Achieve better Google rankings with the power of backlinks; with Farzad Rashidi

Welcome to The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. This show will tell you how to get the recognition you and your business deserve. Our guests share their practical insights and tools which you can use straight away. Your host is international entrepreneur, podcast host, and author Jim James. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we are going to a place called Rockville, Maryland in America. And we're going to meet Farzad Rashidi, who is a co-founder of a company called Respona. Farzad, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Jim, for having me.

Well, thank you, because you're going to help us to understand the sort of curious black art of backlinks, because link building is something that some of us know a little bit about, and you know a lot more than we do. And Respona has, you know, become one of the leading companies in this and was originally sort of spun out from the massively successful Visme, which is a sort of a graphics and design platform with over 20 million active subscribers. So you guys know what you're doing and I'd love for you to share with us how does Respona help the unnoticed entrepreneur to get noticed?

So Jim, to get into that, I'd like to kind of start with a quick little backstory of how it came to be as a product, 'cause I think that would sort of shed some light in terms of why we do it the way that we went about it. And that is when I joined Visme as the first marketing hire, it was a completely bootstrapped company, no outside funding. And as you mentioned, it's a tool for other business owners to create graphics and presentations. And it was quite a daunting task because paid advertising works well up to a certain degree. But as a bootstrapped company, obviously cash is always short. And also at the same time, there's diminishing returns on ads when you double the budget. Normally you don't double the conversions, so that at some point sort of plateaus. And as far as our sales goes, since we had a very unique price point in a way that was, I think at the time was $15 a month, that was very affordable for most businesses. It wouldn't make financial sense to hire salespeople and go door to door. So we had to sort of find a channel that would help us scale without having to invest too much cash. So we landed on content marketing and SEO. And to kind of walk back from it, the way we sort of settled on it, we were like, okay, so Jim, let's say you would like to create an infographic or presentation for this episode. And how would you go about creating that graphic if you didn't already have a solution? What was the first step for you to find a solution to your problem? If you're in the top 1% when it comes to quality of content, however way you define it, you're still in the millionth. You don't even come close to the top 10 or get over 99% of clicks. So we're like, okay, we're missing something. And what we found is that the way Google sort of prioritizes these search results is not only based on what's the content on the page, but also on the credibility and the authoritativeness of that website. And we're like, great, how do you actually define credibility? Because it's somewhat subjective. So the way Google works, the core algorithm of Google, It's kind of like a spider that crawls the web. And when other relevant websites in your space that contain some authority themselves link back to you, mention you, and talk about you, that's in the eyes of Google, is a vote of popularity. And that helps your general domain authority, as we said in the SEO industry, to increase. And that also increases your likelihood from your own website pages to start getting rankings for Google. So that's kind of like a simplified version. And we're like, great. So that means we have to go get more people to talk about us. And it ended up being a lot harder said than done, which ultimately led to the creation of Respondent.

I see. So you get this ranking, I guess, authority through credibility, right? Maybe it's perhaps one way of simplifying that. But how does it work then, Farzad? If you have content on your website, are you asking another website to link By what, sharing the content on their website as well as yours? I've failed to understand how you get someone else to send someone to you because they're worried about losing their own traffic.

Yeah, I mean, something we learned also over trial and error, right? What we found is that you can't just reach out to websites cold and ask them to just mention you, right? It's just not how the real world works. So we had to come up with a strategy, with a plan on how we actually go about building mutually beneficial collaborations with other relevant authoritative websites in our space, which actually has a lot to do— the process is quite similar with PR, which I know that's your background. So let me walk you through an example. One of the simplest examples of a link building campaign, which most SEOs don't even consider it as link building, is what I'm doing right now, being a guest on another podcast. Believe it or not, that is an SEO strategy. Let me take it step by step. So when I come on as a guest on the show, your website is going to put up the episode with the transcription and potentially links to Respona, ultimately mentioning me and the company that I come from. So when Google crawls that new page that you put on your site and sees, okay, Jim is a smart person with— carries a level of authority and is vouching for Respona, he's had their founder on the page and is linking to their website. And is mentioning them, is talking about them. So that is another vote of popularity. But at the same time, nobody's being taken advantage of because why? Because I come on the show and I help you create content together, right? So I help you create a podcast episode and spend an hour and you're so kind to let me on the show and be a great host as you are. And so we create value together and then the podcast listeners value by listening to the show. And we get value because we get— and it's not to say the only reason why I'm here is to get a link. There's mirrors of benefits to being a guest. Like you first of all meet smart people like in our space like yourself. You build these relationships. You also get free advertising to a niche audience who are listening to this show. And you also get a link to your website that also helps your search pages to have a higher chance of getting up into search results. So kind of strategies like this where you're basically building mutually beneficial collaborations. kind of the basis for any sort of link building campaign. And that's kind of something that led to the creation of Respona that helped us sort of streamline that entire process from discovery to finding the right person, getting the contacts and outreach.

Okay, Farzad, I'm sold. And hey, thank you for coming on the show because I'm learning and, you know, you're sharing. So there's a lot in this for all of us. So with Respona, tell us what does it do? Because, you know, one of the challenges is knowing who to link with. I mean, you can go on other podcasts, for example, but As you know, there's, I think, over several million podcasts now, and you can use platforms to find them. But how does Respona solve that problem that isn't then just having a big Excel spreadsheet in the sky that you've got a virtual assistant desperately trying to figure out what to do with?

Exactly. So there's numerous strategies that folks can do when it comes to promotion and link building. Podcast outreach is one out of a gazillion different types of outreach you can run. I can give you a few more examples. Like one of the easiest ways, for example, say e-commerce brand. Let's say you come up with like the cannabis industry is growing in the US. So let's say you have some CBD gummies that you sell. How do I find a CBD gummy as a customer? I normally go on Google and then look up what are some of the best CBD gummies, right? So the search results that come up are rarely ever sellers themselves. They're actually either news sites or blogs that are talking and listing other gummies that are linking to other websites. So one of the strategies, for example, called the listicle strategy. So Responder helps you first find these websites that are already ranking on Google, that are already carrying a level of authority, and then goes and finds the right person in charge of that blog. Okay, who actually wrote that piece and who's the content manager behind that piece of content? And then finds you their LinkedIn address and their public email address, verifies it, makes sure that's the correct person, and then helps you write an email template and personalize that email to reach out to that person and actually get your product mentioned. So now the same you can apply to different industries. For Respona, we do the same. For BizMe, we look up best presentation tools, right? So, so this example of a listicle strategy, so that's kind of Respona does is that it streamlines the whole process from discovery to average.

Farzad, it sounds like to some degree the Holy Grail. Is this useful for every kind of a business? I mean, could I use this for the Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast, for example, to, you know, build the authority of the domain name? Which industries does it work particularly well for and does it not work for?

So it all comes down to the customer acquisition channel that you pick for your business, right? So I always walk through this example. I'm like, you got to answer 2 questions. First of all, are your customers aware of the problem that you're solving? And two, where they're searching for a solution if they're aware of the problem. So for example, for Respona, it's clear. Okay, I need more backlinks to my site. So if anybody's SEO savvy or any sort of runs any sort of content marketing campaigns, they're aware of the concept at least. So they're aware of the problem and they're looking for it where they're looking for it. They're Googling it. Okay, how do I build links to my website? What are some of the ways for me to increase my organic traffic? So that means it's almost idiotic for us not to invest in our content marketing SEO because that's how our customers are finding us, right? So this is how we position ourselves to come up in places where they're looking for a product like ours will show up. But say if you sell, for example, a very expensive enterprise software or hospital MRI machines that are in millions of dollars, no hospital administrators Googling, where do I find an MRI machine? That's ridiculous. And also same goes on the other end of the spectrum where you have a lifestyle product, say you sell t-shirts. I personally don't Google, okay, buying t-shirts. I normally go onto the store and purchase it, or I go to my favorite brand. So maybe TikTok influencers and social media and other channels may be a better way for you to invest your funds and resources. So kind of picking that type of business that your customers are actively looking for a solution and also showing up again, you're catering to the customer need is not so much You know, you don't want to be chasing after customers. You want the customers to come to you when they have a need to solve. And that's kind of the basis for the whole content marketing and SEO.

And you mentioned backlinks working on, you know, other sites. Does this relate if it's, for example, on a Twitter feed or in Facebook or Instagram? Are those links still working or is it really only within the search engine parameters of Google. So that's another just aspect to think about.

There's a simple rule of thumb: if it's easy to get, it's no good. If it's hard to get, it's good. So anybody can go on Twitter and Facebook and just post a bunch of things and link back to their site. So Google never prioritizes them. So they developed a tag called nofollow back in, I guess, 10, 20 years ago, that all of these social media user-generated content adds. So forum links, Reddit, you know, Quora, all sorts of social media, and none of them actually carry any sort of weight when it comes to prioritizing the search results in Google. But that doesn't mean that's not a helpful channel for you as a business owner, right? So what I'm trying to say is that there's no cheating the system. There's no quick and simple way to get rich. You gotta have to put in the work to actually, you know, get authority mentions from other relevant sites in your space.

And in a way, that's, to be honest, very reassuring, Farzad. Now we're talking about Respona. You're a co-founder at Respona. So thanks for educating me on the way that these backlinks work. And I'm sure that my fellow listeners will be fascinated by that. As a co-founder and you're building this new business, can you tell us what have you been doing to build Respona? I mean, obviously you're doing backlinks, but other ways that you've been building the brand would be fascinating to hear.

Sure. So, I mean, as far as Respona goes, you know, link building and backlinks are a piece of the puzzle, right? So obviously a big part of our efforts goes into content creation. So we spend about 20% of our resources on creating content. That's quite a scientific process. We normally find, okay, what are some of the keywords that are underserved? Like they're high in demand, people looking for them, low in competition, there's not too much supply, and they carry some sort of commercial value because we don't want to just reach out or write content about cooking, right? So it has to be relevant to our business and something that our potential customers would get value from. So First understanding, okay, what we need to write about, how do we now go and answer the questions to the best of our ability, create maybe a unique piece of content that actually caters to their search intent. And then after that, how do we actually get this piece of content in the search results? So it's all a process, right? So it's not just you get links and then somehow magically your traffic goes up. You kind of have to have all these pieces of the puzzle together. So for Respona, basically we're replicating a lot of the strategies and through trial and error we learned at BizMe, and so we get Good amount of organic traffic itself, and we're fully inbound. So customers find us normally, they're either looking at certain keywords or doing some research online, and we have quite a lot of websites that are vouching for us. So that helps. And as far as, you know, strategies that we experiment with, we've never really been good at outbound sales. I know it works very particularly well for agencies or expensive products that carry a large lifetime value. And something we've just never been very good at because we keep our product pricing very affordable. So most businesses can afford them. But that also means that it wouldn't make financial sense to hire someone, right, to go door to door. But experimented and nothing really that carried or something that was worthwhile for us to do long term. And paid advertising was another one. I haven't really had much luck with it as much because there's lots of agencies that bet on our keywords that carry again a much larger LTV so they can afford to invest more into CPC and whatnot. And it's just something that doesn't make sense for us to do. But it doesn't mean that we don't do it at all. Like there's obviously retargeting certain things that we do, but very small percentage of our efforts. But it generally comes down to kind of maximizing our organic channels. So that is basically writing content, promoting it, and also at the same time, you know, me building my own personal brand, going as a guest and Podcast. I just started a Substack. We'll see how that goes. And so yeah, kind of experimenting and kind of figuring out what else we can do on our end, but majority of our efforts are basically on SEO and content.

Okay, that's wonderful. And I think you've really neatly articulated, Farzad, the need to identify, you know, that your customers are looking for you and they know what they're looking for. But also the third element is that you've got a low price, high volume product that needs to be low touch, right? So the inbound is really, really key. If there's one thing that you think, Farzad, that's really moved the needle, at the risk of asking you to sort of come back to the same question, one thing that you can say either for Visme or for Responsa that's really moved the needle in terms of brand awareness, because inbound doesn't really necessarily build brand awareness, does it? Or does it? What would you say would be the strategy that you've adopted that's really sort of moved the needle in terms of sort of complete growth of the brand?

So it is kind of hard to attribute this, but I'm a big believer in being a guest on other podcasts. It tends to be a great promotion strategy because you're not here to sell anything. You're there to position yourself as an expert and actually educate the audience. And that's normally the best way to establish trust and relationships is by teaching people something they don't know. And be helpful to them without expecting anything in return. And that tends to be the same thing also when it comes to content creation, right? So you're putting out content that's free and ungated, and if someone likes it and you also elaborate on your product in it, that tends to bring a lot of conversions. So that would be one strategy I think lots of business owners can do regardless of whether they pick SEO as an acquisition strategy. It's just a great way to build relationships with other folks in the industry. And it's relatively easy to do, you know, as long as you have a process in place to be able to figure out what podcasts actually are relevant and you can add the most value to and reach out and position yourself as a potential guest.

And is Respona helping you to find the right podcast? Am I right in understanding that's one of the functions of Respona?

Yeah, so that's one of the other outreach strategies which you can input, say, another person in your industry, right? So I can put in, for example, you can put in my name, Farzad Rashidi of Respona. And it will pull up all the popular podcasts that I've been a guest on over the past year or so. There's like a recent, relatively recent episodes. So that automatically tells you 3 things about this podcast. One, they're relevant to your space because I've obviously interviewed someone. I don't go on cooking shows, right? So I'll go on shows that are relevant. 2, that means that the podcast accepts guests in the first place because not all podcasts do. So having interview style episodes is another thing that's down. And also it makes the personalization a lot easier because then you can now reference the episode given you actually listened to the episode. So that's actually how Yvonne came across your podcast is that they found the episode with Mark Myers and he's another great person in our industry and he's been a guest on your show. So we actually reached out and referenced that episode and asked if you'd be interested in interviewing me. And this is how we scheduled this interview. So obviously it's an effort worthwhile. So that's also another thing I would say.

Yeah, Fazluddin Rashidi, that's wonderful. So final question, if there's one thing that you'd like to share with my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs about being a founder, piece of advice, what would you like to share? Because now you're on another journey having worked successfully with building Visme up with the founder, and now you're a co-founder and you've already got this new Respona brand. Obviously, you're driving this, I can tell. What would be one piece of advice or wisdom that you'd like to share with my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs?

That's a great question. So I would say, I mean, maybe just me being young and inexperienced, and that's something that Paymon always tells me is that good things always take time. And my case has always been, it normally takes 3 times the amount of time and resources Compared to what I think any initiative would take. So building Respondo has definitely been a humbling experience because it was the first software company I was involved with from the ground up. So from idea to creation, and it's mind-boggling the amount of work it has taken to get it to this point. And obviously, you know, we've still got a long road ahead of us. But as far as I would say advice goes, Normally people I've seen that are successful, and again, I don't in any way think I'm a successful person per se, but every single successful entrepreneur I know, their resilience and perseverance has gotten to this point. Taking them 10 years to get to a meaningful result and something that most people don't want to do, to stick around and hustle beyond the work, be underpaid and overworked for a decade to get to something. So that Most folks would just prefer to go the safe route, get a job. And normally some of them have much better quality of life. So it's definitely not a get-rich-quick type scheme to be an entrepreneur. It's definitely something that requires a considerable amount of time. So makes me feel a lot more respectful to folks who have done it and made it and made their company successful.

Well, and Farzad Rashidi, I'm sure that Respona is going to go from strength to strength with you and your energy and your insight. Thank you so much for coming on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Lovely to find that your platform works. It found my show and brought us together. So it works. Yeah.

That sounds great.

So thank you for the education as well. That's wonderful, Farzad. So if people want to find out more about you and Respona, where can they go to find you?

So if you're interested in Respona, we put out tons of free educational content at respona.com. That's R-E-S-P-O-N-A.com. P-O-N-A dot com, and my full name is Farzad Rashidi. Aren't a whole lot of us on LinkedIn, so I normally stick out like a sore thumb. So you can easily find me there. And I recently started a Substack, so we'll see how that goes. But farzadrashidi.com that you can also subscribe and support my blabberings if you're any interested. So that I would say is the best way.

Okay, Farzad. Thank you so much, and thank you to Farzad Rashidi for giving. Me and I'm sure you some education about how backlinks work, do check out Respona. It introduced Farzad Rashidi and myself, so that's fabulous. It works. And what else would work is if you could please share this show with any fellow entrepreneurs that you know who may enjoy it, but also to leave a review because those also really help. And until we get to meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating and say thank Thank you. To you for listening.