Jeremy Poland is a seasoned marketer, with a backstory in church leadership & publishing. Struggling to support a growing family on one non-profit salary, he erected a digital agency from side hustle to family sustainer. With a specialization in SEO for Small Businesses, the proprietary “playbook” and data he developed led to the formation of DIY SEO!
https://diyseo.link
https://diyseo.link/affiliates
if you enjoyed the show be sure to check out my info:
https://app.wingcard.io/ROB3SA64
Jeremy Poland is a seasoned marketer, with a backstory in church leadership & publishing. Struggling to support a growing family on one non-profit salary, he erected a digital agency from side hustle to family sustainer. With a specialization in SEO for Small Businesses, the proprietary “playbook” and data he developed led to the formation of DIY SEO!
https://diyseo.link
https://diyseo.link/affiliates
if you enjoyed the show be sure to check out my info:
https://app.wingcard.io/ROB3SA64
Hello, hello, everybody how y'all doing today, my friends. So just a quick housekeeping. I am slowly going to start introducing solar podcasts, kind of like this where I'm just talking and going about it. And yeah, it's gonna be interesting. I started off the show of me just talking, but now I'm kind of having, there's a weird seasonality thing with podcasting. I won't get too into it. But essentially, it's hard to get people during the summer and during the fall and winter to come on, because of the intense family. This are business marketing. So I'm gonna start inducing. So podcast because it also just is easier for me to keep doing content without having to worry, gosh, do I have an interview this week kind of thing. It's like, Oh, way I can just talk like this. So other than that, I'm doing YouTube more, I'm gonna be posting more, really, when I do a solo podcast like this. I'll put videos on YouTube. So you get to look at my lovely face on YouTube. And don't forget to like, subscribe, share this. Yeah, just spread the word out there, and have a safe and wonderful day. Let's get right into
intro guy:it. Welcome to the Josh Bolton show where we dive into interesting and inspiring conversations. And now your host, Josh Bolton.
Josh Bolton:Hey, welcome, everybody. Today we have Jeremy on absolutely awesome, dude, we've been chatting for like 20 minutes. When we first kicked it off. He was like, why are you recording? And like, I'm gonna forget it. We're gonna hit a good point. And yeah, we've been talking about so many good website hosting thing, strategies. He helped me out with theft of service. So Jeremy, before I start rambling,
Unknown:here, Josh, from one agency owner to another, you know, just we're talking about some success and some horror stories. And so it's been fun.
Josh Bolton:It's been really fun. So tell me a little about yourself. I know you're out in Houston, Texas, right?
Unknown:Yes, I'm out in Houston, Texas, I'm married. And we have eight children. And so it's a very sizable family of very active life. I have a background as a church, Pastor, enjoy writing self published a few books. And that led me over time into digital marketing as a side hustle, and then really is a full time operation. So I've enjoyed being a contract marketer for for a set of companies ultimately ends up to more than a full time a traditional full time income. And, and you know, when I manage it, well, it, it's less work than, than a full time setup. So I eventually spun into SEO as my favorite element. And so that's, that's where our DIY SEO was born. Because I felt like it's kind of an expensive service, many people aren't able to get a hold of it, there's a fair amount of confusion and sort of like, maybe over complication about the subject. And so DIY SEO is a a low budget, you know, agency powered solution for small businesses and agencies who would like to leverage the power to really help people rank and just kind of cut to the bottom line of SEO and sort of skip all the like, you know, extraneous talk about all tags, and, you know, other elements that play a small role, but I'm getting to the biggest piece and that's the content and the backgrounds.
Josh Bolton:It is and that is the biggest one I've noticed in general. So we're like now it's funny. Jeremy Rifkin. Subscribe to my video before he even got on my channel. Before he got on the Zoom call. I got the notification, but who the heck is on YouTube right now? Yeah, man. It was definitely your recommendation on one of your free articles was like use YouTube as the highest ranking method for your links. But I've noticed you to Gray's out links though. Does that matter in the search engine part?
Unknown:You know, in for a lot of us SEO marketers we add a YouTube link would be considered a nofollow link. So YouTube is limiting, if you will the search engine power from a link at YouTube. But it's one of those. If you think about it from a logical standpoint, Google is the search engine master. Right. So this is their, their algorithm and their result. And YouTube is one of their products. So it just makes sense to have every company doing anything online should have a link and within a YouTube video. I mean, it's like so that's why it's it's front and center on I, you know, in my monthly backlink building program, because it's just, there's no reason not definitely for me to, you know, yeah, so it's not going to it's not going to surge. And I mean it because it is nofollow a lot. A lot of, you know, social media, let's put the new nofollow throttle on, but you're still Google's still able to track that connection. And so you're, you know, you're, you're appeasing the Google monster. So you definitely, one of my philosophies is use every Google product and every service and fill out every form related to Google, because you know, they're gonna reward you for that.
Josh Bolton:Yeah, I noticed a while ago, I don't know if it works anymore as I bought like a$12 domain theme for like, blogger, YouTube thing. And it was one of those I didn't realize it, but for awhile before you Google and then cracked on ads, I actually was making a lot of money from I'm like, posting half baked ideas on this. So I'm like, Oh, I'm just, no one knows exist. I'm just gonna type and suddenly, I'm looking like, Google emails be like, You do realize you have$75. And I'm like, this is yeah. And my AdSense, I still can't get it. Because it's not a
Unknown:traffic, you got traffic to this blogger site with some content that you generated.
Josh Bolton:And that wasn't even it wasn't even strategic at all.
Unknown:Okay, gosh, you Yeah, free form. And for fun, you Google AdSense.
Josh Bolton:I still look at it. That's where I'm like, I want to get my money out. But is it Oh, you need $100? To Yeah, no.
Unknown:Yes. Okay. Yes. Are you google adsense as well? Yeah, the $100 payment threshold? Well, that sounds like you're you're not too far. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of interesting things out there. And maybe you must have been writing about something maybe that wasn't that competitive. And, you know, with keyword research, we can see what's what's competitive, and you know, see who, who's who's competing for various topics. And, you know, ultimately, my main message with with us with DIY SEO is that the majority of people listening need approximately 100 New referring domains to create a significant improvement in their rankings by referring domain. That's maybe the only jargon term all use, that's a backlink from an external website to your site. I'm just interested in I'm curious, I'm interested in that one backlink from that one website, and then I'm moving on to the next website, another have 100 websites, giving me one backlink each for a total of 100 referring domains, 100 backlinks, then have two websites give me 50 backlinks each. So you follow. So yeah, if people get a backlink from 100 Different referring domains, especially including some medium and higher value sites in that mix, they're going to see a very noticeable increase in the rankings, as long as they have content already that corresponds with with the searches they hope to rank for. Sometimes people don't even have the content or the page that corresponds with with a keyword there. They're desiring so they've got to create that content piece, which doesn't have to be overwhelming three, four or five paragraphs, look at the competition, see what what articles and what amount of text and information is already ranking, then work to exceed that. And then support all your efforts and your domain by building backlinks to your homepage, in general, and then often to your specific money pages or key pages, like if your pest control your AMP page or rose page, your your Rhoden page, you know, and so the some of those efforts will definitely pay off.
Josh Bolton:So I'm just curious for you, then what are some SEO tips or tools or services you recommend?
Unknown:I use h refs, I'm a huge hrs user and within DLSU I recommend all my members start with a href trial $7.07 days, usually they can get a lot of data that they can get the majority of the data they need within that time. I also use keywords everywhere as a Chrome extension. And as I'm browsing it gives me some nice keyword data. There is the opportunity to purchase credits and to quickly generate more data, more keyword results as you go. But I love the free option there. And I use hrs for keyword tracking. I use bright local for local keyword rank tracking. So all of those have free options and free tiers. And that's really what what folks need why I use a truss primarily for is, if I'm working with a plumbing company, I look at the three or four Plumbing Companies in their area that are ranking ahead of them, then I'm going to use h refs to download their backlinks. And I'm going to get a sense of how strong those four competitors ahead of my clients are and where they're getting their backlinks from. And so I've harnessed that data in to do SEO at scale. So I've got great backlink opportunities for people grouped by industry grouped by location, starting with Texas regions. And I also have special place for people who are podcasters authors, other types of, you know, I show companies how they can use their existing assets and their existing goodwill in order to generate online PR and SEO gain, for example, a job page or career page. There's so many ways to build backlinks by sharing and networking, your job page, because because the world at large is interested in jobs and media outlets are interested in, in exposing job opportunities to the readers. And so if you help them by promoting properly your company's job page or career page, then then you can earn backlinks that way. It's just an example. So
Josh Bolton:interesting. I'm just curious now, because you touched a little on me, it's the podcasting part. Is that going on podcasters and getting them to put your link? Or is there a whole strategy to help podcasters rank better?
Unknown:Great, what you referenced is really the top of the tear when you're creating content. And you're networking with people online, like we're networking through this episode. So I'm a guest on your show. And so basically, we both have an interest now in this episode. Did you know and so a mutual linking back and forth is, is the ultimate. So if somebody is in their industry, being a guest on shows being interviewed, sharing, you know, tips and information that in earning backlinks that way, because they're their companies being linked to or referenced that that's, that's the ultimate, I mean, what I also have for podcasters is, I have a list of podcast, directory style sites, podcast platforms, all different types of podcast sites. So the moment someone has a podcast, even if they haven't been on many shows, etc, they can begin building a set about backlinks, some of them. I mean, like starting with your podcasting, your hosting platform, Episode shownotes go in there, you ought to include your own domain, in your show notes, and that will create backlinks. And
Josh Bolton:I did not think about that when I'm gonna start doing that now. Yeah, so you
Unknown:know, have your own. So, so I actually, this is a small business special play this, this pest control company that we're creating as a scenario, they can start a podcast right on anchored, FM fm.com, you know, then they can, we can quickly generate 20 quality, medium to high quality backlinks for them as a result of this very basic podcast show that they've started. So just think about that, how many other pest control companies are going to do that? Very few. So we're going to so I mean, I started because I had to kind of growth hack my way to client success. And a lot of times they weren't, they didn't have much of a budget and so on. So I thought of, you know, once or twice, I would interview over over a zoom call or over, over Skype, one of the founders and actually talk about the industry and turn these conversations into podcast episodes, in a very simple way. And, and oftentimes, I'll transcribe a conversation into a blog post. So then, you know, got some content out of this, actually, from an expert, you know, and, and got it, you know, into kind of India, the SEO game.
Josh Bolton:So that's actually one a lot of people have recommended to me, but the biggest one for me, is I use otter to transcribe everything. Okay. But it like certain words, like we as a human can pick it up, but we really muffle or slur it too much for the computer to understand. Yeah, and there are times when I've read through the transcripts, it's, it's a solid, like, 20,000 words, when I'm done with the flow for a full hour interview for me. And I'm sitting here going like, I can't edit this all in one day. Kind of
Unknown:thing. And that is a lot. I mean, yes. Wow, that is a lot of words. I do tell people I've done the 20 minute phone call, I'll get 6000 words. And then I will call it down to about 4000 So you could delete Coal sections.
Josh Bolton:That's a good okay, I'm gonna take that up.
Unknown:You know, look, you also can you can pay for human transcription to the cost is offset higher, but you could
Josh Bolton:also, I do know a lady that does, she would give me editing for like two cents a word essentially. Okay, it's not bad. I think she said if I did 40,000 It would be like 1000 bucks. 40,000 words is like$1,000 I'm like, Okay, I'm like, that's not bad, but I'm like, still, I gave you 20 That's like almost 200 bucks. It's just no guarantee. I'm gonna make money.
Unknown:Yes. So, but yeah,
Josh Bolton:I got a few people. That's just, that was a daunting one lucky and like, I took it and put in Grammarly. And it's like, you have 3000 errors? And I'm like, I don't have time for this.
Unknown:Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that's crazy, man. Yes.
Josh Bolton:But, um, so keep chunking out the actual podcast, the blog, would that Okay? Would that be like a drip series, where like, I clean it all up from time
Unknown:to saying like, if you've got 20,000 words, you might not need all of that in your transcript. And so you if you saw several big paragraphs that had a lot of jargon or muddled terms, you might just just quickly delete those two paragraph, boom, boom, boom. So you're, you're reducing your workload, basically. So that's what, you know, you're just trying to isolate the, like, better sections, if you will, you could say, I'm gonna choose the best eight paragraphs, I'm gonna fine tune those and go just just say move forward. Okay,
Josh Bolton:I'm definitely gonna do that. Because I do technically have a blog on my website. It's not like WordPress optimized, but it is it does generate traffic kind of thing.
Unknown:Okay, okay. Yes, yes. I mean, you're, you got all these words flowing from the podcast episodes, or if you, you know, need to interview a client or something about what they do. It is a great way to generate content, because they're rarely going to write something down for you. But if they, if you give them a way to speak about what they what they know, and they're what they're experts in, you really can, you know, get some good meat, and then Google loves that text, you know, so
Josh Bolton:perfect. Yeah, then I will, I'll get more strategic on that. Thank you. Yeah. So I'm for you. We were talking about software earlier. I'm very curious about that. And then anything else we need to get into? What's your experience with software, because I tried kartra, that was just a nightmare to get up and running.
Unknown:Software has been amazing. It's, um, it's something that I use.
Josh Bolton:The kid trying to break in or something?
Unknown:Yeah, this gives you time again. So software is something I use to display my air table data. So with the lseo, I've got 3000 Different backlinks, sources, organizing, cataloged in different ways. And so software allows me to display this air table data in various views that are user friendly. And maybe it has a user login feature essentially forms the, the, the shell of a website and allows for member access, and so on. So I find I found fiber, or SARS software really, really cool for just in particular for displaying air table data. So if anyone has data that they were within air table they would like to sell or share. It's, it's really cool, because you can choose the different card style or list style formats for your, your records. And you can you can share, you can choose to have a thumbnail image or whatever. So it's, it's cool. It's a very cool tool.
Josh Bolton:So I take a air table then from the explaining it's a place where you put your information, it categorizes sorts it and then softer extracts that makes it even easier
Unknown:to read. Yes, so airtable is a is a level up from Excel. And especially when it comes to images and, and in text. And so you can paste all kinds of cool data and inside like you can have drop down menus and color coding and really, really cool way to have a spreadsheet essentially. And so that's where I save all of my dry SEO data and and then software allows me to display it in an user friendly way. So I can create a page on software within my software site and say this page is for pest control companies. And then I'm going to create a list and show all of the different backlink opportunities that I have tagged as relevant to pest control companies. And so only those those cards are going to show up on the test. troll page.
Josh Bolton:Okay, cool. That is very useful. Yeah,
Unknown:yeah. Yeah, it's, it's neat. It's cool what you can do with with software. So it's you can you can create, like actionable tables, and you know that, that your user users can click, you know, option one, option two, and then the data will refresh and change. So, it's a, that's an eight. Yeah.
Josh Bolton:So then that would that be? Would that be the better option? Or should I build something? Because it would, for me, I guess it'd be more of like a hub? Where, yes, the data for like, because I get, like I was telling you earlier, I get asked for podcast coaching, but also strategies, would that also work for a type of coaching? Or is it more a place like, here's what I recommend, pay me like the 20 bucks a month to get this, like my lead list
Unknown:tables, if you really do have spreadsheets and tables, and if that's the best way to, to house, your your knowledge, then then software would would be good. But if your your knowledge is better shared and video format, or you know, like modules and things like that, or Word documents or something, then you you probably could use a more traditional course, system, you know, software type tool, that software software is extreme with, you have a good bit of data in, in an air table, like if, like, you mentioned, tools, yes, like you've got a list of 20 tools, that could be a software thing. But that probably alone wouldn't be enough to do software. But you see, like, I've got 3000 different strategies. And then I'm displaying that in different pages for different different groups of people or different sets of people. And so that's, that's why software has been a great solution.
Josh Bolton:Yeah, my my knowledge is either better by video or just by saying it is like, like, full follow me as I do this video kind of style. Okay, yes, yes, totally. So it might be more built out like a YouTube, I guess, at this point. I'm just, I was curious if you knew of a good CRM, because like I said, kartra, I paid them their $100 a month to get in and I build out everything on the back end, that was perfect flowing, the marketing the affiliates and whatever, when I couldn't get the actual link to hook to Karcher. So it was like something crazy, like it was Jr. bolt on something, something something dot kartra dot something something and I'm like, no one's gonna remember that. And I was yelling if
Unknown:you're interested in sending. So you've got kartra widely set up with sounds good. Or you're interested in connecting your kartra unique URL to a custom domain? Yes,
Josh Bolton:I did it like five times, and they didn't work.
Unknown:Their support should be able to help you because I've done the exact same thing within Kajabi. And I understand it, and I rely on support to hold my hand. You can definitely connect your your unique kartra. I did well to do any custom domain. So if I go to Josh bolton.com. In you know, you could connect your kartra registration page there. So definitely possible.
Josh Bolton:And you said, Yeah, that's what I did. I actually, for awhile, I was hitting up support. I'm like, Hey, I'm doing this. I've built up my back end. And they're like, Oh, um, give it 24 hours. So I literally went to my email scheduled 24 hour thing I said, still doesn't work. What am I supposed to do? Kind of thing. And they just kept saying, Oh, give it 24 hours, or, Oh, you input this data wrong. I like I took the screenshots and everything. It took a new guy. I got hired within the week to read. He read through all my notes. And he's like, Oh, they gave you the runaround. He's like, Yeah, let's, if it doesn't work like that, and it looks like you've done everything he's like, it's just not gonna work.
Unknown:Okay, good. Well, that's, that's right.
Josh Bolton:And I told him like, thank you so much for being honest with me because these guys kept giving me the runaround. Even my mentor even winning, he's like an SEO guy like you. He just like, Okay, do this, this and this, and that we did on the Zoom call, everyone watched. And then we came back a week later, and he's like, Oh, how to work and I was like, Well, I emailed him like three days later. He's a give the world wide web. It's like, three days. He's like, even those everything's fast. There's a few things are slow, but the internet's to these days. And I'm like, Okay. Three days later, he hits me up and he's like, what happened? Am I type in my address? See what happened? He does didn't come up. Oh, my. And then that's where I he's like, why? He's like, are you okay with paying$20? For one hour? I know a lady on Fiverr that can get this done. Same thing.
Unknown:Okay. Yes, yes, goodness.
Josh Bolton:So I was just one of those. I told him awake. I'm Oman. This question my What's your CRM? I should use
Unknown:a yes, yes. Man I use I use a job. So that's my job. When you use her yeah, the job be to, to market and fulfill my subscribers.
Josh Bolton:So that would be your, your business clientele subscribers, right? Yes.
Unknown:But also in I do connect with ConvertKit as part of my mark marketing stack, so ConvertKit sends automated emails to folks for me.
Josh Bolton:Okay, so then I'm assuming with your SEO and marketing, how, how would you help someone rank a like a lead page, for a mark, email collect squeeze page for SEO?
Unknown:I'm the same way you would mark it any any type of business, they would simply need to boost build up the domain with quality backlinks. So that domain had a set of you know how to recognize domain authority. And then, you know, the squeeze page or the registration page should have some content that corresponds and actually provides information so that that Google would consider ranking it for something, you know. So the number one piece of making sure that domain is is solid with backlinks.
Josh Bolton:So then it would just then I guess, the hypothetical, let's say I pay you whatever your monthly rate is, and I see the sights, but let's say it's something like the medium you recommend for this industry? How to would I have to be an actual applied to the medium get like author permission? And then post something? Or whatever
Unknown:is good motion? Yes, good question. i There are sites like medium which have that's that's a simple registration processes, right? You know, you can, you can quickly register it that there is a distinction between being an authorized medium, author it within certain medium niche publications, but to just be a general medium user, that's a, that's a one minute registration process. And then you can post to medium. So that's what I would suggest for the majority of folks, similar to what you what you just brought up. I have subscribed to a set of websites and publishing tools where somebody can use my login, then go because they really only need to create one piece of content, right it within that, that tool, they can go use my login as a DIY SEO member. And then they can pay then they can create a one piece of content within that site and include their backlink. So that I call that the subscription play. That's sites like Zendesk, which are helped that site. So you can you can create helpdesk articles, and then have backlinks within those. And that creates really high value backlink opportunities.
Josh Bolton:Another one I heard is LinkedIn is really good on the backlink power to
Unknown:maybe so but you know, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't assign much value to the obvious social, you know, media tools like Facebook and so on. I mean, what we're what we're really trying to do is get to less common sites that that are that are, are used by higher end entities like like Zendesk, I'd rather have a link from Zendesk and LinkedIn. And you know, just because Zendesk is a paid tool used by medium to large corporations for Help Desk software, and then it's possible to create links within that, and some Google's school, Google makes a distinction between those two.
Josh Bolton:And I'm sure they have all these unique tags. Yes,
Unknown:yeah. So while we don't understand all of Google's thinking, what we're trying to do is create links quickly and rapidly from from smart places. One amazing backlink source is aarp.org. They have a business directory for companies willing to sign a pledge to respect workers of all ages. American Association of Retired Persons, so that's a high power backlink that almost any company can obtain. It's a simple form to fill out, wait two weeks, and then they'll they'll they'll publish a backlink. So I read the publisher profile, you know, to the page which creates the backlink. So that's the kind of thing that I've got within DOI SEO is I've scoured the web and scoured hundreds and probably 1000s of backlink profiles of different companies. And I've I've looked for these cool finds, like wow, I got a backlink from here, how they do that. So I know that in my within my within my airtable database Make sure that NATO so anyway. Oh, gotta go in second job.
Josh Bolton:All right.
Unknown:Sorry No no, no yeah, no sorry Josh, I gotta finish in a minute because I got school lunch.
Josh Bolton:I wouldn't say this has been absolutely great. Yeah.
Unknown:Sorry for the cut up. But yeah, what do you do final sequence? And I'll
Josh Bolton:perfect. So usually asked to be going good I would say I usually have to be going out questions I just got to what are someone inspired by you that living a good life making good money but it's free to be with the kids what are some tips, tricks or advice you give them to start down that path,
Unknown:I would say, learn to learn some high value interesting skills, offer those skills and unique ways maybe undercut bigger, you know, bigger companies that are providing those skills services, and then also look for ways to create products or create information out of out of what you're doing. And if you're able to, when you're able to do that, you know, you really can get scale. It's certainly not necessarily overnight. But if you're able to bottle up your process, or your data or your tips, etc, you know, you can really share that out.
Josh Bolton:Perfect Second. Second question is, where can everyone contact you I'm
Unknown:I'm available at DOI SEO dot link and then we'll have your unique link in the show notes. And anyone who would like to check out watch my 10 minute presentation where I go into detail with slides about you know how to do DUIs, you know and what, what, what what kind of results people can expect, you know, within that presentation, so, yeah, I've got the connect with people that way.
Josh Bolton:Wonderful. Thank you for so much. I've already learned like, a ton and just our quick chat.
Unknown:Oh, awesome, man. Well, I'm glad I'm glad. Thank you. I've enjoyed it, Josh.
Josh Bolton:Thank you have a safe and wonderful day. You too. See you man.