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[00:00:01.360 --> 00:00:04.480] But that night from like 1.15 to 1.27 a.m.
[00:00:04.560 --> 00:00:06.720] Google de-indexed 20 of my test sites.
[00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:08.000] So that wasn't fun.
[00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.680] But then I realized they completely validated everything I was saying.
[00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:20.240] So I think it's possible I'm the only person on the planet that has both a US patent in SEO and a Google rule written for them.
[00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:25.680] Hello, welcome back to Indiebytes, the podcast where I bring you stories of fellow indie hackers in 50 minutes or less.
[00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:35.280] Today I'm joined by Kyle Rufus, the co-founder of High Voted SEO, Page Optimizer Pro, and Internet Marketing Gold, an agency software and course business respectively, which will focus on mastering SEO.
[00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:40.720] I've spoken at length before on the podcast about how SEO can be such an effective tool for indie hackers to use.
[00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:43.040] So Kyle is the perfect guest to talk to you today.
[00:00:43.040 --> 00:00:46.480] Before we get into this conversation, I want to thank Indiebyte sponsor Email Octopus.
[00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:51.120] EmailOctopus are an indie email marketing platform built to support other small-growing businesses like yours.
[00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:55.840] They're focused on affordability and ease of use, which is perfect when you're starting out as a bootstrapper.
[00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:59.520] EmailOctopus contains all the features you need to reach and grow your audience.
[00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:05.120] You can start today without paying a penny on their free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers.
[00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:11.440] To try out Email Octopus, head to emailoctopus.com and use the code IndieBytes with 30% off if you choose to upgrade to a PayPal.
[00:01:11.440 --> 00:01:13.120] All links are in the show notes.
[00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:14.240] Kyle, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:14.960] How are you doing?
[00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:15.840] I'm doing great.
[00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:17.040] Thanks for having me.
[00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:22.000] Let's kick off with your background from SEO to start paying the bills.
[00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:23.520] Tell me about that.
[00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:28.480] Yeah, I was a lawyer in Another Life, and I took some time off.
[00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:33.120] And in that time off, I started a web design development business.
[00:01:33.120 --> 00:01:34.480] And I brought my brother into that business.
[00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:35.760] He's actually going pretty well.
[00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.560] He can code.
[00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:38.320] He does web design and development.
[00:01:38.320 --> 00:01:41.840] And we got the bright idea of opening a company in India.
[00:01:42.160 --> 00:01:45.760] And we were told we were going to get a shakedown from the police.
[00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:46.560] And that happened.
[00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:47.760] There was a knock on the door.
[00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:49.200] My brother was there at the time, and I was not.
[00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:50.480] I was in the US.
[00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:52.160] And they said, We need to see the papers.
[00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:52.960] He shows the papers.
[00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:54.080] They're like, These are the wrong papers.
[00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:58.160] And instead of asking for the bribe, they put him in handcuffs and they throw him in jail.
[00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:02.680] So my brother is in jail in India and he's talking to the chief of police there.
[00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:04.520] And the chief of police goes, These could be the right papers.
[00:02:04.520 --> 00:02:04.920] I don't know.
[00:02:04.920 --> 00:02:05.880] You have two choices.
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:07.320] One, you can leave town tomorrow.
[00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:11.800] Two, you can sit in jail and wait for the magistrate to come and the magistrate will sort this out.
[00:02:11.800 --> 00:02:13.720] And my brother goes, When does the magistrate come?
[00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:15.880] And the chief of police is like, I don't know.
[00:02:15.880 --> 00:02:18.360] So my brother goes, I'll leave town tomorrow then.
[00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:20.200] So he runs back to the office.
[00:02:20.200 --> 00:02:21.000] He gets what he can.
[00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:24.040] Our employees have fled because they don't want any part of this.
[00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:27.240] And we're hammeraging clients because we can't service these clients.
[00:02:27.240 --> 00:02:30.040] And my brother goes, Hey, look, the ship is sinking.
[00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:31.720] I can take these four clients because he can code.
[00:02:31.720 --> 00:02:34.440] And I don't code and I don't know what I'm doing there.
[00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:40.200] And we had just taken on these SEO clients, this new thing called SEO that I had heard about.
[00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:45.240] And basically, what I decided at that point was, I'm going to take these SEO clients because I need to pay the rent next month.
[00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:47.960] And I need to figure out how to do SEO today.
[00:02:48.280 --> 00:02:51.000] And that's pretty much what I did.
[00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:52.520] And it turned out I wasn't bad at it.
[00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:55.160] And I was able to keep those clients and grow those clients.
[00:02:55.160 --> 00:02:59.160] And then I met my now business partner and we started high voltage.
[00:02:59.160 --> 00:03:01.880] What year was this when this was all happening, Kyle?
[00:03:01.880 --> 00:03:04.600] This was all 2013, 2014.
[00:03:04.600 --> 00:03:06.200] That is wild.
[00:03:06.200 --> 00:03:10.520] I did not expect that to be the start of your founding story to get into SEO.
[00:03:10.520 --> 00:03:15.800] What sort of resources were you turning to back in 2013, 2014 to learn it?
[00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:17.320] It's a pretty common story, you know?
[00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:20.520] There you are, breaking your brother out of jail in India.
[00:03:20.760 --> 00:03:23.960] The resources, actually, that's really what got me my name in SEO.
[00:03:23.960 --> 00:03:26.520] Was when I was like, you know, is this a ranking factor?
[00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:31.080] And I'd search on Google and you get like three yeses and three no's and three maybes.
[00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:33.320] And I was like, well, that's not going to work.
[00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:35.080] And I was like, oh, everybody's running their own test sites.
[00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:35.880] So they're putting other sites.
[00:03:35.880 --> 00:03:37.960] So I put up sites just to like play with things.
[00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:43.160] And then I realized that's still taking a lot of time, you know, to put something up and see if it can rank or not.
[00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:46.480] And I decided, I was just fooling around in Google and I was like, well, what happens if I do this?
[00:03:44.920 --> 00:03:52.000] I just typed in a string of letters and I got this page that said, you know, we don't have anything for that keyword.
[00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:54.880] And then I was like, well, what if I optimize terms for that keyword?
[00:03:54.880 --> 00:03:56.160] Can I get them to show up here?
[00:03:56.160 --> 00:03:56.960] And they did.
[00:03:56.960 --> 00:04:00.160] And then I realized now I've got an environment that I control.
[00:04:00.160 --> 00:04:07.760] You know, I can tinker in here and then I can actually see instant movement because I'm the only one that's doing anything here.
[00:04:07.760 --> 00:04:10.880] So if I do something and a page goes up, I've got a positive factor.
[00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:12.560] If I do something, a page goes down, that's a negative factor.
[00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:14.560] If I do something that doesn't move, that's a non-factor.
[00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:19.280] And then I developed a method for testing that kind of encapsulates that concept.
[00:04:19.280 --> 00:04:20.480] And I now actually have a U.S.
[00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:25.680] patent on that method for testing if something is or is not a ranking factor within search engines.
[00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:31.280] But that really allowed me to really propel my knowledge forward and kind of figure out what's going on in SEO.
[00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:33.920] Why are you so scientific with your SEO?
[00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:35.280] Because no one else is.
[00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:40.400] It was 2015 then that I spoke at my first conference.
[00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:42.320] And it was a real high-level conference.
[00:04:42.320 --> 00:04:43.520] There were only like 40 people in the room.
[00:04:43.520 --> 00:04:47.280] And it was the kind of place where you can get interactive a little bit with the speakers.
[00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:53.680] And I was a late addition to the conference, but I said, I'm going to show this method that I developed for testing and some of my results.
[00:04:53.680 --> 00:04:55.440] And I really thought it'd be kind of interactive.
[00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:56.080] This is what I'm doing.
[00:04:56.080 --> 00:04:57.040] What are you guys doing?
[00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:59.280] Because I figured at this point, that's what everyone was doing.
[00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:02.720] And about five minutes into this talk, I realized nobody's doing this.
[00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:07.440] And then really what that allowed me to do is to have a point of view.
[00:05:07.760 --> 00:05:14.240] If you're selling services or you're doing anything, you're selling a product and you don't have a point of view, then you're just lost within that crowd.
[00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:16.560] You're just doing the same thing that everybody else is.
[00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:21.040] But we were able to say, hey, look, we run scientific tests on Google's algorithm.
[00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:22.880] We know that nobody else is doing this.
[00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:27.840] And it allows us to be like, if you want something that is logical, that is math-based, that is science-based, that's us.
[00:05:27.840 --> 00:05:34.120] And something at the beginning we were able to say, too, was ask the other agencies you're looking at, are they running to ask them for their most recent tests?
[00:05:34.120 --> 00:05:36.280] And you'll find out that they don't have any tests.
[00:05:36.280 --> 00:05:38.440] And what that means is that they're testing on your site.
[00:05:38.440 --> 00:05:40.920] They're learning how to do SEO on you.
[00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:44.920] You know, we're learning how to do SEO over here, and then we're bringing to the table what we know works.
[00:05:44.920 --> 00:05:47.480] And that was a real differentiating factor for us.
[00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:52.680] What do you think about sort of testing other marketing strategies apart from SEO?
[00:05:52.680 --> 00:05:58.360] The first things you can do, even before you get into an SEO project, is run a short ad campaign with your titles.
[00:05:58.360 --> 00:06:01.960] You know, a big thing is, you know, are people going to resonate with this title?
[00:06:01.960 --> 00:06:05.320] And then when they click in, are they actually going to buy the product?
[00:06:05.320 --> 00:06:07.720] Are they interested in getting the thing?
[00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:09.800] And you can really play with your messaging a lot.
[00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:14.120] On more than one occasion, we've worked with a company where, you know, they're with us for six months.
[00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:15.800] They paid us $2,000 a month.
[00:06:15.800 --> 00:06:17.640] We're on page one for a ton of terms.
[00:06:17.640 --> 00:06:21.000] And then you get there and then they realize that nobody wants to buy this product.
[00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:23.640] Or the messaging just isn't there.
[00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:29.720] And that's a pretty expensive lesson to learn when you could probably have done it through ads first.
[00:06:29.720 --> 00:06:35.800] To say, like, you know what, this messaging isn't getting us to where we need to be before you make that type of commitment.
[00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:39.480] But you can try out a lot through ads before you get into some of the longer.
[00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:41.320] You know, setting up a funnel sucks.
[00:06:41.320 --> 00:06:43.640] You know, setting up an email campaign sucks.
[00:06:43.640 --> 00:06:48.360] But you really want to have some confidence that you've got some proof of concept to be, I think, before you even get into any of that.
[00:06:48.360 --> 00:06:51.400] And running quick ads is a decent way to do it.
[00:06:51.640 --> 00:07:01.880] I've actually heard this a few times in terms of ways of validating your ideas or getting eyeballs on your ideas to see if they're actually something worth pursuing.
[00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:06.120] Because as you say, you can put a lot of time and effort into building a product.
[00:07:06.120 --> 00:07:12.120] But if there's no market for the product that you're building, that's a lot of wasted time and effort.
[00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:17.200] And ads can be sort of a shortcut to get there just by putting a little bit of money down.
[00:07:17.440 --> 00:07:27.360] Carl, one of the stories you're famous for is ranking number one for a site with Lorem Ipsum, which prompted Google to actually change some of their rules and guidelines.
[00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:30.320] Can you tell me a little bit about that story?
[00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:32.480] Well, this story will live with me forever.
[00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:37.920] So the short version of it was there was a public competition to rank for the term Rhinoplasty Plano.
[00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:42.480] Rhinoplasty is a nose job, and Plano is right outside of Dallas, Texas in the U.S.
[00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:44.720] And it was a 30-day competition.
[00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:47.280] The only rule was you have to use a brand new domain.
[00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:48.640] So this is a real sprint.
[00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:51.360] Now, this is back when you could do that, I think, a little bit better too.
[00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:52.800] But after that, do whatever you want to do.
[00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:56.560] So I felt pretty good about my skills and my team and at high voltage.
[00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:57.600] And so we entered.
[00:07:57.600 --> 00:07:59.840] And 27 professionals entered.
[00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:03.600] Only seven actually got a page to rank, which I think was pretty interesting.
[00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:06.560] Anyway, without doing anything else, about two weeks later, we moved to page one.
[00:08:06.560 --> 00:08:08.640] About two weeks after that, we moved to number one.
[00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:11.680] About two weeks after that, we were number one, organic, and number one, maps.
[00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:15.360] And about two weeks after that, we'd actually wiped out the maps and we were the knowledge panel.
[00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:18.320] We were rhino plastyplano, which is hilarious.
[00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:23.360] And at this point, really, people really lost their minds because we did the entire site in lorem ipsum.
[00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:29.520] Lorem ipsum is the fake Latin you put on websites when you're you know designing things to see how text is going to look.
[00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:30.880] But then we did the math.
[00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:32.640] How many times do we need our target keyword?
[00:08:32.640 --> 00:08:34.000] How many times do you need its variations?
[00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:35.440] How many times do we need contextual terms?
[00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:37.120] And where do we need them on the page?
[00:08:37.120 --> 00:08:46.720] And then we crassily copied and pasted them into the lorem ipsum the right amount of times in the right places and shot up to the first page.
[00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:52.560] About three months later, an article was written about it, which listed my name and also the site.
[00:08:52.560 --> 00:08:58.080] And about six hours after that article came out, Google de-indexed the site, which is, I guess, fair play.
[00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:03.400] But that night, from like 1.15 to 1:27 a.m., Google de-indexed 20 of my test sites.
[00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:04.280] So that wasn't fun.
[00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:08.520] But then I realized they completely validated everything I was saying.
[00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:15.560] If I had gotten lucky or was talking nonsense, they would have rolled their eyes and moved on, but instead they got very punitive.
[00:09:15.560 --> 00:09:18.520] Fast forward a couple years, I did a course on white hat SEO.
[00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:20.360] Believe it or not, White Hat SEO.
[00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:21.640] I just test the algorithm.
[00:09:22.120 --> 00:09:23.720] People think it's a weird association.
[00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:25.640] People like, oh, because you're testing, you must be black hat.
[00:09:25.640 --> 00:09:26.440] No, not at all.
[00:09:26.600 --> 00:09:30.840] I'm completely what I stay within the guidelines, but I just need to know how the algorithm works.
[00:09:31.160 --> 00:09:37.400] Two years later, I actually wrote, I did a course on White Hat SEO, and I was refreshing myself with the guidelines.
[00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:47.320] And on the no-no list on the automatically generated content area, it says you can't have text on the page that makes no sense to the reader but contains keywords.
[00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:51.880] And I was like, well, when did that come into the rulebook?
[00:09:51.880 --> 00:09:55.000] So I took the URL and I went into the Wayback Machine.
[00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.960] And you can see before the competition, that rule isn't there.
[00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:03.160] And then one week after the competition finished and my site went live and people could read it, that rule exists.
[00:10:03.160 --> 00:10:06.680] And about three months later, they penalized me for that rule.
[00:10:06.680 --> 00:10:11.320] So I think it's possible I'm the only person on the planet that has both a U.S.
[00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:15.080] patent in SEO and a Google rule written for them.
[00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:16.440] Oh, God, I love that.
[00:10:16.440 --> 00:10:17.160] That's cool.
[00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:18.920] You clearly know your stuff.
[00:10:18.920 --> 00:10:20.760] You've been doing this for a decade.
[00:10:20.760 --> 00:10:25.160] You're scientific with your approach to the algorithm and ranking.
[00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:27.800] But a lot of people listening to this might just be starting out.
[00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:31.080] They don't know what they do to start ranking in SEO.
[00:10:31.080 --> 00:10:36.920] So now in 2024, where would you recommend people get started to start ranking?
[00:10:36.920 --> 00:10:42.920] You know, the fortunate thing is, while it always feels like Google is changing, the core stuff stays the same.
[00:10:43.160 --> 00:10:47.760] The core principles for ranking remain the same, which is actually extremely encouraging.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:50.640] That it's not, it's like if you're starting today, you haven't missed it.
[00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:54.000] You know, you haven't missed the boat, and now you can't rank for anything.
[00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:54.720] You certainly can.
[00:10:54.720 --> 00:10:56.960] You can certainly start sites now.
[00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:02.320] How I would start really more than anything is trying to find those gaps where people are not.
[00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:04.320] And that's easier said than done, I know.
[00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:10.960] But there are lower competition terms that exist within every niche that people, like the big guys, aren't really spending a lot of time on.
[00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:12.240] You can start there.
[00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:21.040] Those can rank pretty quickly, even with a brand new site, and can start to get you some of those impressions, some of those clicks, and start to get a feel for if this is doable.
[00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:30.400] But in doing that, the less SEO you do, the more just research and creation of content, the safer your site becomes with any Google update.
[00:11:30.400 --> 00:11:37.440] Because if Google is just ranking you because you've done that term, there's nothing for Google to take away on any kind of an update.
[00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:45.360] So you can slowly but surely raise the strength of your site through content like this where you're finding that low competition content at lower search volumes.
[00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:48.080] Now, at the same time, sure, do all the big terms.
[00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:51.680] You know, those massive terms you want to win, you will need those for sure.
[00:11:51.680 --> 00:11:53.520] And winning them often takes a certain amount of time.
[00:11:53.520 --> 00:11:59.760] But I would definitely focus my first steps on getting a lot of content at some very low levels.
[00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:02.720] Start build up the overall authority of the site.
[00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:07.920] And that authority is measured by the number of keywords it's ranking for, the impressions it's getting, the clicks, that sort of thing.
[00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:09.280] Not a third-party metric.
[00:12:09.280 --> 00:12:14.000] We're really looking at how many clicks are we getting per day and trying to move up levels that way.
[00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:18.800] I want to round off on just in terms of building your businesses.
[00:12:18.800 --> 00:12:29.280] Have you run into any roadblocks over the years, any inflection points that maybe you can look back on that you've had to overcome that indie founders might find interesting?
[00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:34.280] Well, you know, everybody's got the problem of where our users coming from.
[00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:39.960] Like if you've got a certain, you know, some sort of SaaS that you're building out, where are those people coming from?
[00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:44.200] And the best place to get that is brand ambassadors.
[00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:50.920] And one of the things we did accidentally when we built our tool really was we gave it away for about seven months for free.
[00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:53.160] And we got people in to use it.
[00:12:53.160 --> 00:12:54.440] And they were basically beta testers.
[00:12:54.440 --> 00:13:00.600] And we got to the point about seven months after like, hey guys, I'm really sorry, but we have to charge $1 a report because it's getting kind of expensive.
[00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:03.240] And nobody had any heartburn about that.
[00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:09.080] And in fact, once we started charging, that first month we did $2,600, which blew my mind.
[00:13:09.240 --> 00:13:11.960] I was like, we did 2,600 reports.
[00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:17.560] In perspective, we've now crossed over about 2 million reports run on the tool.
[00:13:17.560 --> 00:13:20.280] But taking that $1 was big in a couple of different ways.
[00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:22.760] One is people totally understood.
[00:13:22.760 --> 00:13:24.200] No heartburn whatsoever.
[00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:26.200] They've been using it for free for so long that we appreciate it.
[00:13:26.280 --> 00:13:28.600] But they all became brand ambassadors.
[00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:37.400] And they went out and started telling their friends about it and started talking in their Facebook groups or their Discord chats or their Skype groups or wherever they're at and started spreading that out.
[00:13:37.400 --> 00:13:44.760] And that was more marketing value than I could have ever achieved through any other channel was having those brand ambassadors.
[00:13:44.760 --> 00:13:49.080] And you have people that will defend your tool till the end of time.
[00:13:49.080 --> 00:13:56.680] So you need to have a method for brand ambassadors, influencers that will talk about your thing positively.
[00:13:56.680 --> 00:14:04.440] That is a really good point, Carl, because the power of a personal recommendation is unlike any other marketing channel.
[00:14:05.400 --> 00:14:11.560] I end every episode on three recommendations, a book, a podcast, and an indie hacker entrepreneur.
[00:14:11.560 --> 00:14:15.840] For the book, Give me The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway.
[00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:21.920] For podcast, I'll go with Doug Cunnington's niche site project, I think is what he calls it, but that's an excellent podcast.
[00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:24.240] You know, I'm really good friends with Matt Diggity.
[00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:25.840] He's here with me in Chiang Mai.
[00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:29.680] He's probably one of the few that I do actually watch his YouTube videos when they come out.
[00:14:29.680 --> 00:14:31.360] I watch a lot of it for the marketing, though.
[00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:38.560] Not the actual tip necessarily, but the marketing that he's doing, you know, and how he's presenting this information.
[00:14:38.560 --> 00:14:41.040] Kyle, thank you so much for coming on this episode of Indiebuys.
[00:14:41.040 --> 00:14:41.920] Thanks for having me.
[00:14:41.920 --> 00:14:44.000] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indiebuys.
[00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:47.120] A big thank you to my sponsor, Emo Octopus, for making the show happen.
[00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:48.000] That's all from me.
[00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:49.760] See you next week.

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:01.360 --> 00:00:04.480] But that night from like 1.15 to 1.27 a.m.
[00:00:04.560 --> 00:00:06.720] Google de-indexed 20 of my test sites.
[00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:08.000] So that wasn't fun.
[00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.680] But then I realized they completely validated everything I was saying.
[00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:20.240] So I think it's possible I'm the only person on the planet that has both a US patent in SEO and a Google rule written for them.
[00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:25.680] Hello, welcome back to Indiebytes, the podcast where I bring you stories of fellow indie hackers in 50 minutes or less.
[00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:35.280] Today I'm joined by Kyle Rufus, the co-founder of High Voted SEO, Page Optimizer Pro, and Internet Marketing Gold, an agency software and course business respectively, which will focus on mastering SEO.
[00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:40.720] I've spoken at length before on the podcast about how SEO can be such an effective tool for indie hackers to use.
[00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:43.040] So Kyle is the perfect guest to talk to you today.
[00:00:43.040 --> 00:00:46.480] Before we get into this conversation, I want to thank Indiebyte sponsor Email Octopus.
[00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:51.120] EmailOctopus are an indie email marketing platform built to support other small-growing businesses like yours.
[00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:55.840] They're focused on affordability and ease of use, which is perfect when you're starting out as a bootstrapper.
[00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:59.520] EmailOctopus contains all the features you need to reach and grow your audience.
[00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:05.120] You can start today without paying a penny on their free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers.
[00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:11.440] To try out Email Octopus, head to emailoctopus.com and use the code IndieBytes with 30% off if you choose to upgrade to a PayPal.
[00:01:11.440 --> 00:01:13.120] All links are in the show notes.
[00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:14.240] Kyle, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:14.960] How are you doing?
[00:01:14.960 --> 00:01:15.840] I'm doing great.
[00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:17.040] Thanks for having me.
[00:01:17.040 --> 00:01:22.000] Let's kick off with your background from SEO to start paying the bills.
[00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:23.520] Tell me about that.
[00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:28.480] Yeah, I was a lawyer in Another Life, and I took some time off.
[00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:33.120] And in that time off, I started a web design development business.
[00:01:33.120 --> 00:01:34.480] And I brought my brother into that business.
[00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:35.760] He's actually going pretty well.
[00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.560] He can code.
[00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:38.320] He does web design and development.
[00:01:38.320 --> 00:01:41.840] And we got the bright idea of opening a company in India.
[00:01:42.160 --> 00:01:45.760] And we were told we were going to get a shakedown from the police.
[00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:46.560] And that happened.
[00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:47.760] There was a knock on the door.
[00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:49.200] My brother was there at the time, and I was not.
[00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:50.480] I was in the US.
[00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:52.160] And they said, We need to see the papers.
[00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:52.960] He shows the papers.
[00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:54.080] They're like, These are the wrong papers.
[00:01:54.080 --> 00:01:58.160] And instead of asking for the bribe, they put him in handcuffs and they throw him in jail.
[00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:02.680] So my brother is in jail in India and he's talking to the chief of police there.
[00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:04.520] And the chief of police goes, These could be the right papers.
[00:02:04.520 --> 00:02:04.920] I don't know.
[00:02:04.920 --> 00:02:05.880] You have two choices.
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:07.320] One, you can leave town tomorrow.
[00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:11.800] Two, you can sit in jail and wait for the magistrate to come and the magistrate will sort this out.
[00:02:11.800 --> 00:02:13.720] And my brother goes, When does the magistrate come?
[00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:15.880] And the chief of police is like, I don't know.
[00:02:15.880 --> 00:02:18.360] So my brother goes, I'll leave town tomorrow then.
[00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:20.200] So he runs back to the office.
[00:02:20.200 --> 00:02:21.000] He gets what he can.
[00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:24.040] Our employees have fled because they don't want any part of this.
[00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:27.240] And we're hammeraging clients because we can't service these clients.
[00:02:27.240 --> 00:02:30.040] And my brother goes, Hey, look, the ship is sinking.
[00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:31.720] I can take these four clients because he can code.
[00:02:31.720 --> 00:02:34.440] And I don't code and I don't know what I'm doing there.
[00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:40.200] And we had just taken on these SEO clients, this new thing called SEO that I had heard about.
[00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:45.240] And basically, what I decided at that point was, I'm going to take these SEO clients because I need to pay the rent next month.
[00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:47.960] And I need to figure out how to do SEO today.
[00:02:48.280 --> 00:02:51.000] And that's pretty much what I did.
[00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:52.520] And it turned out I wasn't bad at it.
[00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:55.160] And I was able to keep those clients and grow those clients.
[00:02:55.160 --> 00:02:59.160] And then I met my now business partner and we started high voltage.
[00:02:59.160 --> 00:03:01.880] What year was this when this was all happening, Kyle?
[00:03:01.880 --> 00:03:04.600] This was all 2013, 2014.
[00:03:04.600 --> 00:03:06.200] That is wild.
[00:03:06.200 --> 00:03:10.520] I did not expect that to be the start of your founding story to get into SEO.
[00:03:10.520 --> 00:03:15.800] What sort of resources were you turning to back in 2013, 2014 to learn it?
[00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:17.320] It's a pretty common story, you know?
[00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:20.520] There you are, breaking your brother out of jail in India.
[00:03:20.760 --> 00:03:23.960] The resources, actually, that's really what got me my name in SEO.
[00:03:23.960 --> 00:03:26.520] Was when I was like, you know, is this a ranking factor?
[00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:31.080] And I'd search on Google and you get like three yeses and three no's and three maybes.
[00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:33.320] And I was like, well, that's not going to work.
[00:03:33.320 --> 00:03:35.080] And I was like, oh, everybody's running their own test sites.
[00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:35.880] So they're putting other sites.
[00:03:35.880 --> 00:03:37.960] So I put up sites just to like play with things.
[00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:43.160] And then I realized that's still taking a lot of time, you know, to put something up and see if it can rank or not.
[00:03:43.160 --> 00:03:46.480] And I decided, I was just fooling around in Google and I was like, well, what happens if I do this?
[00:03:44.920 --> 00:03:52.000] I just typed in a string of letters and I got this page that said, you know, we don't have anything for that keyword.
[00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:54.880] And then I was like, well, what if I optimize terms for that keyword?
[00:03:54.880 --> 00:03:56.160] Can I get them to show up here?
[00:03:56.160 --> 00:03:56.960] And they did.
[00:03:56.960 --> 00:04:00.160] And then I realized now I've got an environment that I control.
[00:04:00.160 --> 00:04:07.760] You know, I can tinker in here and then I can actually see instant movement because I'm the only one that's doing anything here.
[00:04:07.760 --> 00:04:10.880] So if I do something and a page goes up, I've got a positive factor.
[00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:12.560] If I do something, a page goes down, that's a negative factor.
[00:04:12.560 --> 00:04:14.560] If I do something that doesn't move, that's a non-factor.
[00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:19.280] And then I developed a method for testing that kind of encapsulates that concept.
[00:04:19.280 --> 00:04:20.480] And I now actually have a U.S.
[00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:25.680] patent on that method for testing if something is or is not a ranking factor within search engines.
[00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:31.280] But that really allowed me to really propel my knowledge forward and kind of figure out what's going on in SEO.
[00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:33.920] Why are you so scientific with your SEO?
[00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:35.280] Because no one else is.
[00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:40.400] It was 2015 then that I spoke at my first conference.
[00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:42.320] And it was a real high-level conference.
[00:04:42.320 --> 00:04:43.520] There were only like 40 people in the room.
[00:04:43.520 --> 00:04:47.280] And it was the kind of place where you can get interactive a little bit with the speakers.
[00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:53.680] And I was a late addition to the conference, but I said, I'm going to show this method that I developed for testing and some of my results.
[00:04:53.680 --> 00:04:55.440] And I really thought it'd be kind of interactive.
[00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:56.080] This is what I'm doing.
[00:04:56.080 --> 00:04:57.040] What are you guys doing?
[00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:59.280] Because I figured at this point, that's what everyone was doing.
[00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:02.720] And about five minutes into this talk, I realized nobody's doing this.
[00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:07.440] And then really what that allowed me to do is to have a point of view.
[00:05:07.760 --> 00:05:14.240] If you're selling services or you're doing anything, you're selling a product and you don't have a point of view, then you're just lost within that crowd.
[00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:16.560] You're just doing the same thing that everybody else is.
[00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:21.040] But we were able to say, hey, look, we run scientific tests on Google's algorithm.
[00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:22.880] We know that nobody else is doing this.
[00:05:22.880 --> 00:05:27.840] And it allows us to be like, if you want something that is logical, that is math-based, that is science-based, that's us.
[00:05:27.840 --> 00:05:34.120] And something at the beginning we were able to say, too, was ask the other agencies you're looking at, are they running to ask them for their most recent tests?
[00:05:34.120 --> 00:05:36.280] And you'll find out that they don't have any tests.
[00:05:36.280 --> 00:05:38.440] And what that means is that they're testing on your site.
[00:05:38.440 --> 00:05:40.920] They're learning how to do SEO on you.
[00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:44.920] You know, we're learning how to do SEO over here, and then we're bringing to the table what we know works.
[00:05:44.920 --> 00:05:47.480] And that was a real differentiating factor for us.
[00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:52.680] What do you think about sort of testing other marketing strategies apart from SEO?
[00:05:52.680 --> 00:05:58.360] The first things you can do, even before you get into an SEO project, is run a short ad campaign with your titles.
[00:05:58.360 --> 00:06:01.960] You know, a big thing is, you know, are people going to resonate with this title?
[00:06:01.960 --> 00:06:05.320] And then when they click in, are they actually going to buy the product?
[00:06:05.320 --> 00:06:07.720] Are they interested in getting the thing?
[00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:09.800] And you can really play with your messaging a lot.
[00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:14.120] On more than one occasion, we've worked with a company where, you know, they're with us for six months.
[00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:15.800] They paid us $2,000 a month.
[00:06:15.800 --> 00:06:17.640] We're on page one for a ton of terms.
[00:06:17.640 --> 00:06:21.000] And then you get there and then they realize that nobody wants to buy this product.
[00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:23.640] Or the messaging just isn't there.
[00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:29.720] And that's a pretty expensive lesson to learn when you could probably have done it through ads first.
[00:06:29.720 --> 00:06:35.800] To say, like, you know what, this messaging isn't getting us to where we need to be before you make that type of commitment.
[00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:39.480] But you can try out a lot through ads before you get into some of the longer.
[00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:41.320] You know, setting up a funnel sucks.
[00:06:41.320 --> 00:06:43.640] You know, setting up an email campaign sucks.
[00:06:43.640 --> 00:06:48.360] But you really want to have some confidence that you've got some proof of concept to be, I think, before you even get into any of that.
[00:06:48.360 --> 00:06:51.400] And running quick ads is a decent way to do it.
[00:06:51.640 --> 00:07:01.880] I've actually heard this a few times in terms of ways of validating your ideas or getting eyeballs on your ideas to see if they're actually something worth pursuing.
[00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:06.120] Because as you say, you can put a lot of time and effort into building a product.
[00:07:06.120 --> 00:07:12.120] But if there's no market for the product that you're building, that's a lot of wasted time and effort.
[00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:17.200] And ads can be sort of a shortcut to get there just by putting a little bit of money down.
[00:07:17.440 --> 00:07:27.360] Carl, one of the stories you're famous for is ranking number one for a site with Lorem Ipsum, which prompted Google to actually change some of their rules and guidelines.
[00:07:27.360 --> 00:07:30.320] Can you tell me a little bit about that story?
[00:07:30.320 --> 00:07:32.480] Well, this story will live with me forever.
[00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:37.920] So the short version of it was there was a public competition to rank for the term Rhinoplasty Plano.
[00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:42.480] Rhinoplasty is a nose job, and Plano is right outside of Dallas, Texas in the U.S.
[00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:44.720] And it was a 30-day competition.
[00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:47.280] The only rule was you have to use a brand new domain.
[00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:48.640] So this is a real sprint.
[00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:51.360] Now, this is back when you could do that, I think, a little bit better too.
[00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:52.800] But after that, do whatever you want to do.
[00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:56.560] So I felt pretty good about my skills and my team and at high voltage.
[00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:57.600] And so we entered.
[00:07:57.600 --> 00:07:59.840] And 27 professionals entered.
[00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:03.600] Only seven actually got a page to rank, which I think was pretty interesting.
[00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:06.560] Anyway, without doing anything else, about two weeks later, we moved to page one.
[00:08:06.560 --> 00:08:08.640] About two weeks after that, we moved to number one.
[00:08:08.640 --> 00:08:11.680] About two weeks after that, we were number one, organic, and number one, maps.
[00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:15.360] And about two weeks after that, we'd actually wiped out the maps and we were the knowledge panel.
[00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:18.320] We were rhino plastyplano, which is hilarious.
[00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:23.360] And at this point, really, people really lost their minds because we did the entire site in lorem ipsum.
[00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:29.520] Lorem ipsum is the fake Latin you put on websites when you're you know designing things to see how text is going to look.
[00:08:29.520 --> 00:08:30.880] But then we did the math.
[00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:32.640] How many times do we need our target keyword?
[00:08:32.640 --> 00:08:34.000] How many times do you need its variations?
[00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:35.440] How many times do we need contextual terms?
[00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:37.120] And where do we need them on the page?
[00:08:37.120 --> 00:08:46.720] And then we crassily copied and pasted them into the lorem ipsum the right amount of times in the right places and shot up to the first page.
[00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:52.560] About three months later, an article was written about it, which listed my name and also the site.
[00:08:52.560 --> 00:08:58.080] And about six hours after that article came out, Google de-indexed the site, which is, I guess, fair play.
[00:08:58.080 --> 00:09:03.400] But that night, from like 1.15 to 1:27 a.m., Google de-indexed 20 of my test sites.
[00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:04.280] So that wasn't fun.
[00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:08.520] But then I realized they completely validated everything I was saying.
[00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:15.560] If I had gotten lucky or was talking nonsense, they would have rolled their eyes and moved on, but instead they got very punitive.
[00:09:15.560 --> 00:09:18.520] Fast forward a couple years, I did a course on white hat SEO.
[00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:20.360] Believe it or not, White Hat SEO.
[00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:21.640] I just test the algorithm.
[00:09:22.120 --> 00:09:23.720] People think it's a weird association.
[00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:25.640] People like, oh, because you're testing, you must be black hat.
[00:09:25.640 --> 00:09:26.440] No, not at all.
[00:09:26.600 --> 00:09:30.840] I'm completely what I stay within the guidelines, but I just need to know how the algorithm works.
[00:09:31.160 --> 00:09:37.400] Two years later, I actually wrote, I did a course on White Hat SEO, and I was refreshing myself with the guidelines.
[00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:47.320] And on the no-no list on the automatically generated content area, it says you can't have text on the page that makes no sense to the reader but contains keywords.
[00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:51.880] And I was like, well, when did that come into the rulebook?
[00:09:51.880 --> 00:09:55.000] So I took the URL and I went into the Wayback Machine.
[00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.960] And you can see before the competition, that rule isn't there.
[00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:03.160] And then one week after the competition finished and my site went live and people could read it, that rule exists.
[00:10:03.160 --> 00:10:06.680] And about three months later, they penalized me for that rule.
[00:10:06.680 --> 00:10:11.320] So I think it's possible I'm the only person on the planet that has both a U.S.
[00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:15.080] patent in SEO and a Google rule written for them.
[00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:16.440] Oh, God, I love that.
[00:10:16.440 --> 00:10:17.160] That's cool.
[00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:18.920] You clearly know your stuff.
[00:10:18.920 --> 00:10:20.760] You've been doing this for a decade.
[00:10:20.760 --> 00:10:25.160] You're scientific with your approach to the algorithm and ranking.
[00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:27.800] But a lot of people listening to this might just be starting out.
[00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:31.080] They don't know what they do to start ranking in SEO.
[00:10:31.080 --> 00:10:36.920] So now in 2024, where would you recommend people get started to start ranking?
[00:10:36.920 --> 00:10:42.920] You know, the fortunate thing is, while it always feels like Google is changing, the core stuff stays the same.
[00:10:43.160 --> 00:10:47.760] The core principles for ranking remain the same, which is actually extremely encouraging.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:50.640] That it's not, it's like if you're starting today, you haven't missed it.
[00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:54.000] You know, you haven't missed the boat, and now you can't rank for anything.
[00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:54.720] You certainly can.
[00:10:54.720 --> 00:10:56.960] You can certainly start sites now.
[00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:02.320] How I would start really more than anything is trying to find those gaps where people are not.
[00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:04.320] And that's easier said than done, I know.
[00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:10.960] But there are lower competition terms that exist within every niche that people, like the big guys, aren't really spending a lot of time on.
[00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:12.240] You can start there.
[00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:21.040] Those can rank pretty quickly, even with a brand new site, and can start to get you some of those impressions, some of those clicks, and start to get a feel for if this is doable.
[00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:30.400] But in doing that, the less SEO you do, the more just research and creation of content, the safer your site becomes with any Google update.
[00:11:30.400 --> 00:11:37.440] Because if Google is just ranking you because you've done that term, there's nothing for Google to take away on any kind of an update.
[00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:45.360] So you can slowly but surely raise the strength of your site through content like this where you're finding that low competition content at lower search volumes.
[00:11:45.360 --> 00:11:48.080] Now, at the same time, sure, do all the big terms.
[00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:51.680] You know, those massive terms you want to win, you will need those for sure.
[00:11:51.680 --> 00:11:53.520] And winning them often takes a certain amount of time.
[00:11:53.520 --> 00:11:59.760] But I would definitely focus my first steps on getting a lot of content at some very low levels.
[00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:02.720] Start build up the overall authority of the site.
[00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:07.920] And that authority is measured by the number of keywords it's ranking for, the impressions it's getting, the clicks, that sort of thing.
[00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:09.280] Not a third-party metric.
[00:12:09.280 --> 00:12:14.000] We're really looking at how many clicks are we getting per day and trying to move up levels that way.
[00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:18.800] I want to round off on just in terms of building your businesses.
[00:12:18.800 --> 00:12:29.280] Have you run into any roadblocks over the years, any inflection points that maybe you can look back on that you've had to overcome that indie founders might find interesting?
[00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:34.280] Well, you know, everybody's got the problem of where our users coming from.
[00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:39.960] Like if you've got a certain, you know, some sort of SaaS that you're building out, where are those people coming from?
[00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:44.200] And the best place to get that is brand ambassadors.
[00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:50.920] And one of the things we did accidentally when we built our tool really was we gave it away for about seven months for free.
[00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:53.160] And we got people in to use it.
[00:12:53.160 --> 00:12:54.440] And they were basically beta testers.
[00:12:54.440 --> 00:13:00.600] And we got to the point about seven months after like, hey guys, I'm really sorry, but we have to charge $1 a report because it's getting kind of expensive.
[00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:03.240] And nobody had any heartburn about that.
[00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:09.080] And in fact, once we started charging, that first month we did $2,600, which blew my mind.
[00:13:09.240 --> 00:13:11.960] I was like, we did 2,600 reports.
[00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:17.560] In perspective, we've now crossed over about 2 million reports run on the tool.
[00:13:17.560 --> 00:13:20.280] But taking that $1 was big in a couple of different ways.
[00:13:20.280 --> 00:13:22.760] One is people totally understood.
[00:13:22.760 --> 00:13:24.200] No heartburn whatsoever.
[00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:26.200] They've been using it for free for so long that we appreciate it.
[00:13:26.280 --> 00:13:28.600] But they all became brand ambassadors.
[00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:37.400] And they went out and started telling their friends about it and started talking in their Facebook groups or their Discord chats or their Skype groups or wherever they're at and started spreading that out.
[00:13:37.400 --> 00:13:44.760] And that was more marketing value than I could have ever achieved through any other channel was having those brand ambassadors.
[00:13:44.760 --> 00:13:49.080] And you have people that will defend your tool till the end of time.
[00:13:49.080 --> 00:13:56.680] So you need to have a method for brand ambassadors, influencers that will talk about your thing positively.
[00:13:56.680 --> 00:14:04.440] That is a really good point, Carl, because the power of a personal recommendation is unlike any other marketing channel.
[00:14:05.400 --> 00:14:11.560] I end every episode on three recommendations, a book, a podcast, and an indie hacker entrepreneur.
[00:14:11.560 --> 00:14:15.840] For the book, Give me The Algebra of Happiness by Scott Galloway.
[00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:21.920] For podcast, I'll go with Doug Cunnington's niche site project, I think is what he calls it, but that's an excellent podcast.
[00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:24.240] You know, I'm really good friends with Matt Diggity.
[00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:25.840] He's here with me in Chiang Mai.
[00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:29.680] He's probably one of the few that I do actually watch his YouTube videos when they come out.
[00:14:29.680 --> 00:14:31.360] I watch a lot of it for the marketing, though.
[00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:38.560] Not the actual tip necessarily, but the marketing that he's doing, you know, and how he's presenting this information.
[00:14:38.560 --> 00:14:41.040] Kyle, thank you so much for coming on this episode of Indiebuys.
[00:14:41.040 --> 00:14:41.920] Thanks for having me.
[00:14:41.920 --> 00:14:44.000] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indiebuys.
[00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:47.120] A big thank you to my sponsor, Emo Octopus, for making the show happen.
[00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:48.000] That's all from me.
[00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:49.760] See you next week.