not really possible or practical, so I just do it myself. Fair enough. I think it's interesting cuz like a lot of people in SEO they just all want to build systems and scale, etc. And I quite like the idea of like sometimes do-it-yourself, accept it's not scalable, but actually achieve higher results. Uh so, it's nice to to hear that from It's usually like a debate between Mark and I, let's be honest. It's like he wants to build systems, I don't want to kind of like hand I mean, I'm doing the podcast, you can see. So, you should guess what Guess what side I'm on. Yeah. Um but, what do you What do you give to your writers? What do your editorial looks like? Like, do you give How much documentation do you give them apart from, I guess, the template? Not much because the template speaks for itself. I mean, if if It depends on the template, like we have these, you know, trends posts, which are like biggest business trends. Those are pretty wide open. Like, there's a template there, but you have to decide on the trends you're going to cover, write about them. So, for those, we have like our best writers on that, and that's usually someone who's like ex-McKinsey, ex-Bain consults, Bain um or Deloitte, or like a big firm, like either hedge fund or something, where they're good at analysis. Like, they can understand how to write how to understand a big big industry, what's going on, and the ability to write about it. But, for something like filling all these startups that are growing in their funding round, it's you know, you it's usually a bit simpler in terms of the person that you need to do that. Um yeah, so it kind of depends. So, my next question is like, obviously, you're you're putting lots of work in to templating all that content. Um why don't you consider using AI content if you were collecting just the facts that you want in your article? If it's so templated, cuz AI could do pretty decent, no? It could for a lot of it, yeah. I I mean, for example, with the startup list posts, I mean, those descriptions that are like three to four sentences about what the startup is, AI could probably do a decent job of that. Um but that that's also an opportunity to have a human not just write about what like a generic description of the company, but also give insights of why it's growing. Like Liquid Death, for example, I don't know if you're familiar with them. Um, they're a water canned water company that's going to go that's going to go public. And they're like, you know, why is this everyone's like, why is this canned water company going to go public? Well, if you ask ChatGPT what Liquid Death is, it'll just describe it. It's a canned water company, blah, blah, but if you're reading a startup list post and one actually describes like why they're growing and gives a stat about how much they grew over the last year, then that's going to help your stuff stand out. So, yeah, I think AI could do a decent job. Like, for example, in our in our app in our actual actual platform, we're using AI to write descriptions of companies cuz those just need to be straight up here's what the thing is. Uh, but for our our content of like why a company's growing, I think it's still helpful to have a human at this point do that. Yeah, okay. I mean, we're looking more at like hybrid processes and all that. And so, we're like looking at like sections in the article that can be written by AI and sections that can be written by humans. All together with like an editor that actually goes through the whole article and make sure everything flows, but um, yeah, I think it's pretty useful. Like, for example, this interview, you see how I'm quoting all your videos and everything? I actually fed all the transcripts of all your videos, podcast interviews to this uh, AI from uh, called Claude that has a 100,000 tokens, read all of it, and I was able to chat with every all the content you've created. That is unbelievable. So, like, actually most of this interview, a lot of the quotes, I mean, I've watched all your videos as they came out, but I don't necessarily remember everything. And so, this was like uh, it can be helpful for content in like more creative ways than just writing me an article, basically. Right. Um, which I think uh, I think that that's the future, basically. So, I was just curious because you're you're so close. You're basically advocating figuring it out with AI now is the way. Yeah. how to do that. And so, it's like it's quite interesting that you're not dabbling with it yet. Talking about AI, how are you preparing for Google SGE and what do you think of it? Uh, all right, for let's just do what I think of it. I honestly think I don't think it's going to be as huge as people think. Why do I say that? Well, let's just look at it like there's a lot of guessing and prediction about what could happen. I'm not even going to get into that because the future is unknown. We don't know yet. What do we know now? ChatGPT was launched in November. It was the fastest growing application of all time. Faster than Instagram or like ridiculously fast growth. And tech people who are very tech-savvy who tend to search a lot were using it the most. That was pretty soon that's going to be a year ago when ChatGPT was launched. Like it's right around the corner. How have Google and then being also incorporated their own search, right? And SG is available in limited amounts in Google as well. How have Google search has been affected over that time? Not very much. Not very much or if at all. Yeah. So, for me as a case study and everyone who's watching this is going to be like, "Oh, yeah, you can only see the here and now. You can't see the future." Of course, it's going to be more impactful in the future and it's going to be better than it is now. But the nature of information retrieval, which Google is, it's just really good like it is now. Like honestly, if I want to know how to reduce my SaaS churn, I would never ask ChatGPT that question. I would never ask Google SGG cuz you know you're getting SG. You know you're going to get a generic answer back. I'd rather read something from ProfitWell, something from another SaaS founder, and just get like a few different perspectives on it with the 10 blue links that load instantly and give me what I want. So, I think what we're going to my prediction, I will get into one prediction. I think in the future we're going to look at LLMs. They're really good at doing things. If you want to do something, they're fantastic. They're a game-changing technology. I'm not dismissing the technology like you just used, you know, a year ago that wasn't possible what you just did. Mhm. Feed it all these interviews and and videos and just be able to summarize and talk with that's amazing. But for finding stuff, finding information, Google search is still probably the best interface for that. So, I think in the future we're going to have sort of two like we're going to know which tool to use. We're going to be like, I need to do something, I'll go to SGE. I need to actually read and and learn about something, I'm going to go to traditional Google. So, that's sort of my prediction. That said, I think SGE will eat away from some terms that people are using now for information retrieval when they really want to do something. Um but I don't see it as this like existential threat that's going to come and eat SEO. Could be wrong, but that's just my my two cents. Okay, I think that's um that's really interesting. I agree with you on the fact that ChatGPT is made to do things. And I think one of the stats that proves it the most is that in June the the stat the usage went down. And you know why? Because university has closed. And so that's one of the reason and because it's like you write the letter to your landlord you don't want to write, argue for the fine that you had it uh you know, tries to get you a refund for the plane ticket you couldn't make and it does all that stuff. And it's like that's useful, but that's not what Google was useful anyway. In my opinion, SGE is probably going to be a little bit like when they released the weather uh in the SERPs, you know? It's like it killed the the weather sites. I mean, the weather sites went down like 80% or something. So, I feel like there might be some verticals where traffic will go down a lot while many will be unaffected. Uh and uh it depends how how deep is the information that you're looking for. If you're just looking for like can my dog eat avocado? Like, yeah, it's like so if you just need to ask for it you do that. I don't need to read an article for that. Yeah. Um but if you're looking like like my dog is having a a seizure right now or whatever, like you might be looking for something that's a little bit more uh has a bit more credentials and uh is not just created by AI basically. Yeah. Yeah, and I think honestly like the reason a lot of people say, "Oh, people search for something Reddit in Google uh lot now. I don't know if you've seen this where people will do a search, myself included sometimes, and use Reddit. I don't think it's just because the search results suck, although that's part of it. I think part of it is that people want a perspective from people, and that's what you get from Reddit. Like, I was recently looking at like different training splits you can do for the gym. And I just didn't want to read some generic nonsense written by somebody or 10 people written by 10 people or AI or whatever. I wanted to go to Reddit to see people's perspective. Some guy feels really strongly that you should do push pull and legs. Another guy feels like you should do the bro split of like, you know, biceps and tries and all that stuff. It's like that's Yeah, that's what I want. I want to hear those perspectives, and that's what Google search is good at. And you're robbed of that with a GPT model with ChatGPT or another model because it just synthesizes stuff, and it gives you the vanilla answer, the mediocre answer. And but yeah, you're right. I think for certain searches like even these stat pages we talked about, that's something Google is already I've noticed is kind of expanded feature snippet where where if you search for like number of ChatGPT users, it won't just pull the the snippet from your from Exploding Topics. Above it, there's 100 million, a huge text, because they're confident from a bunch of sources that it's 100 million, and they're just giving you some props cuz you're the best source or whatever for that. So, I could 100% see those being like just massive parts of the page if not taking up the entire page and eating away at some queries. But in the meantime, like There's lots of money to be had for now, you know? Yeah, like I don't understand People are so gym so so quick to like jump on the next thing, and it's like 90% of the things these time these things don't even happen. Like voice search and Clubhouse and chatbots and all these things, like they don't even happen half the time. So, in the meantime, you're building for these things that are never going to come. Or Facebook Messenger and all this stuff. Like in the meantime, like Facebook Messenger is a perfect example. That was going to be like the email killer. Everyone's going to be on Facebook Messenger. Oh, yeah. Meanwhile, I'm building my email list. I'm so glad I did. Like, you want to You don't want to just be like You want to have an eye to the future, of course. And don't be I'm not saying like be a Luddite and just forget things are going to pretend things are always going to be the same cuz they're not. But, always trying to be like one step ahead of the competition is a huge mistake. Like, what's working right now? I think a big part of it is because a lot of marketers, they don't own businesses. So, they don't know Like, they can They have the luxury of predicting. And they're consultants, so they can talk about the future. Like, you need leads this month. How are you going to get them? You're not going to get it from SGE. You need to figure out how to get leads today. So, that's kind of where my focus is most of the time, with an eye in the future and knowing things will probably change and trying to prepare for that as well. I agree. I think it's it's a bias of content creators as well. Like, it's you get more clicks talking about the future than talking about what the boring SEO tactics. And that kind of like biases the conversation. So, I try to not do that in our content. It's like, we talk about the future, but we also like say, "Hey, do stuff that works today, and you should do that. It's boring, but it works." And because we want to have people actually make money. Um one last kind of like point that I've never heard you weigh in, and I think a lot of people would be interested. Uh I'm releasing a video today on this. Uh is E-E-A-T. So, E-E-A-T has divided the world in two categories. Okay. The people who believe that Google knows your entire life and just follows you in the street and you don't really need to tell anything because they know everything about you already, and they've dis- they've made their mind about you. And the people who think it just doesn't exist and uh and it's just like wish- wishful thinking in the Google search quality rater's guidelines. Where do you stand uh between these two sides, basically? Probably somewhere in the middle, but more towards the it doesn't matter. Especially when it comes to your on-site E-E-A-T. Like, that's how out of the industry I am. I didn't even know this debate was happening. Uh but, think of it It's just like with the topical authority stuff. If I put on my site, "This This written by Elon Musk, reviewed by Bill Gates, edited by Mark Zuckerberg. It doesn't make it true. Why would they use that for anything? It doesn't make any sense. And we actually tested this recently on the site because we out of just like sheer laziness, when a freelance writer would contribute a post, we had my co-founder Josh as the author because he's the one that set up our CMS. Like that is how little I care about authorship. So then recently we've been changing the author to the person who actually wrote the piece. No change whatsoever. And these are people with totally different histories. Josh is not super like e-famous, but he has some enough for Google to understand who he is. And then the the freelance writer may or may not be have any. They may be just have a LinkedIn profile. And it doesn't make any difference in terms of traffic because the page is authoritative cuz people linking to it. And it makes the users happy. Everything else is pretty much noise. Okay. I my take on that is more that there's kind of like a minimum threshold that you need to meet in terms of communicating who you are, who's behind the website, etc. All of that. Um and if you don't meet that threshold, you you're in trouble and you just jump up and down with the algorithm updates, etc. And it's like lots of people, you know, it's like it's funny like in that video I explained like, you know, the trash on this site will have like a a dirty contact form seven contact page with no information of who's behind the site on the about page or anything like that. There's no business associated with it. There's no address. There's no phone number. There's no nothing that's that tells you like, "Okay, there's there's a legit company behind this or like someone that's trustable." I think if people don't meet that threshold, I think that Google's probably looking at that. That's a good theory. No, that's a really good point. And and that that's more about transparency than trying to say, "I'm some sort of expert." You know. Uh one thing that I like as well is um so one thing I I actually tell people that might be interesting, but like I can't tell for sure it's a ranking factor, is like um associating yourself with high-profile authors in your in your niche, but actually having the links back like from their social profiles, etc. back to their author page on your site and making custom author pages on the site because like you can fake saying Bill Gates wrote the article, but you can't fake Bill Gates LinkedIn profile linking back to your author page on your site, you know? So, it's like if you can have these kind of like assets and actually associate all this stuff with schema, etc. It might not be a bad thing, but I think the most important is actually giving some transparency about who's behind the site and the content. And I think a lot of sites failed there and they actually might be jumping up and down in the rankings because of that. Yeah, makes sense. But it was it was interesting because, you know, you have that on all your websites. Like on Backlinko you've had that, on Exploding Topics you have that, but people sometimes build sites in a very uh very random way and it's like I think it's like Google wanting to not have fake news on their front page is it's a problem. Like they want to know who's behind the site. That's 100% true. Yeah, you're right about that. Like I for my old affiliate sites I used to go overboard with that stuff. Like I'd put my ad and I would create an address with a virtual mailbox. Have a phone number like cuz I agree with you. Google does I think they do care about that stuff and you're right. Cuz the number one thing is just their big their big goal is CYA, right? They don't want to show people fake news or stuff that's inaccurate. And how do they suss it out? Well, links is one way, but also is the site trusted? But also the brand the brand is the big one, too. Like Exactly. Like brand mentions, brand Are you brand mentioned? Yeah, you positively like that's where they the rater guidelines are helpful because they're using humans to say does the site have a good or bad reputation? Cuz it's one thing to get a bunch of links, but you've seen over the years like Dr. Axe um in the like that site had tons of links, had authority out the wazoo. He's an actual he's an actual doctor. Like on the surface he should be like killing it. He's a doctor in natural medicine, so that's uh know that. I don't know the I'm not pretending to we had a site competing with him, so it's like it's like I would say in terms of credentials I would be questioning the the actual um like the quality of the information based on his I don't know. I never went to the site. I remember seeing it being like, "Wow, I can't believe it got slammed." Cuz he was like the poster child for that August Medic update. Yep. Um yeah, but like it's cool. I I like that what you're saying like the reputation etc. It's all the stuff that we tell people, so I'm happy about that. Um It comes back to honestly 90% of SEO is just doing smart stuff as you would as a business. Like And it's like you need to see what you have there. Yeah. Like you need to to show your face Like you can't just like run a site with like I put a people that do not exist photo and like invent a name etc. I think this is kind of ending slowly as Google has to be fighting fake news on its side, so it's it's going to affect them basically. Uh okay. Uh to wrap it up the my last question is do you have two creators that you follow and in the industry that you think need more followers that you would recommend to people? I'm honestly dude I'm not in I'm like so out in SEO industry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In entrepreneurship. Yeah, in entrepreneurs the one that I've been following a lot lately is Alex Becker. I don't know if you've heard of this guy. Okay. Yeah, I mean I knew him from his SEO days. I didn't like him back in the day. But now I like him actually. I think he has he has a good advice. He's pretty hardcore, but he's cool actually. Yeah. But it's good to be hard like he's hardcore and then you realize you do like 25% of what he's doing, you're still like completely over the top, but it just it just motivating uh for me. Um that's the only one I can think of at the moment that I've been following. Full cool. Well, uh final words of wisdom and where people can find you? Yeah, the number one place to find me would be my YouTube channel at Brian Dean. Getting that back going again as you mentioned. And then the number one words of wisdom is honestly like we talked these SEO conversations are often get into the weeds of like uh topical authority and you know keywords and stuff like that. And yeah, that's always important, but it's all about the user. Like if the user's happy, then you're going to generally do well. If you If people are coming to your site and you have topical authority, that's perfect and you send topical map to create a Like it doesn't any of your sites just like no one's going to stay and people Google them out. Or if you don't create a brand, if you just create a a site silently and you're not trying to push other channels to try to get people to talk about your site, which Google pays it definitely pays attention to. Like honestly, like the SEO is almost a byproduct of doing stuff well. Now, you still need to focus I'm not just saying like create great content and you're ranked cuz I hate that stuff. I've hated that stuff since I created backlinko. It's not about that, but it's that if you only do SEO, it's a lot harder is basically my message. I agree with you. I mean, that's why we're doing YouTube. That's why we're doing all these tests because actually helps. And we find So, yeah, like we're definitely more focused on building brands than we're building just SEO now. It's like Uh and I think also it's like people need to pivot their business models quite often. Like people see SEO as a business. It's not a business, it's a traffic source. Yep. Um and uh and and and like we've been encouraging people to do more like their own products and actually like build a customer base etc. because all these things matter as well. Like if affiliates mention you, if like a means all these things sites are quoting your brand etc. and you're creating an environment where you can be quoted more on the web, which helps you do better basically. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for joining the podcast. I hope you had fun. And uh Yeah, awesome. All right, that was it guys. That was my interview with Brian Dean. So, what do you think? Luck or skills? Let me know in the comments. While you're in the comment section, also let me know who else you'd like to hear on the podcast. And if you want another insane SEO story, check out this video where I share the exact process that this company uses to generate nine figures. Yeah, you heard it correctly, nine figures per year with SEO. I'll see you in the next episode.