Another Long Day... - GrindstoneSEO

Another day we're not going over live examples of how NOT to build anchors.

But damn do we need to...

The shit I see on a day to day basis that just boggles my mind.

2024 and SEOs are out here treating their sites like it's pre-Penguin 2012.

Anyway, short and sweet. Edit: lol no it was not.

Got some excellent feedback last night in this tweet from Andy Beard.

https://x.com/AndyBeard/status/1750694799819043184?s=20

Should be obvious but I'll state it anyway.

My experiences aren't yours.

What I've learned doesn't mean you'll experience the same outcome.

Case in point, if you're an in-house SEO working for a big dog authority site, you probably don't need to read me.

If you're sitting on a DR80+ site that ranks page 1 for thousands of keywords, our battles are going to be different.

The edges I've had to discover, you don't need to fight that fight.

Sure, some of the stuff you'll learn from me will probably make your job even easier.

But just because my perspective comes from being the little guy battling bigger sites* with bigger budgets, and that's who I'm writing to...doesn't mean you have to listen if you're on the other side of that equation.

*Most of the time...one time I got to handle SEO for a startup with lots of cash to burn and a $15,000/month PR firm getting them amazing links...and then me doing what I do to those links.

We disrupted the shit out of that industry, I won't lie.

2 year old site outranking 23 year old site in a high volume service vertical worth $1200/hour plus.

One simple trick to ____________, __________ hate him.

That little flex is me saying if you're getting kick ass high value contextual links in competitive niches and you're not using our Link Boost Only packages on them, I'm not sure why you're still here.

It's a cheat code.

To the point where I don't even want to say that because the little guys will be even further behind the 8 ball if you big dogs start employing my tricks.

So yeah, that's point 1.

Don't assume everyone is coming from the same place.

If you don't have to worry about {little|new|underpowered} site things, don't.

Point 2.

Don't believe anything you read in the SEO world.

Even here.

Even if I'm not lying to you, I could still be wrong.

Reagan said 'trust but verify'.

My SEO mantra is 'consider and then try to disprove'.

Take ideas from me.

From the SERPs.

From your SEO cohort.

And then test those ideas.

Test twists on those ideas.

Test the inverse of the ideas.

Sometimes you learn quicker by doing what you can't than by figuring out what you can.

That alone will let you start to visualize patterns that most SEOs will never see through the noise.

CCarter would drop some Neo reading the matrix thing here and tbh, it's not a terrible analogy.

The whole reason you're reading this email is because I've been that guy that tests.

Started in 2008 and never stopped...

Minus a brief period in 2019 when Google let me buy as much affiliate traffic as I wanted for 2.5 months...and then another 6 months trying to do it again after they banned me for it.

Yeah, I know.

The whole situation makes as little sense as that sentence.

Now we have access to the data on hundreds of sites from our clients and our clients' clients.

I see what we do with links.

I see what they do with other link vendors (please stop, FFS...it's not helping either of us).

I do consulting sessions and improve their on-site.

Watch those results.

And when you're in the trenches with big(ger) data sets, patterns emerge.

And if you're good at pattern recognition, now you have more ammo for your tests.

And as much as we test, it's looking like we're going to be testing a lot more soon:

https://twitter.com/GrindstoneSEO/status/1744492241534718312

It's an ever escalating situation that leads to you fine tuning your craft.

So to sum it, like Andy said in that first tweet link.

Use what you learn here to think about your process differently.

But don't accept it as certitude.

Your sites are not my sites.

My sites are not your sites.

My dry powder is likely different from your dry powder.

Think but challenge.

Until next time..

Cheers,

Grind

P.S. Make my team work more than want to this weekend and go buy some links over @ https://clients.grindstoneseo.com