Bill Hartzer & Brian Harnish Talk SEO, AI, Link Building & Domain Names

Speaker A: All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. I cashed out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker B: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At Jenn, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Moneylion SA. See it in action@genDigital.com.

Speaker C: okay, we record. We, we are recording now. Okay, Got it.

Speaker A: So, yeah, so, um, I wanted to uh, have this kind of sit down conversation, you know, talk, uh, about the industry, talk about AI, uh, talk about, you know, a couple different things here. Um, and I think I had a few things that we could um, talk about here. But um, what specifically have you been. Uh, tell me a little bit about your background and uh, let's start with that. And you know, how you got into SEO.

Speaker C: Oh my God, that was a long time ago. I've been in uh, I've been in uh, SEO basically since 1998 for uh, probably about uh, 26 years now. Um, I started by teaching myself HTML, CSS, building websites, Adobe Photoshop and everything. Pretty much avalanche, uh, from there into everything you see today. So I have, um, I have worked on large websites, small websites. Um, I've got my official start in SEO in 2007. So I was working at a real estate, um, posting company in their support department. That company ended up getting acquired and then that ended up in me doing a lotto move into the digital marketing SEO department. And I have been doing SEO full time ever since December 2007. So not, not exactly one of the OG, but pretty close. Yeah,

Speaker A: yeah, I mean, I go back a little further. Um, you know I was actually a technical writer um, back in the 90s. You know, I kind of classically trained if you will, you know, for technical writing. And it's interesting because, you know, technical writing was really just, you know, um, a table of contents and then, and then really organizing your content, you know, was originally just um. Yeah, yeah, you got a bunch of content. But you know, it was uh, you know, headings, um, you know, H1s, H2s, H3 tags and boarded list and everything really that you know, HTML, the classic HTML skip back with and, and you know, and I um, was doing you know, online help in the 90s and

Speaker C: remember when uh, classic HTML used uh, table for design with 250 columns and 350 rows.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean it was really pretty much, um, you know, pretty much very uh, you know, very basic and you know, having an organized page and having you know, um, organized content, um, and all that.

Speaker C: I mean it really before I knew it in 98. I apologize, Bill. And before, uh, I knew it in 98, that's exactly what you're saying. I was um, doing SEO before it was called SEO. It's basically exactly like you said, working on creating and organize well structured webpage that users can, that's good for users. And.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's interesting because now, you know, here we are, what, 20 some odd years later and in fact we're kind of back to, you know, get back to that. And you know, even with uh, you know I, even with AI content, I mean even, you know, we're back to nowadays, you know, with um, um, my kind of. I'll go through my process, you know for uh, you know, for creating and figuring, you know, figuring out, figuring out content. But frankly, um, a lot of those basics and you know, some, someone will come back and you know, I still see a post on a Facebook group that says, oh, well, I just create, you know, I create, you know, eight articles on my site and all, you know, that are 400 words. And you know, that seems to work very well for me. And, and you know, it's just not, I mean it just is, is maybe one of those might be okay. And then, you know, and then you know, all the uh, you know, Google's ignoring or just doesn't put much weight into all these other, all the other ones that you're doing. I mean it just is, you know, I still find it amazing, you know, that um, you know how um, there's just so many um, SEO myths out there. But.

Speaker C: Oh yeah, still, I mean, it's just

Speaker A: like, come on, you know, my, uh, let me go through my process and, and tell me, tell me what you, tell me what you think. You know, if, I mean, if, if I didn't have, you know, all sorts of uh, you know, additional tools, um, you know what the basic is. Let's start with. Okay, I'M you know, I have a brand new domain name and website. And so, you know, I would actually go to chat something, you know, an AI like chat GBT and say, you know what? And, and ask it. Literally. I'm creating a new website about um, you know, about search engines, um, on, you know, a new domain that I've really just got, um, just acquired search engines.net and so I, you know, I tell them, you know, tell it and you know, then I'll get explained. Well, what pages? If I'm writing, um, a page about search engines, what, what content and what pages would I, you know, would someone expect to see if they go to a website about search engines? It could be about red widgets, it could be up route roofing, it could be about Dallas roofing, it could be about, you know, San Diego, um, com inspection, whatever. It is kind of, you know, my process is, is. And it's interesting because, you know, with all the knowledge that, you know, the AI has, it comes back and says, hey, you know, you need to talk about this, that, um, and the other, you know, and that's a good start. I mean it's kind of, you know, you kind of start to think, okay, well these are the different topics that I need to mention and create either, you know, those could be. And then depending on that, those could be a section of the site where, you know, you're talking about, you know, if it's home inspection, you're talking about real estate and every, you know, or a buyer, you're buying, buying a house and, and so forth. And then you could have another, you know, that could be a whole series of pages or it could be just one page. You need a, you know, a page about this or a page about that. And so you kind of get an idea by, you know, talking, talking or asking the AI about what kind of topics. And you know, and that kind of starts to give you some relevancy and kind of focus, a little focus on that, you know, on that, that topic for the whole website. Then of course you get into, oh, you know, I'm, I'm. Then you can ask it, oh, I'm writing a section about real estate or I'm writing a, you know, a section about this. Tell me the, you know, the different pages that I need. And so you start to. And then the next after that as the sections, oh, I'm writing a page about this. And then, you know, it'll come back and you know, ask it to give me the topics, the topics, the subhead, the headings. And the subheadings and sections, uh, you know, of content that I need to mention on that page. It's interesting because it really comes back with, you know, a fair amount. I mean, obviously from there you could then, um, dig in further and tell the AI to write that content or, you know, or you can take that and, and you know, give it to a writer. But that's kind of, you know, kind of my process. There's tools that help you do that process kind of a little bit faster or a little bit more optimized or whatever. But frankly, if you were to use that process, even if you don't do the traditional SEO, you're probably going to come up with a kind of halfway decent site. Um, because you're, you know, my opinion is that you're not really focused on keywords. I mean, sure, you know, yeah, okay. You know, I want to rank for Dallas home inspection or San Diego. San Diego roofing. But yeah, and sure, okay, put that, you know, in a title tag and put it in, you know, and mention it. You know, make it clear that you're roofer in San Diego. But right, you know, when it comes down to it, I mean, um, it's not, you know, I mean, I, I can't believe I'm still hearing, you know, keyword density.

Speaker C: You know, it's literally like, that's literally 2000 SEO. SEO for the year 2000, basically, um, maybe even a little bit earlier than that. So, like, sometimes people get stuck in their ways and don't.

Speaker A: All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. I cashed out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity. A, uh, fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker B: When billions of people feel unsafe. And that's no longer a security problem, it's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Moneylion. See it in action@gendigital.com yeah.

Speaker C: Move forward to, uh, more projective strategies. Like now it's more about the topic and the entity and what's discussed on the page than the actual keyword being repeated over and over and over again. Search engines have evolved beyond that by a lot. So you can't really base SEO on just one keyword or two keywords or whatever. Now you can interweave it into the targeting of the page and make sure that you talk about the topic enough that it is in line with what your competitors are talking about. But on the whole, it's well beyond just doing basic keywords.

Speaker A: Yes, I mean it's, it's, you know, and the reason for that is that, you know, as is technology has evolved. I mean, you know, uh, that's, you know, it sounds like a big, you know, high level phrase but you know, search engines are using AI just like we're using AI, but they understand natural language.

Speaker C: Yeah, NLP a lot better than um,

Speaker A: you know, and, and yes, I mean it used to be, you know, programming and you know, the, the, I think the, one of the earliest um, you know, SEO type of, you know, exposure that I had was when it, you know, I could probably. What we weren't talking about, it was just rankings. It wasn't SEO, um, or anything like that.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: It was basically, it was keyword destiny. And what was happening is, is that you would, you know, it was um, there was essentially a, someone had come up with the perfect keyword. Destiny was like 13.67% and that was, you know, used at the time. And so basically the, the, the uh, you know, I remember specifically that people were, you people were hiding. They're hiding their code.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: On the page it was kind of a, you know, but like JavaScript either doing a JavaScript redirect or some kind of, you know, or um, you know, or cloaking or something. But the idea was there was a paragraph or two paragraphs of text and I remember specifically that there was one that was a, something about um, the Washington and uh, chopping down a cherry tree. And they had used that, you know, two or three paragraphs and if you search and replaced rather than cherry tree, you used your keyword you wanted to rank for. You swapped it out. It was the third. It came out to the perfect 13.67% keyword density. And you would like um, just about any keyword and so that, you know, so and the search engines, you know, they did look at title tag, keyword and the title tag and they did look at meta description tag and they took you to look at, you know, mentions of that on the page. And so it was, you Know, it was the amount of processing power they had, um, you know, it was. And so forth and be able to, you know, go through all, you know, the pages that they, you know, that they knew about on the web.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: And you know, that was it. And now, you know, now we're talking about, you know, so many different, um, you know, changes that, you know, then we got into 200 ranking factors. I remember it was 200 or so and you know, it was links and anchor text and you know, keyword and title tag and you know, and so forth and bold and italic and all that. And you know, it was interesting. I mean it. And so we have evolved, um, and you know, it. So now it's not really about keywords. I mean, as an SEO, we can start with keywords. I mean, I think that keyword research is still a good place to start for in a lot of areas.

Speaker C: Um, yeah, you need to know exactly what you're targeting in terms of the competitive landscape. Right. I mean you can't exactly just willy nilly glass or something and expect it to bring search volume. You have to figure out what the current search volume of the market is, what your competitors are doing. But you don't want to do exactly what they're doing. What if they're doing something that's not exactly in line with what Google's looking for? Right.

Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI, uh, agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker B: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At jen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in action@gendigital.com M I cashed

Speaker A: out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker B: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem. It's an economic one. At gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands, Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Moneylion. See it in action@genndigital.com so you kind

Speaker C: of have to want, uh, a balance between that and what you want on your Own website.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it, you know, so, I mean, yes, it comes down to. Yeah, I mean, Eddie Geo, you know, San Diego roofing. Okay, let's start with that. San Diego roofer. San Diego roofing. But, you know, there's, um, and, and it's easier, dude, you know, like when you go through that process with the, the AI and asking it the, you know, asking it the questions. I mean, um, sure, that's, you know, that's a great way to start. I mean, you know, I am a San Diego roofer. I mean, creating a website. What pages should I create? You know, and then, and then, you know, then, um, you know, then obviously you can, you know, once that is created and so forth, you know, I mean, it's, it's, um, you can do things, you know, you can start looking at competitors and what they're, you know, what, what they're ranking for and what their, um, you know, what, what content. Um, you know, I, I look lately at doing entity analysis, which is essentially kind of the same thing, is kind of like, okay, if I'm creating a page, you know, that's right. That I want to rank for, you know, San Diego roofing, what do I need to mention on that page? And you know, um, and so, you know, those would be, you know, you know, you need to mention, you know, the various entities. Um, you can do some analysis on who's ranking and what, you know, topics and subtopics and headings that they're mentioning on their pages.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: You know, kind of combine, um, everything that you know, what they're doing and.

Speaker C: Exactly. And it's kind of like you have to look at better pages. I apologize, Bill. Um, it's not like you can look at just a couple of people who are ranking. Right. You have to look at top 10 and overall organic results and see what they're talking about on their pages, see what you can include on yours to kind of match and get an algorithmic advantage and see where you can fall in line with all of that so you can at least get to the top 10. And then maybe you can use some additional SEO to boost your site to number one, depending on the competitiveness of that particular space.

Speaker A: So here's a question, you know, it's interesting because I know, um, so what are your thoughts around. What if there's no, you know, what if there's no keyword research or there's no. Nobody's written about that this before. Maybe it's breaking, maybe it's news, or maybe it's, um, you Know, you have a news website. Okay, so it's a challenge because really, um, there's no, you know, there's no,

Speaker C: no baseline.

Speaker A: It's, it's. There's not a lot. You know, there's you, you do a search and, you know, semrush or even, you know, God forbid, keyword planner or something like that, and you don't even, um. And you know, there's no searches, but, you know, you've kind of identified that this is a, you know, breaking news topic or this is something that nobody's really written about. That's, that's the challenge is that, you know, that, um, but you want to kind of. I get, you know, so it's, it's. You don't really know what. Of that topic. You don't really know yet. Nobody's created a page about that yet. I mean, so, you know, you're the first. And um, I've, you know, I'll tell you some stories about being, you know, my, my theory about being the first on something, um, with content and. But,

Speaker C: oh, uh, that's always.

Speaker A: You wanna, you know, maybe even ChatGPT or any of these. AIs. Don't even know anything about the subject. So it's kind of, you know, you, I guess you're kind of left to. Okay, if I'm, you know, I'm writing about this, what can I, you know, what, um, I'm writing about this new breaking news thing or this new discovery or something. Um, I guess you have to kind of the way. Well, the way I would do it is, you know, there's going to be certain. Uh, you kind of have to think about what somebody, or estimate or guess what somebody would try and search for. If it's a company name. Yeah, I mean, you'd mentioned a company name or if it's a concept or something. Um, you know, our break. You know, so you would start. Kind of start with that and then, you know, um, if there's, in my opinion, if, you know, you would. In the first couple paragraphs, you know, in, in the content, you would explain everything. And you know, if it's, if you can do screen captures, if it's something online, then sure, you can describe things and everything and then any, any kind of related topic, um, you might be able to, you know, explain what, you know, doing some definitions of, you know, or explaining what something is or, um, you know, or why it's important, um, just to add some additional content. And I think it's kind of, you know, I've done. I Started off in the early 2000s as I discovered expired domain names. Okay. And, and you know, it had some value. And so what I was doing is I was, I would buy expired, expired domain name. And um, I would figure out that this website still had you know, for example, you know, uh, slot, you know, for about us page they used slash about and you know, they had some you know, page about, you know, maybe uh, uh, you know, team HTML or what, whatever. Um, you know, other pages they had on the site, the URLs, not the content but the URLs. And so what I do is I realized that, okay, let's say you know, I would, I would actually create 10 pages on, on 10 different um, 10 different old URLs. This was the time when if you submitted a new page, okay, this wasn't a time where you submitted a new page to Google. Um, and you know, 2003 to 2006, 2007, 2008, etc. Um, you submit a new page, if you, if there's a brand new URL, Google will take about two weeks to, to crawl and index that page. But here you have some kind of break, you know, the traffic was from breaking news. So here's a kind of breaking something on you know, um, um, that would appear on CNN or some kind of breaking news item. The key what I discovered is that Google needed to know about those URLs ahead of time. So for example, let's say you know,/123html the website still, you know, I would establish that page, I would put some nonsense, literally. Laura mipsom Content, whatever, it didn't matter what the content was. Okay. And then, and I'll get it crawled and index, you know, you know, so I did about you know, 20 or 30 holding, I would call them holding pages. So it was fun because when you know, Google wasn't quick and, and you know, at that point. But if they, if they, if you went to a whole, a page that they already knew about you updated with brand new content. Yeah, we crawl it and within 30 minutes to an hour you would get it in there. So here's a breaking news event and the news sites, they would add a page, you know, a new page about the breaking news, etc. It take a week or two for them to get crowd and index. Well I already had the page ready, I would change it and then within an hour or two I was ranking number one. Now here's, that's the key.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Now let's take it further. The reason why that worked is yes, I would get the traffic because people are searching and I was the only one with a content about that breaking news item.

Speaker C: I have something for you though. I have something for you. I have something interesting for you though in that regard.

Speaker A: So when you, so what I'm saying is when you're the first to be out there, then other sites would then actually, and blogs and bloggers and all. Ah, that time they would then link to you because you're ranking number one for that subject in that topic.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And you're the first.

Speaker C: I was able uh, in a past life I was able to get rankings for breaking or breaking news, like not just breaking news but maybe standard topics, topically focused articles by writing a page. But the reason why it would be in the top 10 within 24 hours is because I would be writing 5 to 10 posts who did on this particular website, if you get updated with that kind of quantity of posts and then most of those posts will be ranking in the top 10 for their respective, for their respective topics and keywords. So sometimes multiple keywords depending on how it was written for the particular topic. Huh. And the key is that nowadays if you want to have something that is mobile and nimble in terms of being updated in that fashion. Right. Keep things. You want to be like literally the news authority in that niche. Yes. And the way to do that be like that industry own very short.

Speaker A: Yes, yes, I'd definitely be the um, yeah. And, and, and you get links now. You know I would um, you know I had various uh, you know I had you know, several hundred sites. I mean a lot of sites that were, you know, a lot of them were aspired domains. A lot of them ended up being new domains. I had a business to business, um, sort of news network. So what I would do is I wanted to, I never could outrank the company name because that was their website. But I also want, always wanted to be second, third and fourth. So if I covered the news about that company, you know there's a lot of searches about a uh, company and people would click through to you know, the second or third listing because they weren't really looking for the website in particular. They knew, you know the company website but they wanted to look at, you know, the news about that company or from a different source. So I had, you know that worked um, well and then uh, you know that came to, you know there was an interesting link building technique is that you know, what you would do is say you're um, you're, you know, your Topic is, um, you know, you're roofing and, and you have, you know, you have a news website about you know, roofing companies and you know, the roofing industry. Well, um, do a search for in the news and you know, a roofing and what you would find is a lot of major companies will, their marketing departments will create a section on their website where they've mentioned in the news and, and they would then link back to, you know, um, even if you're not a news source, they would, you know, they would. And you wrote an article, um, or you're a blogger or something like that. You would. If you find companies in your industry that typically write, you know, will link to where they've been mentioned. Okay, they'll link to, you know, my news or my blog or my news site or so forth. Um, there's companies that still do that. I mean, you know, they're the, you know, traditional media companies, traditional marketing departments and they will have you know, a press release section on their site. They'll have a, for their press releases. They will have, you know, in the news and etc. And so you can, you know, if they don't find you that you've written about an article, then sure, tell them, send them email saying hey, we wrote an article about your latest, uh, you know, product or something like that. And so you know that they already have an in the news page or in the news section. And so you can get some really, really high quality links like that. Um, that kind of brings the question, you know, my question to you is, do we need even need to spend time getting link, you know, doing link building anymore? Um, sure, we need to do maybe digital pr but the traditional deal style link building. I mean frankly, if I have a site and I've gotten to a certain point where yeah, I have some, you know, I have some good links and, and, and so forth that I'm doing. All right. Um, it comes down to, you know, there's an emphasis on content where I can just, I don't have to do a lot of link building that I did have to do maybe five or 10 years ago. So what's your thoughts about, you know, about links and link building and so forth? Do we need to do it as SEOs anymore? You know, and how much time percentage you think it's 75% link building and, or 75 content or what's your thoughts around that?

Speaker C: I would say that uh, that it more likes 80 great content, 20%. Some um, link building.

Speaker A: I cashed out my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker B: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem, it's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet. With products and technologies from our global brands Nord, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in action@genndigital.com I cashed out

Speaker A: my entire 401k thinking someone stole my identity. A fake email cost me my dream home. After I sent my personal information to a scammer, my AI agent wired thousands to an account I'd never seen.

Speaker B: When billions of people feel unsafe, that's no longer a security problem, it's an economic one. At Gen, we're building the trust layer for a more fearless planet with products and technologies from our global brands Norton, Lifelock, Avast and Money Lion. See it in action@jenndigital.com um, because the

Speaker C: links that you get are going to come from the great content that you write. So you want to have the content that uh, gives your site the authority enough to impress people in your industry enough that they'll want to link to you. You want to build those relationships. And that's what the important part is about. Links like, it's not like say 10 years ago where everybody was doing link exchanges and exchanging with everybody else in the industry and then Google finally ended up penalizing that one, um, with uh, uh, shows, um, like in the attorney, uh, industry, uh, they all still do it, um, and some sites get uh, walloped as a result of doing that. And so it takes a lot of cleanup just to really actually get the site back to getting any traction at all just because of that specific uh, link building technique. Now though also as well, um, I had probably worked on at least one site in that niche that was literally part of a massive toxic link negative SEO campaign. And that probably required. It was much easier 10 years ago to do that kind of thing. But now Google mostly ignores toxic links, especially when it appears as if a competitor is actually working to do some manipulative toxic link building. Right. So it's um, it's not as prevalent as it was 10 years ago, but can still happen if somebody knows what they're doing. But it's less of an issue now than it was.

Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like as far as

Speaker C: links are concerned though, I, I believe it really 80% dependent on your content and 20, then 20% would be your uh, link building. But it depends on the actual niche and competitors and your marketplace as far as the link building that's required. Right. So if you're in a big market like Los Angeles, you might have something that's more towards 65% great content than 40 then 35% good link. For example. The ratio might adjust, but it all depends on whether or not your informational niche, um, ecom or whatever because different types of niches require different adjustments to your strategy. M. You can't really, to conclude that you can't really do a ah, cut and paste or copy paste strategy and expect it to apply to every single website as SEO doesn't work out, unfortunately.

Speaker A: Well, I mean it's, it's, I feel like though, you know, definitely with a new site or a new, you know, maybe a domain that's changed topics or something like that that um, you need a certain amount of links. I wouldn't say amount, you know, you don't need to say, you know, you need a certain, you need certain links to be able to send some trust over enough so that, you know, so that you know, so that you're in, in Google's graces and, or if you're, you know, you have some kind of. I hate to use the word authority because so many people throw the word authority out there.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, you know, in all sorts of different, you know, meanings and you know, there's two dozen different meanings of the word authority.

Speaker C: Um, yes.

Speaker A: However, you know, you need some kind of, you know, you get, need to get to a certain point where they say, okay, this is, this is not just a spam site anymore. Not just a low quality site. It's just, it's, you know, it's, it's legit. And um, then they can, you know, then when you start to really pick up, you know, and do the right content, you know, then it's going to, you know, then it's going to do well. I mean I, I can tell you it could be one link, I mean literally, unfortunately that, you know, I have, you know, uh, an example would be a B2B very niche industrial B2B company that does, you know, services industrial, uh, industrial equipment and you know, and so forth. And you know, frankly it was one directory listing, I hate to say directory, but it was a very large site. Um, that's an, you know, an industry relay, you know, about, around industries and B2B and so forth. And my client, you know, has been with me probably 10 years and, and you know, three, four, maybe five, three or four years ago we just came across that and um, he paid for the listing, which is like $700 a year. Um, but frankly, you know, it um, it's not a great looking site. It's probably from you know, early 2000s.

Speaker C: Oh, I see

Speaker A: really good content. And, and that one link has made a massive, you know, a massive, uh, maybe it's trust, maybe it's you know, I mean massive, you know, detail, massive change. And now I don't really do many links. They have, you know, this, this, um, they have some links but it's not, you know, it's nothing that I've done really. Link building. I concentrate on content for that site. And so it's at the point where after that getting that directory listing, um, now I can create a new page on the site and literally in 45 minutes it'll rank within the top three in a lot of cases. Number one, um, you know, in 45 minutes, brand new page, brand new content on that site. So there's something to do with you know, authority being passed and trust and so forth. Yeah, um, it's one link. I mean it's crazy. You know, it's literally one link.

Speaker C: It's literally been around for, for decades. It's been around for decades. So much so that it's become an authority for that particular business. And basically.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I, I have a couple sites like that that are old news websites that I've established. I started in 2003. Um, and you know, they've been around and I did a few um, you know, um, with uh, uh, you know, things with um, industry, you know, industry conferences. Okay. So for example the, you know, my news website, which was only me and I had 27 other news websites but I was official, official media, you know, official, um, one of the official media partners for that conference and.

Speaker C: Oh wow.

Speaker A: Um, and so, you know, so I've been, you know, and, and um, once you get into being, you know, there's probably in that one, in one industry there's probably 20 different conferences and once you get to be a media partner for one, you know, then they all will, will message you or uh, even get in touch and say would you like to be the, you know, media partner for our, for our conference? And so. Yep, you know, and then you get the links from the conference and obviously the company is, you know, the companies themselves links to the conference because they're going to be at uh, Booth at 27, add whatever conference in the conference press. So it's kind of a whole, you know, link, blink, exchange thing kind of. But it happens, you know, it happens. And there's still, you know, there are still, um, conferences out there in certain, a lot of industries where, um, that's a possibility. I mean, it's, it's uh, you know, you need a logo and, and um, you know, ask for media passes or something. And, and that's why, you know, blogs, I mean, you know, blogs still work if you're a blogger. Um, you know, I seen that question, is it worth it in 2025 to start a blog or to have, you know, keep having a blog? You know, and yeah, I mean, I really do think that, um, you know, it's, uh, Yeah, I mean, it definitely is. Um, if you're looking for, on the other hand, if you're looking for expired domains, what I have found is that, you know, I was interested, I saw somewhere I was doing some weight building or something or some research and I found something interesting is, you know, there was a whole. For, for many years there were a lot of mommy bloggers. Okay. And that was the thing.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now it's, you know, all those mommy bloggers are on TikTok and doing YouTube shorts and all that and Instagram reels and all that.

Speaker C: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: But you know what it was, it used to be there still. So you can still find, you know, the mommy bloggers if you're in that industry, um, or if you're in something that they may have talked about or something. Um, it was interesting because I came across some posts and some news, them articles and so forth about the top top 100 mommy bloggers. Okay. And you know, they had a top, you know, in the top 10 list and so forth. Okay. Various ditches I started to go through. And this was, you know, this was a list that was just put out, you know, two years ago. So not very long, maybe a year or two ago, you know, the top top money bombing bloggers of 2023 or 2024. And you know, the, and they listed the top 20, the top 10, the top 100. I started to go through those and about, to be honest with you, about 80 to 90% of those of those blog, those mommy blogs didn't even exist and the domain names were not even, oh my God, were not even, you know, registered, uh, anymore. I mean, you can literally, you know, and so what I discovered is that looking back, you know, I discovered that, you know, the someone would start a blog and, and do it, you know, mommy blog and they would, you start to look at the post and they would blog every day and they were really going well and doing great content and, you know, taking photos, doing reviews of strollers and doing reviews of all sorts of stuff. And then it kind of, you know, maybe three to six months that the posts kind of slowed down to once a week, you know, and then it kind of slowed down a little bit to once a month, and then, uh, maybe every couple of weeks. And then by the time the first year ended, you know, they weren't making what they thought, you know, they could make by doing, you know, being a mommy blogger and getting.

Speaker C: Yeah, they probably thought they would, uh, be making a hundred thousand, uh, a month or something like that. Right? A wild figure like that.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I mean, they would do that. And you know, and, and they were, you know, creating these site, you know, great, you know, these sites, um, you know, and, and by the time, you know, a year came around, maybe they would renew the domain name, maybe they wouldn't. And, you know, and, and they gave it up. You know, um, yeah, that was two years ago. I mean, now, you know, now they're, they're on TikTok and making that, you know, or, or they have an, um, or they have an OnlyFans page and they've gone that route. But yeah, so, you know, it's interesting. I mean, it's, it's, um. So I wanted to mention, you know, there's, um, expired domains. I did want to mention though, um, that, you know about content because there's still these, uh, you know, there's still SEOs out there that really think that they. Oh, they can, you know, buy Aspire domain, go to The Wayback Machine archive.org literally take, steal the content, you know, steal the content from the old site and put that back up.

Speaker C: And so nothing that stops anybody from doing that. Just be prepared to face the penalty, uh, when the owner of the site comes back and sued you for stealing their content.

Speaker A: Exactly. You know, so, yeah, so definitely, um, yeah. And you know, I've gotten.

Speaker C: And hey, I shut this site down. They're not supposed to be running this site now. That's my content. Knock it off.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've had some extreme cases where, you know, that. I know of that. Um, um, so anyway, so yeah, definitely

Speaker C: don't do that is my recommendation. Don't ever do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it, it. Yeah, I mean, you know, unfortunately there's, you know, there is, there is software that will, you know, that will go and you can, will scrape. Um, and you know, if you Originally, you know, I have had, you know, there are situations where maybe your web, you know, you, um, you propane your web designer and you know, and whatever, and they, you know, and somehow the website went down and you know, with your business and so forth. Um, and you don't have access to the website anymore, you know, and website and domain name down. Sure, you may be, you know, you may be able to go back and recover that. Um. But yeah, buying and domain, um. There are some extreme examples out there where, you know, where. I, um, mean, it's, it's. I know of one in particular where, um, a research hospital, nonprofit, um, research hospital literally closed and it closed. But somebody, some, you know, some SEO somewhere, some black hat SEO, um, you know, and went and bought the expired, you know.org domain and literally put the hospital's website back up and. Because they wanted some links. And so there's still, you know, so much confusion out there of whether the hospital, you know, still exist and so forth. And it's been closed for, you know, several.

Speaker C: I was being intentionally dramatic because I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all. I've seen some, uh, those, some of those same kinds of issues over the years. So it's like nothing surprises me anymore. It's just like, why. Why did you shoot yourself in the foot? I mean, you can shoot yourself in the foot, just don't blame us when Google decides to penalize you for it. Right. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's, it's, you know, and the other thing is, I mean, there's, you know, for your purse, like, for example, I mean, I've had, you know, a lot of people come to me, you know, I recover stolen domain names. I recover because I'm so, you know, embedded in the domain, uh, name industry. I can usually get, you know, back a domain name because I know a lot of people at registrars and I know the process.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: The legal aspects and so forth. And I've had so many people just come to me and say, you know, I didn't read you. You know, I had my name.com and it's unique and I just, and, and I didn't renew it. But now, you know, you go. And it's an adult site or now you go to that domain. You know, I didn't renew the name. And now it's, you know, a casino site. And I'm really concerned that my public images around, you know, is showing a, you know, casino site and so forth. I mean, just, I know it's, it's $10, you know, 10 to $11 a year at the lowest. Um, you know, for a hunt, literally for $100, you can register it for 10 years and in advance and just do that and, you know, I mean, $50, renew it for five years and just, you know, even though you're not gonna, you know, you know, you don't have plans to even have a website on it, um, anymore. Um, you know, just, just do that. You're gonna save so much hassle. Um, otherwise, you know, you probably would probably. If you expires and someone from China puts up a, you know, gets a domain name and puts up a casino site on it, you're probably looking eight to $10,000. Yeah, probably looking at eight to $10,000 to get, you know, to, uh, to purchase that domain name from them. I mean, it's, it's got to be a real hassle. So, um, yeah, anyway, so, yeah, I mean, the same thing, um, Yeah, I mean the same thing with, you know, um. So at this point, um, I would keep, you know, if you. Unless. Unless it's such a domain name that you don't think that, you know, you're never going to be connected with it anymore. What, um, I would do is, is just, when in doubt, renew it. M. And you can probably, you know, sell, um, list listed, you know, listed for sale. You may be able to get, you know, um, the renewal fees back for it. Um, and there's still, you know, some really good domain names out there. Um, and that expired. You know, I picked up search engines.net um, fairly, you know, fairly recently expired that one. Um, and somebody had that domain for, gosh, um, you know, since 1998. And it was a live website.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: From 1998 till today.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: Um, so many refer, you know, and then it expired. And, um, it is a generic, so it expired. There's, you know, not many, not a good, not very good chance of them getting it back. Um, obviously, you know, unless it's your company name or unless it's your name, you know, um, go for generic names. I, you know, I, I'm not a big fan of, of, you know, uh, buying, you know, buying a domain name and using it. Um, you know, if it's somebody else's brand or somebody else's name.

Speaker C: Yeah. Definitely not name.

Speaker A: Etc.

Speaker C: It could be a trick. It could, uh, be a trademark. It could open you up to liabilities that you don't want to do stuff they don't want to deal with. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, um, and then if you don't you know if anybody's listening or watching this? If you don't have your name.com, you know, um, then you know you do need to go register it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: If you. 100% I'll make this offer if it's your exact name. If you cannot, you know, afford the$10.89 to register the name.

Speaker C: Don't forget to register that your name sucks.com variation too just to protect against you don't.

Speaker A: Yes. So you don't have to do that. Now I'd like to mention, you know, there are two services now called one called Global Block. It's Global Block Go. And there's another one called Name Block N A M E B L O C K name Block and you can pay, um, you can block. So yeah, so let's say, you know, let's say um, say you have BrianHarnish.com okay. You can block your, you know, you have that you are um, you would just be able to need to show that you're, you know, have rights to Brian Harnish. Okay. And you can pay a certain amount per year. Just one decent, you know, one fee. And you will be able to block every, you know, um, if someone goes to register Brian harness123.com or Brian harness, you know, um, stinks.com or something like that. Any domain that includes your brand, um, whether it's, you know, um, you know, Brian Harnish, maybe they want to BR1A N for Brian.

Speaker C: Um, hey, don't give anybody

Speaker A: version or you know a version of your name. They changed the eyes to the one and they register, try to register brianharnish.com those will be blocked. Those domains up to 500 different versions of your name. Okay. And you know the common phishing like PayPal, pay one okay. Um, those will be blocked and no one will be able to. It will show as um, as unavailable to register. So all those versions, up to 500 different versions plus all this, you know, 1600 TLDS, you know, BrianHarnish.net BrianHarnest.org those will be blocked and no one will

Speaker C: be able to repeat. Why don't you repeat that service for viewers?

Speaker A: It's um, there's one service is called globalblock co. Um, and the other one um, is name Block N A M E B L O C K. So these, these service, those services, it's very good for um, you know, for brands. Um, and you know I know a company who has franchisees and franchises and they um, they have a, well an attorney on staff who Is just job is to police and take down websites that are being, you know, were being put up by people. People, um, could be a franchisee or could be, you know, a competitor putting up using their brand. So, um, Global Block and Name Block are great, um, services because like I said, you can pay one price and block and nobody will be able to register, um, that name.

Speaker C: Yeah, then you don't have to buy all those different variations.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Um, and then, you know, you wouldn't. If somebody puts up a site or takes, you know, your brand or your name and, and you. So you do not have to be a trademark owner. You don't have to own the trademark. You know. So, um, it is my understanding from talking to. With you know, trademark attorneys, um, it's very difficult to trademark a personal name. Um, so, you know, um. Now, uh, there's a guy who was able to circumvent that process. Uh, and I might consider it. Um, but you know, generally speaking, um, the, you know, in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, uspto they don't really allow you to. To put a trade, you know, get a trademark on a personal name. That's kind of their policy. Um, you just can't. However, will, there's someone named William Joel, um, who has able to get. And he has a trademark on um, Billy Joel.

Speaker C: Oh no.

Speaker A: So it is possible. And you know, I have considered doing that route with my name because Bill Hartzer, which I have, you know, been gone by. Gone you know, for years. Um, you know, that's um, not my, uh. That's not my legal, uh, name. And so it is at this point kind of a, uh, a trademark or a common law trademark.

Speaker C: Um. Right.

Speaker A: So. So basically with um. But with Name Block and Global Block, you just have to kind of show that you have the rights to, you know, you have the rights to the name and um, or the brand. And they will, um, they will block and they will block those. Um. And if you're um. I have a tool that allows me to put in the name, you know, your name, um, or the company name. And it will. It's uh, it's a free tool and it will tell me how many potential names and versions will be blocked if you pay, you know, um, if you pay for Global Block, it will show how many, you know, it's a report. It basically says if you know, um, um, how many versions and how many domains, um, registrations will be blocked per year. Uh, typically, um, that you know, for that price. So.

Speaker C: Yeah, good stuff.

Speaker A: So, yeah. So we're running, um. You know, about uh, 30 seconds to be having been on here an hour. Um.

Speaker C: Really? It's always been an hour. Wow.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I um, know that uh, we need to schedule another time um, to do uh, version two of this uh. Definitely episode. Episode two and episode. You know, maybe um.

Speaker C: Um.

Speaker A: You know we'll do uh uh. Uh. Have this a series. Um.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know the br.

Speaker A: It's the Brian and Bill SEO show.

Speaker C: Yeah, why not?

Speaker A: And um. Let's make this episode one. So this has been the uh. Let's uh. Wrap it up. I'll say this has been the episode one of the premiere episode of the uh.

Speaker C: Uh.

Speaker B: Uh.

Speaker A: Brian and Bill uh. Um. Chat. SEO. Uh advice chat series and um. I guess we'll talk to everybody next time.

Speaker C: Yeah, have a great one everybody. Okay.