Fatrank Podcast

James Dooley:
how to grow a link building agency SEO is probably the best way of growing but actually a different part of growing as well instead of it being social media ads is organic social media you're competing typically against the bigger boys you have to spend a lot before you see any return I think with regards to PPC like AdWords in Google I think you need to know the converting keywords I think you need to make certain you've got the right sales funnels in place I think you just can't really make that assumption the issue with SEO is it's you definitely don't want to look at SEO link building agencies be teaming up with PPC companies and web design companies they also a bit of a trickier customer I think the last method for if anyone is looking to grow their link building agency is hi so today I'm joined with Hudson the founder of seero and today's video is about how to grow a link building agency so we'll bounce off each other and give some ideas of what is the best way of growing a backlink agency

Karl Hudson:
yeah so I guess it's quite a difficult one because some people would probably believe that SEO is probably the best way of growing but actually on the counter spin of that we speak to quite a few top level agencies link building agencies and they seem to say that it actually is a lot of paid ad advertising that's helped them scale even more so if we look at social media ads as a first point of view that's probably fundamental to growing a link building agency despite it being something completely different you'd expect a link building agency should be building links to grow their brand but yeah if you're looking at Facebook Twitter I know we're doing a lot on YouTube at the moment YouTube's probably a great avenue especially considering if you think about the average demographic or a marketing person or someone who's in business he's probably watching a lot of podcasts and probably on YouTube a lot so that is probably in my eyes one of the better ways what do you think J have you got any other

James Dooley:
yeah I mean with you guys if we are expanding on social media ads for now then I think Facebook and Instagram are great platforms definitely making certain that your website is set up with the retargeting pixel because the retargeting pixel is probably the cheapest form of remarketing that there is Twitter ads can do all right YouTube ads you can go you've got places like quora and Reddit that you could be doing on question based like what type of link should I be building and stuff like that that seems to work pretty well if you've got some nice infographics you could even do places like Pinterest ads as well so basically all different ways of social media ads but then a different part of growing as well instead of it being social media ads is organic social media so posting literally every single day and providing some sort of value if people have never read the book the goger I'd recommend you go reading that book and going giving value out to potential customers or if you're doing link building for SEO agencies providing them with some value with how they can scale their agency out can work pretty well I'd say on that LinkedIn is probably the best place to hang go and provide good value but again you can be doing it on even TikTok for certain videos and providing value on there Instagram Facebook Twitter again I'd probably say LinkedIn for organic social media what have you found that works probably the best on organic social media

Karl Hudson:
I personally prefer LinkedIn just because I find there's too much noise on Facebook and you've got a lot of friends on there some friends just don't want to see you posting stuff about whatever you're doing so yeah I definitely think LinkedIn and obviously trying to just be consistent with it I sometimes fall short on this as well trying to do at least one post a day not always trying to pitch trying to provide value to your audience you seem to it builds up like snowballs has like a Snowball Effect pretty quickly when you're doing that obviously there's other elements to this as well where you can start to look at paid ads obviously organic social media is great and so is paid social media but then you've also got a paid ads game with Bing or Google and that can be the problem it can be very expensive because you're competing typically against the bigger boys who are controlling the whole narrative when it comes to spend obviously there are certain industries where that would be fantastic in but I think link building it's one of them we've toyed with it before and played around with it and yeah you have to spend a lot before you see any return

James Dooley:
I think with regards to PPC like AdWords in Google I think you need to know the converting keywords I think you need to make certain you've got the right sales funnels in place that you're knowing exactly how to increase your average transactional value and the lifetime value of your customers once you have all them ducks in a row then it might allow you to spend that little bit more on PPC leads but if you've not and you've not mastered knowing exactly what your lifetime value average customer is which could be 2000 3000 5000 dollars when you know that if you're knowing that you're acquiring a new customer let's say 500 dollars it becomes a little bit easier for you to be able to do that but what's your thoughts on traditional marketing like billboard advertising TV advertising radio advertising magazines some people talk about doing that for me it's a little bit old school but what's your thoughts on traditional marketing

Karl Hudson:
I think there's a time and a place and I think the hardest part with traditional marketing is trying to gauge the ROI I know in previous businesses when we were doing TV and radio ads it was just very hard other than seeing spikes in traffic at the time the advert was on it was very hard to note the trend over time and see the actual ROI that is the main thing I would almost say if you're doing traditional advertising you're almost doing it for marketing and to build up brand notoriety rather than the ROI is going to be X you just can't really make that assumption that's my opinion anyway

James Dooley:
I think another strategy as well is SEO so search engine optimisation if you're starting to know what people are asking questions on you can start building topical authority by writing lots of articles answering the queries and giving good value which you can then share on social media platforms as well so it is a good strategy the only issue is unlike PPC where if you start spending budget today you can generate leads today the issue with SEO is it's a long term investment but something that is very important is if someone's ever looking to sell their link building agency and they are looking to grow it to sell having an SEO value to your website gives you a much higher multiplier so instead of just thinking about how much is it and how much am I getting in return and what's my ROI you also need to understand that you might actually get an extra 12 months multiplier so if you go and spend 100 200 even 300 grand in SEO of your website and it improves the traffic and that starts generating its own leads via organic SEO the multiplier of your site could be worth that little bit more have you got anything else to add on that Karl with regards to SEO for link building agencies

Karl Hudson:
again yeah you hit the nail on the head it's just the time it takes you'll find a few nugget keywords you might be able to rank for quite quickly but again you'll only be able to do that if you're leveraging the authority of your site and building that authority which again is another thing that takes time and it's a long term thing if you're getting into setting up a link building agency and you want it to be a quick hit you definitely don't want to look at SEO because that's a long term strategy I think whereas if you plan over the next 10 years I'm going to form this link building agency and this is the strategy we're going to run with then it probably makes sense

James Dooley:
for sure another strategy is lead generation companies so over at fat rank one of the things I founded with fat rank is that we offer a no risk supply of inquiries which guarantee clients a return on investment if they qualify now what we could do for link building agencies is I'm going to be brutally honest obviously I'm an investor in seero so there's no chance I'm going to start generating leads for a link building agency when I can pass it into seero myself but people should be looking for lead generation agencies where it might be that we don't personally build let's say a certain type of backlink that we don't do that then we might be able to cross sell into another agency so building up those relationships with customers which I always call shouldering niches you might be able to do that or in certain scenarios you could start buying certain leads from places like bark the only issue with that is normally they resell those leads to multiple companies and you're not getting exclusive leads but what's your thoughts on lead generation companies to grow the business or trying to partner up with maybe a web designer so a web designer might be building a website and then the client might ask do you know anyone that can do SEO or content and links should link building agencies be teaming up with PPC companies and web design companies to say look we'll pass you anyone that asks for web design but you pass us anyone that asks for link building inquiries

Karl Hudson:
yeah I would say that's a very good strategy the sense that with us we try to target SEOs typically because they know what links are so it's an easier sell and they understand the value the caveat to that is they're also a trickier customer because they understand a lot more about it so yeah definitely shoulder niches is a great way from a lead generation point of view just make sure you pick companies that you've used before or have prior experience with and I know yourself at fat rank you're testing out a lot of these companies because you don't want to deal with people who are not willing to pay and give you kickbacks exactly so you're wanting the creme de la creme and that's only going to help your service get better as well

James Dooley:
I think the last method for anyone looking to grow their link building agency is networking so getting yourself to these SEO meetups like SEO vibes or Chiang Mai SEO and if you can get yourself to those SEO meetups then you can meet the owners of SEO agencies or big affiliate marketers that might be spending 20000 30000 50000 dollars a month specifically on backlinks because they might be earning half a million a month through 15 websites they own so getting yourself out to these networking events and building those relationships in person is another great way of growing a link building agency what's your thoughts on that Karl

Karl Hudson:
I would say not just the networking but the mastermind element so getting into the paid masterminds even paying a small amount of money to join a room but it's a room of business owners where you can chat to them and a lot of them might not understand link building but they probably understand what the result of link building can do and explaining that from that avenue could get you straight into different businesses could be shoulder niches could be different niches could be just a business owner that knows the value of link building and wants a link building agency instead of an SEO

James Dooley:
yeah for sure yeah so anyone who's watching this if you are a link building agency and you're looking to grow your link building company we hope you like the tips and tricks we've just said leave us a comment in the comment section let us know if there's anything you're doing additional to what we've just mentioned if you are looking to grow out your link building company