Andy Gee (00:01.24)
Hey everyone, I have Dejan Mladenovski with me from Shuffle Digital. Thank you so much for joining Dejan .
Dejan Mladenovski (00:10.7)
More than welcome mate, more than welcome. Happy to be here.
Andy Gee (00:13.29)
It’s been awesome to watch your journey from chasing us around SEO meetups around Sydney to seeing you do your thing and what you’re very passionate about. You are my equal in terms of energy, my friend. haven’t seen, if there’s anyone that’s got more energy than me, certainly you. I’ve been, nah mate, it’s been a pleasure watching you and learning from you.
Dejan Mladenovski (00:30.504)
Hahaha
Dejan Mladenovski (00:35.36)
Mate, take that as a compliment.
Andy Gee (00:42.664)
And before we start, I’m going to plug you as well for the SEO Sydney Conference before I forget, because I promised our mutual friend James Norquay that I was going to plug it for him.
Dejan Mladenovski (00:47.638)
Yes.
Dejan Mladenovski (00:52.278)
We’ve got to do it. We’ve got to do it. It’s the biggest conference of the year, right?
Andy Gee (00:55.596)
biggest SEO conference of the year being hosted by our good friends over at Prosperity Media. And one of the guest speakers is Dayan. So make sure you get your tickets and what we’ll do, we’ll put the link to where you can buy the tickets later on. So thanks, mates. How’s your week been? What have you been up to?
Dejan Mladenovski (01:01.111)
Yes.
Dejan Mladenovski (01:16.466)
May you know just another eventful week in SEO right the way I like to see it is every day is another day in SEO paradise so Now weeks been very technical I guess this week you can say been been diving deep into some programmatic looking for you know opportunities gaps
Andy Gee (01:23.566)
You
Dejan Mladenovski (01:34.434)
That’s sort of what I’ve been looking at dealing with a technical issues as well with SEO but overall mate you know how it is just doing my thing. Nothing extravagant to say except the BAU but sometimes it’s the best way right. Sometimes in SEO what you don’t want is you don’t want the massive swings which I’m sure we’ve all had to deal with once or twice in our career.
Andy Gee (01:59.855)
Well, especially like when you get new clients, well, one client that I’ve received where we had worked with him for about three months and I knew there was problems with the content, but we kind of let it slide a little bit longer than probably what I should have. And that December rollout came because obviously the previous SEO just put the content there for no other purpose but for SEO and that just got completely devalued. So we had the best month in November.
And then December came, the algorithm hit right when I was going on holidays. And he’s like, why is the rankings dropped off? And I’m like, I know for sure what it is. said that, you know, but yeah, so when we have updated and changed the content, the rankings are recovering. So what are you sort of noticing in the recent updates and how does that tie into programmatic SDR?
Dejan Mladenovski (02:49.698)
I think just in general, off the back of that, think like SEO is just getting harder.
Andy Gee (02:54.785)
It’s getting much harder.
Dejan Mladenovski (02:55.042)
I think like, know, gone are the days where exactly as you said, you can slap up a couple of landing pages for keywords that maybe, you know, the business didn’t have and, you know, up you go, you know, to the first page, maybe to position nine and 10 and, you know, add a few links and up they go to seven and eight. It’s getting very tough and it’s not just because, you know, the market’s big, there’s a lot more people doing it. And of course, SEO being a zero sum game that it is, it’s just there’s a lot of cert features going in, right?
the real estate that we once had, maintaining the same positions is no longer sustainable because maintaining the same position and what you’ll see is a gradual decline in clicks over time. I think just as a whole, SEO is getting more challenging.
To the contrary though, I think like, you know, I’ve been playing quite a bit with like large language models and optimizations. I think there’s an opportunity there, you know, for people that can crack it. But definitely from what I’ve seen, the people that are already performing well in organic is a huge crossover for the people that are performing well in large language models, just on the basis of, you know, they already have these large established link profiles. They’re already authorities built up maybe over, you know, several years, potentially decades.
And I think yeah, I think that’s probably a good way. I think it’s just getting more difficult. I think like, you know, lot of clients recently have come to me is
Quite a few people or their current providers have just said, look, we’ve tried everything and we can’t get growth. I’ve noticed that first time in my career. A lot of people are just being transparent about it saying, we’ve done everything we can, but we just can’t seem to the needle. I that’s something that I found quite interesting over the last six months. I’ve not seen it like that before. What are your thoughts on that?
Andy Gee (04:39.458)
Yeah, absolutely, mate. And it’s spot on. I it’s for a couple of reasons. A lot of the work is just not great. I mean, I’ve been pulled into basically another big client is hiring us just to review.
agency, they just want a second opinion on three, because basically the company they’re working with has acquired is an American company has acquired three Australian, there’s many more to come, Australian companies. And I’m there responsible to sort of oversee some of this agency work because I don’t really necessarily want that type of work full time at the moment for resource reasons. And it’s not very good down. It’s it’s people using disavow files.
Dejan Mladenovski (05:00.875)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (05:28.158)
A, when they don’t have a manual action. Two, half the URLs on the disk of our file don’t even exist anymore. And C, there’s some actually legit URLs on there. And then obviously there’s a few URLs that were spammed, which every site has. know, those sort of directories, spammy directory bots. Yeah, it’s just scraper sites. And they’ve just submitted that for three months worth of work. I’m thinking, like, so.
Dejan Mladenovski (05:35.415)
you
Dejan Mladenovski (05:44.866)
Scrapers.
Andy Gee (05:54.287)
I mean, don’t know necessarily the history with the clients that have come to you and saying we’ve tried everything. Normally when they’ve tried everything, they haven’t technically tried everything. What they’ve done, they think they’ve tried a lot because they’ve gone from agency to agency. But a lot of these agencies have sort of their ways of doing things and they’re not necessarily too adaptable to what happens specifically within what you need to do is maybe uniquely to a certain industry.
Dejan Mladenovski (06:05.367)
Yep.
Andy Gee (06:22.56)
So yes, I’m finding it, but I’m also finding the fact that there’s not a lot of great work being done. And I mean, if you’re not doing digital PR, you’re not getting into that branding component of SEO. And I think what is why SEO is also much difficult now is you actually got specialties within SEO. And so different companies will need different things. But everyone needs digital PR and branding.
Dejan Mladenovski (06:27.511)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (06:41.122)
Correct.
Andy Gee (06:48.526)
Anyone can and like you said, the bar in which to compete is getting a lot higher. And I don’t think necessarily the competitors are getting better. I just think that the bar that Google’s favoring actual brands versus correct and topical authority and and understanding the signals between brand mentions, social signals like why would you be growing just on some links and then you’re not growing anywhere else? No one’s talking about you.
Dejan Mladenovski (07:02.006)
Yep, authority sites.
Dejan Mladenovski (07:17.792)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (07:18.124)
No one’s mentioning you on Twitter. This is much harder to game.
Dejan Mladenovski (07:20.45)
Do you know?
I’m gonna
carry that conversation on, I wanna lean into that because what the common denominator I’ve personally seen, just to give you a bit more context, is the link profile. I feel like everything’s been maxed out from a content perspective, I feel like the content’s actually maybe been done to a decent standard, website’s quite good, it’s got CRO, the optimization’s completed. It’s clear that if we’re purely looking at the site, we’re looking at the technical fundamentals of it, and we’re looking at the content build out, the topical authority build out of the site, I’m not seeing
that that is what is the issue with most sites. I am really saying, this is like, it’s more often than not the link profile and just the lack of quality links in the link profile, right? So I think when you drill down into like, I’ve seen this countless times, like this is generally the number one reason I see most sites not ranking that come to me and say, you know, what we want to perform better. Generally the number one reason is the link profile, particularly for like SMB type businesses. And the reason for that
is if you actually drill down into it, if we’re specifically at links,
Dejan Mladenovski (08:29.888)
that I would consider that move the needle, right? And what am I talking about, you know, to give viewers a bit of context, I’m talking, if we’re just using AHRES metrics here, for argument’s sake, let’s say we’re talking at least the DR12, page that, you know, is at least talking about this, at least the page is talking about the subject of the site, or the whole entire site is about that topic, where the domain traffic is at least 500, where there isn’t, you know, 100 outlinks going from that page, diluting the site, where the domain,
Andy Gee (08:32.344)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Gee (08:39.48)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Gee (08:51.629)
Which is better.
Dejan Mladenovski (08:59.812)
You know, the ratio of the domain is incoming links to outgoing links isn’t crazy. you know, it doesn’t have a thousand referring domains to it and then linking out to 20,000 sites. You want to see a more balanced ratio, right? You know, when you start drilling in and you start filtering out all the sites that don’t meet that criteria and that do meet that criteria and you overlay it with, you know, what then my competitors might be doing. I’m seeing that as the biggest problem.
Andy Gee (09:10.221)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (09:25.731)
And you know, I think it’s a funny thing, right? Like you talked to digital PR branding. You know, I think, yeah. Nah, go ahead.
Andy Gee (09:32.046)
But if no one’s talking about you, Daya, sorry to catch you off, just quickly, if no one’s linking to these clients, maybe because they just suck. That’s partly a reason. That’s not always the only reason. It’s not the only reason. But if you’re not thinking about how to get people to talk about you, especially in competitive niches, it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Dejan Mladenovski (09:44.022)
not the only reason.
Dejan Mladenovski (09:55.468)
Well, let’s go back to basics, right? What’s Google even trying to do? What are they trying to do? Like in my perspective, they’re just trying to take the offline world online. And, know, before the time of Google, you know, how would a cafe around the corner fill up? Will it only fill up if there was, you know, XYZ groups of people talking about that business? Maybe they’re saying, you know, this is the best coffee shop, the word of mouth spreads. I think all Google have tried to do with like, you know, this sort of link based algorithmic model is just take that model and shift it online.
Andy Gee (10:03.896)
Correct.
Andy Gee (10:12.984)
Correct.
Andy Gee (10:17.581)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (10:25.412)
enough sites talking about you, right? Chances are you’re probably a quality of business. Chances are you’re probably legit, particularly if it’s coming from different sources. But just like the real world, two people’s different people’s opinions on that subject matter, gonna hold more weight, right? Maybe if you go to our friend James Lork and ask him who are good SEOs, it’s gonna maybe carry more weight than per se somebody that maybe isn’t in the industry, somebody that maybe hasn’t got experience with it. So that’s a good way of looking at a link with authority and how
much value we can hold. I think you’re right. you know, if you look at some businesses, maybe they just haven’t gone out of the way to create any link worthy content. You know, maybe they haven’t, you maybe they do have something link worthy, but maybe they just haven’t done any outreach campaigns or got in front of the right people. Other, yeah.
Andy Gee (11:13.006)
I mean, the last model of 10 years, man, we did, I think we had the best technical SEO in 2017, 2018, but that’s not, I always look at technical SEO as the shell of the Ferrari. You need it, it needs to be there. And obviously I always see technical SEO as sort of increasing.
the chances of improving your discoverability and visibility. We’ve lost them, mate. If we didn’t get those sorts of links. OK, so we had a strategy to get. I can talk about last because I don’t have an NDA, but. You can get the links from the magazines, the broads. That was that was a strategy. Then we had a strategy to get links from when our customers got married and then they got featured.
And then we had a strategy for just plain old digital PR. And when I look back on that campaign to get obviously the site was pretty technically sounds anyway. But back then, the the brand signals of sort of going to Google, necessarily typing in Larsson, Jewellery, Engage at Rinks wasn’t as important as it is now. Because even when we ranked first, we didn’t always have the most clicks.
because the girls still wanted to see what Tiffany had to offer. So even the sweat and the tears to get first for engagement rings and wedding rings. And then even though Google wasn’t tagging on the branding component, the girls still wanted to see what does Tiffany have to offer? What does Blue Noel have to offer? What does Prouds have to offer? And so I always felt like, okay, Rank Brain is certainly a thing, but I…
We kept it stable and I don’t always feel like we had most clicks, even though we were first, because people only knew of us on the search results.
Dejan Mladenovski (13:15.392)
Yep, think intense plays a part there. think like, you know, for an industry like that, definitely, you know, there’s
there’s industries or there’s players maybe that you see in the brick and mortar stores that maybe people are more familiar with. Again, word of mouth, you’ll see jewelies at the local large shopping mall, Westfield, et cetera. You’ll see these brands that I think you associate that product with those brands. And if you see something, maybe that doesn’t sort of like meet that criteria, maybe a brand you’ve never heard of, maybe you’re more skeptical of looking for something that is, maybe you’re predisposed to looking for that brand when you’re searching that keyword.
Andy Gee (13:30.272)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (13:35.842)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (13:45.708)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (13:50.732)
It’s just the mindset and psychology of the target market.
Dejan Mladenovski (13:53.516)
Correct. I think like looking at it maybe in the street, yeah, no, no, it’s fine.
Andy Gee (13:56.365)
Whereas most people would be happy to click the first position. Sorry to get you off down. Sorry there’s a…
Dejan Mladenovski (14:00.61)
But you’re right like most people are inclined and to your point like if you’re looking for an industry that maybe you don’t have any sort of like You know brand preference take for example on a professional service, maybe an accountant or a lawyer Maybe you don’t have a brand in your mind, right? And so therefore like you’re not gonna be so inclined to say okay. We’re gonna go with XY or Z You know, I think their first position I think will dominate But maybe in a market that does have
Andy Gee (14:08.62)
Mm. Mm.
Andy Gee (14:17.762)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Gee (14:27.992)
Mm.
Dejan Mladenovski (14:30.564)
sort of large established players, it is sometimes difficult because maybe they want to go into that store. Maybe they want to see something more in person and it’s quite difficult to do that with Econ, right? Sure they’ll come up with some tech to change that in the coming years, but for the moment, quite difficult. And like, yeah, I think…
you just because you also rank first for a certain keyword, right? I think like, look at, you gotta look at the whole market share and the spread of keywords sometimes. I think that’s also important.
Andy Gee (15:01.858)
Mm-hmm. That is, I would argue that’s probably more important. I told my client that I would rather you rank, even any jeweler, even that they have a meeting with me, I would rather you rank, generate three to 5,000, generate basically three to 5,000, let’s say unique users a month.
from long tail people coming to Google having multiple brands of products and variations 18 karat yellow gold engagement ring. I’m only using jewelers. I just do a lot of work in jewelers. Just easy to illustrate. I would rather you generate three to five thousand unique users on the website every month from long tail search. First of all, they’re further down in the buying cycle to they already know what they want. They’re probably a more urgent buyers. The revenue of that three to five thousand is going to be a lot higher than just
Dejan Mladenovski (15:39.648)
Yep, yep, yep.
Dejan Mladenovski (15:50.146)
Sure. Yeah.
Andy Gee (15:57.977)
there maybe won’t be as much traffic as ranking first for engaging rings or wedding rings. And let’s say I would rather you get three to five thousand long tail searches than necessarily fifteen thousand short keyword freight like commercial intent keywords versus three to five thousand transactional versus fifteen thousand commercial intent keywords.
Dejan Mladenovski (16:15.906)
I’m definitely with you, definitely with you. Yeah, no, no, definitely with you. think that’s the crux of whole, the biggest service we offer is like programmatic SEO, right? And to your point, specialization in SEO, it’s definitely where it’s moving. Even in a more niche market like Australia. You’ve seen this in the US market for almost a decade, right? But it is making its way.
Andy Gee (16:26.049)
Yes.
Andy Gee (16:36.8)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (16:39.156)
over the Pacific here. I think like, you know, programmatic SEO in that, on that point exactly looks at that. You know, what we’re trying to do is, you know, find a modifier, find a keyword, find a range, find a group and scale these pages out and, you know, target these more higher intent buyer, buyer terms where maybe the user wants a specific sort of page targeted to what they’re looking for as opposed to a generalized page. But yeah, on that,
Andy Gee (16:58.862)
Mm-hmm.
Andy Gee (17:07.542)
It’s harder to rank. It’s harder to rank and sometimes you can get better results. There’s other ways to get. I think if you can nail the programmatic SEO, there’s certainly cases to be made that that can be very beneficial. I just think I’m seeing some people do it. They’re not doing it well.
Dejan Mladenovski (17:08.875)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (17:24.93)
Well, this is the thing, not every business, you if I had to put a number of maybe 1 % to 2 % of businesses might suit programmatic SEO, right? And I think a good determination of if you actually think programmatic SEO is right for you is like, look at the SERPs, look at what you’re trying to compete for. Like, do your competitors have specific pages for that term? Go dig deep, how much traffic are they generating from these pages? know, how much search is available in this entire cluster? I think you can get a very, very quick answer
Andy Gee (17:32.461)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (17:42.584)
Mm.
Dejan Mladenovski (17:54.866)
And if you’re trying to compete with generic pages against competitors that have built out specific pages for these keywords, it is always going to be an uphill battle.
Andy Gee (18:03.086)
Oh, correct. And I think I think there’s more than one or two percent. I mean, if you’re looking at I mean, when I was working for another client in work where. mean, do you know how much traffic we’re leaving on the table because the accessibility on variations of the work boots couldn’t get indexed? And I was I was like, I was on the floor crying because in a fetal position, because I’m thinking. Like.
Dejan Mladenovski (18:19.419)
Yep. Yep.
Andy Gee (18:31.854)
You know, the colors of work boots, the sizes of work boots, all of this data wasn’t even accessible on a basic scale. What I find is that Google can get a lot of, get very confused and you can see it in the canonicalization.
Even in very, how do you sort of build your programmatic SEO in a way that doesn’t cause canonical issues? Because every time I’ve seen, so what I’m doing is pagination. I’m trying to use AI to help us determine. So because Google isn’t as smart as they think they are. And we unfortunately have to do with a large amounts of pagination. I’m trying to work to use AI. I love to build a tool that can sort of
on the fly build out, obviously you want to have control and edit them so you don’t have issues and you want to make sure the search intents are lined. But like let’s say like every kind of second, third row, bang, there’s a content snippet explaining the products above. To create diversity in and like if you’re like going back to your example about the online offline world.
Dejan Mladenovski (19:37.196)
Yep. Yep.
Andy Gee (19:45.807)
If you’re sitting in front of the jeweler and he’s showing you 10 rings or 10 products, let’s say rings, right, just make it easier. He’s going to explain them, right? He’s not just going to show you just book after book after book after book with no variation. So I’m seeing in sort of like those super like we have a lot of products, the pagination gets so confused. How do you overcome that in your programmatic S.E.R. when you have if you have similarity in your blocks?
Dejan Mladenovski (20:01.964)
Yes.
Dejan Mladenovski (20:12.29)
Yep, two questions there was like first one was about the canonicalization and how do you ensure the pages don’t become canonicalized. I think go back to basics and determine if that page actually requires or that keyword requires an individual page and a great way to actually determine that is if your competitors have built out.
Andy Gee (20:17.795)
Yeah.
you
Dejan Mladenovski (20:32.258)
a separate page for it or if they have a title, like if the keyword that you’re targeting, that page that have that exact keyword in that title and specifically targeting that, it’s a very good signal that that page can have its own sort of page without being canonicalized, particularly if that group of keywords or your competitors seem to individually rank for those terms, that’s a good signal that it’s quite safe to push that strategy. And there’s other things you gotta look at, obviously, sites with a higher authority
already obviously have a bit more leeway and I will say that programmatic SEO works much better when you have an established brand and you actually already have the main authority. It is very difficult to do at scale on a brint. Yeah, like if you’re a catch and you’re rolling out, you know, a bunch of these, you know, subcategory pages, it’s obviously going to be a very different game than when you’re, if you’re a small SMB e-com that maybe just started and you know, you’re scaling out, you know, hundreds of category pages. It’s a different level.
Andy Gee (21:04.49)
They do.
Andy Gee (21:13.268)
luck catch.
Andy Gee (21:23.862)
Yeah, 100%.
Andy Gee (21:29.89)
But I think every site needs to work out how they can dynamically build content assets. I mean, to compete in, like even with the work with e-commerce, man, I mean, there is so much, there’s so much data that we’re not even.
allowing for accessibility. Here’s the quality content that I kind of out the window. Quality content is so subjective, man, it’s ridiculous. So we were ranking first for popular work boots. Now, the intern wrote the content. I just gave him the clusters right about. This article generated thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars every month. wasn’t fucking, what’s the name?
Dejan Mladenovski (21:52.81)
It is.
Andy Gee (22:12.246)
What’s that English writer? It wasn’t Shakespearean quality, my friend, I can tell you, right? It was just hey, it’s for trainees. They just want to know what’s popular and the most comfortable work boots of 2023. Dude, I just gave them the cluster. I told them what to write about. Add products here. Maybe add a video here. Just simple guidelines. Now this article ranked first generator like I’m talking between six to 10k every month. It took about two hours to write. Right.
Dejan Mladenovski (22:16.374)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (22:38.614)
Yep. So that’s the thing, right?
Andy Gee (22:40.844)
And it wasn’t even quality. It’s tradies are, tradies are lazy. Look, just stereotypically, tradies are lazy. They’re not going to browse around a site, your fucking pagination down to the 20th page. Right. They talk. They don’t.
Dejan Mladenovski (22:52.524)
They’re busy, right? They’re coming home from work. Maybe they’ve just ripped their boots. They want to just maybe, maybe the intent is…
Andy Gee (22:58.017)
Stereotypically, they’re not tech savvy. They’re not going to say they want to watch Netflix and have dinner. You know what mean? So that article, it wasn’t even, it wasn’t written that well. It was unique. It was had the, but it was optimized perfectly for the user. At the end of the day, they just want to know what’s the most, just point me to the dude, point me where I need to go for the most comfortable and popular work. But that was it. That was the article dude.
Dejan Mladenovski (23:22.998)
Yep. Yep.
I think there’s a lot of examples of that, right? Pages that are great, built from the ground up, far more in-depth detail than their competitors. And then there’s just empty pages that don’t provide any sort of value at all. It’s just AI generated, but it’s just keyword stuffed, NLP optimized, stuff with synonyms and finity like industry jargon. And that seems to rank far better than the highly optimized article.
Andy Gee (23:31.267)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (23:54.292)
There’s so many examples of that.
Andy Gee (23:56.6)
Mm.
Andy Gee (24:00.065)
What’s the common denominator, like you said? What you said was perfect. What’s the common denominator? Between lower ranking content, quality, heat quality. And I think it comes down to Google believing that the search attend is more aligned. Right or wrongly, what about you disagree?
Dejan Mladenovski (24:14.914)
think intents are part of it, but after the leaks, think user signals are a massive part of it as well for these types of pages. How long do they stay on the page? I think that falls into intent. I think you really got to say, if the intents not align to the search term, people are going to bounce.
Andy Gee (24:21.76)
Yeah, without doubt,
Andy Gee (24:27.776)
Yep. And how are you going to define intent? Right?
Dejan Mladenovski (24:32.93)
I think that how else can they do it at scale? You’ve got to think like how else can they possibly work out if a page is quality at scale without really diagnosing it? See what the user does. See what the user does. It’s the best way. But I also think authority. Authority is the last one.
Andy Gee (24:39.597)
Look out.
Andy Gee (24:43.446)
That’s the best way. I think that’s why I think that I want 100 % authority. But believe it or not, there were sites below us that had more authority.
Dejan Mladenovski (24:53.148)
I think yes you can trump authority but I think if that competitor did even half or three quarters of what you did I think you’ll see them trump and I think that’s the thing ultimately. in a like I guess you know.
Andy Gee (25:03.746)
Yeah, yeah, good points.
Dejan Mladenovski (25:11.938)
world now with AI content that, and it’s getting good. Like you look at some of the content that’s coming out of GROK3, Sonnet 3.7 that just released, it’s good, right? And I think this, think about like, you the old saying goes like it’s the worst it’ll ever be. You know, I think people ask, maybe people from a few years ago are still thinking, know, AI is just word for word and it can’t, you know, do any of these things, but it is seriously getting good for, especially technical subjects. We’ve seen that with like open AIs, like deep research.
I think seriously the content, the value of content for certain industries has gone to zero. I think you look at like a…
you look at industry like work boots, the time and effort it’s gonna take to go and build out hundreds of category pages versus AI doing it, there is a huge, huge, huge advantage of AI doing it. And then the question begs, okay, if AI is eventually gonna get to or surpass a human level intelligence in content, and I think it’s a safe assumption, right? If we see where the deep research models are going and how in depth the content’s getting and how they’re citing all the resources,
getting pretty good for at least the available content that they have to scrape right? Potentially proprietary subjects, maybe data that’s hidden behind paywalls, APIs, maybe not so much but if it’s publicly available which for a lot of industries it is, the only thing that comes to mind that’s going to separate these websites is authority.
And I think we’re seeing it already. think you’re seeing it that the price of links has gone up. The difficulty to these links, it’s going up. I think we’re already starting to see it. I can’t see how we’re going to move away from the link model if content is going to be so easy to generate.
Dejan Mladenovski (27:00.372)
it’s going to get to a point where well, if I’m Google, why wouldn’t I just use my Gemini engine to put it up at the top and these websites are displaying that content anyway. How much longer is it, you know?
Andy Gee (27:10.318)
I think it all comes back to the branding signals, mate. That’s what’s going to drive it. At the end of the if Google’s got a million sites, it can deliver you. Authority, 100%. Of course. if you’re finding… How would Google look at a site that has massive amounts of social branding and engagement, legit engagement?
One post, 700,000 views with 100,000 comments. That has no SEO authority. How do you, do you think that at the moment it’s a low factor? At the moment it’s probably zero factor. So.
Dejan Mladenovski (27:44.834)
Yeah, I think it is a factor. I think it is a low factor though. think, you like you look at, you look at like a social fortress. You look at things like a social fortress, right? Like, don’t get me wrong. Like, you know, it goes back to the whole debate of no follow and do follow. I think people…
People sometimes think no follows don’t do anything, but I disagree. think they definitely move the needle. And you look at bigger sites, here’s the thing. I think you put it up recently that your social media brands, look at the link profile that add linking to your social media.
Andy Gee (28:08.352)
No, they do. I disagree.
Andy Gee (28:17.518)
I’ve got no follow-ups from big sites.
Andy Gee (28:27.15)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (28:28.404)
sort of like profiles and see if you can get a pointer back to your site. those social media profiles, read your content. So it beefs up your, it obviously beefs up that authority of that page if there’s links going back to that social profile. And if that social profile is discussing your brand, it’s like an entity, it’s linking back in a lot of the cases to your brand, there’s value there. So I don’t think social media is completely not worthy. I think it’s important. And I think it may be more important in an LLM world.
Andy Gee (28:30.094)
Thank you for reading my content.
Andy Gee (28:42.402)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andy Gee (28:48.238)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (28:58.348)
but I will have to wait and see, right? I just think even like…
I digital signals, right? Google has the only digital signals to go off with brand. It’s not gonna know, unless somebody’s posted online, it’s not gonna know what billboards are on the bus stop or on the major highways. It can only see digital signals, right? And as part of any SEO campaign, I think some sort of brand building exercise, whether that’s through guest posting, link acquisition, getting resource links, getting links from your partner.
Andy Gee (29:16.75)
course.
Dejan Mladenovski (29:33.028)
That is all a branding exercise that I feel you cannot get away from now. Maybe a few years ago you could roll off the back and purely do content and get away with it. But in any half competitive vertical, half competitive vertical,
Andy Gee (29:38.819)
Mm.
Andy Gee (29:48.015)
I don’t think you… No, I reckon, well, the industries I worked in, like you’ve got the jewellery, fashion, workwear, you’ve always needed the links, I mean, I haven’t worked in an industry where you haven’t. I mean, even in the last half decade, content alone was never…
Dejan Mladenovski (30:05.228)
What are you, I’ve got a question, okay, got two questions actually. First question is, why do you think link building is not as discussed as much as other elements of SEO, as an industry as a whole? When, in Australia or in general, I think in Australia, let’s stay with Australia because you don’t really hear it. I think digital PR is a bigger thing there, right? But here in Australia, right, it’s not a major talking point. Why do you think that is?
Andy Gee (30:16.308)
know, Stray Out? Because it’s…
I think in the UK still discussed a lot.
Andy Gee (30:29.774)
I honestly, I think because like you said, the cost of links is going up. It’s not so easy to game. Google’s crushed down on private blog networks quite a bit. So a lot of the gamification of link building in yesteryear was, there was a lot more you could do. I remember I used to argue when I was working in my agency.
where we just had where the head of strategy there, we nearly literally came to a physical blows, mate, like where he wanted to go down this sort of private blog network style. And I’m just like, this is just not a good idea for clients, right? We need to I didn’t have so much of a mature understanding of the mixing branding with how does that sort of like.
you know, email outreach I knew of but didn’t sort of like practice a lot in 2008, 9, 10. Understanding, okay, here’s some sites that are linking to your competitors. How can you approach these sites and give them piece of content that’s better like the sort of the roadshow sort of strategy. All these, all these are legit. I just think now that A, the budgets, I think staffing is a huge issue.
to find people that even really know how to do link building in Australia’s. Quote. Not great. If you can find SEOs that can do link building well, they’re gonna want a lot of money. And so…
Dejan Mladenovski (31:54.178)
agree with that.
Andy Gee (32:04.524)
I just don’t think it’s, like you said, I think you said it all already, you’ve already said it. I think the bar in which to gain links is harder than ever before. The market understands the values of links. It’s harder for agencies to scalably, scale is always the fucking buzzword, to scalably grow a link building package. I think many SEOs don’t understand the power of branding.
to generate links, how to become a resource. It’s not just even digital PR links. So again, going back with Larsen, being the go-to person for Elle and for Vogue, these sort of highly relevant, highly authoritative sites, they don’t want to just give you a link insertion for…
You know what I mean? And if they do, it’s going to cost like, it’s not easy. It’s not scale. When we were featured on The Bachelor, we created something to get everyone to talk about it, getting people excited about that was able to do. So I just think it’s really hard. It’s not so easy to do the links. I think link building ultimately down separates the kids from the adults here and within the space. And I think it requires a lot more marketing and business intelligence to build out sort of.
really powerful, meaningful link building that is not only scalable but sustainable. I think like what I find with link building is the velocity is really important as well.
just brands fall over and I think a lot of SEOs can hide behind big brands sometimes. They’ve got a lot of backlinks and things. But I’m not impressed with someone that can take over a Bing Lee, even like myself back in the day and get first for LEDTs. I’m looking more, hey, like taking a brand that’s got a million dollars to turnover and using SEO to build that up to 10 times the revenue. That for me is much more impressive than, hey, we’ve just taken Bing Lee from five million a year with SEO to 20.
Dejan Mladenovski (33:35.042)
percent.
Andy Gee (33:58.857)
million dollars a year like you’ve already taken a side it’s already got the authority like you said and yeah i think i think it’s harder i think google’s cracked down a lot of sort of the the gaming tactics and i think it requires i think it requires a lot of outreach a lot of effort and a lot of sort of i like my secret is tapping into good good entrepreneurs so so like if you give me a good entrepreneur
in a business that’s got a thousand bucks. I’d rather work with him a thousand bucks. I know James Norquay isn’t going to approve this message, but I would rather take his thousand bucks a month than get me some blue chip client with more red tape than the Red Cross and for ten thousand dollars and not be able to do anything. Everything’s going to go through this department, that department, this, that. Yeah, I think I think how would you answer your own question?
Dejan Mladenovski (34:34.902)
Ha ha ha!
Dejan Mladenovski (34:57.588)
Yeah, all right. So question I guess was, you why do I think links are not talked about as much in the market? I think you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you did. You did. I think you definitely answered it.
Andy Gee (35:02.71)
Well, did, sorry, sorry, Sorry. Did I answer that question or did I kind of just.
Dejan Mladenovski (35:10.976)
I just think because a lot of people are not good at it. I think that I want to come into a campaign and say, okay, this is your link position, this is where your competitors are, this is what needs to happen on the campaign. I reckon sometimes transparency lacks in the initial stages. Everybody’s doing whatever they can to get the sale, right? And I get that, economy’s tough, there’s reasons for it. But my thoughts are like, you have that…
Andy Gee (35:14.019)
yeah.
Andy Gee (35:35.054)
show.
Dejan Mladenovski (35:40.854)
benchmark at the start, think you know what the campaign is going to be moving forward. And it’s a lot more easy to measure as well. I think like, as you said, I think it’s quite hard. It is quite hard. Like, you know, there is all sorts of link marketplaces out there. The links don’t really work. They’re devalued, you know, to an extent. You know, you can see that by, it’s not hard to work out if a link’s been devalued. You could just have a look at the trend of the site itself. Have a look at, you know, sites that it’s linking from and look at the trends.
Andy Gee (35:46.776)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (36:10.788)
that they’re going on. You know, it’s very difficult, very difficult. You know, I almost think, man, I actually think like marketplace links are a risk. Like, and hear me out on this, like we’re talking about this at Chiang Mai SEO. And there was an interesting slide by a fellow that runs the…
Andy Gee (36:13.644)
It’s hard work,
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (36:34.486)
the runs the conference call. And what he said was that PBNs are safer than guest posts in 2025. That will be safer. I know big claim, but I’m inclined to believe it. I’m inclined to sort of.
Andy Gee (36:42.083)
Oof.
Dejan Mladenovski (36:49.41)
I’m trying to sort of like say that I agree and I’ll tell you my reasons for it. If all these sites are just selling links to any body that they can pretty much touch and I mean like you know they’re selling links to like if you’re a site if it’s an Australian business and it’s selling you know gambling links to a casino in South Africa and then a slot machine in Thailand and all these places
Andy Gee (37:11.022)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (37:13.942)
You know, the site’s not on topic. It’s just trying to take dollars. It’s not topically relevant. It’s talking about all these different subject matters when it has no authority in one given niche or specific vertical. I would think that maybe let’s not even use the word PBM. Let’s use maybe, you know, old site that’s been reestablished, reestablished sites, right? Sites that maybe had some links and authority in a specific vertical. It’s re-birthed into sort of a mini authority. And now with AI, you can make the site grow.
Andy Gee (37:38.498)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (37:44.068)
You know you can build it on you know custom frameworks and you can build out topical maps and you can drip feed Content that potentially used to rank for an ahrefs historical keywords and get that ranking and only link out to authority sites and Sites in that vertical that’s it that to me feels a lot safer Than maybe getting a link on these because when money is involved in they’re selling links You have to assume that they’re gonna accept anybody and when somebody comes along and offers, you know X amount of dollars for a link that’s completely
not going to be relevant to, it’s not going to move the needle and in fact it’s probably going to hurt you and devalue all your efforts anyway.
Andy Gee (38:16.494)
I’m just going to move the needle.
Andy Gee (38:22.69)
But that’s a good point, man. And not all private blog networks are created equal. But the majority that I used to see.
Dejan Mladenovski (38:29.32)
A of them don’t, yeah, you know what? I’ll caveat that a lot of people don’t do it correctly. A lot of people, they don’t know how to do it.
Andy Gee (38:34.222)
A lot of people don’t do it. think both, I mean, look, I mean, who am I? I mean, my opinion is, look, both are very risky. And I don’t think most of it, I mean, PBN’s a good business. And I think there’s a reason. I think there’s some reason for him to say that. Not because I don’t know him, but I would say there’s a reason. And sure, PBN’s can in some ways.
I think he’s using a very good example versus a very bad example.
Dejan Mladenovski (39:05.427)
Yeah, I think that’s what you’ve got to take the context right most PPNs are done poorly most PPNs are done poorly
Andy Gee (39:08.558)
You got to take the… 90 % of them have done bullet. And I would say, I would say dude that ranking in like, mean, look, mean, chain wise a different market. Like I can’t speak to that market. I just, I can’t. So I’m going to plead ignorance on that one. I don’t like talking about things I don’t know what I’m talking about. But in Australia, in the Australian markets, when I work with brands, when we’ve built out a strategy to generate links the right way, and I’m meaning the right way, I’m not trying to sound holier than that.
when I build a machine for them to understand this is what’s required to build links with velocity and that can generate the topical authority, et cetera. I just feel that’s what’s going to not only move the needle but keep you at 10,000 revs. I think if that private blog network for whatever reason, if you pay for links at any scale, then that is ultimately
You are kind of like, it’s a liability. You’re kind of like, what’s the end game here? Are you just going to be continually buying private block? What happens if the site owners drop them? What happens? Even guest posting. mean, I think guest posting, again, there’s really, really bad examples. But how does Google know when a link’s been paid or not? But
Dejan Mladenovski (40:35.028)
It doesn’t and this is it you know this is the issue this this goes back to the issue of It don’t know right they can only look at okay What are the signals that the site’s sending if it’s leaking out to all these groups of sites that don’t make sense like it’s no good If you’re ever gonna like just for viewers out there if you’re ever gonna like you know use a network of sites just never buy it ever Never ever ever buy a site network. That’s just don’t do it because you know if they’re selling it. It’s it’s already lost its value
Andy Gee (40:39.179)
It doesn’t. They don’t know, man.
Andy Gee (40:58.99)
That’s disclaimer here.
Dejan Mladenovski (41:05.504)
I think I agree, it’s not a holy topic, one that people don’t want to talk about, right? That’s why I wanted to touch on it with you.
Andy Gee (41:11.584)
No, I’ll talk about it till I blow in the face because I used to have these discussions a lot down like with our head of strategy. We came to physical blows over it. Now, his strategy got taken down. So in the end, I was vindicated. Now, does that mean that if anyone else done a private blog network, if they’ve done it better? I mean, I can’t just assume. And I’ve seen private blog networks done well in the UK.
Dejan Mladenovski (41:19.82)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (41:25.527)
Yep.
Dejan Mladenovski (41:35.97)
I think private blog networks, there’s two different types, right? There’s one that, no. So what they were in 2014, 2015, 2016 is they were groups of sites that were all linked together. So you’d maybe have one site and you had a link at the bottom and it was like, it was all on the same template, it was all on the same IP address, it was all using the same whois data. It all had.
Andy Gee (41:38.936)
But I just don’t touch them. Maybe I’m too old.
Andy Gee (41:50.198)
Yes, correct.
Andy Gee (41:54.51)
There was no effort. There was no effort. They all even on the same server.
Andy Gee (42:02.878)
we had to see block I some of them had to see block IP sort of down pat but like but I don’t even know whether yeah anyway so I’ll catch you off
Dejan Mladenovski (42:11.008)
Yeah, even a C block IP, right? Like I think it’s still quite obvious that even if you know, because if you’re using the same provider, let’s say you’re using Digital Ocean or Vulture or whatever you might be using, if you change, if you get a different IP, generally it stays in that same like range, unless you get it in a completely different location, then then the like, you know, maybe the A class will be different with what you’re after. But.
Andy Gee (42:26.476)
Mm-hmm. Correct.
Mm. Mm.
Dejan Mladenovski (42:33.26)
There’s that old school private blog network where the sites are all linked together. And then there’s like a different method, right? Is where you’re actually trying to build a digital asset and turn it into a bit of an authority and actually provide value for the user. It’s a big effort, right? And the reason you won’t see people doing it is because it’s a huge effort to do it. Massive effort. To build out a quality site on a custom template in a niche that, you know, it already has an established link profile in, that maybe it
Andy Gee (42:53.281)
is a massive effort to do.
Dejan Mladenovski (43:03.204)
hasn’t been devalued with Wayback Archive having a look, make sure it hasn’t been turned into something silly in the past. You’ve got to do all these checks. Even before you even think about this method, there is a whole host of things that you need to make sure that it even meets all the quality signals. And that’s the reason I think people don’t do it. It’s time consuming, it requires a lot of technical knowledge, and it’s a lot of trial and error to perfect.
Andy Gee (43:11.352)
Correct.
Andy Gee (43:20.344)
to me.
Andy Gee (43:29.868)
Yeah. And honestly, they are. And I’m not trying like this might be an analogy that may offend some people. For me, it’s like I watch a lot of mafia shows. If half these mafia guys actually build legit businesses, the amount of effort they go to to build illegitimate businesses, it’s just crazy. The amount of detail that they go into. I’m not saying that private blog networks is the same as organized crime. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just trying to use an analogy here that I just feel like
Dejan Mladenovski (43:54.859)
Hahaha.
Andy Gee (43:59.343)
I think if you look, if you’ve got your own affiliate sites, hey, my heart says, you do whatever you got to do. Like I’m no Google apologist here, right? Like evangelists. I’m like, you just go do whatever you need to do to make money. Who am I to judge you, right? On the affiliate side. I think when I just come, maybe I’m old, maybe I’ve been in it for 20 years and now it’s my weakness, no longer my strength. That’s what I got to say about people like you. You’ve got the energy of you got youth on your side.
Dejan Mladenovski (44:23.083)
fuck.
Dejan Mladenovski (44:28.729)
mate, we’re hungry, we’re hungry for those links, you know what I’m saying?
Andy Gee (44:31.05)
You’re hungry, mate. You’re like a fucking beep off its leash,
Dejan Mladenovski (44:33.75)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Andy Gee (44:37.083)
no
Andy Gee (44:44.642)
I just always feel like you’d be playing toe to toe with a searcher, yeah? And I feel like your results, your…
Dejan Mladenovski (44:50.914)
I like it is that. Yeah, think you’re, that’s a, I wanna lean into that. I wanna hop onto that because.
Andy Gee (44:55.598)
You’re basically always at a point, even if the growth is like, you can’t see my hand going up, but you get it. But you’re always kind of like in the back of your mind. I know Google isn’t as smart as they think they are, but I would be feeling as well as a PBN could be done. Hey, with my Asayi back in 2010, I should have done private blog networks. I would have made from a…
Dejan Mladenovski (45:21.506)
Well you gotta look at it like this. You gotta look at it like this, right?
Andy Gee (45:24.438)
I would have made from hundreds of dollars to thousands in months if I focused on that. But I wanted to even make like you should see my affiliates. That’s another discussion for another day. But I always feel like I’m on edge. Whereas I feel like I feel like and I’ve done it before. I feel like I’ve helped clients at my detriment, my financial detriment, build a sort of understanding in a machine to say it’s hard to get links. But this is the model.
Dejan Mladenovski (45:36.587)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (45:54.625)
I think will work. And I kind of wouldn’t want to do a talk about it because I don’t necessarily want to give it away.
Dejan Mladenovski (46:00.692)
Yeah, well, let’s look at it like this, right? So, thing is about it is it’s gotta be a diversified link portfolio. I think I slightly already am, if you know what I mean. Like look, it’s a diversified portfolio. Might have to talk after the podcast, mate.
Andy Gee (46:10.254)
Are you trying to talk me into a blog that works there?
Andy Gee (46:19.574)
I sent you my clickbank website and you can do whatever you like.
Dejan Mladenovski (46:25.846)
But basically you gotta look, right? Because for the viewers listening, maybe they want a quick strategy of what could potentially work. Sometimes a site can get X amount far just by doing all the high quality citations in that vertical. You can get some, you can get…
Andy Gee (46:42.914)
High quality citations as what? How would you break it? You mean like a low-key? Yep. Yep.
Dejan Mladenovski (46:45.344)
High quality citation, I would break it down as niche relevant, niche relevant, local. So something that’s local and something that’s in your vertical, right? That is probably where you’d wanna start if you’re doing it. Where like you start going and building 300 citations and it’s a directory out of the US, you know, for industry Timbuktu that…
Andy Gee (46:56.312)
Sure.
Dejan Mladenovski (47:12.192)
that doesn’t really hold much authority, that’s not really gonna help you. You wanna send signals, you wanna be strategic with how you do it. So that is one strategy that can get you so far. And I think just look around, you’ve got some partners, you’ve got people you work with, everybody’s got a little network that they know. It’s not a private blog network, mean it’s technically maybe it’s own little private blog in itself, right? Businesses that link to each other, that are established, that might know each other, that might recommend each other’s services anyway
Andy Gee (47:15.469)
Yep.
Andy Gee (47:28.717)
Mm-hmm.
Dejan Mladenovski (47:42.098)
in the offline world could make a good point to start somewhere. Obviously, reciprocal links, you don’t want to do too many of them. Think about five, maybe five to 10 of your closest partners and I’d cap it there.
Then, okay, what are you really left with to do? Yes, you can go out and build link baitable assets, right? You can find, okay, know, if X amount of sites are writing about this topic and you have the best content on that, you could potentially do it. If a journalist is looking for something, statistics piece, or who, what, when, where type article, they can find that.
Andy Gee (48:11.936)
Yeah sure sure so you got like a mixture of strategies you know yeah yeah
Dejan Mladenovski (48:16.298)
Mix the things, mix the things. I still do think guest posting works, but not how it used to work. I think you’ve to be very strategic and vet the sites well. So like I said, all those things I mentioned previously, like, you know, does the site, you know, link out to this bad network? What’s the ratio of incoming to outgoing links? Yep.
Andy Gee (48:25.848)
bit.
Andy Gee (48:34.062)
One of those clients, I want your view on this, one of these clients that got bought out from the US company that I’m doing some consulting work for, they had a manual action back in, I don’t know if it was two years ago, can’t remember, it’s either two or three years ago. For me, a manual action from what I’ve seen, because I’ve seen some horrible sites not get a manual action.
Here’s what my opinion is and I want you to have something different. I want to see how they’re perspective. For me, to see a lot of bad sites that might have like 10,000 bad links and this was just shit. This was just shit, right? I’ve seen 10,000 links just go under the radar, dodgy stuff, go under the radar. This site had 27,000 spammy links from clear cut. Half of it was, well.
wouldn’t say half but one one third of it is probably like web 2.0 spam and shit like that and others just like gent your classic good old-fashioned classic link spam right
Dejan Mladenovski (49:38.294)
Yeah, I a straight box, X from just GSA Blasting. Yeah.
Andy Gee (49:40.847)
Yeah, yeah, that type of shit. Yeah, 100%. So you had a bit of X-ROMO. Well, I mean, the X one, what is it called? They used to do a lot of Web 2.0 spam. But anyway, whatever, right? Yeah. No, not X-ROMO, the other one. Ah, fuck, what’s it called? I used to know these tools. Anyway, doesn’t matter. So it had a mixture of a range of spam.
Dejan Mladenovski (49:52.466)
X, X Ruma? Yeah, yeah, okay, yep.
Dejan Mladenovski (50:00.811)
And we’re go.
Andy Gee (50:06.461)
Obviously anyone can build spam for a competitor and try to negative SEO them, right? I gave them an answer of why I think necessarily they got hit and other sites that see that might still have something similar but go under the radar. Why do you feel some sites will go under the radar? Considering that Google can know that it can be a negative SEO attack.
Dejan Mladenovski (50:29.462)
Yeah, I think, well, you look at what Google said on this, right? They’re like, you we ignore bad links. Like we ignore spam link. They’ve come out said that in paraphrasing, but in different forms. What is scary?
Andy Gee (50:34.296)
Correct. Yeah.
Sure.
Dejan Mladenovski (50:45.012)
is like if you think about negative SEO and how it’s harming that site, what is scary is sustained, like sustained poor links. So what am I talking about? I mean, you know, the people that maybe they’re just getting into the industry and you know, they see the price of a link over here is like $1,000 for one link. They’re like, why would I do that? Then they see on Fiverr, hey, I can get 5,000 links for $10. Woo, I’m winning. And I think doing that blast once,
I think maybe you’ll get away with it. Sustained blasts. Sustained.
Andy Gee (51:18.964)
you think a negative SEO attack with sustained blasts could get us out down? Pending the authority of those demands.
Dejan Mladenovski (51:22.594)
Potentially right because if you think about it Depending the authority potentially right I haven’t tested that but I’ve been ongoing theory I’d love to test it on one of my own sites where I just blast it with just poor links and see what happens Because if you think about it like Sustained poor links
Andy Gee (51:36.046)
That’s good.
Dejan Mladenovski (51:42.658)
can’t be good. Like if you’re sending and here’s the thing, I’m not talking about, you know, completely non relevant links. I’m talking about exact match anchor type spam. So for example, like what you’ll see with negative type links is somebody thinks, I’m going to hit them with, you know, I’m going to hit this, you know, let’s use jewelry with like a bunch of, you know, adult links, right? And I’m going to have these. That’s not the way you would think Google would hit you. Google would hit you if you’re actively trying to manipulate the search. So if you’re using exact match anchors from all
Andy Gee (52:03.041)
Yeah, sure.
Dejan Mladenovski (52:12.612)
these poor quality sites and you’re doing that at a sustained period, right? Say I’m doing one of these blasts every week, every week and I’m doing it for six months and I’m using different variations of exact match anchor texts. That surely can’t be good. Scary thing is you might initially get a boost but the chickens will come home to roost on that. And then it makes you really think like if…
Andy Gee (52:33.272)
Mm.
Andy Gee (52:36.728)
I have to some tests.
Dejan Mladenovski (52:37.834)
Yet if that sounds like potentially could hurt you, well then every site’s vulnerable. Because it doesn’t take much to do that to any site. And that’s a scary thought.
Andy Gee (52:40.93)
Mm. Mm.
It was 20,000. mean, 27, you can build 27,000 broken links with X-ROM quite quickly.
Dejan Mladenovski (52:51.692)
quite quickly and quite cheaply too. You can just go on a marketplace and buy that right now, right? So the fact that anybody can do it to you, to us building like, you know, legitimate brands, Omega Digital, Shuffle, anybody could just hit us with that scary thought.
Andy Gee (52:57.366)
I mean, I mean…
Andy Gee (53:07.566)
Well, want to know what’s I mean. Yes, I understand what Google says. I’m trying to understand what Google says. Google does sometimes.
Dejan Mladenovski (53:15.062)
I get why that also had to crack down on it too because if anybody could do it, like if it’s too easy to do, then every site, every business model, right?
Andy Gee (53:21.61)
That’s whole point of my question. It’s like, where’s the barrier? Where’s the boundary? Because between understanding that I can just do a negative attack with enough money. And I think what you mentioned at the very start about brands having leeway, that definitely plays a huge part.
Dejan Mladenovski (53:36.012)
Definitely, definitely. man, have you seen what’s happened with the Parasite SEO? How like the certain sites, you know, that have no authority, DR90s, Google said they’re gonna crack down on this back in May. I think eventually they did manual action a few sites. I forget what the exact name of the update was, but it basically targeted large publishers that, you know, were publishing, getting…
Andy Gee (54:01.812)
I for the first couple of times we’re outranking Reddit a few times, which is very unusual.
Dejan Mladenovski (54:06.944)
Yeah, Reddit as well popped up massively this year, but not just Reddit, right? was publications. It was like your Outlook Indias. It was like your Forbes. was, you know, these sites that got huge, huge, huge, huge growth at the expense of smaller, smaller sites, but.
Andy Gee (54:16.002)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (54:25.258)
I think in general what you’ll find is that there’s a trend to authority. Like look at the last three, four years of updates, right? Which sites have performed well constantly, right? Go and look at the SERPs, go and look at who was ranking three, four years ago, go look now, like there was a clear trend towards favoring these authority sites. I can’t see that changing. Make the best content you want if the content is not amplified.
Andy Gee (54:25.271)
Yeah.
Andy Gee (54:43.085)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (54:51.146)
and it’s not got that social traction links pointing back to it. The social to get links pointing back to it. It’s gonna be tough.
Andy Gee (54:57.23)
Well, one of the previous clients we had, mate, was how much should you spend on an engagement ring, which is a very popular term. we did the right thing. We had the original research. We had the data analyst involved. I didn’t do this because Google said it all, but we did exactly the blueprint.
the original research, the data citation. We gave a reason for ANZ for Westpac to sign us the link to us. Well, Westpac didn’t. And one of the guys at the SCO of conference 2024 came up to me and said, you’re Andrew, you try to pitch us with linking to your client. He just came up to me out of the blue. At the SCO conference last year, said, oh, sorry, we couldn’t do it. I said, well, don’t take my client’s content, mate. Then I won’t come after you. So don’t take these citations or these data.
and they’re not linked to him. So it was a of an awkward conversation. I’m Captain Awkward. But yeah, did, it’s very hard to kind of get onto that first page where people want to use your data. Once you get on the first page and people start wanting to cite you, because we didn’t just do your normal three months salary, that’s what you should, like the same regurgitated bullshit, but we did the blueprint of.
Dejan Mladenovski (56:09.854)
sometimes you got to amplify it, right? Sometimes the way to do it is pay for ads to get that. If you’re not ranking there and you know that it’s a linkable asset, sometimes you got to pay to be there. And to get that initial traction of the links, sometimes it’s just got to something, you just got to the bullet on the budget for it. That four to six months is going to be…
Andy Gee (56:16.654)
Oh, you the out, the promotion, the content promotion man. Exactly. Yeah.
Andy Gee (56:27.246)
it unfortunately wasn’t ever yeah 100 % dude it wasn’t evergreen content so the links velocity started died off but in 2020 what was it 2020 yeah 2024 we just we did in 2023 we just updated the data a little bit republished the date that cougar doesn’t like but we did we did put like we did put new content in it republished the date bang straight up again
Dejan Mladenovski (56:33.408)
Makes it tougher. Yep.
Andy Gee (56:54.004)
So, but unfortunately we didn’t have the league velocity so just people weren’t taking our data. But I would say that’s that that model for me was hey like there needs to be a strategy to get onto the first base. It’s like soccer man you’ve got to get promoted to be in the big league. Once you’re in the big league then you get the deals and the players and the opportunities. You don’t want be in division three.
Dejan Mladenovski (57:15.318)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andy Gee (57:17.95)
or page three. like you said, it’s tough. it’s paid ads, whether you’re link building, whatever you’re kind of doing to kind of get up there. But you know articles. But the popular work boots example, I didn’t do shit. I didn’t build any links. I didn’t do nothing. It wasn’t even good content. And it would generate a system.
Dejan Mladenovski (57:31.168)
Yeah. Hey, I think competition is the thing, man. Like, you know, for something that maybe people just, if you’re early on something, you know, and like you can get there and just, you know, if everybody’s just got standard category pages and you’ve got a fully optimized page of it, I think you’ll do well.
Andy Gee (57:48.687)
I the page, with the work boots example, the page got first and there was competitors doing it. There was our vicious competitors, the authority, they picked up on it. All the SEOs did. And I’ll let you go very soon. I’m going to talk about this until I’m blown in face with you. But yeah, I think it was just Google, like the brain kicked in. Everyone was bang, clicking on it, bang, bang. Staying on it, clicking on it, buying.
Dejan Mladenovski (58:06.496)
Hahaha
Andy Gee (58:17.176)
Hey, Google can see all that, right? So why drop us? We were meeting the intent, the customers were happy. They weren’t bouncing, they were staying on the side, they were buying our products. At the end of the day…
Dejan Mladenovski (58:18.678)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (58:26.118)
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’ll wrap up with this. So wrap up with this one. So content, like content period of peak performance, right? Nine to 15 months, nine to 15 months, right? After that, you know, chances are if the site’s pages perform well, that your competitors have had enough time to copy it, release a similar strategy.
Andy Gee (58:30.914)
You wrap up with it, yeah, wrap it up.
Andy Gee (58:42.286)
12 months? Yeah, I agree.
Dejan Mladenovski (58:54.711)
If you’ve got a date marked as well, people start looking at it, it’s a bit old, like two plus years as well, can in fact affect your CTR.
Andy Gee (59:00.706)
Yeah.
Dejan Mladenovski (59:03.52)
But it’s just that point that it just doesn’t perform as well. It just doesn’t seem to do well past that point without some sort of a refresh. I think in that example, these are the page, and a good strategy of content overall is pages that already have backlinks, pages that once performed well, these are the ones that the effort should be pointed on. These are the ones that should be refreshed. These are the pages that you should be thinking, okay, how can I turn a link from other pages that maybe have recently got links to sort of send more signals?
Andy Gee (59:25.614)
Hmm.
Andy Gee (59:31.726)
Yeah, 100 % dude. Yeah, 100%.
Dejan Mladenovski (59:33.396)
There’s so many things you can do in SEO, right?
what really separates somebody that really can drive forward a campaign versus maybe someone that’s maybe just getting into it, maybe hasn’t got as much experience as yourself, Andrew, is knowing what the next thing to do to move the needle at that 80-20, that, I know if I put 80 % of the work in this, 20 % of the work in this little thing, I get 80 % of the boost. That is what’s gonna separate, I think, this industry. think when we’re moving now into a space where there’s not enough, there’s not gonna be enough room for everybody in the market.
It’s probably one of the first times that we’ve seen it. There’s a lot of businesses offering SEO. And I think with AI people, they’re going to be able to service more clients at a same productive level. I think we’re going to see big changes. I’m excited for it. I’m here for it. I reckon the game will change in the next two to three years, but anybody likes it not, it’s my personal opinion.
Andy Gee (01:00:33.32)
I think it always changes.
Dejan Mladenovski (01:00:35.468)
But I think it’s gonna change in unprecedented way over the next two to three years. Something that we haven’t seen in decades. And I think for anybody that’s in the industry that loves it maybe as much as us, Andrew, and that can adapt to it and execute it, it’s gonna crush it. So I’m bullish. I’m pessimistic in the current form it is, but I’m bullish where it’s going. And yeah, it’s been good, it’s been good.
Andy Gee (01:00:41.198)
Sure.
Andy Gee (01:00:56.782)
Clearly.
Andy Gee (01:01:01.102)
I’ve enjoyed the debate, It’s been fantastic, mate. I love the energy, love the passion. I’ve got a soft spot for you because I see a little bit of me in you, mate. So I see the good things anyway. Now, listen, if you want to listen to Dan speak, get your tickets to SCO Sydney Conference. I promised James that I would keep plugging it. But I think it’s just coming for listening to Dan talk about programmatic SEO and maybe even in the drinks afterwards, Dan and I sort of getting into it again.
Dejan Mladenovski (01:01:10.487)
Hahaha
Dejan Mladenovski (01:01:29.964)
Just come up to us if you’re there. We’ll kick off where we left off. Ask us any questions you heard today.
Andy Gee (01:01:30.261)
I didn’t…
Andy Gee (01:01:33.774)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Listen, Shuffle Digital, 1300 764 736 and shuffledigital.com.au.
Dejan Mladenovski (01:01:42.442)
Andrew Glintos, Omega Digital X, Omega X.
Andy Gee (01:01:45.494)
It’s not very, it’s not befitting to pump pump and to plug your own doom. Thanks so much my man. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you. Let’s do this again. This was fun.
Dejan Mladenovski (01:01:48.478)
No worries mate. Feelings mutual mate, appreciate your time and yeah, love the chat. Let’s go. Let’s get Sessy.
