96% of sites ranking in top 10 have 1000+ links

Do you want to talk about the 1,000 links?

Yeah, so go for it. You start it off because it's really tiny on my screen so I can't even read it.

Are you on your iPad?

I'm on my iPad. I didn't end up bringing my computer with me when I was traveling.

Oh wow, wow, wow. Guys, let me know if this audio is good because I give him crap about his microphone. So he's on his new microphone. I want to know if it's good audio quality or not. So tweet at us please. This guy, Chris Long. So Go Fish Chris on X. So he says, new SEO study, 96% of websites ranking in the top 10 results have 1,000+ links. This directly challenges Google's recent links aren't as important claims, right? This is an interesting data study from Jim Boykin and Jim Boykin Internet Marketing Ninjas. So he analyzed 200 different commercial intent queries and scraped the top 10 results for each one. Then he analyzed how many unique referring domains each one had. He found that, and I'll give the 3 points here and then we can talk about it, 4 points actually. 96% of websites had at least 1,000 unique backlinks, okay? 62% of sites in the top 10 had at least 10,000 backlinks. That's a lot. And the sites in the study had an average of 42,000 referring domains. This is Ahrefs data. And the weakest site in the top 10 only had 54 unique backlinks.

That's kind of crazy to think about. But yeah, I've always been a big believer in links. They could say it's not, important ranking factor, and they say it's not a top 3 ranking factor, but they don't say it's not a top 5 ranking factor or top 10 ranking factor. And based on the leaked document, how many factors were there? Like 1,400 or 14,000 or—

1,400.

1,400.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think 14,000. I could be wrong.

Either way, it was a really big number. It was either 1,000 or 10,000 plus. And when you think about that, if links are still in the top 10, That means it's a really important factor out of all the—

14,000.

14,000. So if links are, let's say, in the top 10, that's still a really important factor out of 14,000. Just think about that for a minute. 14,000 factors that impact rankings. You know they're not all going to have equal weight. Some of them like brand queries have a high, you know, they carry a lot of weight. Something like links, something like click-through rates, These are all factors that really have high, you know, weight when it comes to their algorithm.

Still links, guys. Still content. Still clickstream data, okay? You just look at users, you look at user signals, right? You're looking at links is kind of a web signal as well. And then content. Now, that's not to say Neil and I are geniuses here, but if you're going to write an algorithm, those things kind of seem to make sense to me. Now, here's an interesting thing. So Neil, we just talked about Eight Sleep, right? So they only have 3,500 referring domains. So this kind of goes against the case study. So there are outliers at the end of the day, right? No, no, no.

35 referring domains. They're talking about 1,000 links. That is true. They're above the 1,000 threshold.

But here, let's move back over here to the Chris Long one. So share this tab instead, right? So 96% of websites, okay, in the top 10 results, 62% of the top 10 had at least 10,000 backlinks. The average is 42,000 referring domains, right? And obviously the average can be skewed by the really big websites. But I just think that when you look at Eight Sleep, for example, like, okay, Single Grain, I don't know how many links you have. Let me move over. So Single Grain has like 8,200 or 8,500 referring domains, right? And we've been doing SEO for a while. neilpatel.com, do you have a sense for how many referring domains you have?

Maybe 20,000, 30,000.

You have 79,000.

I'll take it.

Anyway, so Eight Sleep, my point is they're not focusing so much on kind of traditional SEO, right? They're just like brand, brand, brand, brand, brand. And I think that's the right move because it's, people still need to be educated on, it's sleep education at the end of the day because it's a new, it's a different way to sleep.

Yeah, but Eight Sleep also has a ton of brand queries and more than the competition.

Yes, so I think what we're both getting at here is if you can score it, right? And if your brand is super skewed up, that might cover some of the other channels where you might be weak at or the other ranking scenarios.

By the way, how much did they spend on the Formula 1 sponsorship?

I don't, it's a very small one with Mercedes. It's like a little logo. It's not one of the big logos where it's like on the halo where you can see it on the camera.

Well, how much money did they raise in total?

I don't know. Let's see. Eight Sleep raises. Eight Sleep raises how much? $87 million Series C, and they've raised $173 million total. And I believe they're doing over 9 figures. This is not quoted from them, but, and it says that in the AI overview, they're valued at $500 million. I mean, last round I came in, it was $250 million. But I think it's worth a lot more, and they don't plan on raising right now.

Well, they just raised a lot of money, so I don't know if they need any more for a while, and hopefully they can get to profitability so there's no more dilution for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I would hope so. Let's see where that goes.

But by the way, on a side note, all right, so this is just curiosity. I'm not questioning you. I'm not saying that you made a— when I say question, I'm not saying you made a good or a bad decision, but—

I think I know where you're going with this.

Why invest in Eight Sleep at a $250 million valuation? Because even if they get to a billion, you only 4x your money.

That was what I was thinking. And I was so glad that I met with the CEO a couple weeks ago because what they're building could go into multi-billions, right? We're talking like $10, $20 billion or so. Because to me, the guy is laser-focused and he's going to build for a long time. And to me, it's not just going to be a sleep product anymore. It's going to be, you're going to be able to like do MRIs on your body and scan for health issues. And then I'm like, whoa, if you can do that, then you can make recommendations to people, maybe like AI, like AI assisted with doctors. And then they make, you get a little affiliate commission on every little thing you recommend. So I think it could become a lot bigger. So you're right. If it was only a billion dollar outcome, it won't have only been a 4x plus dilution. Like what would I, maybe it's like a 1.5, 2x or so. But I think it'll be a lot bigger. All right everyone, quick message from the Agency Owners Association. So this is the peer group for agency owners that Neil and I both put together. This is for people that are doing 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures, even 9 figures as well. And we're all here to help you grow your agency faster. In this group, we share leads, we share learnings with each other. It's a community where people can ask questions, their most burning questions personally, professionally. We'll share templates, reports, things like that. We're constantly adding more value to the group. I will tell you that the price is continuing to increase. The good news is that there's no long-term commitment. So you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io/agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io/agency to learn more. And we hope to see you inside.

So they haven't released those new features, I'm assuming, yet, but they plan to. And I'm assuming what they're waiting for is like millions and millions of people to have the product and then just cross all other services to them.

Yeah, I mean, I told you about the new features, right? The one that can like, if you're snoring, it moves you up, moves you down, and then there's all this, like you could tap it to like increase the temperature or whatever.

Whoms— if you have a significant other, does it move both of you up when you're snoring or—

No, no, no, it moves one of you up.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. And then let's say your wife likes to sleep hotter. I'm assuming she likes to sleep hotter, right? She can heat her side to 110 degrees and then your side can go all the way down to 55 degrees.

Oh, so you can adjust it.

So the point I'm telling you this again, they're shipping so quickly and he's so laser-focused again that at the end of the day, all the angel investments you made, these bets, you're really betting on the founder.

You really are. And when I was You know, I don't really do much angel investing these days, but when I used to do a lot more angel investing, I would just bet on good founders, assuming they're going after a big TAM. And I would just continually bet on them because I'm like, yeah, they may fail this one or the next one or the third one, but if I keep betting on them overall, I should be up. And it paid off for me. But the problem I have with angel investing these days, I'm an LP in venture funds. It's just too much work to manage all the direct investments for me. But what I found is the returns, And this is just my case. I'm not saying it's for others, but the returns just aren't as good as they used to be. A, people raise way too much.

The bar is just so high.

Yeah. A, people raise way too much before they sell or go public. So you're getting just diluted so much more. B, you know, people aren't giving like $500 million rounds unless, you know, typically there's liquidation preferences on that money. And the next thing that I found is when I got into angel investing, it wasn't as competitive, but now everyone's an angel investor. Everyone's a VC. And it's drove valuations up, which have also reduced returns. And again, this could just be my experience and other people are crushing it, and that's probably the case. But I've just found that angel investment returns aren't as good as they used to be. And it's just easier to put your money in the stock market because if you hold Apple or Amazon stock for a long time, they're clipping more than 20% a year. And when you look at that, it's similar to the average venture returns, but you can get your money in and out whenever you want and you can borrow on it with ease.

I think that the problem is, so what do you think your hit rate is on all the angel investments you've made in the past? I know you don't do any recently.

Yeah, so let's assume just to keep the math simple, I put in $1,000 in total, right? I put in more than that, but let's say I put in $1,000 between all my deals, all right? Including the recent ones. I've recuperated more than $1,000 In cash, roughly $1,400. So 40% more. All right. On top of that, I have quite a few bets that are still out there. And on paper, they're amazing, but paper doesn't mean crap because some of them have raised a lot of money and there's going to be liquidation preferences, or if they go public, I don't know what's going to end up happening. So maybe it all turns into $5,000 or something like that, which may seem great. You know, if I'm lucky, it gets to $5,000.

I doubt it.

But you have to keep in mind, I've been doing this for like 16+ years.

It's not a good return after 16 years. No.

And the $5,000 that I'm saying hypothetically, I haven't actually seen that money. Who cares what it says on paper? I'm talking about, I'm hoping one day I get that kind of cash. And I doubt it, but maybe I get $3,000 or something. But I would be really disappointed if it went down to $3,000. So it's just like, I was just better off investing in my own business.

All right, look, if you're looking to hire additional marketers for your team, there's no better place to look than, well, hiring nearshore, hiring offshore. And we found that we've hired amazing creative people. We've hired amazing people that can help with execution on the marketing side. Whatever it is that you're looking for exactly, we are helping with that. We have recruiters from our side. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io/hire. Once again, it's marketingschool.io/hire. Fill out the information in terms of what you need, and then we'll have our recruiters reach out to you to help you with the placement. And it should be great for you at the end of the day because you're going to save a lot of money and you're going to get the help that you need. So you're going to get help from a cost standpoint and also an execution standpoint as well. So again, marketingschool.io/hire, and we'll see you inside. I think what Neil and I really want to share here is— and so I don't do much angel investing anymore either, but the returns that you're going to get on your own effort, and you know your business the best, usually it's your own business. And we've seen this. You map out every single thing that we've done. Whether it's investing in other funds or investing in these companies or investing in real estate or whatever, it is your business that does the best at the end of the day. It's just most people, like even the same thing that Mohnish Pabrai says, right? And it's like most people just don't have the patience to watch paint dry. And it's the same thing with your business. If you are down to be patient for 10, 20, 30 years, your return's going to be way better.

You know what's funny? I never knew that he was the author of Dhandho Investor.

You didn't know that?

No.

I was like, you know Dhandho Investor because you're an idiot.

Yeah, I've had that book for a long, long time.

I read it when I was much younger. So, okay, we talk about YPO, right? He's in the same YPO forum as Syed.

I know that. You mentioned that to me. Syed created his own forum, him, Maneesh, and a few others.

And Guy Spier, and then like some other like publicly traded CEOs. So it's like, it's a pretty nice forum.

Oh, cool.

That's the type of forum you need to be in.

So I haven't joined a forum yet. You know that, right?

I know. Well, because you need to be in a forum like that. And I would say don't join one until you can find a forum like that, which you should be able to find one. But like, and by the way, we should define 2 things before we move on. So one, liquidation preferences, and then 2, forum. So you go on liquidation preferences and I'll go on forum and then we'll move on to the next topic.

Yeah, so liquidation preference is like, let's say if someone is worth $10 billion and someone puts in $2 billion for 20% and they're the latest investors, usually when someone's putting in that kind of capital, they typically have, A standard liquidation of, I at least get my money out before anyone else gets their money out. So for example, if the company botches and goes to $5 billion in valuation, they at least— and it sells for $5 billion. Yeah, they at least get their $2 billion back versus it being, well, oh, I only get 20% and it's $1 billion. Well, no, usually they have something in there where they at least get their money back.

Yep.

All right.

And then so the second thing is forum. And so We talk a lot about community. And so one is having your community of entrepreneurs. So a forum in like EO, YPO, or Hampton, this is your group of 8 to 10 brothers and sisters. In some cases, you'll meet once a month. In some cases, you'll meet once every quarter. Some might be remote, some might be in person. And then the idea is you also have a retreat once a year. And this is where you share the 5% of things that you can't share with your spouse or your other friends. And you really go deep, right? And some people are like, In the past, I've been in forums where it's like, oh yeah, my wife cheated on me, or I cheated on my wife, right? It's like you never know what happens. And then in some cases, like my business partner embezzled from me, or my employees stole from me. You hear all these kinds of problems, right? And then people are just sharing experiences, not necessarily giving advice. And so I found it to be very helpful. Neil will eventually join one. I bet he will. He just needs to find the right one. And then I think he'll be like, Eric, you're right. Well, mark my words, he'll come back to this podcast episode in a couple of years and he'll be like, you're right.

So, I know in a forum you're not supposed to talk about what other people said and their names and their business and stuff like that, but let's talk about you because you can talk about yourself. If you had to pick like the 5 main key lessons that you've gotten from being in a forum, whether it's the YPO forum or EO or anything like that, what are 5 really solid things that have helped shape your entrepreneurial journey?

One, get a prenup. 2, if you're going to—

Explain why on each one.

Yeah. 2 go with each other. They go with each other. So one and 2. Okay. The reason why number one, you should get a prenup, or in my opinion, not you should, why I'm going to get a prenup, right, is because 2, one of my friends ended up marrying someone and it went too quickly and it was very clear it wasn't the right fit. And it was very clear that it was going to blow up, right? So that's 2 things over there. The 3rd one would be you have to be able to control your destiny. So there's some people in the group before that had, or groups I've been in in the past where they would have minority shares in the business, but they couldn't drive the outcomes that they wanted to drive because they really weren't seen as a major partner. So they might've owned like 10% or something like that, right? And they ended up getting screwed at the end of the day because they couldn't drive their vision forward.

Yeah.

The 4th thing is I would say focus. The ones that did really well, they continue to stay locked in on one business. And one guy even almost bankrupted his and he was like crying to the forum. He's like, crap, I'm going to have to shut everything down. I don't know what I'm going to say to my kids and blah, blah, blah. Now, he's doing like $40, $50 million a year, right? Which is pretty good from bankrupt to almost bankrupt to $50 million a year. That's 4, right?

That's a big swing.

Yeah. And then the 5th, so in some cases you have to keep going too. That would be another one. But the 5th one is, so going back to number 2, it's like you got to make sure you marry the right person, but also you want to marry the right person because to me, everyone that has had kids, it might've been hell for the first 1 or 2 years, right? Because you have to go through a lot, but it seems like it's worth it in spades. And it takes them to a different level of—

Yeah.

of being a human being, I believe. So yeah, I'd say those 5 or 6 things.

Oh, that's good.

All right, everyone. So that's it for today. Speaking of which, the Agency Accelerator— or sorry, Agency Owners Association, I should say— Neil and I will both be doing a session this week. And so we do these, we do these group coaching calls every now and then. So that's happening. You can learn more about this group, marketingschool.io/agency. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It helps this podcast grow. And we will catch you later. Bye.