Fernando Raymond Talks About SEO, Web Hosting & Digital PR

Hey, Harshit. Really good to get on this interview. It’s been a long time. We have been chatting about getting to do the interview for a long time, since last month. Here we are. Let’s get this going and share everything about SEO, some of the things that I know. It’s interesting to talk to you about RankWatch and know a lot of things because I checked the tool and it’s interesting. I also have some things to ask from you as well.

I mean, I was a young child raised in several countries from a very young age in Doha, Qatar. Then in Sri Lanka, a lot of travelling around because my dad used to work in many countries. I was lucky to be on the flight and go. Then I moved to the UK. That was how I was actually because of a lot of travelling. Getting back to that thing that really got me is to think about freedom, the travel, the exploring new opportunities. My mindset was always very curious. I want to find a way rather than settling this way. That’s been my mindset throughout my years of growing and exploring. One wants to tap in what are the opportunities in the world? What more can be done? Rather be settling to what said this is the way it is. That’s the way because I think my travel and my opportunity to see the world got me to that level. Then what happened is how I got into this, what I’m doing right now, the business of entrepreneurship and SEO, which I did before starting Secret Host, was also I wasn’t really happy with the job and what I was doing.
I went to study further, went to university, even got a master’s, thought that’s the way to get another job that you want. Then I felt like when I was in a job, I wasn’t really fulfilled. I want to see what I can do to have things under my control and add more value to more people rather than just at one place. That’s where I came across as CEO. I think I read it on Forbes when I was looking for rising industries, industries with more demand that anybody can do from just a laptop and internet connection. I saw the CEO, this was back in 2013, while I was in one of these offices when I was working in the UK. Then I read about it and I’m like, maybe I can learn this. That’s the starting point. Got it, got hooked. I was like, Okay, because Google is really the hype at that time. Everybody wants to Google the giant, the search engine, Google skills advertising. I knew and also those articles and what I read got me to think like, This could be big. Then my hook point was; there are millions of business owners already and they are going to be willing to find people who can do Google advertising, Google adwords, traffic generation.
When I saw that, I’m like, let’s read everything on the planet about it and try to start testing. This is 2014. In 2013, I left the job, came on, and moved to London. I was in the West Midlands in Booster, where I was living for a long time, though, half a decade. Then I moved to London and just put in myself to learn everything about it. Started my own blog, applied the stuff. It ranked, the phone started ringing. I started doing WordPress training and things like that. Then on the other side, I actually made it aware of… Because I didn’t know how to get the clients. I know the SEO skill now slightly. I wouldn’t say I knew really well. I met my lawyer one day and I was like, I was making a way out of it. Everybody, I can rank your sites on Google. Then she said, Okay, I had this one of her clients ask her about SEO. Anybody know how to rank on Google? Then she’s like, Okay, this is the number. Maybe contact him, give him a call, send him an email. That’s exactly what I did. Met the guy. Up to date, he’s a client.
For the last seven years at ClickDo, he’s still a client. He has just one payment every month. He’s been the longest waiting client and the first ever client. That’s actually the client I learned SEO from. We applied everything and that’s the game. 2014, ’15, fully into SEO, ’16, SEO was easy at that time. You build a bunch of PBN backlinks, it goes to the top. That’s like the startup story.

The SeekaHost thing, guys, if you see that I got the SeekaHost living, breathing, living, this is my life right now because ClickDo is the digital agency and the team runs it. I would only like, once a month, have a look and talk to some of the managers, see how things are running. They’re running it, it’s going. The clients, everybody is served. It’s going on. Now my full focus and what I’m doing is SeekaHost. The SeekaHost story was basically as a part of SEO because I was doing SEO at ClickDo. I was ranked number one as an SEO consultant in London. People knew me. That’s how thousands of people got to know me from all around the world and everything. I started a group call because at that time I used a technique called private block networks. I may be one of the very first people who studied because I read how Google works by backlinks. If more sites backlink to a particular site and if the content is relevant and good, that site goes up in the ranks. What I did, I built most of those sites, put relevant content, and built the backlinks.
Yes, it was super easy at that time, 2014, ’15. I started a group also as a community to share my knowledge and it’s called PBN Demystify. Right now on Facebook, more than 10,500 people are there. I was basically talking about the hype, what I’m doing. Also, that group helped us to get people to also trade backlinks and all. That’s a part of how it went. I was talking about PBNs and this stuff, and people asking. I started to see because to build the PBNs, we were using those IP address hosting to keep the networks and things generally. These are really good blogs, not those dodgy books people think, Oh, PBN, is it good or anything? No, these are real websites to publish good content, which tells a story and reference about another site to which it helps to rank. I had the group and I had a domain name also, which I actually bought from a domain hunting person, which is sickhouse.com, which used to be a hosting company back in 2000. It was one of the oldest hosting companies in the world. I bought this, I had this and I was teaching PBN stuff, the hosting, the requirements, everything.
People were asking, bro, where are you getting hosting from? Tell us about that. I’m like, I’m seeing the demand. I’m like, Let’s do it. At that time, I had a person dedicatedly working and sorting all my PBN hostings and all IP addresses, making sure it’s all unique and things like that. I got him, got Kassun, had a chat, and we’re like, we’re launching a web hosting company. Let’s do this. Let’s figure it out. Because he knew the systems and all the things. In a few days, we figured out how all the SaaS models will fix up the subscription model, how you set up, connecting the servers, all these things. This is back in 2015, we launched it under ClickDo. ClickDo was the company, mother company. SeekaHost was underneath as a branch. First week, we got 100 clients basically from the group of launching. People, because at that time we were super cheap. I’ll put the price as $10 and make it still 90% off. But we got the hook and that’s the start of SeekaHost underneath ClickDo, back in 2015, and then we ran it that way, 16, 17, till 18, till it got to a certain number of clients, like the first 1,000 clients plus.
And also we felt it’s time to really go as a separate business, separate staff, separate thing, completely have it because when people pay with their life, they’re still going to and they’re paying for ClickDo. When more and more new people start coming as customers who didn’t know me, they don’t know what’s ClickDo. That’s how the ball started. 2018, because we made it as a separate company in the UK and then we launched in several countries. SeekaHost is the best thing that I did so far right now because it’s done because we have people now we’re selling business hosting, WordPress hosting, PBN hosting. We are the leaders in the world. Now we launched through the SeekaHost panel, SeekaHost app, one of the WordPress hosting control panels. I would say it’s the easiest ever WordPress hosting control panel. Anybody can use it because I built it in a manner, even my mom or dad can literally go and press a button and buy a domain. Three clicks, fourth click to install WordPress, and then WordPress open. These days, a lot of things are building up. These days, what we are building is the complete Ecomm. solution. Now we have the entire thing, people can get it up, but we know the developers working, it’s like the e-commerce solution, the land pay.
It’s a little bit of Shopify. There are providers in the world, VIX. They have their templates and stuff. That’s what’s getting developed. Next year, we will have a fully integrated solution. Any person, by the domain, host it, have it literally, have their shopping carts and everything page ready to get started, take photos, upload the products, start selling. Domain, hosting, everything. That’s where SeekaHost is heading. It’s really a hobby for me and my team. We just work nonstop. It’s going well since the pandemic, I would say, because everybody started going online. Every minute somebody’s buying a hosting order means.

It went crazy. I felt everybody’s buying domains. That’s why you can see how hard Google is going in the web hosting industry. Google now ranks because for personal web hosting, it’s one of the good keywords for us for Zykohoff. We rank… It’s not a huge one, but it’s been really good with a lot of related terms, and we are ranked on the first page, number five or so globally. Google is now coming and ranking next to us for personal web hosting. They, of course, try to sell it as cloud hosting. Then I’m like, Wow. Because for the web hosting business, SEO is the crucial thing, either paid ads or organically. Paid ads are very expensive. Organically being on the first page. PBN hosting, we are in the top three. I have two pages ranked, Cost app and zcost.com. I rank it by I think 2016 or so. Since then, we were not spending on ads at that time. I wasn’t bought into Google. That’s all about organic history. I’m not paying for ads, I rank it, get the orders come. So since then, it really starts coming. 2018, we are like, We’re making money properly.
Let’s pay something to Google. It really maximises when you pay on Google ads. Google ads work really well. But Google is the place for the web hosting business and now Google ranks number one for domain name registration. That’s true. Cloud, business web hosting, personal web hosting, I think in one month they will be number one. It’s crazy, man. The biggest players are in the industry.

The core expertise, we are an SEO agency. I’m in a digital marketing agency right now. We’re a full cycle digital marketing agency that helps businesses get started online, the website, build it the right way with the right UI with the highest conversion optimization. Then once you build it, well, you’re going to get the traffic because you want to sell. We help businesses get the clicks that they can convert to make money. That’s the core of ClickDo. It’s a deal marketing agency in London and we provide local businesses. That’s how we even got started. That’s one main thing we offer. But now we slightly serve clients, but we now offer a lot of the PR, press releases, backlinks, guest posting service because that’s a very scalable thing. Client wise, there is a number you can manage. Life gets harder when you even get 50 recurring clients. Get mental because there are always 10 clients calling on a day because the ranks shuffle. We have the clients thing going, but we are really into the PR side because that’s what businesses need to end up there to rank. However, as client contracts, we have several. As I said, the very first clients are still there.
Oldest who knows us, understands the game, they are there. But new clients, we are very picky who we want to take because Google updates come, man. Google comes, slaps the rank, and then it’s a nightmare for your agency. As consultants, we are providing basically search and optimization, Facebook ads, Google advertising, a lot of Google ads, which is a very scalable thing and very predictable getting clients. The landing page is good. If the product price is right, the service is right, it is standing out compared to the market. At least you’re good at what the market is providing. If your price at the service and the product is good, you send the traffic it converts. We do a lot of Google advertising and even for the organic clients, we do assume we really said, Dude, you know to do Google adwords also. Know the keywords, go after the right keywords and maximize your chances. That’s what ClickDo does.

We like clients who got the money, not the clients who want to survive with us. Early days start now. Now we don’t even start clients who just build a website. We say, guys, because a site to get matured and this stuff, there are some things to do, you’re not going to get any results paid into the agency monthly and expecting three months of phone. That’s not going to happen. That’s why we run Google Adwords. The ideal client is the client who has the business going. He’s not trying to survive from SEO. Basically, see, it’s a dentist. We work with a lot of dentists, orthodontists in London. They are anyway making money from their intake because the area people know that. However, they want to maximize for new patients by being visible on Google. That client already has money, easy to work with. Majority, at least they are easy because for them to pay in the return, it’s nothing. So orthodontists, cosmetic surgeons, like hair transplant, dentists, they are anyway getting the money, surviving. They’re doing really fine. If she is not there, they’re like, fine, Google is closed, who cares? We’re running, that business is basically surviving. They’re not going to pay next month and ask, when am I going to… That’s one of the ideal classes. Also, lawyers, which are very corporate lawyers. How we do this game, if you search, if you look at… We have lawyers in candy walls, candy walls in lawyers. We have sites now which are ranking and already owning the keywords. A lot of lawyers, restaurants. We have business. ClickDo it. We build the authority block. We have London Business News, those sites. These sites go after. Hatton Garden Jewelers is a keyword with over 10K traffic. Every jeweller in London, which is the Hatton Garden, it’s the core area with billionaires, celebrities come to buy jewellery. They want to rank there. Already we did this key but we own number one. We have London Business News so we have ranked it number one. When we pitch, we are like, we already did a ranking. You can either list there on the position, £1000 per listing. Also at the same time, pay us to do SEO, we’ll also get you here. Those industries which have money, we try to go off them.
We have industries like based control companies, low risk tomorrow companies. We go off the clients who we already pruned to work and we have a case study that the client can trust and they see us. We show them the traffic. We’re like, we’ve done it. We are there. We are already getting traffic. Let us do this for you. Because before that, I used to get clients for anything. But anything we need to pay money for, they don’t want to know. They think you pay money, next month the ranks are there. That’s not that. That is no more. We try to take even the client’s idea. Client is a client who got the money and the understanding of SEO and also to take things further, we try to take clients in industries that we’ve proven and we know A2 is about how that industry works, SEO wise. What’s the competition? What backlinks did? What do we do to rank that? Because we see that industry so much, when we look at the first page, we know a newcomer. We quickly do a full check. If a newcomer comes to the first page and they are for a week, we do a full check up for them.
We decode their backlinks, their content strategy, all those things. That’s how we pick the ideal client that we can actually serve and we can do. That’s why when we pick a client, they go forever. That’s the ideal pick and that’s how we work at ClickDo.

First 30 days, they come on board, on page fixers and everything. How we do when we load them, we tell them this is exactly what your site is missing and this stuff. First 30 days, this, make it if they fix us to happen. Then a lot of content marketing, the blogging, we have weekly blogging, so our writers will do that. The other thing, PR, which is the proper press that gets the links. We have them agreed, we will say, depending on their retainer. If a client is paying £2,000 a month or £1,500 a month, we have a certain thing. If a client is willing to pay £3,000 a month, it’s a different thing. If a client is like, Dude, let’s blow up the money, 6K, 8K in a month. I only want to do it for three months. I want the best possible link. We do a thing we say, we can get this, this, we can get you an entrepreneur, we can get you a Forbes, we can get you the biggest places. It’s a thing. We have deliverables agreed weekly wise, monthly wise, every month, the client gets a full report of all the links and all the work happened.
For clients in the very minimum ranges, they are in a very low worth thing. I think we still have some clients at the lower side paying up like, I don’t know, 700 or 800. No, 600. They’ve been there for a long time. Their issue is there, they are ranking, so very little things to do. Then we just have a set of things to be done for them, not heavy links or anything because the right site is ranking, we just have to maintain and then the client also doesn’t expect us what’s been happening. They just keep on paying money. There are things like that. The first 30 days, of course, really differ. But if it’s a new site, brand new, so the first 30 days, direct listings, the blogging, a certain number of articles going on, and then, of course, PR, you’re not going to get hundreds of links straight away on the first one. Several links which reference that site. It’s a very custom plan. We put into the industry, to the website. Where is the website? Is it brand new? Is it old? Is it a site that does so much SEO and it just stuck at number 7?
Now it’s on to go to number 10, number 1. It’s a completely different approach. First month, first three months and things like that. We try to get clients at three-month commitment. It’s a three-month contract. Some we take if it is links only, but we try to say, I mean, it’s three months, one month, you might not even see any movement.

Before even starting the website? No, it’s crazy. We tested crazy stuff on how PR can do. Before the C Cost app comes, I already start seducing the app. You can see I’m about to launch the cheap UAE domains for Dubai. I already tweeted about it. I already mentioned that the C Cost app is about to launch. Page hasn’t even gone live. When the page goes live, it’s straight away. So, if you Google keywords like cheap.com domains, cheap.co.uk domains, cheap canada domain, cheap.in domains. So, we do the digital PR almost when the page goes live or even before we create the hype and the content, everything is ready because it’s not overlooked. It’s like the most important thing. We tested the industry in a way, I don’t even know how it works. How Google works. Even Google algorithms can’t shake it then. We test digital PR at a very high level by getting the links on every single biggest site on the planet. The site rank for a keyword, it’s unshakeable with the site links, everything. Google updates, doesn’t matter. Google nothing matters. They have been ranking number 1, number 1 for several years now.
Several updates went on. That site we built it, I will later drop it to you guys publicly because it’s a client site and all. We did a lot of work. They literally like, whatever the money, £10,000 this month, let’s do it. £6,000, one link, let’s do it. Because they know at number one, there were two keywords. It’s bowling, the phone is ringing, and the call centre. They could scale call centres. It’s a service industry that’s one of the highest demand services with a lowest price per job at £100 to £100 plus, which goes up to £300 and above per job. For them to get a click, it’s like 10 pounds plus to get a click. They’re still doing Google adwords. They’re now in the domination method. To get that thing, we did minus your normal way, build the site, everything. It was struggling to go to numbers. We backed up. We reverse engineered the number one ranking guy. Where do they get the links from? Number two guy, where do they get the linking? Then what we thought, if we get all this PR, it’s digital PR, it’s outreach. But you outreach and you get a call and ask how many you want?
What’s your price? They’re like, £2,000. Okay, I’ll send you £2,200. Do the link tomorrow morning. Let’s do it. With articles and all, content.
It has to look organic altogether. It’s just not like publishing on a dodgy site or anything. You planned it. So digital PR means a very strategic plan and catered to the audience. It’s basically that digital PR, we did it, we tried it, and it went to number one. This went to number one back in 2019, mid since then how many updates were there?
Number one. Then we realized at that level of PR, why we call it digital PR is basically public relation getting down to the really raw. It’s basically buying publications, buying guest posts, buying guest posts on the biggest sites on the planet, which is every biggest news site in the UK, every news site. There is not even anything. We literally went and got on everything and then we were like, Whoa, nobody can control the rags after that.

There are ways. I’m on it. Yeah. I’ll tell you one more thing. Like, SeekaHost app. How do I trigger it before even launching? How I take up because I’m going back to your question, you asked when should the Digital PR get started? For me at least, as soon as I got the idea and the business was ready to move. Say the product is getting built and you can show a shot it’s coming, I would create the boost. I don’t want it to come and start. I would create the hype. I have publications on entrepreneurs. Really good. I have mentions on Forbes. There are ways to go. You reach out to the people who write the journalist and all, you contact them. You ask, Dude, I’m willing to give a little bit of ideas. And they think, Do you think you will edit that article? Not everybody’s going to accept it. Some are like, Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll do it and I’ll give you a mention. Like your thing. I have C cars, that’s how you get links on Wikipedia. So, it’s public relations done digitally, which caused digital PR.

But that’s why all these companies, new SaaS businesses and the online business came and took to core. Just imagine those established brick and mortar businesses on time merged into online and capitalize on their websites and the traffic. These newcomers would have had no time, no chance because these guys already have offline traffic and people know their shops and stuff and the service. Just imagine there was an accountant who provides accounting service based in Bangalore. All these people came to his accounting office and hired him, but he never went online. But if he went online, had the presence, his brand is already known and he could have said to his people who are coming, go to my online, pay there, let’s do it virtually. Then it goes viral. He could have blown up, but they were late. They must have slipped into that. Then newcomers came and took over. These brick and mortar people don’t even have people walking in because the pandemic happened. Lockdowns happened. They’re out of business.

What do you mean?

Local business. At ClickDo we still do local businesses’ SEO. The first steps are like so if you’re doing to a client, let me say, if you’re doing to a client, either we build the site which we really like, we try to build the website in WordPress. People still build on other platforms. I tested it. WordPress has a little bit of easy code that Google bots or things like it, ranks better no matter how it’s easier. We try to. If the client comes and they have the site in Wix or some other… We are like, Dude, only Wix ranks on Wix, not any other site because Wix has authority, likewise. You can rank it, but there are a lot of things. We will try to build the website or convert it to WordPress, and then we will build the website in the right way. If they already have a website in WordPress, we’re like, Okay, this is what we need to do. Full order of the website, what’s happening? Then we also look at the backlink profile. Do they have backlinks? What are they missing? What do the competitors in the top 10 have?
We use Ahrefs or there are different tools. We will even get an idea, have a look. Then we identify this is the strategy that needs to be implemented for this tool. Where are the ranks? We will look at the rank checking and how we can actually use it. There are so many ranks… I mean, the RankWatch also gives the rank check, right?

Yeah, I was checking the thing. Likewise, the ranks, where is it ranking right now? Is it ranking? Is it not ranking? Do a full keyword research, identify the core keywords, have a full document, try to basically fit into one page document on top of all the other things. We write a one page document for the first month. It’s like a one A4 level on the thing. It’s easy. We pass on to the SEO managers and the client gets a copy, he knows what’s happening. That’s the approach. Then once it is fixed, end of the month, tick, all done. It would mostly have at large 10 points or else if it’s a website that’s really much where it’s like five, six or more points to be done, which includes also the fix in the backlink. Do we have to disavow the bad backlinks? Do we have to change the content? Do we have to change content on what pages? That’s the one page strategy sub. Everything we have that one page, the first consultant, they’re like, That’s what needs to be reported to the client at the end of the month. That’s done in the first month. That’s done loading, have the plan and the thing. That’s what’s been approved when loading a local issue client for the first 30 days. It’s very crucial because especially when you’re taking a local issue client, they paid the first month when they started. Second month before they pay, they’re like, Did my work happen? That’s very important because it takes three months to build trust and then onwards clients like, Let’s keep on rolling if the ranks are moving.

We have the CRM, which is click to own CRM, a client portal we have built. We have built one for invoicing the client records, clients reporting, not reporting, basically their documentation. For the particular client, there will be an account inside our portal that we will have a folder uploaded. That folder, anybody who’s involved in that project can click and see this was the first month’s plan. Say, I wrote the plan, they will see the plan as a document. It’s a CRM we have for client management. That’s brilliant. Industry wise, we are open for a lot of things. Right now, I don’t know what the guys are using. If they are using anything, I’ve given them complete autonomy to use anything and they pay. They use different things, different tools. We use almost all the tools and we get hooked with one and we continue that.

Yeah. Task and operations management and our entire staffing manager, and we have the Kube2 HRM system, the CRM, which is also from the people, the staff owns, the client details. Customers build it. We have a system like that which holds the client’s folder, client’s account details, did the client pay their accounts, and also connected with our accounting system, which is merging with invoices and everything, which is also connected with QuickBooks. We have those, really. Email software and all, I know HubSpot, one of the companies is using for… Seacoast is using a bit. Then I don’t think we have Slack we use, not sure, very sure we are still using. That’s about these things.

Enterprise, if the ranks are there, however, depending on the… I wouldn’t say we dealt with huge enterprise brand names. I don’t even call their names. They’re not like, we didn’t deal with anybody like Apple or anything like doing SEO. Some people put that.
I’ve done training for people who worked at different big name brands, but I can’t say that’s one of my clients. I trained the staff. I used to do SEO training, so I had some major names, but I can’t quote that I did SEO for them. I don’t even know that staff is there anymore. Likewise, we have many even those plans, small business, of course, the industry gives this is small, this is big. If you have this many employees, it’s big. If you have this many… We work with interesting companies who have a passion to do what they are doing. The same thing they are doing maybe… SeekaHost, you can call a small business, but Google, you can call a big business. Both offer the same thing. We have a cloud host, we have a domain, we have a WordPress host, we have a business host, we have minecraft servers, but because of the number of employees and the numbers, they are small, they are big. Approach wise, it depends on their market and their budget. Of course, the smaller thing could be an enterprise who can pick and create straight away. One of the best teachers, if anybody wants to go into SEO, go and do SEO for cryptocurrency people, but now it’s dropping.
Now is not the best time to get them, but it’s going to go up again. Those Bitcoin guys, when they order even content, their bill is like 10,000 plus. That’s like nothing. The biggest clients who were paying were in the crypto industry, guest postings and all, they were like £100 guest posts. 10, on London business, it’s okay, £10,000, 100 guest posts. Likewise, that’s how they would order stuff. Those are niches that if anybody is going to issue or anything, I would advise those are rich niches, really. Might be a little turbulence. Hold on, things will be there. Approach depends on the differentiation, small and big is, do they have the budget and how competitive is their niche?

One of the parameters that we can justify reporting to clients is we report every month to each other. The backlinks help the sites to push, which helps the ranks to go up. The thing that I’m trying to do is the backlinks. Clients want to see how many backlinks were accumulated. We want to see that it’s built and it’s so in different tools. There are several tools that show the backlinks and all. One of the main things because we know if the backlinks are coming, if the backlinks authorities, good ranks are climbing. If backlinks come from good. So, backlinks are a major thing. And then, of course, the ranks. So, the backlinks help the sites to push, which helps the ranks to go up. Those are two of our main parameters. If backlinks come and ranks still don’t go up, the client is not happy anyway. Think backlinks, more backlinks coming, ranks going up, traffic goes up, and then the conversion. Then some clients we have, they are going to rank, went up, traffic came up, no sales. That’s a big problem. Then that’s a parameter to go down and dig down.
It’s the price. What is the industry offer? Then we have to do a full investigation about, now you got the ranks, now you got the traffic. Maybe if the bounce rate is not that bad, if it’s bouncing, why is the reason? Our parameter in sequence should be site built, which is the content of the… Which we call the presentation. If it is a hotel, you present it to the world, world come, world don’t like it, they go. They like it, they stay more, they go and tell the people, everybody comes. That approach. It’s a web property. It’s like a hotel property. Your presentation and then you take into the websites are the backlinks, which helps to increase the ranks, which helps to increase the traffic, which should help to increase the conversions, which is the sales, which helps to make more money. If all this goes up and this is not making sales, get to investigate this. Is the traffic right? Are you ranking for the right keywords? This thing, what is your balance? Those are the main five parameters. They go back and forth and identify most probably when it goes here, it’s right if you got the right keywords right.
If you got the right keywords and if you rank for the right keywords on the top and if you got the right traffic, which means because you rank for the right keywords, the traffic you get because you did the right analysis, you’ll get the right traffic and if your product is good, it’s going to be bought.

Backlinks for years ago hardcore for backlinks for even commercial pages, but not easy. They are like bot backlinks, everybody does that. But however, what I read…

What’s that?

Outreach and ask what’s the price for the link. So, that is a way of it. People call it, but that’s how the commercial markets move. Everything there is a price. And how I see it is they have to edit the article to put the link. So, you have to pay for that. And your world. I don’t get it when people say we should not pay for backlinks. How is he going to pay for maintaining his website? Outreach, discuss, pay the price to get the job done. It’s not you’re paying for the link, you’re paying for the time of the human to do the job and add value to your thing. Because they have to go, maybe they have to publish a full article. You have to pay for the time for that. That’s how I see that. You outreach and you get what you want, really. Of course, when you’re getting, making sure your website and the product is good, it has to be good.
If you get the best backlink for a horrible page, content page, and if it ranks when your bounce rate is high, Google is going to drop it no matter what backlinks you have. That’s right. Your product, web page, the content has to be good for the relevant audience once it ranks to serve for what they are looking for. That’s been triggered to rank by backlinks. Going back to getting the backlinks part, outreach is one thing. Reaching out to competitors and even asking, look here, I see you have a blog post. It’s like, we are even happy to reference you. Would you also reference us? We’re also in the same game. However, we are not referenced to the commercial page. We want to get relevance back. That’s one thing. Some people like it. Very tough to get those links. The other thing is if you are, say, a local business or a… I forget what the word is operating in a certain country, in the UK, we will try to get publications on top of the sites. It’s PR, public exposure on news sites. If BBC has a mention in an article and a mention about how good the Seahawks and Finan, no game.
It runs. You get public exposure on a website which has built its authority and a place that people trust or go. When that communicates, this is good. This site’s rank has much to try and go up. That’s a very powerful signal. How do you get it done? Pay for link builders, pay for companies that do digital PR, you do outreach by your own company staff. Or else you write the most amazing list posts and market research data that people would one day maybe hopefully link to you.

Yeah, there is a way to get it. Google my name, Fernando Raymond, and see I have a full on publication by myself on entrepreneur. And look at the links. Do-follow, no-follow, everything. These are some things we talk about, your underground meetings only. These are very secretive. That is the way the world works. That is really a way. There are some of the things I said, like in the bragging manner, like some of the ranks, it’s insane. When I show them to employees of those search engine companies, when I have some of my friends, when I show them, do you see this? They are like, Whoa, how do you do that? Then when you show when you have links from this, they are like, My God. It’s basically, how do you win a war and become a president in a country? You have to be liked by the people, one thing. There are other ways you have to seduce them. You have to cash them out. Overall, you have to be a good person that does good jobs. If your website is good, if the content is good, how you rank doesn’t matter.
And the only way to rank is, is a matter that works. There are no ways you can put bad content, horrible content, build a horrible show. It doesn’t matter. You get the best links. You’re not going to rank. Even if you rank, you’re going to drop. So that you do good work, build the property right. And then you get on the thing that there is a way to get a do-follow link. Do-follow links help? And no-follow links. I’m getting no-follow links from crazy sites. I love it. Look at no-follow links to seek cause. You seek cause that, get in no-follow links. Look at seek cause no-follow links for Wikipedia, they really help. I’m still to understand the way people say, guys, I only want do-follow links. I’m like, give me the links. I want the reference. Do-follow no-follow is basically putting a code No-follow and the things. I think the thirst to make the job harder. Both links help and to do-follow gives that means I’m feeling you are endorsing straight up as it’s a good source. When you put a no-follow, you are like, I’m not endorsing it, but I’m referencing it.
It’s up to you to decide. Up to Google bots to decide if it is good to pass on. That’s the practical thing that I’m trying to see. When you give a no-follow link, you’re like, I’m full on with that. I love it. When you give a no-follow link, you actually take extra time to put the no follow code. The right way of linking on the web, you just link, referencing. When you’re doing Harvard referencing, when you are doing your TCS, when you’re doing your master’s dissertation, you’re not going to put do-follow no-follow. You’re not going to say, This reference is highly endorsed. This reference is very less likely to be endorsed so the professor can decide whether to pick it. We don’t do that. I don’t get why this no-follow comes from. All the links should be as picked as you are linking. I did a very lot of research about it, I try to understand. Even my UIDAI. When you write a paper, before the Internet came, a paper that’s been having more references, more sources is the paper that the research panel would justify as a good paper. But on the paper, you’re not going to say, This reference, do-follow.

It’s trustworthy. This link, don’t trust. The professor would say, What the hell? If you don’t trust, why did you put the link? That’s the thing. Guys, forget about do-follow, no-follow. We give you everything from ClickDo. Because of the price.

Even from ZCoHost, as a practice, from the early days, we did no-follow links, so we kept it.
But to be very honest, like I’m saying, if you look at some bigger blogs, I see backlinko.com, or even Neil Patel, they’re getting big traffic in a very competitive nature. All links do-follow, other than if they are linking for a web hosting company on and on and on. Then I think even still, if you look at… They are like, and they’re getting traffic. So the ideal way should be don’t even give a no-follow link. I’m trying to read this argument. Even my personal blog and all, I think as a practice, we’re publishers, I have told I put a no-follow and this stuff. But actually, I deep down ask the question, from ClickDo, we used to have no-follow links only when we are linking. Now we are just, I’m like, just a link. Because if you are linking, why don’t you fully believe what you are linking?

The thing is, if you added a no-follow link, that’s a suspicious thing if you may be charged for that link and you are still scared. You link because you got a favour, but you are like, I’m not sure. No-follow links come up. That’s why Google, I’m feeling they said put sponsored posts, put real sponsored, all these things because then they can identify this guy doesn’t trust what he links.
Because that’s the thing I was trying to fix. ClickDo business block. I told most of the writers, authors to just link, don’t even spend time with the no-follow code and traffic is going up. Makes sense. Because if you link, you link. You gotta watch out who you link. If you link to a bad quality site, either it’s a no-follow link, it’s a bad link. You link into the wrong source. It. It’s like that. Because Google and the search engine came to the model of a research paper model. Research papers get picked up and it does the standard and it’s a good paper that justifies an argument when it has more references. You can’t link to a bad reference and say this is going to justify the argument. Likewise, why would you place a bad no-follow link from your article?

Makes sense? Let’s talk about it later, maybe, but I’m diving deep on it.

Number one, it’s the relevance. Is it relevant with the net? If the client is on cryptocurrency, you’re not going to link on a dog walking site, like mommy blog or Daddy Fishing blog. Each relevance is number one. And then that prospect sites quality of authority. So we use tools. There are tools that will look at the backlinks of that. So, basically when prospecting, net relevance is the first pickup point. That attractiveness, the looks, the relevance. And then we do the investigation, is it having good traffic? What are the keywords that it’s getting traffic from? What are the backlinks that it has? We could further break it down. If it is getting good traffic for keywords and the backlinks are still not as many, but we can see it’s picking up backlinks intervals. One backlink happened a week ago, three weeks ago. It’s consistent, not that the last backlink happened in 2018. When you look at a prospecting site, traffic can come, but if we see the last backlink on a tool showing it in 2016, then we are like…
They’re not doing any analytics. They’re not actively doing it. Nobody cares right now. However, it has this feature in the one article it wrote long ago which is still ranking for some reason, but it’s just a matter of it can tank. We look at the backlinking time intervals for that side. That would be the third parameter. That’s actually good. Then, of course, it comes down to when we approach how they come back, what are their guidelines? Would they put a niche editor with a little close with a reference link to the client site or something? Or else would they accept a full blown featured article that we can tell a story to the relevant niche of the client? Then it comes down to the price order. What’s the favour? Is it free? If there is a price, is it worth it? Can we pay the price according to what the client or the business owner can justify? Getting a backlink, it’s PR, it’s exposure, two things. If you publish on a good, neat, relevant site, it could rank, which will get traffic, which will pass it on to this site. Or else if the site is already getting traffic, this article gets featured on the home page, this could also get exposure.
That’s also a spare benefit. Those are the parameters we look at. Base wise, that’s the thing. The true frequency, the prospecting site’s quality and the backlinks it’s having, and then do they accept this full blown article? What’s the price? Can we pay the price? Those are the four to five that core things to look after when going after parameters because they have to respond. Then, can you pay? or what’s the procedure to get published? Can we be done in a timely time? If they say, three months to get published, we would lose a client by then.

Branded and not heavy anchors, commercial anchors. Google is smart enough. We tested that in one of that niche I said, we rank really hard with really author telling. But actually their brand name had the direct anchor also, keyword. That’s the EMB. They get the real anchor advantage. I would say if the site is built with the right content, Google or whatever search engine knows what this site is about and what it needs to show up. If the sites that link-building anchors are nature relevant sites, so this is a dental site. If it gets content on dentistry, oral hygiene blogs, health and wellbeing blogs, search engine bots know it. This is what’s referencing. If you’re referencing an article or a page that also has a similarity, which is linking from a niche relevancy anchor, don’t go to dentist London. Maybe one time, two times, but it’s pretty obvious. If you have 10 links, build dentist London, dentist London, dentist London, you’re going to get tanked, really. That’s not the way. Because the anchor text, their density and all, don’t believe. I’ve been an SEO consultant for years, done it, tested it, everything. I ran for three years straight in this entire country for SEO consultant number one.
That page is still on the first page of SEO Consultant London. That page with the whole video and all. I tested everything. What I realized was if the content is right and if you are getting the rich relevant news websites and everything is linking, it’s actually good. Anchor text ratio, nobody can say you just need five links. Competitor has six links. No, there could be different things. Competitor has six or four links and their links could be powerful. Also, you’re not going to get the same anchors. That’s misleading. That’s not the way you compete, really. Anchors, when it’s getting more branded, branded plus partial anchor, partial keyword focus and go after the keyword. If you want to go after a dentist in London or a dentist near me, when you put on a keyword research tool, you will get 10 or 20 keywords which are related with that keyword. Even on Google, when you search, see what could be closely related and build those links. If you aim to build 20 links, build those close 20 anchors with the goal to run for this core keyword of this page. That’s the thing. This comes at issue, I’d say it’s a strategy, but it’s more of an art.
Artists, you can’t say, dude, you need to draw like this two times, three times, four times. Artists, it’s an art. It’s also SEO. There is a core strategy that you follow in the fundamentals. However, you play about it with your time of entering the market, the quality of the content, how aggressive is the competition, changing the anchor text, linking, building everything, content models, the product service chain. All these things are very sensitive. That’s why a qualified SEO consultant expert who has two or more years of successful experience and done case studies is the people I can see at and people after two, three years of really hammering, they get that. They know what the anchor is. First comer comes, I know SEO, how long can you work in an agency? Three months. They’re like, I’ll be 10 anchors. It’s not going to happen. It comes with the experience of being like a doctor. Even with the same operation, there is a way to approach it, but he knows how to navigate it. That’s the anchor text ratios and all. You play around, you see how that… That’s why rank trackers, backlink analysis, and rank trackers are very important.
Ranks when you’re building, is it going up? Is it going down? How long did it go down? How long was it on the second page? Did it bounce again? It’s a very, very time taking thing, but that’s a very strategic thing to do. Then with the experience, you master the thing and identify. Then you’re like, Okay, I don’t need to get 10 anchor links. I’m just going to get two links, one from Forbes and one from BBC. Two anchors. What are the anchors? Just the brand name. Still it’s fixed up. Then somebody can’t say, I build five anchor texts in the relevant keyword as I still don’t write.

Basically the quantity of course, then the quality really. If the way of the content goes, if you are getting a publication going on, say, at a massively popular site, which is very much relevant and it’s going to be on the first page appearing and it’s going to rank because it went on a key but the exposure is going to get huge. That alone or going all in for that month or the week is enough rather than getting very low quality 10 links.

We have a lot of outside content writers. Even in-house, a couple of them actually, they already didn’t have a look. But we have outside content writers. Many we get from. From the UK, our native writers, depending on the quality of the poster articles we want. A lot from India, from Africa. We have many content writers. They’ve been doing it for years for us. Also massive content because we’re building a lot of blogs, which are used publications. So, if you look at London Local, UK Business Magazine, eBusiness blog, hundreds of articles each, which are publications. We are building them to be the biggest channels. So, if you Google London Business News, writers write for that. And also once you build a block, you don’t write it. People buy it. So, people pay us to write and publish on it. They pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for each publication. They will write the article, they will send the article on behalf of their clients most of the time or as their business. Writers, easy to find. If anybody wants writers, I know a lot of good writers, really.

It depends on nature. If it’s an e-commerce site with hundreds of products, it’s a different story. We always, as an agency, try to do up very few keywords, tell the client. Let’s focus on three to five really cool keywords that have a lot of related keywords that will get you the most traffic, rather than trying to go after so many pages with going after little keywords. If somebody says, I’m a plumber, if I’m a dentist based in Lancaster, we know the keywords that we need to research. We go to keyword research tools. There are several tools. My team uses it. I used to go back in the days, different tools like major known tools are there. We use Mirage, like we use Ahrefs. Those are tools that industry users use Google Keyword Planner. We play around, get an idea, look at the keywords, look at what their competitors are ranking. We put the competitors in that particular page. When we put a page, we will get an understanding. If you are really going, what we will do, even from the client, we’ll ask, Who’s your main benchmark or the competitor that you believe is the thing?
To get the inside data, because they know their industry more than us offline wise. We look at those brands, what keywords they are ranking, identify them, how that traffic they are getting, get an understanding, try to map down those keywords for this particular site and say, present to the client, say, these are the keywords. We will try to do it soon. Two hours session maximum, really soon. Hours and hours and hours. If it really goes, maybe… Sometimes if somebody struggles with the keyword session, I’ll get on the call with them, half an hour call maximum, one hour even if it won’t really go. I’ll go there quickly, say they run through, they will put on Ahrefs, they look at SEMRush, they will put on Google Keyword Planner. Those tools are mainly what we are also using. And then I’m like, This keeps it as a night. Put this competitor, look at the competitor’s site quickly. Have several screens open and we’ll icon two. These are the 10 keywords. That’s all for the client for the next six months. That’s about it.

No, they may not spend eight to 10 hours, but they bill for 10 to 8 hours. That’s how we do it. You don’t want to say you’re doing it. I told you the truth. But when you want to bill it, you’re not going to tell… I’m not being very true to those things right now. I want to keep it. But it’s a different story. Maybe if you’re having a client meeting for the first time, you can’t bill for two hours for £1000.

But when you say the keyword research is 10 hours, then you can say keyword research, the loan is $1,000.

Let’s keep it away.

We have one of the clients in the dental industry. We were most successful, which went for traffic over 70K up to some good months, 100K. That’s in the dentistry industry by ranking them for the keywords like Inversal Length, Inversal Length Cost, Inversal Length Densities, what are the dentures like veneers for the teeth? That’s a case study. I can even share you the link. It’s even on ClickDo. In dental SEO case study even on YouTube, it’s there. Let me see if it is.

I’m going to literally talk to you. It’s a natural smile. I think it’s the most traffic generating site. I just dropped you on Skype anyway. You can see or else you can pass it on. I’m not going to go about screen recording. Dental Natured, this was actually done in 2021. Now, traffic even grew further. Natural smile. That aside, if anybody wants to put the domain, every single keyword was ranked from literally scratch over a two year SEO period and proper content marketing, very identifying the proper keywords and very high end level. These are SEO projects, very high end SEO projects. You spend the time, several people are inbound. We have two account managers, one dedicated person talking to the client every day, if not every day, every week whenever they need. Those high standards and that level when you work with the client, that’s the results you can get because they invest in content and we get the best writers in the country for them. As you know, it’s like English writers as well as all writers who can really write about that subject. That’s your study.

Yeah. One more other thing we do whenever we do those things, all the articles are put by those dentist because orthodontist clients, we try to get it because even though the writer is right, it still goes to the client and they will take several days and read it and approve it and then onwards it goes live. We really put the science of it to Google and then it ranks. This ranks for the… Anybody can search for natural smiles.co.uk and see Dinesh manage the case, the entire client with his team underneath and massive success. The client is like… The client on top of that runs Google ads just really boss the industry. And then I’ve seen clients email several times. Dinesh would show me like, Oh, the client is asking to shut down for the next two months because they get inquiries, phone ringing. Yeah, crazy. From organically. Because they’re literally ranking down one for those tones.

Many were there in my early days of SEO to a level, it went to legal cases levels. Here you can’t mess around. You take a client, the site was already with the bad backlinks, but you took the client, they paid you for the first month. After two days, the Google update came. You haven’t even done anything yet. Google update came. The client came on board on the first page because they wanted to go to the top because the current provider couldn’t do it. But they were aggressive. A lot of strategies that are also red flagging. Update happened in three days. Site is on the seventh page. Client because paid us and came. We haven’t done anything yet. Those are massive horror things. We will now have no refunds. This is how SEO works. These are the things in a meeting. We will try to identify the ideal client we want to work with because if you take the wrong client on board, also some clients pay the price because you tell them and they come on board and they are like, dude, I paid for the last month. The ranks were just still there.
Very pain in the ass. Those become the horror level. Also, SEO client consultancy has a number of clients, but it’s not only the way SEO industry consultants can make money. Agencies can make money with a lot of things. As they try to be like, Be like, we’ve said no for more clients than 10 years ever. We’re not even worried. The client will be like, literally, because the client this year is fine. With the fine client who got the money and was willing to pay. If not, you are just taking a bad marriage. You’re just marrying a person because you have nobody and you just can’t sleep in the same house. It becomes that toxic and bad because some clients will keep on calling you, calling you, calling you and like, My ranks are not picking up. Oh, I said it was at seventh point. Now it’s at the eighth point. Is it falling? It’s a very thing. It’s a horror with the wrong clients all the time. Many of them, in many cases, I had to pay meetings, convince them, show them. Then some clients had to work without getting paid for three months to recover their frankings because they wanted to go to courts and everything.
Major horrors were there in this industry.

Yeah. Rapid fire. Okay, rapid fire. Let’s fire them up. Really anything. What you got?

The last impulse buy. So man, I buy anything I see. I buy an iPhone when I see it because the new one came. I bought the latest Google Pixel and then iPhone 13 plus came and I bought that now Google Pixel. I never ever use it. It’s brand new. Before that, I had the… Now the next person I go to buy a phone, I always buy the latest, but if it is red, sexy and everything. Those are some of the buys. I’m like, buy. Now I’m like, how can I use that? Then I want to give it to my parents or somebody. Funds are some of the buys. Some crazy stock market buys, not stocks, basically cryptocurrency, because the hype was there. I never thought some would crash that bad. Sometimes after a hard day’s work, I’ll open up my coinbase account, my Revolute account, just buy for… I would see the trend, but buy for fun. It’s the trigger. You’re like, Oh, it’s okay. Just buy 10 coins, 10 to 20 coins, and 100 coins. Those normal level, very volatile coins that you can make money quickly when they go. I do those buys and in the last few days, my light coin investments have gone 80 % down.
Dodgecoin, I think it’s even a scam. I think my Dogecoin portfolio is like 90 % down. So, there were some things you do those buyings because of the… But it’s an experience, I love it.

No, I don’t even know my passwords. Yeah. My password, but I have a password, the first word, the list, which I put on my pen drive. Whenever I want, I will have copies of it. So, many passwords, I will only remove my bank account or even there are several actually. I try to have it because you need to change it occasionally also, not really. Clients, I have no idea.

Man, work is just such a hobby. I have a hard time just being on the bed till a little late because I need to sleep seven hours to be at full game.
I just want to jump out of bed.

Not the earliest, but I would be early, like 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock. It’s not the earliest, but some days when I am really curious, mine would wake up at four o’clock, five o’clock on those things. I’m living and breathing C Corestab. It’s really fun. These days, launching the domain checker, domain expiry checker, DNS checker. I’m working with the developer. They start in Sri Lanka a little early. I can’t wait till UK time. But I try to force myself to be on the bed and sleep because then it’s good when I come to the day. But some days yesterday, early morning, I had five hours of sleep, the previous day, five hours stop, so then I feel it. And today, yeah, I slept till a little late. So jumping out of the bed always, anytime, because the work is that fun. It’s a hobby, though. It’s just a hobby. It’s not even work.

PBN Hosting. I think that was.

Yeah, we check our own rankings. I don’t check my client’s rank. I don’t even like favouring clients. There are some that I get on like Ravi Srimol, with whom I have some very friendly clients. Others I don’t check. Here and there maybe. So, PBN Hosting, why I checked was why I said this, we were at number 1 all the time. But yesterday or the day before we saw a person came number 2, almost near. Then I was checking out the rank. I could feel he was coming right on the rank trackers and all when I looked. That’s the keyword I search every few times a week. I would just know that even though the rank tracker searches, I want to make sure. Several keywords, that’s the very last. I would search for an SEO consultant, I would search for business web hosting because we’re on the first page. We are like, how can we go to number one? It’s more so for, I guess, the client’s owner because my team would look at the rank trackers in a client meeting because who checks your rank is either you or your buyer. That’s right. What I learned, one thing for SEO Consultant is, if you’re a consultant is SEO consultant London, I look at that number one, the amount of traffic, not the traffic, about the visits and the clicks you get and the inquiries.
Because it shows 5,000 plus searches a month for SEO Consultant in SEO Consultant London in the UK. It’s all searched by SEO Consultant.

Yeah, so you can trick it. You can run the thing more than you do. I run some of the things with my stuff because we have 30 plus stuff. I will use several people’s everyday search, this particular keyword, and in two months, it will reflect on SEMRush and Ahrefs. When the update happens, when they pick up the new search queries, volumes, and all, it will pick up. You can pick it. It’s like a person who searches. Because the people who also look at it, because they love it. I have my… Because on the Ravish stream only just some of the… That’s when I started. The first I have clients who are like my friends, they’re like, Oh, that’s that level. We’re friends, we travel. That’s the client. They search and they’re like, they will send me a screenshot, bro, ranks on number 7. They search it because they want to make sure rank tracker is there but they also want to see in their own nice way, it ranks on their Google also. That’s unstoppable. But in the SEO industry, most searches in the SEO industry are done by SEO guys who are doing SEO for their own sites.
So, don’t buy into the real volumes of it, not business owners but there are no 5,000 searches by business owners in the UK for SEO Consultant London. Because there are tens of thousands of SEO Consultants. Everybody is searching at least every day or every week about their ads.

Ever gotten or ever given? Whatever I got.

Man, just go all in when you believe in a business. And the one thing, don’t go into the business to do and see how it goes. I have several people. These are actually I got in from readings and some people that the mentors or anything that I virtually saw or followed or read their stuff. I’m like, go all in, then figure it out, hold on it. Going to a web hosting business is really tough. It freaks out. I remember my uncle or dad, they know that Mobile, Amazon is running the business. Google is there. Go to the industry that has the biggest players because you know why? You can even be a player and learn from what they are doing and eventually try to be big and get your share because that’s where a bigger player is already dominating. It’s like there are so many bakeries, but there are still bigger bakeries doing better. But there are also smaller bakeries also catching up. One of them could be bigger. Same thing. Search engine industry. Yahoo was killing it. Who’s killing now?

Go all in if you believe and if you like it. If you have the skill, if you like it, and if you can enjoy doing it all day, every day and think you can do it in even 10 years, 10, 20 years, and the stuff, jump in. Go for it because don’t hesitate. Go all in and then if you also started, just really stick to figure out. That’s what I said. Not like it’s maybe not working, maybe just go and work at my job. No, you went all in, just be all in and figure it out and do it. That’s the way I’ve been doing it. That’s working so far.

Thank you for all this. Really good to talk. Very powerful talk. Very good session with you. Very interesting. Thanks.