SEO & Backlink Strategies With Richard Kennedy

To rank on Google, you need a few things. You need a technically sound website. You need to match the intent. So if someone's looking for SEO services, you have to have SEO services and you have to have authority. And authority you get mostly from links. So links count as votes and votes aren't all equal. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob Dosta.

So welcome everybody to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. I am excited to be joined by one of my clients and one of the self running agency group members, Richard Kennedy. And Richard runs e commerce SEO agency Arken Marketing. Now Arken helps SME e commerce businesses grow and compete using SEO and backlink strategies. Welcome Richard. And is there anything else you wanted to add to my introduction to talk a little bit more about who you are, what you do?

No. Well, thanks for having me. And you kind of got it in one really just help small to medium sized e commerce businesses try and compete with the bigger boys in their market.

Fantastic. And how long have you been running Arken?

Five or six years now. I, I actually can't remember when I, when I started, but I kind of started off as a, a freelancer and then just, it kind of happened naturally that I could bring it into the the agency brand rather than just being a freelancer. So it just kind of happened naturally. Really.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that will be a very common story to many listeners and indeed that was the same as my journey that I started out as a freelancing on my own and then got the opportunity to grow my agency and had to make that choice from being a freelancer to actually growing a business. What are your aspirations for Arken?

I don't want to be a too large agency. I'm a very small agency at the moment, but I don't want to be too big. But I've always wanted it to kind of fuel my other projects. So I have interest in plenty of other things. I've kind of used this as a way to explore my other passions, but that's kind of how I hope it goes or envision it going. But no, I don't have aspirations to be a huge SEO agency. I see some of them on, especially on LinkedIn and it just seems like an absolute nightmare to manage to me and it's not something I have personal aspirations to be, to be honest with you.

Yeah, well, I think, you know, if you have a clear plan and this is the stuff that we talk about in the program if you have a clear plan and so you know where you're headed, then you can kind of create controlled growth, whatever that means. And of course, not every business, you know, defines its success by how big it is or how fast it grows. So I think it's really interesting that you say you want Arken to be a vehicle to enable you to explore your other passions, because getting that balance as an entrepreneur right in your time can often be a challenge. And we can all get very consumed by our business and that becomes our life rather than, you know, it supporting our life.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I say the passion, I don't mean like, I'm not going to be a professional golfer, which is my, I suppose, the only hobby I have outside of work. But the. Yeah, I just. I just feel like there's a lot of opportunity with the skill set of SEO and digital marketing to explore other avenues. And I don't think people should necessarily pigeonhole themselves in it for forever in that sense.

No, no, sure. I mean, I'm a good example of that. This is career number three for me. So I started out as a bad programmer at IBM, found my way into marketing, became. Oh, it's career four, really. Became marketing manager for a software company, then started my agency, ran that for 11 years before selling up and then retraining to become a coach is what I do now. So I've actually had four pretty different careers. So. Yeah, absolutely. And just a little bit of a sidetrack before we jump into talking more about SEO and backlink strategies and all that stuff. Arken has a very clear position and a very clear niche in that you provide SEO services to SME, e commerce businesses. And listeners to this podcast will know that I am a big fan and a big advocate of agencies getting a clear niche. So I'm just interested to understand how you chose that niche and what you see some of the benefits of working in that particular area are.

Yeah, so like, I imagine most, not all, most SEO agencies, they start and they service everybody. Anyone who wants SEO, they service them. We noticed a clear pattern of who we can help best and who we can track the results best on. So it's. We still do have clients that aren't within that certain market. But there's like, I had a call the other day with a B2B client that they only need a couple of calls or conversions a year to make it absolutely worth it. And as great as that is, it's not something that we can track that well. So when we notice a VCommerce when we, when we do good work, we can see the results quickly. So it's nice for. It's nice for us to see the benefit we're having. It's easier for us to track. It's something we enjoy working on. It's just made a lot easier niching down. We still do have clients outside of that, but it does make it easier and we can hone our skills better if we are dedicated onto E commerce. It's been a lot. Really good for us.

Yeah, absolutely. And a good point that you make there is just because you are niched into a certain sector doesn't preclude you from taking on clients outside of that nation. That's something I always tell everybody. And that's true for me. I have a couple of clients that are not agencies, like having architects that, you know, it's not an agency at all. So you just take those clients on on a case by case sort of basis, but you market yourself as being in that niche. What advice would you give to an agency, an SEO agency that's scared of niching because they think they might lose business opportunities if they don't niche down?

I think niching is very good for numerous reasons. But how I think you should do it before I get onto the benefits is don't go into it niching before you've actually worked with what you think is your ideal client because it may not be what you think it is. We were quite lucky in that we had a range of clients and we kind of naturally fell into the clients that we like working with the ones that we can get the best results. So I wouldn't just decide it before you've actually worked with them. I know that can be quite difficult to understand, but not difficult to understand. Difficult to get these clients if you're not niche. But it's something I was scared of at first and I'm not scared of. But since we've done it, we've been able to hone our services to our select clients. So not only can we give them better results, we can charge more and more of them come to us who are ideal clients. There's no or there's a lot less stress involved with dealing with clients that we kind of don't really want to work with. We're only working with people that we want to work with and they want to work with us. And it's made it a whole lot easier in the long run and the short term.

Yeah. And that's a really good piece of advice, actually, that I should use more with people, which is get clients in your target niche first of all, to A, prove that you can win them, to B, prove that you can do a great job for them and to see, show that you actually enjoy working with them because that may well impact, you know, how you niche and where you niche.

Yeah, yes, exactly. Right. I just think it's important to know you like working with them before you commit to, you know, all your branding or being, for example, dedicated to E commerce. And then once you've got an E commerce client, you really don't enjoy it. It's kind of seems a bit backwards, but. No, it's definitely been a positive move for us.

Yeah. And of course there are some sectors that will get the services that you offer more than other sectors. So that's a part to play in it. Like if you were, I don't know how good an example of this is, but if you were trying to sell SEO services to say, manufacturing businesses, you might find that harder because they don't really get, I mean, I might be completely wrong here, of course, but they don't really get SEO and they don't really understand the value of it.

Yeah, there's not many established E commerce businesses that don't know what SEO is and the value it can bring doesn't necessarily mean they're implementing it, but they do understand the value of it. They do understand what it is. For a start, they're not, you know, it's not smoke and mirrors to them. They, they are aware of it.

Yeah. And of course they're going to be very dependent on, on it to generate revenue for their business. So let's, let's move on to talk about SEO, which is kind of the topic of today's conversation. Can you just start out by giving us and the listeners a broad definition of what se.

So search engine optimization is optimizing for search engines. Most commonly, everyone refers to Google, but that doesn't necessarily mean just Google. So you've got like Amazon from an E commerce standpoint. You've got, you know, YouTube, you've got Bing. It's all the different search engines. And you can do stuff like if you're a content creator, you can optimize for like Gumroad and stuff like that. So it's basically optimizing to get your listing hire in a specific search engine.

Right.

Or I try and describe it like I help people find what they're already looking for because they're not going on a search engine looking for trees and then they come up with, you know, I'm not trying to get in front of those sell SEO services. They're already looking for the business, which is why it probably converts a lot higher than, than anything else. Because, you know, you don't go on Twitter to look for SEO, so well, you can do. But if they're, if they're finding your Google, they're already looking for your business. So yeah, that's the kind of broad definition of SEO, I think.

Yeah. And if, if there was you sitting in one corner talking about SEO and then someone else who was a big fan of ppc, like paid advertising, what would you say? The advantages of using SEO, which is earned. Excuse me, it's not paid traffic. Right. It's. It's earned traffic. That's the right term. So what advantage would you say over using SEO versus ppc, or should you use both?

Well, I, I think you should use both. I think any successful business will, won't just rely on one source, but the biggest difference or the biggest selling point in organic traffic is if you turn off your ads. You know, your traffic doesn't go, go off overnight. It's something that you've, you've earned. It's something that you'll have for a while as long as you've done it properly. So it's, it's not something that, you know, cost X and you get Y from it. It's, you know, you earn it and it stays with you for a while if you do it properly.

Yeah, so that's, that's an important distinction to make, I just want to emphasize. So you're saying basically, if you pay for advertising, the minute you turn those ads off, you, your traffic is going to disappear because you don't have that source anymore. Whereas if you've put a good SEO strategy in place, it's going to last for a while and it's going to keep working beyond the time of initially putting that strategy in place.

Exactly. Yeah. And there's a inherent trust as well. Like when you Google, like for a business or a service, if they're ranked organically, there's an inherent trust. You get that they're number one. So you kind of, not that you just assume they're the best, but there is a trust factor involved with ranking organically as opposed to being a paid ad up there.

Yeah. So have you got any other thoughts on. You sort of answered this anyway, but on why SEO is such an effective strategy. Like if I'm a small agency and I'm putting my marketing in place, why should I Put SEO as one of the top strategies that I invest in.

But it's just, you have to remember that with SEO you're targeting people that are already looking for you. So you're not forcing something on them that they're not interested in. They're already interested in your services to some degree. Where they are in the funnel depends on what sort of content you build. But they're already looking for you. You just got to be in front of them at the right time because they're already looking for you.

So, yeah, okay, so, so let's talk a bit about link building and then I'll come back to SEO broadly. Now, I've seen the benefits myself of doing link building, but can you just explain a bit about what link building is and why people should be doing it?

Yeah, so I'll give you a quick kind of 30 second explanation. So to rank on Google, you need a few things. You need a technically sound website, you need to match the intent. So if you, someone's looking for SEO services, you have to have SEO services and you have to have authority. And authority you get mostly from, from links. So links count as, as votes and votes aren't all equal. So the benefit with link building is, well, without link building, it's very, very difficult to compete in the competitive markets. It's normally the difference maker. So it is, it's important for certain markets. It's not, it's not vital for all markets, but anything competitive, a difference maker is more often than not link building. So if you want to overtake a big player, it's usually a lack of links. Not always, but it's usually a lack of links.

So, so let's just take, that's, that's a good explanation, but let's just take a step back. For anybody that's listening to this and going, that's fine, but I don't understand what link building is.

All right, okay, so link is essentially when you go on a website and you have the blue hypertext and you link from one site to another, that's a link you can have. So there's a difference between referring domains and backlinks. A backlink is the individual link. So if your website, if you link to my website 10 times throughout your website, that's one referring domain and 10 links. That's, that's what the difference is. And there's various different types of links. You can have image links, you can have no follow, you can have follow links, you can have redirects. And I won't explain all of Those because I could be here forever. But some links are worth more than others. Follow is mostly what people count when they're talking about, you know, I need X links. It's not mostly. Follow link, follow links. Yeah.

So, yeah. And how does this all come into play with domain authority rankings? And what the hell does that mean as well?

So domain authority, domain rating, trust flow and citation. I think citation flow from Majestic are all numbers that tools give you, so they don't mean anything. So you can. The problem with relying on those as well as they can be easily manipulated. So it used to be page rank. All these numbers don't really mean anything, to be honest with you. So they. We used to. Or we still do report on domain rating, but it doesn't. It's a. If I had to explain the overall power of the domain in five seconds, that's what I would use. But it's just a real kind of vague look at how powerful a website is. It doesn't mean a lot on its own. You've got to look at the links that they're getting this domain rating from. Traffic, relevance. It's not just. So I wouldn't just rely on those metrics, but it is kind of a good, quick indication as to a value of a link. But there's a lot more to it than just domain authority or domain rating.

So just. Yeah, so, yeah, because that's useful for me to know because I've always looked at my domain authority or rating and think it's always too low and look at my competitors and it's a lot higher. So I've been sort of striving to improve that. But as you said, that's only one. One way of ranking.

Yeah.

Well, your website's performing.

Yeah. So Google doesn't rank websites based on their domain authority or their domain rating. It's a. It's a good indicator, but it's something that could be easily manipulated. You can just go on fiverr and type in domain authority and there's so many gigs that you can artificially boost it that provide absolutely no benefit other than associate your website with a potentially bad neighborhood.

Yeah. So talk us through some strategies for link building. Like if I was doing this myself, what would I be doing? What would I be trying to achieve?

So there's, I mean, there's hundreds of different strategies that you can, that you can implement. So we try and focus on a few core ones. So depending on the client, you've got images, if you've got great imagery, that's a fantastic way to get links you can get. The top websites in the world aren't going out and creating their own images for that article, so they will source them from third party, which is a great way. You've got guest posting, although it's typically got a, a worse name now because it's. People associate it with the spam tactics. I'm sure you get it as well, you know, offering you guest posts. You've got digital pr, which is something we're doing more and more of lately. You've got the thing that we love. What I love to do the most is build assets that build links. So think of it like a useful, like it could be a calculator, it could be a, you know, a listicle, it could be, it could be anything that's useful to your industry, that has a search, volume, statistics, pages are great because you can build it, you can promote it and then it will naturally build you links over time. So that's what we focus on. But yeah, the easiest way to get into it would probably be the guest posting route by essentially putting your content on other people's sites. But it has to be good and don't fall into the trap of buying the links that people will email you and the massive Excel sheets because they are 99% absolute junk and you don't want anything to do with that. That's kind of the easy way into it.

And I guess there's a danger there that the whole point of link building is that you want a high performing, high ranking website to refer people to your website or you know, use your images or use your tool, as you said. And if you've got lots of backlinks coming to your website, but the actual quality of the websites they're coming from is not very good, I guess that can damage your own SEO.

Yeah, well, to be honest, the link penalties are far less common than they used to be. So Google's a lot better at just discounting them. So you're, you're wasting your time and effort in the first place. So I, I just, I would set your expectation. Well, set your standards higher than what maybe typically people do. Just because if you do it, if you're not setting your standards high, you could just be wasting your time putting effort into sites that aren't worth anything. You know, if you, if you submit crap content to a crap website, it's not going to do your business any good, it's just a waste of time.

Yeah. So this is a message of quality over quantity. Better off building one backlink a month from a good website with good content than you would be doing 10 or 20 or 50 or 100.

Yeah, I don't know about those. It depends. It's very subjective what is a good or bad backlink. But yeah, for example, you wouldn't go on fiverr and have a 100 automated links that just, you just get no value from it whatsoever. And I would rather spend my time and money on creating a good piece of content that would naturally build links over time. But you do have to, you do have to promote that content as well. It won't just, you can't unless you're a, a large established business, you know you already have a search presence. It's not a case of build it and they will come. You do need to promote these assets as well. But I would rather spend my time and money on one piece of great content that can build links over the next six to 12 months than blasting links from rubbish websites.

Yeah. A couple of years ago I pursued HubSpot to be, to write a guest blog for them and they had lots of hurdles that you had to jump over. But eventually I wrote this article on client and account management for their, for their blog. And HubSpot is a really good active marketer and obviously a good product, but they, they're a great marketer and I guess their website ranks really highly. And I could see, when it went live, I could see a significant increase in traffic to my website and most importantly, because I was allowed to promote one download in that guest blog, I could actually see the number of people that were downloading the piece of content as well. And you know, it was in its hundreds. And of course, as you said earlier on, that was probably two years ago and it still delivers results for me today because it's still live and it's still there. So that is a good example of I guess a good quality website and good quality content as well.

Yeah, well, a very easy way to, to decide if it's worth it or not is try and imagine if Google doesn't exist, would you still want that link? And if, if you would, then that's a, it's not the only indication, but it's a good indication that it's might be a link worth pursuing.

Oops. Yep. Yes.

Did I cut out then?

No, you didn't. I don't know why that message popped up. It just confused me as well. So let's just, just more broadly speaking from a, from an SEO strategy. So if I am a small agency owner, I don't have the budget at the moment to outsource my services to an agency like you. What kind of advice would you say to me if I wanted to do my own SEO? Or what were the sort of three or four or five tips you would, you would give?

So I think his name's Brendan Hufford, has a good strategy of, of the are doing stuff like this. So you would find, I think because it's Dream 50 or Dream 100, I'll have to do double check. And basically you find the top 50 or the top 100 people or sites that you would most like to have dealings with and then just start building relationships with them. That's how I would do it because there's not only the, you know, the SEO benefit of that, but there's potential partnerships, there's being a guest on a podcast, there's a whole different host of things that can transpire from that. Rather than just implementing a, an SEO strategy. That's how I would approach it is find the sites I really want to be a part of or be linked to from. Sorry. See what they post and just start a conversation with them. That's how I would, how I would start.

Yeah, absolutely. So building your dream 100 list is actually one of the systems that we teach in the self running agency group.

There is, maybe that's where I got it from.

I don't have you seen that bit? But there is actually templates because it's a strategy that I've used myself. So where you literally sit down and brainstorm every single partner that you would love to work with, from the ridiculous aspirational kind of partners down to the more realistic kind of partners who are maybe one or two rungs bigger than you up the ladder and then you start an outreach program. And as you said, Richard, partnering can mean a number of things. And actually before we went live on this episode, we were talking about guesting on podcasts being a great way of building your profile and building your audience and getting traffic back to your website. Because obviously in the show notes we'll list, we'll link to Arken Marketing's website. So no doubt you will get some traffic from this website. Sorry, from this episode. So building your Dream 100 list could mean all sorts of things from guest blogging, guest podcasting and running a joint event together, doing a speech for their audience, you know, all sorts of things. So that, that is a good strategy and I guess that's sort of a broader part of an SEO strategy.

Yeah, I think there's potentially massive SEO benefits and others and that's, that's the way I would approach it with not just an agency site, but any site really is. If you're, if you're starting a brand new site and it's not, it's not a case of they have a thousand links, you need a thousand links. But if you look at it in that terms, it can really seem insurmountable. And that's how I would start or recommend any business to start is to find the hundred sites where you would love to get links from, see what content they post and build out similar content. That's how I would recommend any business to start.

Right. Good advice. Any other tips to someone who's thinking about doing SEO and link building themselves? Anything else you would advise them to do?

Yeah, so people often forget about their actual website. So the website needs to be trustworth, seem trustworthy. You need to be approachable. So if you're doing after a personal brand, you need to have information on, on yourself on your website. People don't link to name nameless, faceless sites anymore. They, they used to. But I would, I would spend a lot of time getting my site to look as trustworthy as possible, have as good content as possible. Having good content makes everything so much easier. So I really can't emphasize that enough that having good content just makes things a lot easier. And it does start with having a good site as well.

I guess you're sort of saying that there's no magic bullet to this. There's no magic solution as much as some people will try and tell you otherwise. And that it's the sort of fundamentals that are so important, like having a good quality website that has good content, that's easy to navigate, that is clearly talking to me and that functionally works is a great basis to start with.

Yeah, it just, it makes everything else so much easier. Your outreach, your, you can outreach to a higher standard site if you've got a good site yourself or if you, if your content is useful, it makes the conversations you're having with these people so, so much easier. So I think every, every client we work with, we work on their site before we work off their site just because it makes our job so much easier.

That's, that's a good point. And I guess sometimes it must be frustrating for you because a client doesn't necessarily think that should be your starting point. They think they've got a website there now, want you to drive traffic to it, but actually you kind of have to say, hang on a sec, let's look at your website first?

Yeah. People fall into the trap of X. Post has got 50 links, for example. We can just recreate that and get 50 links. It doesn't work like that. So you need to. If you're. If you want to go down that route, you need to have something that differentiates yourself from it. It needs to look better, it needs to, you know, talk to the user better. It needs to do something better. Otherwise you just can't replicate success through copying.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Good. Any last thoughts on any other advice that you would share before we wrap up today?

No, but I'm always happy to help if any of your listeners want advice or anything they can reach me on. It's just richardkenmarketing.co.uk, always happy to help or point them in the right direction.

Sure. And while we're talking about links included in the show notes, we'll also include your website link and your email. Is there anything else you want us to include in the links?

No, no, no, that's absolutely fine. Just. Just my website and just my email. Richardconmarketing.co.uk or if they have any questions, they can reach out on LinkedIn or anything.

Great.

Happy to help.

So, final question that I ask all my guests. If you could go back in time and give your younger self just starting out in business one piece of advice, what would it be?

So, other than buying as much Bitcoin as I possibly could, I think I would. I would say just to focus on one thing. So it's whether it's because there's so many different elements to SEO, it's not just link building, it's not just technical, it's not just content. There's so many things. I would just focus on one aspect of SEO, because as. As the business is growing or the industry, sorry, it's. You have specialists in all these different areas and I would just say just to focus on one. One thing and one market.

Yeah, it's a good piece of advice. And we should all start narrow and broaden out. It's much easier to do that than it is to start broad and try and fail at that and then realize you've got to go narrow. So, yeah, I think I would tell my younger self to buy more Tesla shares. So I'm with you on that. Great. A good piece of advice. I always love asking guests this because I almost think in a hundred episodes we've never had the same thing twice. Even tested a few people who've come on the ep, the podcast, more than once to see, to challenge them not to listen to what they said before and then to check in if they said the same thing or not. But I don't think we've had that bit of advice before. So, Richard, really appreciate your time today. There was some good nuggets of advice in there and I was just thinking as we were talking that we need to call this episode titled Build it and they won't come. Because I think sometimes people think if I build a lovely website and put it live, suddenly I'll get loads of traffic to it. And of course, that is far from the truth. And I think you've highlighted that point today.

Yeah, yeah. You think? It used to work more like that, but now as larger companies are in there, the bar is so much higher.

Yeah, absolutely. So we all need to be applying some of the advice you have given today. So, great. Thank you so much for your time today and I will see you soon.

No problem. Thank you very much.