Good SEO Still Matters

Rebrand And Chiang Mai SEO Scene

0:00Howdy, welcome back to another fun filled episode of The Unknown Secrets of the Internet Marketing. We are rebranding. This has been an ongoing thing, guys. I know. Uh they we have a new logo, best SEO podcast. Go look for it. We're bringing on the best SEOs from all around the world to keep on top of like everything that's happening in SEO. And so with that trend there, I wanted to bring on Leo uh with Asterix. And he's in Thailand right now. And you know, there's a group of kind of SEOs clustering over that way. And so wanted to hear what was going on, uh, what y'all are looking at on your side of the world, the conversations you're having, the things you're looking for. So, Leo, welcome to the show.

0:43Hey Matt, thank you so much for having me. I'm super happy to be here and to be you know chatting about SEO, which is fashion, hobby, life, career, you know, choose choose whatever you you you prefer. And uh, yeah, definitely, you know, north of uh of Thailand, Chiang Mai is a big place for SEO. I think it started to be a big place for SEO because Matt Digity moved here, uh like I don't know, seven years ago, something like that. So he started to do the Chiang Mai SEO conference, which in my heart I think is the best SEO conference in the world. So every year, you know, a lot of good SEOs came to enjoy Chiang Mai and the life over there, and uh yeah, the the the you know, so much good SEOs over there, a lot. And then so typically it's it's kind of funny because I I I didn't came to Chiang Mai initially because of you know the presence of SEO or anything. I came here for a job, but you know, the guy hiring me was the SEO. I think yeah, a lot of connection over there, and yeah, to show you how big the connection in SEO is over there, you know. I think it was Thursday, something like that. Oh no, last Wednesday. I was eating with uh Kyle Kyle Roof, you know. So it's typically a lot of lunch and everything around with a lot of different SEOs that are really good, you know, and a lot of good discussion over there. So it's it's really interesting to be here, uh, you know, with a lot of SEO around.

1:54Yeah, I need to get Kyle on the show. Uh we we before he moves, we we would talk more, and uh we haven't talked so much. So I I think it might be a good time to reach out to him. But thanks for coming on the show. And you

AI Search Versus Traditional SEO

2:06know, we've been talking about a lot of different things, AI, geo, aeo, a i SEO, whatever you want to call it. I think you know, there's still a little bit of a debate.

2:14A lot of a lot of names, yeah.

2:16There's still still kind of this debate like, is it good SEO? Like, is it different? And again, like I'll just put it out there for for everyone listening if they've listened to past shows. I believe that good SEO, yes, is important um to help the search engines, but I think it goes back to like the cleanliness of your data, like the the data architecture, the uh data hygiene that you have is kind of what we're trying to do, organize all the information of the world. But AI is a completely different system than a search engine. And so maybe some of the things are similar that it needs to have to produce an output, but just because it reprote reproduced a similar output does not mean it got to that that that answer the same way, right? And so structurally, I think it's different. And so I you know, thinking about it maybe like a different layer on SEO is I think the right way to look at it. And I've been kind of hearing from everybody else, like what they see, what they're focused on, what's working, because it's really interesting. This is a fun time because you're like, we're gonna do this strategy, and there's like no data out there, like we don't really know. Like, we're gonna see what happens and we're gonna like build our own data set, right? Like, and I yeah, I feel like that's really, really fun and exciting to be on the frontier to explore. So I would love to hear kind of some of the things that you're looking at, some of the things that y'all are doing, uh and and what you're discovering.

3:44Yeah, definitely. That's so funny because uh, you know, I'm exactly telling that to my team. So we all started SEO, I think, you know, more into me it was like 2017, my team was more like 2020 type of people, etc. And so we didn't know, you know, the previous uh like the early SEO era, you know, like 2004 type of strategy that got crazy, and all the old SEO speaking about like, yeah, you just you know put a website, put thousands of pages, and everything is working like crazy. It's it was like you know, western world, you know. And what I'm saying to my team is that we are right now living the western world of of AI, you know, like it's the way that we can trick it, the way that it can improve visibility, the way they can like you know find shortcuts and everything that works for like you know a few hundred bucks or anything, it's something that is crazy, and uh I think it's like kind of the the a new era where you can like learn a lot of stuff and and and create strategy and everything. So um, same as you, I think that they have like I don't know 60-70 percent of like similarities between AI, uh, you know, and and AI visibility, AI SEO, and an SEO traditional way. And if you're like really good already in SEO, you have like already you know a big win in that. Uh, but definitely there is some specificities. I

Why Listicles Shape AI Answers

4:52think one specificity that I'm really looking into, and I I apply for most of my clients, is the fact that the way that AI search, you know, generally when you what happened most of the time is that you will ask, okay, what are the best you know SEO agencies, something like that. So, what AI will do is that because it doesn't AI doesn't crawl on the website, doesn't have all the data, so generally we'll ask Google, you know, can you provide me uh a few answers on these queries and anything, you know? And generally AI will go to search for like list of top SEO agencies, best SEO agencies, something like that, you know. And so listicles are really the type of uh pages that tend to rank like creatively well. Um, and so what I saw from the data that we're operating and that we're collecting is that so you need obviously like a lot of consensus around a lot of listicles and everything, like more you have quantity in terms of presence, you know, in different um uh pages that say, yeah, you are really good, more AI will tend to pick up on that, etc. And so what we're really doing a lot for the clients definitely is they're contacting a lot of websites to try to set up listicles, you know, when they are able to rank and when they have the shoulders to be able to rank on this type of queries when they are like relevant and everything, and yeah, try to, you know, um kind of uh flow the web and and put it under a lot of listicles that promote clients, um, which is a bit like controversy, you know, right now, because a lot of people are saying, like, yeah, I shouldn't really do that. It's a bit like you know, borderline or like perhaps Google will penalize it. But from the last you know, studied that we did with our clients and everything, which was in July, August, something like that, still working really well and still no sign of like you know being really slowing down or anything. Definitely own listicle on your own website. It's a little bit more tricky and a little bit more like you know, kind of weird, kind of like you shouldn't perhaps do that too much, you know. Uh, but on other websites that create kind of you know media consensus uh that is really interesting and that AI love, I think. So that's really the stuff that I've been you know studying and and doing for my clients in the last six months or

Outreach And Reclaiming Lost Links

6:43so.

6:43Um you know it's interesting because I I've seen the similar thing, right? And and and certainly the listicles on your own site, like you know, yeah, it's it's kind of like a bunch of key, you know.

6:54You can go for it if you want, but yeah, it's a bit cheap, you know.

6:57And if there's no other listicles out there, like you've become like the the canicalized listicle, but like as things progress, right? Like it's about the consensus and it's also about who it is that says that, right? Who it is that puts you on the list and their authority, kind of like the the voting with the backlinks, right? Like, and I feel like that that that market's been been oversaturated, there's too much noise. Like, I you know, and I've I look I am on the fence about uh like you know, backlink building and and guest posting and and that sort of thing when it's when it's like paid paid vendors, right? Like paid pubs and stuff. And and I think that like actually earning the the link, they there's there's there's kind of fingerprints or footprints in what you're doing and and using AI to actually do legitimate outreach and to find where the degradation is happening of links that are like you know, 301s or not 301, sorry, 404 arrows, like on other sites that is a legitimate spot and and helping them fix like I feel like there's a re-surgence or a resurgence of like really good outreach, right? And and also, yeah, yeah.

8:16This this strategy, you know, I was always like it sounds a bit like you know, a bit too much, it doesn't really work or anything. And recently, one thing that happened is that one of the competitors of my clients just been shut down or closed or anything, you know, so everything went forward. So instantly we were like, you know, we can shut all of the media out of the backlinks that they were having and everything, and we get back a lot of them like super quickly. So I was amazed that the strategy finally works, and I think in terms of timing, if you have the good timing, you know, it's perfect. So it's uh if you're like first on the spot, it will work.

8:44That that strategy, I forget what that's called. Like uh Brian Dean and um I there was there was an article back then, uh, and and it's like a tree falling, right? It's like a tree falling, and the the tree falls, and then you go and you're like mining all the links. Uh yeah, yeah.

9:02I will agree on everything, you know, like you've got them trying to get as much as possible, you know.

9:06And it works, yeah. It works, yeah.

9:08It's worked, it's worked like crazy.

9:10Yeah, and I I feel like um leveraging uh AI to be able to do some of this makes a lot of the tedious work and a lot of the research and a lot of the outreach uh really effective, right? If so, yeah, so it's like I I I have always thought, and you know, I'd love to hear because I know like limited budgets and there are some like gray strategies, black hat strategies out there that work. I feel like AI keeps getting smarter, like it's very hard to trick it. And and I've always been of the opinion of if you're gonna put in the hard work, put in the work in something that's gonna last. And so like spending all the time to maybe do some kind of shortcut, and then spending the time to build a legitimate outreach tool and actually go get those links, it's gonna take almost the same amount of work, and one's gonna last versus the other one's gonna last for a certain amount of time, and you're kind of looking over your shoulder for the next update and going, oh no, like what's gonna happen? So I'm curious like go in a little bit more on okay, what are some of the backlink or gray hat strategies that you're seeing and kind of how you feel about them, and then kind of talk about the things that you think that you see people doing or building that are gonna last for the long term. So I'd love to hear the the the both sides of it,

Black Hat Reality And Negative SEO

10:32you know.

10:32Yeah, and it's really interesting because you know, I come from a background where I was in um a gambling affiliate, so I was really like full black hat type of shit, you know, and um affiliate.

10:42So I was in affiliate marketing before agencies, right? So, like yeah, it's a different world when you do it for clients, and you know, yeah, so exactly.

10:50We can we can we can relate, you know, we we know what it is, and so definitely I'm I spent like you know six years full black cat and wrestling France. Um, it's definitely a market where a lot of SEO love black hat type of stuff. So I was really like, you know, um teach a lot of black hat every time, every time all my SEO figures were like people, you know, teaching about black cat and things. So it was really my background initially, and I was always like you know, branding and thinking long-term and white at and everything. It's it's crappy and shitty, and it doesn't matter, it's like just a waste of time, you know, and only like Americans with the big money can do it, you know. That was my mindset.

11:24Yeah, yeah, no, I get it.

11:25Yeah, and after uh like like recently, you know, after launching the agency and everything, I realized that okay, black hat tricks and everything, it's funny. Well, first of all, it tends to work less and less, you know, compared to white art stuff. And like a lot of black hat tactics have been, you know, swayed by Google and and doesn't really work anymore. So really there is, I think, uh decrease of role in black hat because it's it's really really hard anymore, uh, and and doesn't really work anymore. So it's really something that I think people will do less and less, even if there is still a lot of you know place to do that, but um not that much. And I think that all the white hats related stuff, it's more about like thinking about your project long term, you know. You try to build something on long term and you try to earn it, you know, in the best way and try to avoid shortcuts. However, now I'm kind of in the middle ground, you know, where uh all my past about black hat and everything. Typically for me, link building, it's always about like buying backlinks off marketplaces and everything, you know. Like I run myself a marketplace of backlink, and that's something that I I I I bought so much of them and everything that's it's it's just track for me. And I'm like, if I need to wait for the backlinks to come naturally, it will take too much time, you know. And even the outreach for me, it's just at the end your outreach, the people will tell you what's from the price sometime and just end up being kind of the same stuff with a waste of time in my opinion. But you know, in the runway.

12:38Well, you you I mean, you can run an API and you can grab them all, and so can Google, like you know, and yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's and and then now you know, even content generation, like the big debate is around like the footprints that are being written, uh by by anthropic and and even these uh like AI, like uh chat what zero chat GPT, chat GPT zero like uh originality, like I've talked to those guys. Um you know, like it's it's very hard to fool the AI without it being like human origin anymore. Yeah, and you can capture these things. What I'm seeing actually is these strategies. If you want to go into them or you don't, it's up to you. But I would tell you people using those strategies that they know don't work against a competitor from like a negative SEO standpoint is what I'm seeing in some competitive niches. Like we've had a number of websites uh that that are that are getting attacked. Um and it's just like chop down the other person versus like building yourself up. I've seen a lot of that recently, or maybe it's just like people getting frustrated, they don't know what's going on. Like, I'm not I'm not sure because everything's changing in the market. Um, and and I'm not seeing as many people use black at strategies for themselves, but I'm seeing them like attacking for attacking, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

14:01But I think I think that right now there is some strategy that works like quite well for attacking, especially. So I I still have some friends in the gambling industry, and typically like DMCA are the crazy stuff over there, and a lot of uh DDOS attack as well. So that's typically the two stuff that are really going on in terms of negative SEO that are working quite well if you have like you know, uh if you have some money to run it. Um DMCA generally, like Google will tell you like, no, that's not a copy of your content. So what they do is that they flout Google with like so much requests that at some point you're like, perhaps it is, you know, only one pass, the website is kind of shut down. Uh and it's hard for Google, you know, to to fight against that of people reporting again and again about like you know, rights of use and everything. And for DDoS, I mean like it's quite hard. You need to have like quite a good team of you know, originalists, like Eastern Europe Russian type of guy that are going to attack full strengths on the on the servers and everything, but it's definitely the two negative SEO strategies that are working, I think, right now that we see a lot as well from my friend in the in the gambling industry. But in terms of pro black hat for yourself, it's quite hard, you know, it's not that easy because all the spam that we used to do that people used to do in black at not working so well, you know, it's it's kind of not indexing and other things, so it's it's probably really hard for the people and all the um updates and to wipe them down as well. So we don't, you know, yeah.

15:14Well, I I think like if you're reporting up uh up the chain of like what's happening, I I think it's just wasting people's time, like to clean stuff up. It's like if they're not focused on doing what they need to do and they're focused on cleanup, then you're you're winning essentially, I guess. And I don't know that that's what I've seen a lot of. I'm not gonna go into too too many details. I'm not trying to get people to do that, but like I I would just tell you, like, it is I don't know. I if you're if it's asymmetric warfare, right? You're SEO, you only have you know certain top spots, there's only a certain amount of leads, whatever. And and if you're underfunded from a competitor, like what do you do? Or if it's in a very uh like competitive niche, how do you how do you tackle that, Leah? So like if you're approaching it and you're going up against a Goliath and you're you know, you you've been engaged or you know, you're you're working on a project, how do you approach it?

Underdog Plays For Competitive SERPs

16:13Yeah, it's really hard to be honest when you are like really in the situation where you do you don't have enough money to fight, you know, against the big giants and everything. Um, I think that sometimes the fight is asymmetric, but it's still doable. Sometimes it's like kind of a lost cause, you know. I think about like one guy, one of clients of mine, which is in the CRM space and and like was like, you know, starting by his own, trying to do his own stuff and everything. I mean like CRM, you know, it's one of the biggest gated industry that you have on the web, so really hard for him to go into. If you still have like a bit of power and still have a bit of budget, I think you can try to take you know few keywords off the the hands of your competitors. What I do generally is that I try to go for so typically in the SaaS, uh, all the alternative is type of keywords that a lot of uh you know the big player will not try to go into. So if you play on the brand terms and type of stuff like that, which is like again, naturally the most white out type of stuff, but you know, if you are like you don't have all the means uh that they have, like you can you can try to attack them with uh some strategies that are a bit more aggressive than they will do. So going for the brands generally, and you know, you will try to go for review of the brand, you will try to go for alternative for VS type of pages, all the bottom funnel type of stuff that you will have on SaaS, uh, is type of strategies that tend to work well for outsiders, you know, generally. Um, I think as well that uh one thing that is interesting is that when you're on the cider and um you know, you so so typically when you're on the cider, it's even harder to get into listicles and everything because all the listicles, one guy wants to promote his own brand, and then he will put like nine you know competitors and he will put the biggest, so the biggest just get lifted by uh by the strategy overall, you know, it's just uh winner winner take most. Um, and but one thing which is interesting is that most of the listicles that have been put out uh out there in the past were from affiliate and everything, and affiliates are still like doing a lot of money with the top 10 type of stuff. So if you have a really, really good affiliate program, for example, you can leverage that to out-reach them and to be like, you know, you you're not making money out of this listicle, you can make more using my affiliate program or something like that. And uh, you know, getting the best, the the site that are the most trusted, the site that are the most cited by GPT and everything, to get your site at the top, to get your your solution at the top, your name at the top, um, by by paying the affiliate a bit more, you know. So that's typically one strategy that I saw working well in the SaaS industry. Uh, generally two of the strategies that allow you to, as an underdog, to go and grab some, you know, uh some leads from uh Google where it's quite hard, especially to go on like big key money keywords, you know, like the big keywords, the classic ones, they are like so hunted and and so so walked by the big ones that uh it's quite hard. So generally, yeah, branded stuff, uh, especially if you go, for example, in uh industry where there is a lot of um, I'll say that, a lot of new brands coming, you know, a lot of new actors launching and everything. So typically I help uh one of um uh um AI girlfriend software, you know, and there is so much AI girlfriend software launching every day. So I was telling to the guy, just every time that there is a new name, you do like the VS, the review, the alternative. And if you check, there's like hundreds of them, you know, that are recorded on Google Trends, the type of stuff like that. So using Google Trends to get a bit ahead of them, you know, because all of them are using all of us, so using Samrush or Href. So you need like some hundreds of strategy and to get like in advance in terms of keywords, uh, when you see the the volume coming and try to be a bit more aggressive and to go in in places that it will not, you know.

19:33Yeah, no, I I think that data is a a key advantage. And I think that when I think about SEO, I I don't and I I liked that they were talking about like a name change, right? But SEO is so much broader than SEO, right? If you're working with a client and you're you're trying to get them traffic, you're trying to get them higher up in the the the search optimization, right? And then once you get them ranking, you need to move into CRO, right? And then you're looking at data and you're looking at lead account, and then you're talking about like in the CRM, and then now you're going, okay, we need to run some paid ad like and and funnel doesn't work either. I feel like funnel is really underselling what it is we're doing, but what you're talking about is finding data or information or a perspective of that persona or that buyer journey that no one has figured out yet, and kind of getting there first. I did an article uh a while back, I think it was like 2024 or something. It was talking about it was like a new land grab, like this was a new land grab of there's new strategies, new angles, there's new like okay, AI overviews, there's there's new territory that you have to grab. And to your point, that is something that happens as kind of a I won't use the word cartel, but maybe an SEO, like you got a bunch of speakers, but that all know each other that are not intentionally like doing that. But also in other industries, if people team up and build uh a co-op and work together for cross-promoting, channel promotion, uh listicles, build building that team or that that uh go-to-market strategy together is is I think how you're gonna win, in addition to flipping over every rock and looking in places that people aren't looking for to find those little honey holes and then really establishing authority in that area before like like you want to get into long term uh memory that you're an expert in that area. And what where I'm finding it difficult is like if you talk about like a location page strategy, right? Yeah, we're just gonna build like thin, not doorway pages, but we're gonna build, we're gonna build, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna cross that line and make sure that there's a lead capture on that there's unique content in all these areas but AI like maybe there's a trust barometer in in the math that you can't be an expert and an authority in every geography right yeah every location you you you only have so much link equity and you have to figure out how to distribute it about what you want to go after and so okay you're you're a marketing company you can't service every niche anymore you can't you can't be the expert in every niche because you got to have the case studies you got to have the client but you got to then but you have to be like the biggest one you know every yeah you'd be publicist or nothing you know it's like type of uh you're you're a giant or you're or you you you can't you know it's uh it's you well you can't wear a mask you got to be who you are and you got to say this is what I'm good at and these are the type of clients and and the thing is once you do that you get more of the kind of clients that you are actually good at and so it's helpful to specialize and I feel like that's been something that I've heard a lot recently is you know you have to specialize like you can't and I've been telling clients that if we want to switch the conversation over to how we're talking to clients about how to deal with this in the new metrics I think that would be a good conversation but clients have been trained on traffic right increase in traffic and and they also don't want to sacrifice a certain category because there's that lottery ticket that they could get that client and I've been having a lot of conversations when I've been coming in with the account managers from a strategy standpoint talking to clients saying hey we need to focus your website on these areas because when was the last time you got a lead in this area like but there's that one potential deal there's that one potential client I go would you rather have like five ex or one of these and and that's a a mental shift for a lot of people and so I would love to hear kind of how you're talking to your team about metrics how you're talking to clients about metrics and how you're approaching it.

24:10So I

New Metrics Leads Brand Search Trust

24:11think one one funny thing about metrics I think is that uh so we just had AI overview in France rollout like you know one month ago. So we were like so late compared to all over the world you know so I didn't know that we're really going right now yeah we were like yeah it was like Japan no it was like Cuba Iran and France you know the three ones that didn't get it so I was like yeah finally you know we get it um and so yeah definitely the the thing is that we we need to shift the perspective from you know traffic to the leads you know directly the analytics metrics that is the one that interests them and etc so the problem is definitely we used to train them a lot on clicks and traffic and everything so we need to switch that I need to switch that with my team as well because sadly you know a lot of us here have been trained on Google Search Console which is like you know traffic and clicks and everything and you just you're proud of like big metrics and big traffic and big stuff but you you never check about the analytics stuff. So I'm I'm training my team like crazy right now and pushing them into like no show me the analytics I want to see the analytics the number of leads the revenues etc so we're getting better and better about that um one thing that is interesting I think is that you were saying like you know uh SEO is so broader than SEO and so much more and that you need a lot of stuff and you have the CRO and you have the analytics and you have like the funnel and everything. And I think that SEO was kind of easier and we need less leverage you know perhaps like I would not say 10 years ago because even like five six years ago it was easier Google was like you know more chill and everything. And we can by yourself just SEO being like kind of smart in terms of authority and having like good strategy in terms of pages and content create like wonders you know we're able to bring traffic to crazy amounts and everything. And I think in the last yeah three four years especially after the full content update and type of stuff like that like you know SEO now needs to be 360 and needs to be integrated in a full marketing strategy you know and it pains me so much to say that because I'm an SEO and doesn't serve me at all to you know to say that I would prefer me still being able to make wonders and everything. But the reality is that if you don't have any you know brand search or like brand um uh knowledge or anything if you don't have you know uh um a global marketing strategy a good conversion strategy and everything you will not get you know what what you want from Google at the end so now we really need to work well with the brand team we now need to work especially with the LLM we now need so to to to work so well with like you know all the authority building all the stuff so there is so much more stuff that we need to integrate now I feel that it's like um it's harder to be a CEO you know in in 2026 than it was most probably in 2020. The good point is that we have AI we have a lot of tools you know increases productivity and everything but uh we have less leverage I feel over the businesses that we are serving than we used to have you know so it's it's not that easy I think you know one of the new metrics that we're starting to look at internally is we're looking at the brand count the searches by brand how many times in the past it was the complete opposite it was like how many like unbranded terms are we ranking for what is that fan out look like what are those pages doing but we're now measuring which I we we haven't and and maybe that was wrong of us but we weren't measuring before how well the brand is doing and the strength of the brand and going okay our clicks are down our traffic's down but more people are searching for the brand month over month and we're getting more leads right because we don't see all the things happening in the buyer's journey and knowing that people are searching for the brand means that we're in the the the decision making phase right and so that's been something we've been really focused on with clients and talking to clients about and tracking and there's a there's certainly a lag in the data uh as far as um things that we did in maybe the previous quarter that are now happening but we're looking for the compounding of the brand and the strength of the brand and the trust and all that and and that's been a big change for us with the the AI overviews because you kind of get up there you ring the bell and then you lose traffic it's kind of like you don't get the big oh man like we're we're we got so much more traffic you actually get in that position zero and then traffic drops and you're like uh and then now you got to explain the client increase you know that's that's why you need to show the leads you know because the leads increase generally and I think that you know looking at brand it's really interesting for two things one because we need it you know without brand you cannot build like a decent SEO overall uh around it and everything and secondly because it's definitely the stuff that will increase if you're showing up like a lot in GPT and and and AI and everything you know because when people search on AI they will get a brand next what they will do they will search for the brand you know directly on Google or anything and they would go on the website they will check it out and they will like you know directly convert on that. So what I say to clients generally is that right now when we're tracking for LLM you know and for AI overall so it's really hard to track the volume that we'll get because not a lot of people will click through the AI directly to your website. We will monitor that obviously but we know that the the volume is not here you know um it's really we we don't get really a decent amount of volume that we can track or anything. We just like start from the SEO keywords because that's where we know that the people are typing or anything. We try to spin it in a like natural way of asking for AI or anything or like you know asking to clients or your clients tend to search or tend to look or you know what do you think they will type or anything. So we try to spin it you know from the SEO keywords to that because people tend to have like very longer queries and more natural type of queries and everything. And um the last thing that we check definitely is the the increase in brand search because obviously if you're performing really well in ai you will have an increase in brand search and you will have an increase of like conversion starting from the home page you know type of stuff like that. So that's I think that's really interesting to check at you know the volume of brand search and everything. And after generally all the people in marketing they will like you know take a slice of that like oh that's my part that's my part you know everybody's like a bit trying to to take the the the the data out of the brand because it's something that's quite hard to track so I I have a a question for you a little outside this conversation I want to make sure to to get in okay and and I've started to do a lot of multinational SEO um we kind of did it in the past but we work with a lot of energy companies and it's just kind of like we have to get a brand manager to work in these different areas.

International SEO By Geography And Market

30:40I would love to get your perspective on uh you US clients that you've worked with um you know French Canadian clients I guess because also you know Canada uh France like there's a big connection there and then um what what you're seeing like overseas like so I'm curious what different clients look for and what are different strategies and just paint the lay of the land from an international perspective because you got three or four different areas that you've worked in right and it would it'd be it I think you have a good feel for like when you're talking to a client in this area maybe what they're needing or what they're looking for and also how mature is that area right because maybe the US might be more mature because people spent a lot of money on this it's more developed like UK same way like but I'm just curious how you view the different geographies and the clients in those areas yes it's quite funny because I so I used to do a lot of SEO in a lot of different geo in the past due to the affiliate background.

31:39So I did like you know South Africa I did Japan I did a lot of different stuff but I didn't have clients directly over there because it was affiliate in terms of client relationship I think that um the US overall is really focused on the results you know and on the money and like they are really like goal driven kind of uh and and really easy to kind of trust you know they they will trust you really fast they make deal really fast and everything is going so swiftly you know and so and so so so fast. So it's really nice to be with the clients from the US I think especially for me because I'm not really into I know a lot of French companies that will be a lot into contracts you know setting up perfect deal for the long term and other things you know trying to search for lots of stability. It's not really my my type of stuff I like for things to move fast. So I think it's really nice to work with uh US clients um I think that uh one thing which is really different as well is according to the size of the clients so typically when I'm working with US clients or like you know Singaporean clients they tend to be bigger clients so generally they have like as well more maturity they are thinking a bit more long term and they're a bit more like you know want to have a clear strategy sometimes and being like more you know what next step by step you don't explain everything but they want to have another classic overlook on the strategy. I think uh in France people tend to be yeah I it really depends I think a lot of my clients are really educated in terms of SEO uh and they are like quite good and everything because a lot of my my my lead generation is due to YouTube and me making videos speaking about SEO so obviously a lot of people you know are are are listening about SEO when they come to see me. So a lot of French people they will be quite quite well educated into SEO um one funny thing though uh about almost every geo I think is that everyone have like kind of old SEO type of you know mindset and stuff and sometimes they will be asking like you know uh is that okay to do that because I think that's something that you can give penalty you know like to use this type of oncles in backlinks that to do you know and every time there's always the this I think aspect of like SEO moves so fast and uh they want to be sure that you know they are right now in the in the good way of of of doing SEO and everything. And after in terms of SERP so SERP changed a lot according to countries and this one I know exactly the level of competition according to countries because every time it's like so but the US US is definitely the the the hardest uh in terms of competition the good point of the US is that there is so much money in the US that the money is is better than the hardness of the competition you know so if you really want to make a lot of money us is still the best because yeah the the volume and the money is is better than the level of the competition French is quite competitive because people in in in France are quite crazy about SEO I don't really know why. German are way less competitive for example where there is like you know way more money but typically backlinks will cost so much money. Spanish for example is quite competitive because there is a lot of Latin American guys that go for Spanish markets that are like terrorizing you know uh and there is some markets that are like super weird you know typically the uh rich Asian markets I don't understand them you know so uh Japan I work on Japan for two years it was a mess man it was so hard it was so complex the the marketing overall is like crazy I don't understand anything you know and and it was so like flashy and everything and all the rules about SEO that I know was like I it doesn't work over there you know and I think Korea is kind of the same as well a lot of you know some some places and uh are not using internet in the same way that Europe is using or I think the US is using and so it creates some super weird algorithm uh in some countries so it's it's quite interesting I think to have like in a lot of so much different countries and so much different type of SEO that you can explore. Well thank thank you for sharing Leo so is there anything in this conversation that we've had that you feel like we need to include that we haven't included um I don't there is thousand stuff but uh to be honest it was a really really good conversation I think and a lot of uh good topic you know to start on a lot of different stuff so it was it was really interesting.

35:34Awesome well Leo if people want to reach out to you they want to follow your work they want to check out asterisk uh how do they find out more about you?

35:43Yeah the easiest will be LinkedIn definitely so I'm I'm sorry in advance if I send you a message in French or whatever in in LinkedIn is because like most of the people I chat with are French. So yeah uh don't don't blame me on that and uh yeah you can definitely add me on LinkedIn and uh uh see what uh you know we can work on together.

36:00Last question for

Multilingual SEO Without Creating A Mess

36:01you.

36:01So uh you know when sites are in English and French uh I've seen a lot of sites I'm in Houston uh there's a lot of sites in English and Spanish how do you view the SEO component when you're optimizing for two languages and you're trying to like generate leads in those areas do you think the plugins work well do you like building a separate site hard coded like what is your opinion on dual language yeah me generally my opinion is that the simpler the the most simple is the better you know because like after you need so much to care about like a lot of different stuff and and to maintain it and everything and when I'm speaking to clients if they're like delegating to an agency it means that you don't have like you know a perfect end for everything. So I don't want to create a mess for the future for my clients. So what I do generally is that I go for the simpler um I go for like definitely plugins you know if you're on uh on Shopify or WordPress or whatever uh like native stuff for translating it doesn't cash so much anymore with AI and everything uh all the technical setup is quite well done generally and what I do is that if you have a really limited budget I focus on working and optimizing for the main language you know because generally you know English speaking SEO and Spanish speaking SEO are not so different. They will be different definitely but they're not so different. And so I would try to optimize as much as possible for the main language. And if you have more budget and you're able to like you know be able to distribute a bit more and to and to optimize for both languages then yeah you know rerunning kind of the optimization on the on the second language and that will help. And that's funny because sometimes um even if the website for example is a French website getting most of the traffic in French the people the clients will tell me now the goal is the US so we have to you know focus on the on the Henglish speaking first. So I'm like okay we will you know start everything in English and we'll decline everything in French after and you know even if that hurts me a little bit that's okay that's good you know and uh the most important I think is that like at least one language the main language that you're getting super optimized. So like that the second version that you're translating generally automatically sadly uh will be you know uh as much optimized as it could be uh and then as soon as you have time you you re-go for it and you re-optimize it for the you know best localization and everything.

38:08Awesome

Exact Match Domains And Closing Requests

38:09well thank you for sharing guys go check out Leo with asterisk I'm gonna put the links to his LinkedIn and his uh agency in the show notes if you want to support the show please go leave a review on iTunes we really need more reviews we're at 4.3 reviews we're trying to get over 4.5 we have 316 reviews I'd ask you please go leave an honest review on what we could do to improve the show what you're liking um we're gonna be doing a lot more with it so just keep following bestseopodcast.com as well as that is our handles on all the other shows uh one of the things we did cover in this conversation is exact match domains which still um provide intent right they provide intent yeah for what you're trying to do yeah it it works weirdly well you know I'm always like exact match should be shut down at some point you know Google should do something but weirdly it works every time so well you know and AI is picking up on them so much as well so weirdly as well like uh GPT loved the exact match in my opinion from my experience yeah so so guys well we've been doing this a long time that's why we have that domain and those handles um uh if you want to grow your business with the largest most powerful planet on the on the well the tool on the planet the internet guys I'm sorry it's early here it's late there um listen to the best SEO podcast for more uh uh of the latest uh tips and tricks I hate to say tips and tricks because they're not tips and tricks now they're real strategies uh but until the next time my name is Matt Bertram bye bye for now bye