The Ultimate Link-Building Strategy Deep-Dive You Didn't Know You Needed with Justin Champion

Hey, George, do you think maybe the reason why HubSpot made that safe harbor language about Devin is because of his hot takes about a one steak sauce? And whether or not it belongs on.

Stage, I think it's always about Devin's hot takes. Always.

Now, to be clear, Devin, I am on your side. I'm not shaming you. I'm not shading you. I am right there with you, bud. We were talking about it before we got on here today, and if you were in the community, you could see us riffing live right before we started recording. But here's my thing. I'm in total agreement. A1 can go on things, but if it's on a steak, what is the steak trying to hide? What is the steak trying to hide? That is a shady steak. I'm very confused.

Wow.

Put a one on a steak that you've made for me. You should take that as an insult.

Oh, ouch.

Hashtag shady steak.

We're blowing up the Internets. We're blowing up the Internets with that hashtag. I'm just saying I love it.

And in case our listeners couldn't have figured out, we have a full house today. We have a full house today and a guest that I am crazy excited about. Justin, say hello to the audience.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me.

It's going to be a blast.

We've spent the past. We spent a number of episodes recently waxing poetic about big ideas, big philosophies, big mindsets, big principles, all of these things that help us shape how, at a high level, we look at inbound and ourselves as inbound practitioners within the inbound space. Right? So today we're going to be diving back into the deep end of the tactical pool, and we are doing it today with one of my favorite HubSpot humans on the planet. HubSpot's head of product awareness and search authority for growth, the one and only Justin Champion. Give it up. Now, for those of you listening, if you've ever taken a content marketing certification, you know Justin, he is the lead professor of that course. But for me personally, Justin, our friendship began many, many moons ago when you reached out to me to talk about pillar content back when I was the content manager at Quintain, which was like, what, 2020 back when people were just starting to get their sea legs with pillar content. And I remember you were one of the first people I told of because you asked me like, so what did you think when Kathleen, the owner of the agency at the time, pitched you pillar content? They said, am I Being punished. This feels like for something that's ungated, but many, many years later, here we are. But what I'm really excited about for today's conversation, yes, we're going to touch upon topic clusters and pillar content. Where that's gone where we are now. But we're getting into two fascinating and quite frankly controversial topics today. Guest blog and link building. Yes, I know you can't wait, George, because you and I had a conversation leading up to this and I want to hear from you. This is why we wanted you here today, Justin, because when you and I kept our conversations going over the years about topic clusters and pillar content, we started shifting that conversation into link building and into guest blogging. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. These two potentially controversial topics, dispelling the myths and getting to the truth. Because, Justin, why don't we go ahead and lead this off? A lot has changed in the search game, right? And I think a lot of people are used to the whole, like when we move from semantic search to like AI models, and that's why we have topic clusters and it's more organized. But things have continued to evolve at a rapid pace.

Yeah, I mean, and it's interesting, I would still say that the architecture in the backbone, I would still say is, is somewhat similar. When I think of link building, it's really just a door and opening to a place where you're trying to send somebody. So the basis of like topic clusters, really, the whole purpose of it is to have connections with links across pages of relevant topics. And that helps you build up your authority for the amount of content that you have that's relevant to that specific topic. Now with the emergence of AI and things coming out, that's kind of its own whole topic of its own, where people right now you're seeing a surge of content that's coming out. But I would say that it's actually not necessarily great because the more content that's coming out doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be helpful. So I've definitely been seeing some things happen here in ways that people can combat cutting through the noise, which look forward to talking about today.

Now, George, Max and Devin, I would just love to hear from you guys, and particularly you, George, because you and I already started having this conversation in the background. What are your feelings going into this conversation around the ideas of guest blogging and link building, especially in a modern unbound strategy? Yep, George, go ahead.

Yeah, so, so. And I'm nervous as I'LL get about and one I'm excited to talk about, right? And then already Justin has me second guessing myself because when I hear link building, they have flashbacks to all the emails that I've gotten of, hey, we saw an article that you wrote about this video marketing thing and we have a product that we think would make for a great link in your. And I'm like, yo, bro, leave or bro it, whoever, leave me alone. And so I think about like. But then when Justin was just talking, he was like, no, maybe it's like your content and building your links internally versus like external link building. So first of all, I'm super curious if we're talking about internal link building or external link building or both. That's where my brain goes. But then I can't wait to talk about the like, should you allow people to be guest blogging on your blog if they would want to have their content there? And what would that look like in a inbound AI content world of making sure that it is the word that Justin used, helpful that you're actually creating and just not a big pile of like, that's where my brain goes.

I think I'm trying to like the SEO stuff I've always kind of struggled with, I think for so long because I never had like the mental like capacity to go so super deep into like the technical side of things that I very much just leaned on the idea that, hey, there's on page SEO and there's off page SEO. On page SEO is everything that you're doing to say, hey, Google, this was what this piece of content is about. And then off page SEO is everything that you're doing to like, kind of raise the authority of it. And for me it always came down to like, listen, what's going to make people link to your content if it's good content, right? Focus on writing good content. Focus on solving for a goal or a challenge that someone's like searching for. And like, if people are actually finding it and people are actually legitimately finding it helpful, like, that's what gets people to share stuff and link to your stuff when it's genuinely good content versus just like building garbage and then going out there and asking people to link to it because you wrote a guest post, right? And that ended up also just been like, so awkward and cringe worthy trying to reach out and say, hey, I think my content might resonate with your audience. I've just, I'm so bad at it, right? So, like, I've been really terrible at the whole guest Posting and like link building stuff other than leaning on what's the mechanics behind what really good content is and hoping people link to it because of that.

But, but hang on, let me jump in here, let me jump in here for one second because Max, I used to be in your camp and I sort of, kind of am still in your camp of like, well, you just write good content and people are going to link to it. And that literally was the thing that was being preached back in the day. You know, when, you know, the printing press came out and the cotton gin and Liz was doing pillar pages, like back in the day, like that's actually what was being preached. But here's the deal and feel like that's a freaking wing and a prayer strategy. Like, let's just throw it out there and hope for the best. So like, is there a happy medium, Is there a happy medium between let's just throw it out there and hope for the best and let me just spam the crap out of you in your email so you'll give me a link. Like there has to be an in between to this conversation.

I know, but then on the flip side you can also say like, oh, what if we make mediocre content, then go get a couple blogs to link for it. Like, link to it. Like, is that like, you know what I mean? So it's, to me, it's just like all strategies are for not without really good content. And that's the one thing like I keep harping back to. It's like you could polish a turd as much as you want, right? At the end of the day, it's still a turd. You can drive as much traffic to that piece of content as you want. If it doesn't change heart and minds, it doesn't get someone close to achieving any sort of goal or challenge. You're just creating clickbait, wasting people's time and you're breaking people's trust. And so like that's, that's why I always fall back on like the content has to be good if you're creating it right and there's simple physics behind what makes it good. I'm going to get off my make good content so far.

Let's start with something that George brought up. And Justin, I want to kick it back to you here really quick. When you say link building, let's get that shared definition. What do you mean by it? And then I would also just love to hear your take on the exchange you just heard because I think you and I can both Agree. These are the conversations we hear all the time about link building. Like there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of confusion. What is it? What is it? What isn't it? George, I got two of those emails this morning on your behalf. So you know, and I, you know what I did, I deleted both of them because both of them, I'm convinced, just use the same template and it was dumb and they did not resonate with our audience. So yeah, let's start there with what.

I mean by link building. George, you said it, it's internal and it's inbound. It's inbound. It's either called an inbound link or inbound link or a backlink. They're synonymous terms. And really the reason why, maybe giving some history of why links are so important. So a link is internal. Links are a lot easier to build. Like with the topic cluster, it's your internal structure, it's you doing your on page SEO with your website. And that will help with, from a ranking perspective. But the way that a search engine ranks its content, sometimes the content that's ranking number one is not always the best, sometimes it's the most authoritative. And that might be because it has. So the one metric that you're really looking at here is the URL rating. A URL rating is an Ahrefs metric. Ahrefs is an SEO platform and they use this metric to measure the quality of your backlink profile. So if there's a really great piece of content that has a really low URL rating versus a subpar piece of content that maybe has a really high URL rating, it's very possible the one that has the higher URL rating is probably going to rank higher because so many people have linked to it. But that's the question is how have so many people linked to that? And I think that's where people lose trust with link building. Is that because of this? And this is with anything, Right. If you're going to buy a used car, if you have a bad experience, does that mean you're not going to buy a used car again? No. I mean like you're going to find different ways that there's going to be different approaches to it. So from link building perspective, especially when we're talking off page where you're building inbound links, they're much harder to build. And Google over the years has been cracking down on this. They've created algorithms where if you're featured on websites where they're known to pay for links, or if you're doing shady things, then you're actually going to get hurt. So Google is trying to crack down on this. Those are the big things I wanted to call it. And Devin, you haven't had a chance to go yet, and I want to allow you the opportunity. Opportunity of chiming in.

Kevin's got a hand up. Appreciate that is a first.

Strong hand.

Yeah.

Take my strong.

Okay.

So I gotta be honest with you, I've been sitting here a little bit nervous because it just looks like Devon was sitting there waiting to, like, kick somebody's butt.

Like, no. Like, he's got the look.

I'm glad you said that, George.

Fine.

So I'm really glad you said that because I want to use an analogy that I think is applicable to the current blogging landscape. I used to be head of security for a bar here in downtown Youngstown, and it was a performance bar, so we had bands come in quite regularly. Now there are two people that would come to these performances. People that were fans of the bar and people that were fans of the artist. And I think one of the things that we should start thinking about when guest blogging is not pulling people in for content, for content sake and filling it out. What we need to do is start looking at these people's audiences and how much they pull. Like, when people would come to our bar, one of the first things we would ask is like, okay, so how many people you're bringing in the door? Like, tell me about your fan base. Are you performing because you need a gig? Or are you performing because you need a venue? And for people who need a venue, and to bring this analogy into the current context, for people who are just looking for space to publish because they have an audience and they may not be looking for, we might have to, like, go and find these people. At that point, the search engines are going to increase your authority because their audience is going to come to your site. And if it is, if you already have quality content, like Max said, if you have a series of quality content from different perspectives, different guest bloggers, but it's all quality, then you're accessing different groups, and at that point, you're borrowing from these other people's audiences and bringing them in and increasing your reputation. So just to go back to the bar analogy, there are people who will come in because they were fans of Band A, but will come back because they see the quality of bands that showed up that night and may become regulars. And so I think that is the mindset that people need to go into because we're one of the things that when we talk about SEO is we lose the forest for the trees. We're so focused on hacking the algorithm that we forget the purpose of the algorithm itself, which is to make the Internet easier for quality content, to find people who are looking for it, and vice versa. And so if we are working with that overall mindset, knowing that that's the direction that the Internet's headed in, then at that point, it will help you redefine your entire strategy. You're not just thinking about content for the sake of content. You're not thinking about putting another layer on the landfill. You're thinking about putting things out there that people are going to resonate with. And repeated content that will resonate with people. Or the more guest bloggers you have and hot take, the greater diversity that you have within your guest blogging pool, the more you're going to see people coming in from other audiences, but staying because you have an amazing bar.

You know, one of the things I want us to tap into there, because I love so much of what you said, it gets into one of George's favorite elements of this, right? The humans, Right. Actually, George, can you hit us up with one of those, bud? Can you just give us one?

I mean, it would feel fake if I just did it right now.

To be honest, I kind of need it, because I was going to do it, but my button's at home, so if you could just throw one in for me real quick.

All right, well, we're fundamentally talking about this in the direction of the humans.

Thank you. There it is. I feel better. Yeah, I need a cigarette now.

Yep, it was beautiful. But I do want to get back to the robots of it all, because one of the things I want to make sure that we're not missing here. One of the things, Justin, I really want to hear you speak to is that people look at these two concepts, right? Guest blogging and link building. We heard it at the start of this conversation. Like, there's a negative reaction. There's a negative reaction to the fact that, like, oh, we get spammy emails about it. Oh, it's about SEO and not the humans of it all. I would like to hear you talk about. What do you think people are missing? What are they not seeing when they look at it this way?

I think from the negative reactions that we've heard during this call are ones that I've heard all the time as well, where it's like, Liz, you said that you had two emails this morning of people asking you for links. And I think the strat, this all comes back to people who are looking to educate themselves on how to do something. And a lot of times they're not really willing to invest. They're really just looking to transact, meaning that they just want to get the quick fix, like, hey, how do I do this now? Like, I'm trying to do this specific thing. So with link building, one of the way, one of the biggest tactics is to reach out to people who have a page where you could probably get a link back to your content. And to be honest, that used to be strategy that worked really well. But the problem with it was, is that everybody started doing it. And when everybody starts doing something like that, it becomes noise and it becomes annoying. So I wouldn't necessarily say that. The reason why things sometimes get a bad rep is because when something works well, others try to start doing it. Some even probably half ass it sometimes and try to just, you know, blast people. And then because the, to your point, the human element is taken out of it, that is where people get annoyed by it. There's much more to link building than just reaching out to people and doing that. And there are strategies that I've worked on building over the years that get very intricate of how to do this at a level where you can create relationships with a company that you're trying to do link building with, while also building partnerships with other people. And then at the same time creating an approach where it's symbiotic. Right. Like you want to approach it where you're getting, I think the whole essence of inbound. I've been at HubSpot for almost 10 years now, but even before HubSpot I knew this whole concept of inbound. And George, I think you say it well with what you've been preaching over the years is that it's this idea of providing value before extracting it. If you're trying to lead with extracting the value, then everybody's going to be annoyed by that. And I think link building is probably one of the biggest areas in marketing where people are constantly trying to extract value as opposed to providing it first.

So what does it mean to do link building? Well, because the reality is is that if we think about link building from a perspective now, granted, you may be about to say something that's going to totally blow my mind and I haven't thought about it this way, or maybe it's more simple, but ultimately it does come down to an ask. So what does a great link building strategy look like? What Are some of the do's, what are some of the don'ts?

Yeah, I think a relationship perspective is a big one. And I mean I could, I know we only have an hour with this and there's many different tactics to go with, but I get there's a couple that it could be really, really helpful. I think guest blogging is probably one that benefits a lot of people because it helps you build your own brand, it helps you build your company's brand and it's pretty multifaceted, right? Like if you're gonna lead with value and trying to create somebody a piece of content, you're helping them out because then you're ultimately taking that off of their plate. Now when you're guest blogging, one thing a lot of people do is they're just thinking about the one link that they build to their website. Whereas one thing I started doing over the years was, alright, well if I'm linking to 20 different sources in an article, why not link to another source of my guest post and then reach out to them to let them know that, hey, I just boasted this guest blog post. I love this piece of content that you have on your site, actually built a link to it. Don't even ask for anything, just reach out and let them know what you did. So it's almost like you can have one opportunity that creates a buckshot effect where it's like you can just start building relationships with other people. I think that's one thing most people didn't do on a guest post of linking back to their site is using that as like a prospecting tool for other people you want to build connections with. So I think guest blogging in one realm, anybody really can do and it helps, helps your own brand. Another successful thing to focus on and something that really invest time and energy on is co marketing campaigns. And I think why a co marketing campaign can be so helpful is you're essentially working with some form of experience. Maybe it's a webpage, maybe it's a content offer. And then through that experience you can recommend link building. Like, hey, on our site we're going to build a couple of links from our page to this, maybe you could help from this side as well. And I think with link building there's two different aspects. A guest post, when it comes out, it doesn't have any authority, it doesn't have any traffic to it yet. So that value, those links that are built in that article aren't going to be as valuable if you're working with a brand and you're able to get a link on an existing webpage that already gets thousands of you're looking to build. But you really have to do it with a relationship perspective. You can't just reach out with an email saying, hey, this article that you have that gets 50 visits a month could probably benefit to linking to this page because it's not going to be a high success rate. You need to find a way of working with this company, building a relationship with them and then ultimately finding a way of what are they looking for in return and how can I maybe earn that link from them through trust. I think that's the one thing that people are missing and that takes time. But if you're willing to put in the time, you're going to get a lot more value than just sending a thousand emails to people asking the link back to your content. So it's really how much time you willing to put in upfront?

So I love so much of what I just heard and I hope that the listeners had their notepad and wrote some stuff down. But one of the things that my brain does, it likes to simplify the complex. And Justin, in that first part where you're talking about, I literally heard that link building through a combination of the reciprocity approach and the Columbus principle, meaning I've done something for you now. I've built a micro piece of reciprocity. You might feel like you want to do something for me, but I've also given you a map to America. My article, the thing that I'm actually interested in. And now you can discover that it is a great piece that you also might want to link to that and didn't ask anything, didn't have any expectations. But with reciprocity and the assisted discovery may have just done what you needed to do without even asking. I love that so much.

And that's one approach, right? Like maybe they will naturally link back to it or it's actually taken the flip reverse of what you were talking about earlier. Liz, imagine if those two emails you got today were like, hey, we saw this piece of content that you published. We thought it was really great. I actually just published a guest blog post and I linked to it. What would you feel about me reaching out to the first time getting an email like that? I'm not asking you for anything. Maybe I'm gonna set a reminder to reach back to you again in a week and see if you want to collaborate on something. It's taking a different approach that though, because it takes a little bit more time to do it. But I think it's more effective by showing the value before extracting it.

Oh wait, wait. We got a ding for a second. You mean. Justin, you gotta make the humans feel something.

I'm alive. I'm alive.

So here's, here's a thought. As people are listening to this, they might think of how overwhelming it could be to manage these relationships. And if only there were some sort of software where you could put in these people and set reminders or a sequence if you.

Go on, go on.

That would allow you to reach out and maintain these relationships. And so no one falls through the cracks. And I'll.

Do tell, do tell.

I wish somebody would come up with something like that, you know, that would be amazing.

It could be like the relationship management.

Yeah. It could be the hub for your thing that you're trying to.

And Devin. So the product awareness and search authority team, what do you think we use to manage that?

What do you know?

Are you talking about WordPress?

Oh geez, I thought it was.

Nevermind. Let's go.

Justin.

Writing a guest blog, and you and I have talked about this previously where it's like, if you're going to go out and guest blog, let's just go ahead and pull it, you know, let's not pull the wool over anybody, anybody's eyes here. You need to write a unique guest blog just for those people. Like, you shouldn't be just pitching stuff that's a copy and paste job from somewhere else. But here's my question to you because I can. I'm thinking about this from the, the former perspective of someone who's run a content team. Right. Having someone take the effort to write a unique article for a website that is not our own, is that worth the effort? Is the juice worth the squeeze? Because I know you've done some experimentation on this and I'd love to hear, you know, from those frontline experiences, is that level of extra effort to create something that does not live on your own home turf worth it?

I believe so. I mean, it's been successful for me over the years, I think with, with guest blogging because I saw people using it as a tactic, but they weren't. If you're only trying to link back to one page on your. Well, first of all, let me say the first link that you have back to your website on a page is going to be the most valuable. So if you're trying to write a guest blog post and putting in 5, 10 links to your website, hey, the sources are going to like that. But also it's not going to be helpful from a search authority perspective. All those other links, they're not going to be quite as valuable. And I think that's something that people didn't realize. So I think if you're going to, you want to be, if you're a guest blogger who writes really valuable content and people want you to write for them, there's a huge opportunity for you. Because there's three things. Guest post that most people don't do that. If you do these things, it's going to transform your link building. The first is that try to link to the most important page on your site. You can earn that. Usually most, most websites, the higher the domain rating, meaning the more authority the website has, the harder, the more regulations they're gonna have on the link that you can put back to your site. But generally they'll give you one for doing them a solid for writing the content. Now the other links you're gonna put in the article, you want to put links back to the source's content because you want to show that you went through their content and you're like, okay, cool. So like, if you're blogging for HubSpot, maybe 50% of the links on the page are going to different HubSpot articles. The content editor is really gonna like that. Now, with the rest of the links on the page, there's two things that you can do. You can link to your previously guest authored content to help boost the performance of those and keep those relationships strong. And then also you can link to prospects where you want to reach out to them in the future and let them know that you built a link to their site. Whereas most people, when they're thinking about guest blogging, they're only thinking about building the link to their site. They're not thinking about those four other areas of link building. And if you do that, you're going to get a lot more value out of your guest efforts. Because if you're willing to put that time and effort into writing one guest blog post, you're probably going to earn a link to your site. You're probably going to earn 5 to 15 different links to either previous content that you've authored or people that you want to build relationships with. So if you think about it from that perspective, the glass is a lot more full of value than just trying to build one link. Whereas most people just think about, maybe they don't invest as much time and energy, you're probably a lot more excited about creating the best content possible. If you're thinking about, okay, cool, here's my prospecting list. Here's also the people I can reach back to and let them know what I just did. It's all about relationship building. I think guest posting allows you to do that because link building is hard and if you're out there building links for people and they're not even asking you to. Damn.

I mean, yeah, so it's like you're saying like try to like, you know, don't like, if you're going to link five times in an article, don't just send them all to your site because like the quality of them is going to degrade because there's so many, like you're saying link those, link those links elsewhere that can provide you some utility in your greater, you know, link building efforts for other stuff that you might be working on within it.

Exactly. And really quick, I was just going to say it's very important though that you link to the sources website throughout the article. Because if you only do things that you're looking for value for, you need to balance it like maybe more for what the person who is giving you the opportunity. That's when you say stories formula.

You mean like internal links to like their site that.

Yeah.

Hosted on.

Exactly, exactly. They're gonna be like, oh damn, this guy went through and already did all this. Plus it's also gonna protect them stripping out the links that you did. Because if you do, if you do it the reverse way where you build all links to external pages, they might strip all of your links out. Whereas if they see that you're building links internally to them, then they might leave more of those in. The other side of the coin is you don't have to tell the website your link building strategy. Right, that's my link building strategy. Like I wanna be, I'm going to help my business, I'm going to help your business. I'm going to provide value to my partners and I'm going to be thinking about my prospects. Like you don't see that. Also the links that you include in there have to be valuable. Like you can't put links in there that aren't going to be valuable. So I think when you're thinking about that, it's kind of like an art. You have to be really strategic about all the links that you put in there. So when you see 20 links in an article that I'm writing, I'm probably being very intentional with those links, but you might not know that.

Wait, wait, you mean like anything else in life Justin, we should have a strategy of actually what we're gonna do when we're gonna do it. And here's the thing too, like I hope the listeners, or if you're in the community community that are watching this, understand the megaton bomb of goodness that Justin gave you with the three things to pay attention to. Even Chris, who is watching live right now, says, very interesting take. Makes so much sense. I learned something new today right in the chat pane right here as we're doing this live. Here's the thing though, just again, I know my brain works in a really interesting way. It usually goes in multiple directions. But when I heard you talk, I was like, wait, you mean a link building structure that is focused on what's in it for them? You mean like pay attention to other humans? I know you like, wow, that might be a great strategy. You mean, wait, have a, have a strategy around partners that you're actually helping?

If I could put one added layer on top of this, not to, you know, blow everybody's minds too much, but if you do this enough, right, like if there's a business that you really, that you get a guest blogging opportunity with and you really want to build a strong relationship with them, if you imagine this right, the first time you build a, you do a guest blog with them and then maybe you check in with them every month about a new link that you're building to their site. What ends up happening with this is you can start building your own one to many link building network. Meaning that if you start building links for them when they are writing guest posts, when they're creating content, maybe they don't do guest posts, maybe it's just they're writing content for their blog, they're likely going to start link building to you because you're doing it for them. Now, this is a very manual way of doing it. But the thing with link building is links going to specific pages are much stronger than a link going to your homepage, right? Most of the links that your website has go to your homepage. If you're trying to increase the URL rating of your specific pages, you want to have those relationships. Because if you're building links to somebody and you start doing it first, they might be like, hey, Justin's been building links to us. Maybe we should form a relationship with him and start linking to him more. Then you could start to be like, great, here's some of the pages that I'm trying to build links to. If you want to naturally link to them, it takes A little bit more time links to the pages that maybe product pages, for instance, which are really hard to build links to. And I think that is why, that is how you transform your guest blogging strategy, in my opinion.

So let's take a step back for a second. George, you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said there's a strategy and it's like, yes. And we've been talking about a lot of like ad hoc kind of like tips and tactics here and there. Justin, I would love to hear from you. You know, as you're setting about with a content strategy, how do you sit down and develop what your link building strategy is, if you don't mind taking us behind the curtain, so to speak? Like, how do you sit down and decide where your effort goes, what the actual strategy will be?

What Liz is asking you, Justin, is can you open up the kimono a little bit and let us know what happens there?

Yeah, I just, yeah, the opening of the kimono. So I think the, I'm trying to, I just won't stand up and open the kimono, I guess. But I think the, it really depends on where you are in the life cycle of your, of your business and your website. If you're a brand new business, you're just trying to acquire links in the beginning, right? Like you just, you're trying to increase your domain rating, right? Like a brand new website domain rating is how authoritative your website is based on its backlink profile. Again, the homepage is generally the page that gets the most links to it. So in the beginning your link building strategy is really just trying to let people know we exist, right? Like, and that is just trying to build your domain rating. But as your domain rating starts to get above like when it's in the 30s, when it starts to get into the 30s or even the 40s, you really want to start switching that to building links to like specific pages. So your strategy is going to change a little bit with that. And I think depending on what your business is, if you're guest blogging a lot of times you'll be able to most likely link to a some form of product page, not like a pricing page, but like a product page or a service page. And I think you have to find a way of naturally fitting that in the content. So generally what I do with the content marketing course, when that came out a was guest blogging like crazy. If you Google my name, you're going to see all my guest author bios over the years of the different places that I guest Blogged and my main goal was to build links to that specific page because HubSpot forming, domain rating. So I was building links to that page and within a year my link building paired with that page starting to do well and getting natural link building. So you call it organic building or sorry, organic links come into a page with my inorganic links I'm building. And it's been ranking number one for content marketing course for like seven years now. So it's like the one course that people see. So I think that's the strategy people are trying to get to is what are the pages that are most important to you and how can you create valuable content off page if we're only talking about guest blogging? Because this is just one strategy for link building, but it's one that I think can help just about everybody. And then that is really ultimately what you're striving for. First, building up your website's domain rating. Get it to between the 30 and 40 and you can check that in like Moz or Ahrefs or other SEO platforms. It might be a little bit different by platform, but then at some point you're gonna want to shift to building links to specific pages because you want specific pages on your site having links to them, because that's what's gonna make them rank higher in search.

What's like the general, like, what would you say is like the general minimal price of admission or the table stakes you need to acquire to be able to even like, start asking for like guest blog posts or, you know, backlinks.

Or anything like that?

Like, what do you think you have to like, prove before you earn the right to like, start going around, you know, asking for these opportunities? Like, is it a certain amount of content you need to create or like a presence you have to build with your own original stuff first? Like, where do you kind of earn the right to do this?

Yeah, I love this question. Justin, before you answer this, I love this question, Max, because I'm sitting here going, nobody would want me to come blog on their content anyway. Like, why?

Like, yeah, George, I created an asinine amount of educational HubSpot content. What do you mean?

But not. I've never gone and guest blog though. I've never done that. I've never guest blogged anywhere.

You've guest vlog?

Yeah, I think you answered the question there, George, though I think a lot of it has to do with the confidence of it. Like, if you're going to reach out and say, hey, like, I'm really well versed. In this or first of all, like, I love your blog. I love X, Y and Z. Maybe even call out specific articles and then explaining, hey, I actually am really well versed in these topics. Would love the opportunity of creating content for you. It's just sales, right? Like, it's really about pitching yourself and making people believe in you. And George, don't sell yourself short. I think if you wanted to go out there and guest blog, you could do it. I think you saying you can't do it maybe is something that you should just say you can't.

That little bit of imposter syndrome there. Yeah. So here's the thing, George, and hopefully I don't inflate your ego too much, but.

Oh, come on, I'll take it. I'll take it.

I don't know if you knew this about yourself, but your, your reputation precedes you a little bit. Like you were in the first cohort when the onboarding program, the partner scaled onboarding program was still in his beta. And I was in the second cohort and I remember we were able to watch the videos from the first cohort and my first thought was doing this. Okay, it's for real. So, like, the thing is, is that because we're focusing in heavily on not only a specific channel, but a specific tactic within a channel. But one of the things to keep in mind is that there is more than one way to build your personal brand and your own authority within the ecosystem. If someone sees that George B. Thomas is willing to write something, they're going to say yes, because your, your name in the HubSpot ecosystem has a little bit of weight to it. And so they're going to want to, not only just because you have valuable stuff to say, but also because you're known and you have an audience that you bring with you. And so there's. There's a chance that if someone Googles you, then that article that you wrote for them is going to show up. Like, it's not even about the topics you're writing about. It's the fact that you yourself are a long tail keyword. So with the snap.

Yeah.

So first of all, first of all, I'm just going to clock out for the day. I've officially been called a long tail keyword phrase, but no Devin brother. I get it. And first of all, thank you. And this is literally something that I believe in the future that I need to focus on. And I do agree, Justin, that part of this may have been just my own mental limitations to that. I'm not a writer. I'm more like video and audio. But. But if I were to take the brand that Devin is mentioning and apply the strategies that we're talking about today, I actually do get very, I'm very intrigued to what that might actually equal in the future for things that we're doing so very eye opening today.

Here's what I will say to all of this because I think we've gotten into the George of it all, but I think it brings up a broader point that Justin, you were getting at, which is that I think a lot of times what will happen is people will get a case of the yips. They'll get in their head and they'll think because I am not a big time content creator, whatever, they kind of forget that they're an expert in their field. You don't need to necessarily sell somebody on. Like, look at my long CV of all of these blogs I've written. If you've been an expert in your field for a number of years and you have a niche area of expertise, I will tell you right now, George, for one of our clients that we're working on, one of the things that we talked about yesterday is, hey, what partners can we collaborate with to fill in expertise gaps for topics in our content strategy? So one of the things I think people can think about is before you start pitching yourself, have you considered going out to other people and saying, hey, we have some gaps in our roster, we'd love to feature you. I bet that would probably make it easier when it's your time to guest blog for them to say yes. But I think that's the thing you need to keep in mind is that whether you're a George B. Thomas, a long tail keyword that is both a threat and a promise, or what have you, you know, you are, you are an expert in something that you do or sell. And I think that's really important. Just, Justin, you hit the nail on the head. It's all about the yips. You know what I mean? And if you have a content manager on staff, have them interview you about the topic, have them ghostwrite the topic. There are ways to make this a lot easier than you think it has to be.

Yeah, and Max was saying this earlier. Imagine if it's not somebody like you, George, like I think you would be able to have a lot of doors open for you if you wanted them. But if you're just starting out right, like, and you don't know what to do with it specifically, it is going to be harder in the beginning, right? Like, maybe you write your own blog post and then you use that as an example. Somebody's going to give you a chance. If you're out there and you're really trying to create value and opportunities for people. Like, and as you do it, the opportunities are going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more meaningful. So it's like, that's why it's something that you have to invest in with your own brand of things. I will say in something. And you just want to get out there and you want to try and help, and you can't communicate it. Have somebody ghostwrite for you, too. Like, I think that's what you were even saying. Like, Liz, maybe there's like, you're working with a team where you're telling them what you're trying to communicate and you have somebody who's a writer. Like, if you're not a strong writer, don't let that hold you back. George, One thing you could even do is you could do podcasting with companies and then say, hey, I would love to take this. Repurpose the audio session into a blog post that we can put on your site. And then there you go. So it's like, then you can use your podcasting as a way to create content that lives on. That's what co marketing would be like, where it's like, hey, we're going to do this thing. And one thing like that was one thing through the content marketing course that was very explicit about is get really good at repurposing things. Because if you get really good at repurposing things, you're going to create opportunities. And maybe you're not a great writer out the gate, but if you're a great vlogger, well, your episode's going to look at all the things that we talked about in here. You probably could repurpose this episode into a guest post and then be able to publish it somewhere. So I think that is kind of the way of thinking about it as well, is like, how can you get started and then know and trust in the process that over time it's gonna get better, Right? Like, the first day you do something, that's gonna be the hardest. Like an athlete, right? Like, when you become a professional, you've had years and years of development in that, and it's. That is coming back to it. People generally don't like doing that. They want a quick fix. They're just gonna blast an email out, which kind of comes full circle to what we were talking about earlier. Yeah.

It kind of sounds like, you know, people are more interested in your expertise and your audience versus your writing skills. Right. Like I've now I think about, I've had plenty of people come to me ask if I want to write guest blog posts. I've never blogged a thing in my life, right? And I go, well, I could barely read a book. I'm definitely not writing anything, but I'll make a video for you, right? And like, you know, they just, they understand if you have the expertise and you have the audience, like, you know, you can put something together.

Well, I also think to just that point though, it's like expertise. I'm glad you called that out, Justin. Expertise doesn't necessarily mean, isn't necessarily the. Like, you must be this tall line. Sometimes you just need to be the passionate little malcontent who's obsessed about a question and is willing to investigate it. Like, one of the things I was talking to a client about yesterday is you need to, you need to realize you do not need to be the number one expert in something because let's face it, no one likes to know it all. No one likes that guy at the party. We don't like that person at HubSpot Inbound event where they're saying, let me tell you how I got a million whatevers with this one thing that I did because I am perfect. Like, no, we like people who are human, who have gaps, who have flaws. Like, we do not trust infallible experts. So one of the things I encourage them to do is think about it this way. Don't position yourself as the know it all. Position yourself as the one who has decided. I am obsessed with answering the right questions and you can rely on me every time my name shows up as a byline on a piece of content that I went out there and tirelessly tried to figure out the answer to. Whatever this question is. And that may be brand new knowledge.

I love that. One of the things really quickly to come back to what Max is talking about is the fact that he's getting blog requests and he's not a blogger. The thing is, is that building your personal reputation, your personal brand as a blogger may not start with blogging. It may start with a completely different channel that you're more comfortable with or more, you know, literally visible on, in video and in Max's case, these fire TikToks. And if you're not following him on TikTok, shame. But the thing, and that's, that's how I really got into like became A huge Max fan was he did this one Call of Duty video, Call of Duty style video. But he was talking about the CRM and I absolutely lost it. Like that was still. That was unhinged video of all time. But yeah, if you want to be successful, don't just be stuck in that one lane, that one channel. Branch out and go where the people are and then bring them to where you want to be.

I'd also say try to incorporate. That's very well said, Devin. I would also say try to incorporate why people are asking you why they want you to blog for them in the first place. Max, right? Like if they know you, it's probably because they know you from this other area. And I think one thing, and I think it makes sense, right? If somebody is asking you to do one thing, totally makes sense for you to think, oh, this is what they're looking for versus well, what would the end result look like? Is the article gonna have a bunch of GIFs throughout of it? Is it gonna have a video at the beginning that maybe I'm using to help the rest of the article, you all can actually stand out versus somebody who's just a really great native content writer? Like if they're gonna collaborate with you, I don't want to say the content's not gonna be as strong. That's not what I'm trying to say. As much as I think it could be more multimedia where it's like imagine a blog, guest blog post. You're giving somebody that has video at the top, which usually those posts do better anyways because people are gonna stay on the page longer. Maybe that's on their YouTube chann. Maybe it's your YouTube channel. Maybe you have other things that are incorporated throughout the page. I'll guess blogging is that it's not just one format. Like it's really what is your approach or experience, what you're trying to convey in this. And this is coming back to Liz. In the beginning you brought AI and things that are happening. What's happening with search right now? People are getting flipped upside down. Their organic results are tanking. And a lot of it is because content was really written from an SEO perspective. Meaning that Here are the 10 things you need to do to learn how to be a content creation expert. And it's a bam bam translating to is Google's looking for perspective driven content that is not something that's going to be written from a specific bot like ChatGPT or somebody else. So it's like, hey, I've been A content. I've been a editor in Chief for five years. Here are my 10 tips that I've seen in using your experience and putting that in the article. That article is probably going to do better than a website that has even a higher URL rating or domain rating because Google is seeing that it's from your perspective out which that is still only on mobile right now. But this is where search is going. Very perspective driven content from your perspective. Not necessarily something that's just optimized really well for search.

I'm so glad.

Can we hit the brakes and put it in reverse for a sec? Just for a second.

This is where we're going like, because.

First of all, the amount of people that probably know that there's a mobile filter based on perspective is probably about zero people other than Justin Champion who are listening to or watching or even dare I say, partaking of creating this podcast. I didn't even know that was like a filter or a direction that was going. The other thing that I have to unpack when I heard you saying that again, simple mind, simple things. It's like holy crap, he just did like the whole eat thing like authority and like literally the way you said the intro of whatever blog you were about to write was like the authority and the technical prowess and the like, all of that right at the beginning. And then here's the rest of the article and I was like, oh my God, I wonder if people realize how magical those two things paired together actually equal for their content strategy moving forward.

Oh yeah, And George, this is exactly where we're, we're ending our conversation today because Justin, I want to hear you talk a bit more about this because one of the things that I think happened is that people missed that Google was very explicit and upfront about this is where search was going. So before ChatGPT and everything kind of took off and like all of the doomsday rhetoric started imploding and exploding everywhere. Google rolled out its helpful content update like what was it like over a year ago? And it is very explicit where it says we don't even need you to be an expert. We need you to be passionate. You need to have very explicit opinions. But guys, this we are, we have now entered the f around and find out era of content creation. Like we are not doing this anymore. Agencies who are going to get penalized because they're, they have low level content writers who have no authority, interest or perspectives on a piece of content are going out and cobbling together stuff like that doesn't work Anymore. And what's fascinating, Justin, is that people are surprised by this. Google normally is like, every time we roll, it's nothing. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about this one. For months they were like, guys, will you please read this? We are very clearly telling you what's going to happen. And then when everything started tanking, people were just like clutching their pearls. They were telling us this, they were telling us this.

How is the algorithm understanding the passion and whatever around the topic? Is it literally just looking at like how you're writing it or swears per.

Graph is my understanding.

I can, I'm in trouble. I don't really swears, so I'm in trouble. We're. We're not going to be passionate about anything.

I'll work, I'll work on it.

George, can you work on like, we just need to maybe like have the intro be like, you know, like, I don't know. Really, like, I don't know.

Are you ready to learn?

That's what we gotta do.

Yeah, exactly.

I couldn't pull myself to do it, Max, so thanks for having my back.

Welcome. But wait, is that, Is that the perspective stuff? Like when you mentioned perspective, is that the helpful content stuff is like, how is it like measuring all that?

It's part of it. Like, so search is, Search is changing. There's a couple of things that are. Google has a. What's known as sg, the search generative engine, where they're trying to do their own AI, so they're trying to get into the game. They're a little bit later than other people. And I would say that there's two main things that are happening. Like what Liz was saying is perspective driven content. Content that's just written from a perspective of somebody. And I think that's why, I think guest blogging is going to have a resurgence because of that. Right. Like people are going to want to have that perspective driven content. The other side of it, the perspectives filter. So the next time you're on your mobile device now they actually move the pill to the first one. It's actually above video now on most searches. So when you click that, the results aren't even blog posts really. Like they are communities, they're videos and they are forums. YouTube is actually the number one on there. Like I think.

Sure, yeah.

Who want to get into blogging probably have the biggest opportunity to expand the reach. Because if you're. Imagine if everybody vlog or podcast episode, everything you did turn into a guest blog post or turn into a blog post. Or piece of written content, you're putting your video on it. People might find it that way. They might find your video through the Perspectives filter. It's not also just a one size fits all where it's like you're trying to rank number one now. It's like, how can I create content on these different channels that are getting. Yeah, I want my video to show. I want the blog post for my video is to show. I want to maybe my TikTok to be able to also show with it. And I think that's the thing to keep in mind is that it's not on channel. It's much as getting good on a lot of different channels and finding ways of doing that. The Perspectives filter is really about pulling through social media and those other channels because people are now typing searches like how to do content creation Reddit because they want to learn from people on Reddit. That's where perspective sort of came from is that it was originally starting through like forums from people. And Google's like, okay, well that's what you want. We're going to try and make our content like that and we're also going to show you content from all these other channels.

Got you. And is there like a calculation that Google's making where it's like if we're going to these places, it's almost as if it's like we're going to these known human watering holes where humans are actually sharing, you know, a lot of knowledge and stuff that it's a lot less likely to be like AI generated, run of the mill blog bullshit for.

Now until like in the future where this whole episode is in us and it's just AI versions of ourselves. But that'll be another. That'll be for another issue in the future which be so much easier. But see then it's going to be a whole other world of issues and like. Right. That is kind of a theories that video, it's harder to make it AI generated. So I think video content people have been saying for years, video, this is the year of video. Well, it really is the year of video.

Like for 20, you know, there's that fasting Cisco stat.

Yeah, no, since 2013, that 2015, 16, 17, 18 will be the year of video.

One person at Cisco who has that job just to change the year every year, like that's their job. They show up on January 1st, they're like changing it to 20.

You know, if I tried this in the content marketing course back in 20, I was like, take your content, make it into a video or vice versa. And I think if people. People who had been doing that since then, they'd be juggernauts right now, because they would have been optimizing for it.

Listen, I heard it was doing it and continued to do it. That's the thing. Like, video has been. It has been the year a video since 20, but it's not been the year for everybody to do video. It's the year for those who choose to do video are going to reap the rewards of doing video.

Get better at it, expand themselves. Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Is YouTube gonna kill blogging, Justin? Just tell me.

Oh, just now, you were doing so good on this episode. You are doing so good on this episode.

And then you go, got it.

I think it's definitely something where I wouldn't say it's killing. I would say adopt both. I would say if you can find. If you're a great blogger, then find a way of incorporating video into it. If you're a great vlogger, then find a way of repurposing into. I think vloggers actually have more of an advantage, in my opinion, because it's harder to be natural on video than to write really well. You can hide behind a desk and write in a dark hole, but you can't do that on video. So it's like, well, you know, that's truthful.

Truthful.

You can't know what I mean. It's like videos a little bit more. But. But I get. But you know what I mean? It's like you want to do both. It's not and. It's not and. Or it's not or it's. It's and.

Yeah, yeah, the black cat of the. Of the Hub Heroes group. So don't worry. It's true. I'm the one in Georgia, like, occasionally, like, throw a coffee in the cape lives, and I'll just hiss. And he's like, nope, not ready yet. Keep going.

Yeah, it's not ready. Keep writing. Keep writing. Liz, here's the funny thing again. If more people were here alive, they could see that Chris has actually cleared all of our schedules. We can go an entire another hour of this episode. We really. We really can't. But, man, has this been so much fun. Actually, when I saw Chris write that, I thought, how cool would it be to have one day someday where maybe we did backto back guests for, like, five or six episodes and did, like, a marathon of the Hub Heroes podcast live. That would be totally nuts. Anyway, I digress.

I will bring my Hub Heroes blanket, which is, like, my prized possession. I love it so much. And. And like Chris said, our. Our schedules are clear. But, Justin, we also don't want to hold you hostage. So I only have one more question for you, and then we will release you into the great beyond with the understanding that you will be coming back here to do another episode with us. Because I think, yeah, this was. Bye.

I need an animated hub hero to. I'll. I'll do multiple episodes. I'm gonna get an animated hub hero in here somewhere. It's like, oh, yeah, I'll be a guest. I'll be a guest contributor for sure.

Oh, there we go.

There's a vlogger there.

It is called relationship or guest vlogger, maybe, Right?

Yeah.

Speaking of which, who is your favorite superhero then? Liz can ask her question.

I feel like that's a personal question, isn't it? Is that something that we're supposed to get? Batman has been the one for me over the years, but I feel like that's probably a lot of people's. But I would say that that was just one superhero from, like, my youth back, like, Michael Keaton days.

Oh, there you go.

Sort of stuck around with, like, Batman 1 and 2. Watched it when I was in elementary school, and I think it just sort of stuck with me.

God, I feel old now.

I always love when that happens. Do you want to tell us more about. Is that another episode?

We'll talk about davenports at a later date.

All right, Davenport, rip to the goat.

All right, so last question for you. For our listeners, if you could dispel or permanently debunk in our cute, adorable, dumb, inbound marketing brains, a myth either about link building, guest blogging, topic clusters, pillar content, what would it be and why?

I think maybe for the relevance of this episode. People have been saying for years that link building, even guest blogging, is going to have diminishing returns and it's going to die. Matt Cutts, when he was at Google years ago, you can Google this. He had, like, a quote that people refer to all the time where guest blogging and link building is going to die and Google's going to do it a different way. And I'll continue to think that links are going to have a place, whether it's internal, whether it's external, whether it's meant to drive, whether it's meant to increase authority of your pages or drive referral traffic to it. The day that websites aren't ranking in search is when I think that link building is not going to have some sort of component. It might evolve over time, but I think there's going to be some sort of aspect to it. But people need to understand that it might evolve and it might not look exactly the same that it is now and just stay on top of it. It doesn't mean that it's going to go away. It just might evolve over time. Especially as we move from a link authority world to like a where people are known that way versus link building.

Outstanding. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for an incredible episode. Justin, my guy, I could literally sit here and talk about this stuff for hours. This has been amazing. Yep, that's right, Max.

Likewise.

Put it up there. Right up there.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Honor, a pleasure and to our listeners, we will talk to you all next week. George, we got to talk about that marathon. That sounds like an amazing idea. I love it.

I think it would be super dope.

Super dope.

Thanks, everyone. Thanks for having me.