758: Stellar SEO: Link Building, Strategic Content Creation, and Guest Blog Posting with Travis Bliffen

announcer 0:00 Marketer of the day, 758 stellar SEO, link building, strategic content creation and guest blog posting with Travis bliffin. Hey

Robert Plank 0:15 everyone, and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We are here with Travis bliffin from stellar SEO, which is a top rated us link building agency. And we are going to be talking about link building strategies, about guest posting, about content creation, all kinds of fun things. So Travis, glad to be talking to you. Yeah,

Travis Bliffin 0:34 I'm glad to be talking to you as well. Thanks for having me on and never, never like to miss an opportunity to talk about SEO, link building and content.

Robert Plank 0:45 Well, that's good. I mean, it's good to be passionate about what you do, who I mean, if you if the whole point was just to like slonk through and and hate what you're doing, we'd all be in a nine to five. So that's good that you are doing this thing that you love, which is being in this honest and leading SEO agency. So, I mean, what has you excited these days? What is kind of like in your mind, like the cutting edge or the thing that just kind of gets you out of bed in the morning?

Travis Bliffin 1:11 I mean, so my favorite thing is, is, by nature, I've always been a competitive person, and SEO link building, they're both extremely competitive in the fact that that everything you do, every customer you work with, or every industry that you work in, there's a there's always going to be a set of competition that are doing extremely well, and there's always going to be that group of people who wish they were doing what the leading few companies were. And so what I enjoy the most about it, and have for the past several years, is actually being able to go out, identify what those people are doing that are having all the success, and be able to replicate that and recreate that for people and help them move up. You know, so, so basically, all day, every day, I come in and I help put together a strategy and kind of lead the charge in what I view to be a competition between companies. And so all things aside, there's there's constant changes, constant fluctuations. Google seems all over the place, sometimes with what they like and don't like. But the one constant in everything I do is it, did you get to be competitive against other companies, against yourself, against Google, in some cases. And that's definitely the part that drives me every day to do what I do. And what keeps it interesting is there's never a shortage of competitors. That's

Robert Plank 2:36 good. I think that's a healthy way of looking at that friendly competition. And you snuck in there. There's also the competition with your past self to kind of better your best because, and I think that, you know, we probably have all dealt with at one point or another, how it's, it's painful at first to look at your competitors, right? Because sometimes they had, they somehow had the idea before you, or you had that idea that you were sitting on, and they did a way better job than you would have. And then there's that kind of aspect of, there's so many successful people out there that kind of, it's not like the, I don't know, they say one thing and do another, kind of, right, like, they talk about, like, you know, they like, you see them like, you know, posting or posting videos. But then when you go and, like, do your research, you're like, Whoa. I'm only looking at what they're doing on their own platform, and I see them just, you know, posting a video a day, or sending out an email a week. But then you see, whoa, they're, they're like, busting their their butt on all these other, you know, podcasts they're doing, guest posting. So that, that took me years to get past the the muck. I don't know if that's the right way of putting it. But number one, it was painful to look at the competitors. And number two, I wasn't doing enough of really, like spying on them and stalking them, so to speak, and places other than their own, their own websites,

Travis Bliffin 3:57 see that. That's the really I found to be really interesting thing about online business in the first place is that a lot of times, the entire perception you have of a company, big or small, good or bad, is really tied to the channel in which you discovered them. So if your main focus, if if you evaluate every company by their activity on Facebook, for example, then there's going to be a group of SEO agencies, of marketers, of people that really focus on promoting their self on Facebook. And so in that, in that perceived reality, those must be the companies having the most success. And then if you go off of Facebook and you look at something else, you look at, you know, roundups of major media companies, you see that nobody on Facebook is also in that list of of, you know, the fastest growing marketing agencies in the country, because they're out there doing a different place and in a different way. And then sometimes you have that overlap, where you see people across. Multiple platforms, and on all platforms, they've managed to make a big impact. And so those are a lot of times, the people that really do Excel. Because it's really easy to get fixated on a particular platform and think, Okay, since I see them all day, every day on Facebook, for example, this company must really be well known, and then you talk to anybody that's not on Facebook and doesn't join that particular group you might be in, and they've never heard of them. And so I always think that's really funny, just how the method of discovery can completely change your perception of a company. And you're right whenever you go and you say, Okay, I'm going to try to figure out how I can be competitive with this person, sometimes you start to unravel that, and you might find the people who are very dominant on Facebook basically don't exist anywhere else outside of Facebook, and the same is true for Twitter and LinkedIn or Instagram. You know, they're just in one area. And so it's always really interesting to see when we start getting into that kind of competitor discovery phase, you know, who's actually having a lot of success across the board, and which people are more, you know, more show than than they are having success. And you uncover that a lot, too, and what we're doing. So I always find that to be kind of an amusing part.

Robert Plank 6:25 So when you say they're they're more showed than they are success. Does that mean that it's just like they're spending all their time posting and keeping up appearances, but you don't see them actually like making money or doing any real work? Is that what you mean? Yeah,

Travis Bliffin 6:39 that's, that's kind of exactly what I mean in that you'll, you'll see certain people and and by their own self, the content that they put out about themselves, they would lead you to believe that they must be extremely successful, doing really great work, extremely well known. And then you go away from that one single platform, one single area, and and they're, they're non existent. They don't have a footprint or presence in anywhere other than that. And so I see that a lot people selling, you know, courses, trainings. And it seems like Facebook is, is like a hotspot for that, particularly of, you know, the the 10,000 gurus who have the training course to solve every problem you've ever had for no money and little effort and but then you go out and you see other people who, you know, they actually do training, but they do training for for corporations. They do enterprise level trainings. They have real foundation. They have real training. It's not cheap, it's not fast, it's not easy, but those are the companies that you really take a deeper look at, because they've been around for 20, 3040, years, successfully doing that, and they've evolved, and they've grown. And so that's when we are doing research, when we're building out strategies. That's who we really try to look at, is, is who's doing this kind of in an evergreen fashion, and some some stuff. When it comes to online marketing, seems like it's really new, but content marketing, for example, is has been around since what was it 1818, 90 or something, when the the magazine came out, which was the first official content marketing. So there's a lot that you can learn by focusing on who you look at and who you research. And I'm not really sure how we got to that point of it, but yeah, I do see, I do see a lot of stuff, and it does make me question what those people are up to and and how many people are actually buying what seems to be a obnoxious and unrealistic thing that they're offering, and that could be services, coaching, products, there's, there's any number of things where you see the same thing repeat day in and day out,

Robert Plank 8:52 and that that is, I mean, it's good to think about that, because sometimes in that, that competition that we mentioned Earlier in the pursuit of saying, Oh, well, this person is marketing in a way that I'm not, or I might maybe a little envious of what they're doing. We might be like, you know, doing all this work just to catch up on someone who is just keeping up those sorts of appearances. So when you say that you and you mentioned a few times that you like, you figure out a strategy. And so what I mean? What does that mean exactly? Does that mean, like, you see what they're doing already, you see what their content is, and then you, like, pursue new platforms, like, like other blogs, or say, maybe they should post on LinkedIn or YouTube, or, like, when you talk about, like, the strategy, like, kind of, what are we talking about here?

Travis Bliffin 9:38 Yeah. So it kind of goes in multiple steps. But the very first thing, and this is where a lot of people run into strategy issues, is that they do see somebody like that, person on on Facebook, you know, or Twitter, Instagram, and they think, okay, there they have, you know, 2 million followers on here. They must be really just doing a great job. This. This is the channel. This is what I should be doing as well to have success. But then you start to unravel that, and you look at what companies have been around for very long, what what companies are are sending out signals of of growth and success, and who is their audience. Because if you are pulling all of your audience from Facebook, and a different company pulls all of their audience from Twitter, and Company Number Three pulls all of their audience from organic search, right, they might have three completely different target markets, and so the very first step in building that strategy is to figure out if those people that you think are your competitors, or you think are having success in what you do, are actually even targeting the same people that you are. And so that's the very first step of building a strategy, is making sure that you are not trying to replicate the marketing approach of somebody with a different ideal customer than your own. From there, that's when we go out and we look at people who seem to be targeting the same types of customers that would be the ideal customer for our client. And that's when you start to build a strategy by looking at where does their traffic come from. We're focused very much on the organic and content side. So we look at what is their top performing content? What are the top sources of organic traffic? What content on their site got the most publicity, got the most people to link to and mention it, because that starts to help you build this model of what you should and should not be doing to appeal to your ideal customer, because if you go and you just copy somebody else blindly, you might get leads and you might make sales, but you might find out after a few months that everybody you work with isn't even close to what you wanted to be working with when you set out. And so that's kind of how we go about, you know, at a very high level, building out a strategy and and also that's where we see most people run into issues, is that they don't first figure out if those other people that they perceive as successful are targeting the same group. And so from there, it's just a matter of unraveling where their traffic comes from, where they're where they're advertising, who's linking to them, what content they have, and you pull that all together, and that's how you can build a plan that may not be showy, but it grows sustainably and it gets the right people in front of you. And that's even something we've applied to our own business. We're not we're not big on social media. We're not big on paid advertising, because we found that the ideal customers we like to work with are searching for the types of services we offer. They're doing due diligence, they're comparing some of the top companies, and so for us, that's, that's how we generate our customers. Is, is by using organic search, because those are the people that we typically want to work with, versus the types of leads that often are generated with paid advertising, social media platforms, things like that. So it's, it's a really good strategy to follow. Unfortunately, people get, you know, shiny object syndrome, and then they go down 100 different rabbit trails, and then they can't figure out why they're not really gaining traction, or why they're not getting the right types of people to contact them. And so that's, that's kind of how we look at at strategy development and at the highest level.

Robert Plank 13:45 And you know, in your answer there, what kept coming to mind was you mentioned a few times the people right there. It's easy to say, oh, we'll look at the data, or we'll invent. Well, think of a bunch of things and see what works. But what you're saying is, you look at those competitors. You look at what they're doing, you look at their their audience, you see, like, the good performing content. There's a lot of in your thought process. There's a lot of like, okay, there's these people that are the competitors. There's these people that are the customers. And it seems like kind of going from that, that mindset, it's easy, or it's easier to figure out where to be and what sort of content to create, as opposed to just kind of, you know, playing any kind of weird games. And what's also cool is that you mentioned there is that you say you don't necessarily like the social media or the paid ads as much you like the the organic content, Google guest posting, kinds of strategies. And I like that you also, you practice what you preach. Like I google your name for like, two seconds right before we got on here, and I saw all the pages of your your, you know, guest posts on other platforms. You're on SEMrush. You're on Search Engine Journal. So do you have any like, interesting story for, like, how that came to be that kind of high profile thing? Because sometimes you'll see someone will get a guest blog post on, like, Forbes or entrepreneur, and then that's kind of all they'll do all year. So as far as, like, getting on to, like, an SEO rush or a Search Engine Journal, like, was that? Did that come about as part of your strategy. And like, did you have to, like, build up to that, or like, work on them specifically? Or how did you get these kind of high profile guest posts? And how did that? How did it lead to that? Yeah,

Travis Bliffin 15:33 so really, what's funny is one of the very first, one of the very first places that I contributed content to was website magazine, and I did that a few years ago, and since their website is has changed and a few times, and it's not as far as I can tell, it's not quite as popular as it was, but three, four years ago, they had a very engaged audience, Huge email subscriber list, and so I ran across that in doing my own research on multiple occasions. And I thought, well, if I keep seeing this site pop up, they've got to have a lot of content that's relevant to what I'm doing. So I've reached out, and I essentially pitched them on a couple of ideas and and so that was one of the first places that I wrote for, and then I wrote a couple articles, and they went over extremely well. And some of them, I think, are still the more popular articles they've ever had on their site. And so from there, it actually went to me writing. I wrote for a year or two, a weekly column for website magazine. And so using those, I kind of did the LeapFrog approach, where I would reach out to other sites and say, you know, here's, here's 20 articles I've written about this topic on website magazine. Here's an idea I've have for your site. And then they would, they would be more open to it, because they could see some, some current and good examples. You got the proof. Somebody else published what you wrote, and then so you do that LeapFrog. And so you might go from that to business to community, I think at the time was a big one. And so they kind of leapfrogged SEMrush right, SEMrush over to Search Engine Journal. So you just kind of build momentum. And once you get your foot in the door, then you just kind of move your way up and and so we did that a lot a couple years ago. We don't guess post as much now as as a company anymore, and I don't now either, because we essentially in starting there, that's how we established ourselves in the space, because we would write content for those websites about what we do. It would rank because it was on high authority websites, and we would generate leads before our own website could generate leads itself, right? And so over the time, we actually acquired enough links from sites like that that our website now generates the leads for us, and so we've been able to be more passive in the places that we would contribute content to or write for, because we filled up the pipeline. But going back to beginning, that's, that's how we started, is we, we made our own website. We needed to get some good quality links, and the easiest way to do that without a budget was guest posting. So I created the content. I use the LeapFrog approach. Fast forward to today. Basically, if you look at link building services, guest posting services, blogger outreach services, and a bunch of related terms, we rank for all of those. So now we don't have to go and contribute content, because they just, they come to us right. So now we switch to creating content for our own website. And so that's really the next evolution, and that's the same approach that we often would would recommend for clients. You know is, is using that leapfrogging approach, building up your own authority, building up your own inbound traffic, and from there, transitioning into content and and promoting content on your own website. And so that's that's a really good way to go from non existent, because when we started, I started the company myself, and in 2012 had no experience with SEO, had no experience in business, and didn't have a budget either. So basically, I picked up a magazine, flipped through, found this list that had best, you know, best industries to get into in 2013 and one of those was SEO. And I thought, Man, this sounds really interesting. And so I started researching it. I actually went on to, I think it's called Upwork. Now, I forget what Elance or something like that. Before it used to be oDesk, oDesk, so I went on to there, and that's actually where I got some of my very first customers. And all I did was write blog content for them, right? So I was learning about SEO. At the time, and I was writing blog content because, you know, optimized blog content was part of it. So I'm like, Well, this is, you don't really mess this up, and it's a good, you know, way to start making some money while you're still learning. And so that actually led to my first SEO client. Is, is somebody hired me for creating blog content, and then after a little while, you know, I started to talk to him about SEO, told him, you know, essentially, I'm pretty new at this, but I think I've got a really strong grasp. You know, they paid me a little bit of money, and I did a lot of work, and at the end of the day, it worked out for him really well. And so that's, that's where I started. So it's just a matter of starting and then building steps along the way. I saw something the other day somewhere on social media, and it said, you know, don't compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 17. And it was that famous photo of Jeff Bezos where he's got the desk that he made himself, and amazon.com is like, spray painted on the wall. Yeah, it's like, graffiti, yes, yeah, absolutely. And so that's that's kind of we started, where a lot of people start basically non existent, no experience, no budget, and then we just leapfrogged. And we applied that leapfrogging approach to to building a business. Same thing to guest posting. And there's a lot of good lessons that we derive from that that we still apply to stuff today, just on different levels and in different volumes and things like that. But the LeapFrog approaches is really a great way to start to build up that authority. So you know, a lot of people are thinking like, well, I'd love to write for X, Y or Z, but they won't even answer me. So that's where you got to put in some work up front. And you got to find sites that are a couple tiers down the ladder and then work your way up to it, you know, and that that has worked for many years now, and and it also is, I think, as social media, as influencer marketing, all those things continue to grow in popularity, then you're going to see that same type of approach even applied across those so it's kind of an evergreen strategy. In this case, that's how we that's how we got those placements, and that's how we kind of built from obscurity into, you know, very passively, getting a lot of really high profile gigs to work on all the time.

Robert Plank 22:24 Yeah, and there's a lot of good, good stuff to think about in there and that. And so you say that you have these, these blog posts, and a lot of them, you know, you did, like, a set amount, and then that's all you had to do it. It still pays off. You still rank. And that's reassuring, because many times, like when we think about, like, you know, starting on just, just getting, like, a gig, a job, one freelance client, and then, like, doing some for yourself, and getting getting more and more higher profile, it's easy to get overwhelmed. It's a think, oh, man, I need to, like, send 10 proposals a day. I need to write, you know, three articles a week. It's easy to, like, talk yourself out of something before you have even started, but then, like, I like how things worked out for you, how you said, like, You did all you did this, and then, you know, the weekly column, and then you're able to get more and more. And then once you got a certain amount out there, then that was like, as much traffic, as many clients as your agency could handle. So that does not necessarily have to be forever, or it could even switch over to easier things like, I mean, technically, you're still guest posting right? You're guest posting right this second on a podcast with me. It's just an audio form, not something that took you hours or days to write. It's just You were here for 2030, minutes. We knock out an episode, and you're still getting yourself and your agency out there. But maybe things get easier over time. As we get the list, the email list built up, once we get the clients, and the ad budget built up, and all those search engine rankings, all those things, things can get easier. So that's really reassuring. And so with all the possibilities out there, with all the things that people can and should be doing with the outreach and the link building and the SEO and all that, I'm sure some people are curious about what you and your agency can do for them. So do you feel like talking about that and packing some of that stuff?

Travis Bliffin 24:22 Yeah, so, I mean, the the big thing is, if you have, or if you don't yet have the content that is targeted for the types of people you want to attract, then we are able to help you determine what types of content and what types of even keywords and topics are going to appeal to the right type of audience. And that's kind of where I go back to saying that you have to avoid going down that trap where you're trying to replicate what you see other people doing, because they may or may not be trying to get the same kind of audience that you are. Yeah, so that's the first part. Is we help people figure out what content, what information, what message do you need to put out there in order to get the right type of people to come to you right? And then the second part of that is, we help them figure out how, through organic outreach, can we promote this so how can we get people to mention it, share it or link to it? And that's really where our agency specializes is, in creating and guiding the content and then promoting that content so that it gains visibility organically. And that could be through your own website ranking. That could be through getting you to contribute to websites on which your content is going to rank, and you'll get leads that way. But that in a nutshell, is what we do. It's all that we do now. We started out much broader as an SEO agency, and we've really narrowed in on that particular area as as our specialty. So basically, if your difficulty is getting the right type of people to contact you, then that's where we can come in and help by using content and content promotion. I was on a podcast a few years ago, and he Mike Campion, he said something that kind of stuck out to me. Said, the easiest thing to sell is the thing that people want, right? And so some people think like, well, I have to come up with this crazy offer, or this unbelievable offer, or I have to make it like, super cheap. They go through all these things of trying to figure out how to make something that people want, but what you really have to do is find the people who already want what you've made, right? And if there's nobody who wants what you've made, don't make it. Stop making it. Make something different, right? You run into a problem. But if you focus all your efforts on finding people who want exactly what you offer. You're going to keep them around for a really long time. They're going to be very happy with what you do, and you're going to be really happy with them, because they don't want you to change everything you do to a different kind of service. Because all that means is that you didn't find the right customer in the first place, and so that, you know, Link building is link building. We build links, and it helps people rank higher in Google. That's what it is. But at a at a higher level, what we do is help people get the people that actually want exactly what they're offering. They're in the right stage, they're in the right budget, they have the right mindset, they have the right expectations, and we do that by creating content that appeals to those people. And so that is, in my mind, one of the most effective ways. And it's not only with organic you can do the same thing with audiences on paid ads, with audiences on social media, with email list, but if you can find the people who love what you're doing, it makes business so easy. We keep customers for multiple years. The industry average is like three to six months. We have customers that have been with us since we started, right and that's just really unheard of a lot of times, and it's because maybe two out of 10 people that come to us are that right fit with the right expectations and the right thing for our service. And those two people get in, and the other eight people, unfortunately, they don't, because they're not the right fit to benefit from what we do, and so we like to practice what we preach. That's how we run our business, that's how we've grown our business. And then when, when clients do hire us to work with them, we go through a very similar process, and they may already have a lot of very clearly defined buyer personas, and so they task us with finding what topics are are appealing most of those buyer personas, or maybe they even have the content, and they just need to promote that content through outreach. And so we can work in in different phases of that process, but at the end of the day, that's how we help, is we facilitate the completion of that from identifying exactly who you want to be your customer through making sure they can find, find the information that you've put out there to attract them.

Robert Plank 29:28 I mean that that is, that's a simple but powerful idea, that we might be making things way too hard on ourselves by trying to, trying to convince people a bit too much about what we have for offer. Why not find the people, like you said, who are already looking for that? I mean, if you're the if you're the plumber in town, find people who with the busted water heater, right? Don't, don't try to talk them into this thing. And there's enough people out. There's and there are people, you know, looking for, anxious to their problems. I mean, that makes total sense. And like you said, also many times. Times we might be competing with the wrong person pursuing the wrong thing, or just kind of need a better, a little bit better strategy. And so you say that people might be at these different phases in their kind of, in their master plan, there they might be like, you know, targeting, or need to be doing outreach. So how do people get in touch with you and your agency and schedule a call or something like that. How do they take the next step and reach out? Yeah,

Travis Bliffin 30:25 so if they, if they go to stellarco.com then there's a lot of requests to consultation buttons throughout the website and forms. So it's, it's pretty easy to find where to actually contact us, but basically what we do with with anybody who contacts us, we schedule a quick introductory 15 minute call, and the reason we do that is so we can hear about them about what they want to accomplish. And within that 15 minutes, we generally get a pretty good idea of whether or not it makes sense to schedule a second call and then kind of start to unpack very specifically what they're trying to do, where they're at all those things. So it's a pretty smooth process with us. You request a consultation, I'll be the one on the 15 minute call in the history of our company. We just don't have salespeople. We tried it out a few times when we did the SEO agency thing. And what we found is that salespeople have a tendency to want to let four of 10 people through, instead of the two of 10 people that really will have the most benefit. And so that's that's another key part of what we do, is every single customer that is works with our company talks to me, and then I figure out if they're actually going to be a good fit or not a good fit. And then from there, I kind of help facilitate that whole sales process with them, the consultant process, bringing them on so it's a it's a completely different experience once you do reach out to us, because I'm not a salesperson, I started as an SEO person with no sales or business experience, and so we approach everything from that. It's as if we own the website ourself, and we're trying to figure out, what can we do to improve this website, or should we let the website go same thing? So stellar seo.com, fill out the form. We'll get to get on a call, and you know, then I'll hear, hear whatever it is that the issues you're having, where you're at, what you're trying to do, and from there, you know, we'll, we'll figure out if it makes sense to continue the conversation, or if it, if there's a different type of service or or marketing channel, or something else, it would probably be a better fit for you. So that's, that's how we approach it. Well,

Robert Plank 32:39 fantastic. Well, that place to go is stellar seo.com that's S, T, E, L, L, A, R, seo.com and you mentioned a few times in there Travis, and you mentioned it just now that there's this, this concept of being a good fit or not. So you out there in podcast land, you know that you need to get more customers, build the list, get the traffic, get more reach. But you might be a little unsure if you're the right fit or not. Well, this is the way to find out if you are the right fit or not the right fit, by going to stellar seo.com fill in the form to get that consultation. And that way you can be a chatting with Travis, the man, the myth, the legend himself, on that 15 minute call. Soon enough, stellar seo.com we will see you there. And thanks Travis for stopping by and giving, giving us a ton of ideas and kind of pushing us in the right direction, telling us where we need to go. I appreciate it very much. Hey,

Travis Bliffin 33:33 thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And like I said, I always love to, love to talk about SEO and link building and content. It gets me off, gets me fired up. The competitive part, you know, it's just, it's fun. It's I just love what I do. And so that's, I know that that's a select group of people who actually get to say that they really love what they do. So if you're out there thinking about making a switch and doing something different, I'm telling you I did, and it's best decision I ever made. You

Robert Plank 34:03 thanks for listening to today's program. Start from the beginning or view past episodes at marketer of the day.com/episodes, you.