What Can We Automate in Link Building?

Still there are cases that we do you know brand mentioned stuff and for any kind of brand mention or link changes or corrections. We – we like to use a – that’s when we like to use a corporate e-mail address, but otherwise we like to use our own e-mail addresses. But not very little is what I would say – is what I would say is like purely automated, but so we do prospecting then ID then – against the you know our the universe of publishers we already know about, so we’re only fine – only going after new ones with whatever prospect list I’ve just done and then we – then it goes to qualifying and contact finding that’s – we’ve got a team of twenty folks doing that in Uganda actually – that’s where we found a strong team we’re able to build around and rely on consistently. So, it’s a really strong group of folks, but they do a lot of the contact finding and qualifying like just is this a real site? And so, we’ve got that part figured out and then it comes over for outreach. Then you know from after outreach we take our – yes and then they go into the queue for content creation and then it – then it goes – then that content has to go back into the queue for sending and then we you know, hope that they publish and then this so – so then there’s a queue beyond that.

So, we have a really kind of elaborate framework and process we follow but it’s – it’s not automated but it is like we do have a tool – we have a system that’s database driven system for managing all of this work. So it’s not – it’s not automated, but it’s definitely managed and I don’t know why you invited me on the show ‘cause we don’t automate very much at all, but I’m happy to be talking about it, but what we don’t automate, I’m excited to tell you about.

JORDAN CHOO

Well, we’ll definitely dive into that later so Venchito I know you mentioned you use some very specific tools so I’d love to dive deeper into them. So, one of the – that you provided with us with is the resource page and the broken link building prospecting cheat sheet. Can you talk a little bit about that?

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, sure. Basically, we are using Google Spreadsheets just to summarize all of the search queries that are team members are using. So, we try to look at any search query that produces a lot of results in specific industry and we try to collect them and if ever we have a new client, we just source them out and see if – if we can actually have a list for the specific industry. So, basically a cheat sheet is what we give to our new members just to – just for them to have an idea what type of search queries they have to use, but they still have the freedom to you know to – to test and experiment which search queries will give them the best results for specific line.

JORDAN CHOO

Cool. And you have this next one right here.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah. Basically – we don’t automate a lot of things we’re just using Google Spreadsheets just to organize and so the good thing with that is that we’re able to just summarize all of the details making sure that the – the important details that we need to use for sending e-mails is already in place and we’ve got – we have separate spreadsheet for each of our clients just to make sure details are organized and we also have our main spreadsheet to – for all of the brief overview and in terms of the industry, in terms of the metrics agreed upon with our clients. So, we have that kind of thing and at the same time we also have individual spreadsheets for clients.

GARRETT FRENCH

Cool.

NOAH LEARNER

Garrett you look like you’re stealing some secrets.

GARRETT FRENCH

I was looking at it. It’s beautiful. Like that spreadsheet is beautiful, Venchito.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah.

GARRETT FRENCH

Yeah. I was just kind of parsing through what I’m seeing and it’s – it’s you’re keeping careful records of individual URLs. It’s – you kind of tent – you know curating and tending your own massive lists of curated resources in you know – you’ve got the broke – the stuff that’s broken and all kind of lined out there. It’s – it’s – it’s beautiful and you’re tracking how they came in the door, what specific queries you used, what was the footprint or the query that you used and so, I see some competitor co-citation or competitor linking in there and then also just straight-ahead Google queries. This is beautiful kit.

NOAH LEARNER

So, in terms of automation of link building – I mean really it sounds like it’s – it’s like how do we automate project management? Or then the – the tech stack or anything like that?

Do you guys automate how to get stuff from Step A to B to C to D?

GARRETT FRENCH

Only on one context, but go ahead Venchito.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah. There are – there are just certain phases in link building wherein we need to identify repetitive tasks where we just actually – we just have to think if we can actually automate that.

For example, in terms of verifying e-mail addresses, if they are valid or not. So, we are using e-mail verification tools just to make sure these e-mails if we – if you pitch this – if you pitch these contacts, we will not be receiving any bounced e-mails or any failed messages or reply.

So, I think just identifying what are the repetitive tasks and at the same what are specific problems that we can actually using a tool and not looking at every phase and trying to automate every stop. I think we can’t really automate everything, just – we just need to look at certain problems that we need to fix.

NOAH LEARNER

At my agency, it’s like process management some steps in onboarding processes become miniature black holes where you have to intervene and those are the most annoying things of all for me. You know like, if someone’s given you analytics access or search console access, there are so many miniature little necks to process.

I mean do you guys encounter those with what you’re doing and how do you overcome them? Sorry, Jordan.

JORDAN CHOO

No, not at all. By all means. Guys, go for it.

NOAH LEARNER

Venchito, do you want to tackle that first?

VENCHITO TAMPON

I think Garrett can answer that.

GARRETT FRENCH

Sure. Okay, how much time do you have? No – let’s I mean – let me peel this back a little bit, but basically what – how do we – how do I address. I call them rabbit holes or you know stuff you kind of fall into that’s potentially going to get you away from doing the work that you – that needs to get done.

I find those the most in prospecting, especially links and resource page prospecting. I tried to get, you know, you just sort of know. Over time you know when those things are going to likely to happen and you try to shortcut and just say, “This is gonna have to be good enough.” Or you know this – I won’t know every single URL that – that I could possibly e-mail. I’m gonna, you know, 95% of them.

So, it’s – it’s also kind of giving yourself time limits. I think I would look at I’m not sure specifically what the outcome is that you need to have happen. The other piece is maybe that’s so how I scaled the agency was I just picked the things I didn’t like to do or I like doing the least and then hired people to do that.

And so, if you had – you could, you know, treat this the same way, but it might be that you need somebody that’s a little more like hard-nosed about it or I don’t know what it is that’s – that’s drawing you off tasks, Noah. But whatever that might be, just give it to somebody else. You know, who’s – who maybe already has – or you can talk to him about what the output needs to look like from this task. But then just – then you get to walk away from it.

So, that’d be the other suggestion I would have specifically – specific to that.

NOAH LEARNER

I didn’t mean to take us down a rabbit hole.

GARRETT FRENCH

Thanks a lot. This is – it’s – I could have said so many other brilliant about link building. No, just messing. No, that’s a great question. I think you know – there’s a lot of – a lot of space to where you should be talking about little hacks or ideas for improvement on your – within – within an agency for sure. So, I enjoy talking. Anytime I’m saying words I like it so –

NOAH LEARNER

No! 

JORDAN CHOO

So, with that being said, it sounds like you know, Venchito and Garrett, you – the both of you don’t really have a whole lot of automation in your link building process.

So, I would you know – with this question, should link building even be automated, right? We know that the most effective campaigns require a lot of, you know high, touch personalization.

So, I’d love to hear a little bit more about, you know, why haven’t gone down this rabbit hole of automation?

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah. I think mostly, in terms of automation, I think you just need to strike the balance between finding activities that should be done manually.

For example, outreach, building relationships with publishers, conversing with them. This thing should be done by a V.A. (Virtual Assistant) or a team member. Whereas, link prospecting can be done in this – on scalable basis.

So, identifying activities that should be done manually because it requires human eyes. For example, checking if – checking every URL if they’re relevant. It’s not something that can be automated. So, it requires human eyes to see if it’s actually niche-relevant.

Metrics can – pulling out metrics for a list of URLs can be automated, but you can’t really – you can’t really filter those – those pages in terms of relevance if you’re just using tools. So, you need some human eyes to – to identify it on relevant spaces.

So, I think it’s just striking the balance between identifying activities that should be done manually and those things that should be automated.

GARRETT FRENCH

I would venture that there’s more of a case or opportunity for automation if you’re in-house at a – and you don’t have you know, multiple clients and multiple verticals.

Once concept I’ve been knocking around is sort of you know, think back to Venchito’s list of looked like more drug rehab-related URLs. Our resources, well if you had let’s say 5,000 URLs that where in this specific vertical, you just raked out all their out bounds – you know all the out bounds that were in this whole corpus and then you checked each of those out bounds continually to see if they’ve gone dead or not. And then if they have, then you get a notification and you can figure out what to do next.

So, something like that I could see – now, that’s hypothetical that to my knowledge – that tool doesn’t exist, but like that’s the kind of thing that if you’re in-house you can start kind of with – with some I mean you could do that with a client to – you don’t have to be just an in-house. But you’re gonna have – you have – your – your target doesn’t move as much is what I’m saying topically.

So, when you can really focus in on a topic and a specific kind of tactic you can take more shortcuts and I’ll give another example. This one we’re actually doing for Zip Sprout is we have actually well – we were pre-prospecting, so we found in the neighborhood and I think it’s our previous corpus or URLs was about 3 Million. We’re going up probably closer to 12 (Million) on the next corpus, but this is – these are URLs that we’ve extracted just like the link prospector does through scraping a search engine and but they’re all – then we have a layer of filtering that we apply because what we’re looking for – for Zip Sprout is a very specific particular kind of page to – to support a very specific singular tactic which is finding sponsorship opportunities for local visibility, but that could also potentially be a link opportunity, so if you happen to sponsor that event or organization.

So, there’s a lot of really clear identifiers on these pages and so we’re able to filter with a high level of effectiveness and then we can also check to count how many out bounds are happen to be on the page. And so, we’re able to establish for ourselves you know, very effectively that this URL or this domain, this publisher is pre-qualified for an e-mail.

Now, here’s the other trick about it’s – it’s really – it’s always risky to send an e-mail to somebody you’ve never looked on the website. Okay? Just don’t do it. But the thing is if you’re buying, right? Like you’re – we’re going in we’re trying to find price on a sponsorship opportunity, okay?

If you’re going – if you could walk in a store, but you walk in the wrong store, you know with money, no – you know nobody’s gonna really get upset with you. If you walk in asking for something for free. If they’ll link to this or fix that or whatever it’s a different – it’s a different game, right? It’s a different – so, there’s more leeway in my opinion when you’re buying something you can – you can be a little more free with the e-mail you sent.

Now, I don’t know for sure if we’re gonna be e-mailing without checking sites or anything. Process wise, I don’t think we’ve fully established that, but I do think we’re probably gonna have a layer of human you know, “Hey, let’s look at this site before we send an e-mail,” because what we’re trying to get is a big data set of pricing information for sponsorship opportunities in – in every city of the United States. So, we have to cover a lot of ground and so it is sort of link-related, guys, not – it doesn’t have to be just links though because this is also very much about just pure visibility, local reach that sort of thing. But it can also be about links and that’s why I bring it up, but the point is when you can – when you know – when you’ve got a singular tactic – when you’ve got a some very clear signals from the page, they qualify that page for being worth an e-mail that’s when I think automation is more possible and you know we don’t – we’re not gonna try and build a link from every one of these, we’re just trying to get pricing information so, it really isn’t even link building per se, but the point is it’s about quality. If you could really qualify, you’ve got a singular kind of tactic, that’s where automation is going to be more possible or you know they’re gonna find more process improvements you can make you – if it’s going to be something you do long term. You’re gonna have more justification in building out tools for very you know for these very specific tactics.

So, you know, on one hand don’t do tactics, but on the other hand do tactics if it can make sense and you know – so, anyways ask me more questions though I’m afraid I probably glossed over some important parts of that –

NOAH LEARNER

Can I ask a question? So, in a number of your videos, guys, you talk a lot about hey you know I’m working on something, I’ve got a hypothesis and a lot of these hypotheses I haven’t seen follow-up videos after so –

GARRET FRENCH

Is that a question? I don’t hear a question, I hear an accusation, but keep going.

NOAH LEARNER

Not Venchito, but that’s Garrett. So, the question is –

GARRETT FRENCH

I don’t think anyone watch them –

NOAH LEARNER

So, the question is – about what you just said – so, you have a tactic you figure out a strategy and then you – you can then potentially automate it. So, I’m hearing a potential for building out a process around the creation of an automation, you know, workflow per tactic –

GARRETT FRENCH

Yeah –

NOAH LEARNER

By tactic. And then the second piece of that I guess forget about what I just said but the next question –

GARRETT FRENCH

What did I do to you?

NOAH LEARNER

I had too much coffee.

GARRETT FRENCH

Oh my god.

NOAH LEARNER

This much – I didn’t sleep very well/

GARRETT FRENCH

No, I love it –

NOAH LEARNER

I know –

GARRETT FRENCH

I don’t know. I’ll say lots of this stuff, but follow up with me and I’ll answer your question if I’m able to. But also, I just make things up to as a I go along. Keep going.

NOAH LEARNER

Yeah. So, seriously though, how do you test your hypothesis and can that process be automated or at least have a feedback loops that’s automated?

GARRETT FRENCH

I would never – any hypothesis, anything that I’m testing is I’m gonna be super hands-on about. So, way like it would go, “Hey, maybe I could scale this and then it would be or maybe I could automate some portion of this,” and frankly I mean I’ll just say again like we don’t automate anything really like in the true sense of what you know. But if you – if you – even if you could build a process to something or scale to something that’s why you brought up that hey you helped somebody with their CSS – I mean the way to scale that is if you could search source code on –

NOAH LEARNER

Yeah –

GARRETT FRENCH

You know whatever top 1,000 sites and then start sending some e-mails. That’s – that – that’s I wouldn’t say automatable, but certainly you could build process around it and the look for portions of process that you could automate or you know move from one place to the other automatically.

But anyhow, I would – I would – I would venture and I’m guessing Venchito would back me up on this. But it’s like if you’ve got a new idea that’s the last thing you want to look. You – you don’t want to establish a process yet. You want to see what plays out. Who – how people respond, what – what is the play like? You know what is – how do you need to shift it up – what – it’s very tactile at that point and I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t want to automate   it. I’ll give an example, but I’m talking long enough and so I’m gonna let Venchito talk about this too.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah. I think if – what Garrett is trying to say it’s more of a – before you actually try to automate a specific a tactic, you’ve got to understand what specific opportunities are already in place –

GARRETT FRENCH

Yep –

VENCHITO TAMPON

Meaning you want to make sure that if you are – if you will be testing, experimenting that, this can actually be a scaleleable tactic later on. So, yeah, I think that’s – that’s – that’s how things work.

JORDAN CHOO

Well, alright guys let’s go to the next question. So, how you approach automation when it comes to link building? I think we already –

GARRETT FRENCH

I was supposed to wait to talk about what we’re doing with this route, so you know we can in – we can end the webinar early. Just kidding. I’m just kidding.

JORDAN CHOO

So – so let’s actually talk about what have the both of you been able to successfully automate? I know we’ve kind of touched upon it throughout our – our conversation so far, but I’d love to hear a little bit more.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, can I go first?

JORDAN CHOO

Yeah, by all means.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, I think I’m going with the prospecting side and if you’re doing broken link building, resource page building you’ve got to – if you’re doing it on a scale and – so you have to use Citation Labs link prospecting to even though – yes – if you’re trying to collect a lot of link prospects for a specific industry and very specific or phrase for – for a very specific  audience going – really prospecting in terms of outreach we use variety of e-mail verification tools though we try to into a manual route to really hire some virtual – some virtual assistant you get contacts.

We – we don’t want to automate a hunted finding. We want to make sure that those e-mails are – I mean there’s – there’s someone who can really identify if this e-mail address is worth pitching to. So, I think – there’s link press. I would go with successful automation I would go with the link prospecting inside.

JORDAN CHOO

Interesting. So, quick question. As a follow up to e-mail verification, are you running a domain through something like hundred – and then bulk exporting the e-mails and then checking each one individually for each and every single domain? Or is it literally here’s a domain to someone go and find the most appropriate person?

VENCHITO TAMPON

I think there are two things. Number one, we just make it – we just want to make sure that these e-mail addresses are valid, meaning they’re still functioning. I mean if you will send an e-mail to this specific e-mail address we can get or we could probably get a response, not a fail message, not a bounce back.

I mean – and the second thing is we meet – we hire some virtual assistance because there are like e-mail addresses like [email protected] that will just be sprouted if you are tying to automate contact finding. And we need someone who can identify it’s not [email protected] that we should be pitching but rather [email protected] that’s already posted in the resource page.

So, those kinds of things will require some – some human touch.

JORDAN CHOO

Very cool.

NOAH LEARNER

Though when you’re using a tool like BrightVerify and you can quickly filter through a whole contact list and it’ll say like do you want to get rid of all these –

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, yeah –

NOAH LEARNER

What’s your take on that? Do you just dump all the Gmail’s and Yahoo’s? Or how do you filter through?

VENCHITO TAMPON

I think –

NOAH LEARNER

Because I found it’s like 25% in my contacts. It seems like –

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, I think there are – there’s already some – there – let’s say if you are trying to check the validity of let’s say a hundred (100) of your e-mail addresses, there’s already a percentage rate. Let’s see 5 or 10% are – are – are not valid and so from that 90% remaining you just need someone to look at from – from a human touch or human eyes.

NOAH LEARNER

So, valid to you is – is just dead versus what the tools perceive is like ghost domains or whatever?

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, after the automation tool which is the e-mail verification – it should be – it should be leading to another manual filtering.

NOAH LEARNER

Got it. Okay.

JORDAN CHOO

Interesting. How about yourself, Garrett?

GARRETT FRENCH

Well, I’m trying to you know be as like related to automation as possible, but I think one – you know if we talk about what processes do we kind of do automatically, they’re not automated in the true sense, but follow-ups are huge you know follow up e-mails are very – we always do them and we have a you know set cadence for those I’m – I’m not – I don’t know exactly what is this probably like it varies and – and how many we do can vary from vertical to vertical or give and send to give and send, but definitely follow ups is one in a sequence of activities we do just – you can’t relay on a single e-mail to get someone to take action. It can sometimes take two to three maybe more.

So, that – that I would say is – is in that what you’re talking – it’s audit – we do it automatically, but it’s not – it’s not automated, but and then I mean I think a little bit on the – I guess it’s not again it’s not really automated, but link checking because with – with links and resource and – and blog placements and really any of the methods of link building.

It’s hard to – it can be hard to find the links you’ve earned sometimes and so we’ve got a lot of processes around that – that we do you know every month and are kind of automatic I guess to an extent so we’re looking large bodies of large groups of pages that – that could potentially be a link that we’ve earned and then we check and see if  there’s actually a link on there and then we – then of course I have to verify against where we’ve sent e-mails to make sure that this  was really ours and so maybe a little bit on the link checking side, but you know I think my takeaway from this is that there’s still a lot of opportunity for tools for link building agencies. There’s a lot of – you know I think some potential for automation and some of these – some of these key areas that you know if you make tools you should – you should be definitely paying attention to this, but anyhow that I saw – so follow up and then kind of link checking as a – as a job that we do.

I would say is – is definitely you know we’re its automatic and that we have to do it every week and then we have some key super repeatable kinds of things we do or check-in HREFs and I don’t think we have the – any like – that we’re actually pulling the API at all, that’d be a really good idea for – for link reports and everything, but I’ll – I’ll check in with the team on that one. But – but yeah, I think there’s definitely some automation opportunities there in the link checking side and the also again in the follow up side, just remembering to follow up and having that kind of sequence all mapped out already.

JORDAN CHOO

Cool. And have any of you failed miserably at automating something?

VENCHITO TAMPON

Sure. There’s a lot of things in –

JORDAN CHOO

Please by all means share.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah. Which we tried automating initial pitches to – to link prospects so instead of no – no there though we really understand that there are that we need to actually send templated. There are kind of like – there are variables in – that we need to actually personalize depending on the niche, depending on the client that you’re working with, but we have tried to you know automate sending initial pitches to a hundred or even a thousand e-mail addresses and it fails. It failed given the response rate and the conversion rate is very low so I think that was just a – an experiment that is bound to fail in the first place so –

JORDAN CHOO

Interesting. Why – why do you think it failed?

VENCHITO TAMPON

I think – I think that the idea of there’s no sense of personal touch – I mean personalization is still – still key, though you can create templates – e-mail templates for specific list of link prospects, you still have to get some variables just to insert relevance from a receiver  – from a sender to receiver point of  view. So, I think the personal – personalization still matters especially local and which the niche initiative needs game play.

JORDAN CHOO

Garrett, I see you’re nodding your head.

GARRETT FRENCH

Oh yeah. Just the smaller the pool of opportunities the more personalized you need to be. I just told a B2B (Business to Business) Company today we wouldn’t be a strong fit and they need to look for a PR (Public Relations) Agency ‘cause they’re in a space that you know, only they’ve heard about – you know not really there – it’s a – it’s a – it’s a – it’s a – but they only have one main competitor and so it’s – it is a small niche and you know I can run, I can tell you who the – who links to the competitor, but so can they.

You just go to you know any tool and the real – at that – at that level it should be more of a kind of a PR play and it’s a pure relationship play and every e-mail has to really provide and – and have a very clear vision of value to the recipient and in order to do that effectively, you really need to understand that specific space and that specific vertical.

So – so yeah, I think the smaller that – that – that – what Venchito was saying really resonate with me because the smaller the niche the more care that really has to be taken with you know – local is a perfect example. I mean how many local blogs do you have; you know? There’s – there’s – there usually I call you know I say it’s an inch deep in a mile wide, but there’s not a ton of blog opportunity in any given city so you can burn through it real fast and you – you – you know conversion rate is key there so – so yeah I definitely agree that kind of templated pitches especially in small – small verticals is a – is a recipe for disaster.

But as far as failing – failures on – on – on – on our part for automation, one – this was a failure, a mismatch between tactic and I guess I don’t know we used a branded e-mail address – we used a client e-mail address for link requesting and for the first and last time you know it was what I would call – links and resource page. Link requesting was in the – it was in the – the tech space which is in – in hindsight, you know this was many years ago, but in hindsight it was very foolish choice but just because  the – the there aren’t that many links and resource pages that are pure tech and then there – there’s a you know you go in the computer side but I mean the – the computer Science side like edu (.edu), but it was – it wasn’t quite a fit there and so, we – we e-mail people with their permission from their e-mail address until their lawyer called us and said you are ceased and desist right now and we sure did.

But it was – it was definitely scary and definitely an important lesson where I would say, but the mismatch was we were doing link requests with a – with the corporate e-mail and we weren’t doing them super personalized either you know – it was – we were – we were young. I say we but it was me, he wasn’t we. I know this was all on me but, but anyways that was a – that was definitely a miserable failure and – and it was a very anxiety inducing failure as well to you know have to be having several calls with – with – with the in-house counsel was – was definitely not you know it was hard, it was tough time and so, that’s – that’s where like if you’re doing branded stuff, be super careful and be super even more careful than you normally are in terms of prospecting and qualifying and all that sort of thing.

I – this is another one. This kind of another mismatch and you kind of learn this along the way. This isn’t necessarily automation, but we – I’ve done a lot of prospecting of links and resource pages that were maintained by realtors? Or I assume for maintained? We had like 20,000 we want to send e-mails to. We ended up getting, I think three or four links out of the whole mess of it. After sending 20,000 e-mails.

JORDAN CHOO

Wow.

GARRETT FRENCH

And right, and – and the problem is that they don’t care about their links and resource pages nor do they care about adding our resources to them. So, it was a – the lesson was the – the publisher type is – doesn’t care about updating their like – if the link is broken that might have been a play, but we didn’t even try that.

So, it was just a – a really – it was an enormous resource waste as what it was and – but I would – that’s one of my other kind of memorable failures where I just you know kind of reminding myself like I just don’t like realtors. I’m just kidding.  I’m just like I – I just like can’t expect just because somebody’s got a link and resource page that they actually care about it. That they actually maintain it or – or update it and so that’s another kind of assumption that you learn along the way is not everybody with a links and resource page is actually a prospect at al.

So, we actually – how we solved this a little bit is – is we just search for links and resource pages. We set in – you do this in link prospector. You can do it directly in Google, but you can set to look for just pages from the past year. And what it’ll show you is pages that have been updated in the last year as well.

Now, it could have been a template update, it could have been having nothing to do with the links on the page, but you’re more likely to get a actively curated links and resource page that way it’s just by looking for pages that have been – they’ll just set the times – the timestamp in Google to past year.

JORDAN CHOO

Very cool –

GARRETT FRENCH

One little workaround for that but –

JORDAN CHOOS

And – and now that we’re coming to the top of the hour, last question here. What’s the future of link building? Both of you. The million dollar question.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah.

GARRETT FRENCH

Go ahead, Venchito. 

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah, I think I can –

GARRETT FRENCH

I don’t know what to say. I got a lot – I’m gonna have to hear you say it first.

VENCHITO TAMPON

I think there are already a lot of round up boost about that. There’s a lot of SEO polls the future of link building. I think links are still valuable and the reason behind is that visitors visit pages through these links and they think that’s – that’s a very important point that links will never be less valuable in terms of not just ranking but all of the traffic, assisted conversions, all of these things.

But in terms of the – the way – the way agencies seek companies to execute link building, I think there will be – there is a need to specialize and not just choose a tactic from a list of strategies that had already been posted somewhere.

Agencies and I think companies need to learn on how to identify available link opportunities on their – in their specific industry. And not create, but try to understand why are these link linkers are linking the specific competitor or by a specific website by understanding the relationship between pages and pages.

I think there is an opportunity to – to discovering a specific tactic for that specific niche and not just strategy and tactics. I there are a lot of need for tools – Zip Sprout I mean I just recently tested the Zip Sprout sponsorship finder and we’re trying to add another service in our agency.

GARRETT FRENCH

Thank you, Venchito.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Yeah and I think that’s – that’s a very good tool in really automating that’s – the prospecting because we’ve done local sponsorship campaigns in the past and it’s not been working for us on a scale – on a scalable basis given we – there are a lot of time that we have to consume in prospecting. Just the idea that there a lot of problems, may not be problems, but I think there are a lot of need for some tools to be created in the future. But I think there’s a lot, I mean there are – there are outreach tools like BuzzStream are – are – are updating their features from time to time just to serve specific task or specific activity and making sure that there is a smooth process along the way.

So, I think there’s a lot of things in terms of strategy engines.

NOAH LEARNER

Can I summarize what I’ve heard?

VENCHITO TAMPON

Sure.

NOAH LEARNER

So, I’m hearing that automation like the way that I practice it where I’m pushing lots of data around between web hooks and using automation tool kits – it’s not really necessarily gonna happen anytime soon with great effect.

But what I’m hearing is that it’s really the – the processes. It’s about thinking, about how can I scale whatever I’m doing in a manageable efficient process that’s profitable so that as Garrett reminded me why he loves SEO – we can stack cash. It’s really in the process that’s efficient. What’s that?

GARRETT FRENCH

I didn’t know you’re gonna reveal my secret identity as Eugene Crab like – thanks. Thanks, man.

Yeah – yeah, but it is about making money for sure. But I think the – the you know if you’re trying to run a profitable agency, if you’re not focused on that, at least partly on that then you’re not gonna have a sustainable operation.

But – but yeah, I think from a future perspective what I’m always looking for is how – how important does the link remain for Google. And I – you know I rely on understanding that from my peers in the industry, just what are – what are folks saying, you know how impactful do links seem to remain.

And so from what I hear, links are going to likely remain a key element for ranking, decision-making for the algorithm, for the foreseeable future. And then you know, the other piece of that is – is really on a I guess a niche by niche basis as – as I think Venchito does in his – in his agency. Looking at how do we find sites that will send referral traffic – that are potential sort.

So, you’re really it is – it’s – it’s about looking, asking and thinking deeper than just the – the SERPs, but hey what’s really happening? What – what is this audience like? How can we connect with them in a meaningful way? And – and maybe get some customers or visits from – from – from those – from that visibility that we’re – we’ve worked so hatrd to earn, you know.

You’ve – it’s – it’s so – it’s so expensive all the time spent, you know, prospecting, qualifying, contact finding, template writing, template personalization, and it’s like well what else can we get if that link happens. How – how can we make that link as valuable as possible.

I think that is where some of the future could be as well, but I just made that up so it might not but, you know that’s that went from – from thinking about it from – from what I know of in Venchito does. I think there’s – there’s a lot more the remains in that particular space for – for growing the – the potential value of link building.

JORDAN CHOO

Very interesting, very interesting. So, with that all being said – Venchito, Garrett, thank you guys so much for hopping on the hangout. I know both know and I appreciate it. Same with everyone listening.

In terms of next steps, guys, we do have Chase Granberry coming on – on our next hangout which is Friday, May 31^st from 02:00 PM to 03:00 PM MST. We’ll be talking about automating log file collection and analysis.

I’ve seen the product that’s he’s working on. It’s super cool. If you’re into analyzing log files or technical SEO, highly recommend you check it out.

And you know have – have a great weekend everyone. Take care.

GARRETT FRENCH

Thanks everybody.

NOAH LEARNER

Thanks. This was a real blast, Garrett and Venchito. I’m so glad we got to spend an hour together.

GARRETT FRENCH

Thank you, guys.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Thank you very much.

NOAH LEARNER

Have a fantastic weekend.

GARRETT FRENCH

You too.

NOAH LEARNER

Ciao! (Bye!)

GARRETT FRENCH

Bye, guys.

JORDAN CHOO

Take care.

VENCHITO TAMPON

Alright.