Real SEO Rankings Agency - Interview with Rohan Ayyar

[00:02] that's the only thing important you can say yeah conversions are important sales are important visits are important engagement is important but without rankings if your site itself is not ranking there's only 10 places right and

[00:15] now there's not even 10 without rankings like how can you even imagine or how can you call yourself an SEO what what are you optimizing for if if you think rankings aren't important what are you optimizing for you need to get a

[00:29] structure so structure is very important in content yes the ideation process is there and that's what we follow we create a list of ideas for for maybe the whole year it comes to like Advanced topics you need to do your own research

[00:43] AI doesn't help always when I approach someone they they tend to ask you for someone they they tend to ask you for money right y you you pay me $100 and I'll publish your link otherwise Deal or No Deal so how have algorithm updates

[00:55] affected your rankings in your ages after all it's an algorithm it's a bot it can't it can't read and that's what Google admitted in the court case that's going on in the US so the bot can't read [Music]

[01:19] episode where I'll be interviewing SEO experts and entrepreneurs from around the world in today's episode we are speaking to a former head of India for semrush he founded his own agency he's been a speaker at Brighton SEO he's been

[01:34] all over the place on SEO Twitter please welcome to the show Rohan a ladies and gentlemen hello everyone thank you Charles for having me so pleased to be here in this new series yeah well well I appreciate you coming on man do you want

[01:49] background on how you got started with SEO um yep so just like everybody else I think I got into SEO just by accident I suppose um I used to work for a software development company and I used to do I

[02:05] was sort of a team lead and do some project management uh but then this thing called SEO just popped up and we and the company like wanted to rank for say Magento development or PHP web development and things like that and SEO

[02:21] just popped onto the scene way back in 20101 I suppose and I uh I've been in the industry since 2011 about the time Panda hit and so like that was when when

[02:36] I entered SEO the news about panda was all over the place and so it was a big all over the place and so it was a big deal and then slowly I got into SEO and content and those are the topics that interest me so I worked for and then I

[02:50] interest me so I worked for and then I switched and I worked for an agency uh I'm based in ahmdabad India so I worked for an agency called e2m for about 5 years um and around 2018 I guess I got a call from Sam rush

[03:05] 2018 I guess I got a call from Sam rush and uh it was great uh being at Sam rush you know and that's the time when Sam Rush was Rising about the other ones Rush was Rising about the other ones like MOS and the others and uh I worked

[03:18] like MOS and the others and uh I worked at samr for about a year and in 2019 I like Co got together with one of my ex- colleagues DTI and we co-founded an agency called 99 stairs um we do SEO audits uh content marketing

[03:34] um link building and the works yeah so so kind of you worked at India for around a year or so you were the head of the India region what was it like working at se especially during the time where it was it was preo right so they

[03:48] were in that massive growth phase trying to make sure all of their stuff was tip toop shape for the for the IPO right yes so uh the point in India is like uh Market because they they they had they didn't have much awareness about uh SEO

[04:04] didn't have much awareness about uh SEO tools and what tools can do and being a sort of less developed country uh people don't generally pay for SEO tools like we use the group buy stuff and generally like they try and get one subscription

[04:18] and 10 people would use them so uh semrush wanted to like increase the growth so I was more into marketing I didn't have a sales responsibility but all the all all the same like sales was important right the ultimate goal is to

[04:34] get people to use the tool and so what we did was I did a lot of webinars uh with uh people in digital marketing SEO social media because Sam was going

[04:46] getting into uh the entire digital marketing Spectrum not just SEO because they have a they have content tools they have uh social media tools engagement tools and even sort of a marketing calendar or something like that so they

[05:00] wanted to Target the whole Spectrum from PPC uh social media everything and become sort of a whole digital marketing tool and so that's what we did uh I did

[05:12] I organized a lot of meetups in different cities across India um then uh different cities across India um then uh we did webinars and uh we even placed a few articles we did some PR placed a few articles in sort of uh the top media

[05:26] Publications and generally like got to educate people um e-commerce companies and and all the digital people about the importance of SEO and digital marketing

[05:38] importance of SEO and digital marketing as a whole you could say wow okay so so yeah just to add to it like say uh you know flip cart perhaps you've heard of it's It's the Amazon of India so so we took out like big companies like that

[05:53] and approach them and say this is how you can use Sam rush and then we made some case studies and then we put it out in the market and generally got a lot of people to use the tool so that was basically yeah because I I've seen that

[06:09] semrush especially in those other markets like India and some other markets as well generally has a lot bigger presence than ahfs or Ms and because of that localized marketing and the fact that they're getting all these

[06:22] people and they're doing all of this kind of stuff and and kind of see what needs to have Market penetration as well yeah they they had a team in uh Germany uh and they had one in Eastern Europe and then they had one in Latin America

[06:35] so so all these teams were doing their bit and it was managed as a whole by all bit and it was managed as a whole by all renko so maybe uh so so that's how

[06:47] strategies localized strategies from different parts of the world got together and made the tool big yeah so kind of going over to your agency now how have you got most of your leads and most of your lead acquisition for your

[07:00] agency uh so luckily for me it's all word of mouth so from from previous clients or I used to do a lot of guest posting like I was active uh during the

[07:12] time since the time I worked for another agency I used to be very active on agency I used to be very active on Twitter I I proactively tried and uh did guest post on a major website like I've got articles in search engine journal

[07:26] and search engine watch and stuff like that and I was on Twitter so one thing that and I was on Twitter so one thing led to the other and say when when I was when we started the agency we thought like hey we approached a couple of guys

[07:39] uh that old clients of us uh and then we could say we can manage your uh content we can manage your blogs and get you greater visibility and one thing led to the other and most of my work until now is is from word of mouth and reference

[07:57] so uh we we are like um we do white label stuff for a lot of marketing agencies we have clients in the US Israel and the UK mostly so uh

[08:09] these agencies all of most of my clients are far smarter than I am so like they they they they have very specific requirements they want me to do like this is the stuff we want these five links from these five websites or uh

[08:22] links from these five websites or uh just give me a Content calendar for the just give me a Content calendar for the entire year for this client and uh you I I am their chat GPT so what what they can't do themselves like they're they're

[08:35] bad at execution but they they're very clear on what they want and of course I help them get clearer on exactly what it is that may work or may not work for their clients yeah so yeah well that's you said it not me about being a chat

[08:50] TV that's yeah it's pretty it's pretty cool though it kind of allows you to uh it's such a fast rate is pretty awesome and now for a quick message from our sponsor search intelligence if you're looking for digital PR campaigns what

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[10:02] give you inspiration so you you talked at Brighton SEO last year um and in your presentation you kind of alluded to this a bit of an argument that had been going on in Twitter between Ram fish and and jonno alerson where they were talking

[10:17] about ranking factors and if we should be talking about ranking factors within be talking about ranking factors within SEO or not um so what do you think about in terms of do you actually correlate ranking factors to specific work do you

[10:33] you think we should be talking about research around ranking signals and facts and things whose side are you on you need to pick now I've always picked it I and that's what I said in my presentation that uh

[10:47] yes you should you should follow rankings because that's the only thing important say you you can you can say yeah conversions are important sales are engagement is important

[11:00] but without rankings if your site itself is not ranking there's only 10 places is not ranking there's only 10 places right and now there's not even 10 so without rankings like how can you even imagine or how can you call yourself an

[11:12] SEO what what are you optimizing for if if you think rankings aren't important what are you optimizing for so the point I wanted to make and I think I made it successfully is that okay yes

[11:25] conversions everything is important but it it's it's sort of a funnel right so so you get your rankings you get visits you get uh sales you make sales so yes uh ranking factors are important okay we we don't we shouldn't like go deep into

[11:41] we don't we shouldn't like go deep into vanity factors like uh don't say okay I I'm getting this these many links or 3,000 links or keyword stuffing things like that are not so important but yes you should watch out for what is working

[11:55] for you and what's not working for you if if by making a few if by optimizing your content you are getting a a jump of a few places or if by building links from a certain Niche you are getting uh again you your visibility is improving

[12:10] then why not do it so uh my my only point is that we are in SEO if you call yourself an SEO then it's a no-brainer that rankings are important yeah it's it's it's also how you kind of correlate your work being successful yeah over

[12:26] time if you build 10 links 10 times and all of your pages go up you're probably doing something correct right whereas if you go and start optimizing your met down then you're probably doing something wrong right so I think it's

[12:39] correlation but to get better at SEO especially for beginners you kind of have to let them know what it's saying yes or no in terms of correlation working is how you train people yes and and and the point is like people will

[12:55] shouldn't focus on rankings even they mean because some people overdo it so the they say it with good intention that that you shouldn't like get formula if if building links works for one site say in real estate doesn't mean that it

[13:11] in real estate doesn't mean that it might work for somebody else so we need to guard against being formulaic or saying that yes this works and that's where experimentation comes in you you run your own experiments for every

[13:23] client of yours or for every website that you're managing and then you figure out what's working and what's not for you yeah that makes total sense and and be trying to correlate their work

[13:36] otherwise it's it's it's kind of uh like you're kind of shooting blanks right um so when you're doing so you do a lot of content and I was even before you even guest post all over the place if you if you Google your name plus author it

[13:50] comes up a lot right and with a lot of content as well and maybe some from like it's you've been all over the place what's your strategy for content from not necessarily coming up with the keywords the topic of mapping and stuff

[14:05] just the actual uh creating the content from the beginning to kind of publishing it uh so in the in the early days I used to write a lot of content myself so these days uh I'm an agency so do you mean it for like clients like how we do

[14:20] it for clients so what the process is now now we have a small team of writers so still the the basics uh you need to get a structure so structure

[14:32] is very important in content yes the ideation process is there and that's what we follow we create a list of ideas for for maybe the whole year so so when you're working with uh with an end client or a B2B business or an

[14:46] e-commerce company or or even a retailer uh the strategy is to create a list of ideas that you can publish over the period of 6 months to one year and and then you decide the Cadence and then we like give a structure to our

[15:02] writers that this is the topic and at least these are the four or five things that I want you to write about and that's what that's what makes a difference and as uh one more thing is that you need subject matter expertise

[15:16] so I work for some uh very specific companies like um Can name them maybe but uh very Advanced they're doing advanced work in cloud computing um

[15:28] advanced work in cloud computing um Flash storage devices so uh in such uh when it comes to like Advanced topics you need to do your own research AI you need to do your own research AI doesn't help always and uh because it's

[15:41] too new for AI and maybe you it needs to retrain itself with new data all the retrain itself with new data all the time so uh so that's where you need some amount of manual work manual research and that's that's where we come in or

[15:54] that's where we make that small difference uh that's that's what I try basically yeah so you also talk about building links are you buying Links at all because you said that certain specific clients want certain specific

[16:09] sites so I'm guessing in that instance you might have to buy links right yes yes yes there's no two there's no to uh views about it or there's no hiding it so you need sort of like Niche edits or

[16:24] insertions at least and and what happens is like if you're building links for a SAS product or a uh say a project management software something or a CRM management software something or a CRM software uh when you approach uh

[16:39] somebody even even if I do only guest posting when I approach someone they they tend to ask you for money like their strategy or their Web Master strategy or the person in control like if he's the editor of their

[16:53] blog it's their pre prerogative to like you you you pay me $100 and I'll publish you you you pay me $100 and I'll publish your link otherwise Deal or No Deal so in in such cases man it's quicker to it's quicker to pay them even and that

[17:08] doesn't mean you absolved of the responsibility of giving them good content yeah you give them the content all the same I don't want him to choose uh sort of what they write about me or my client uh I will give them the

[17:22] content or suggest what to write all the same but then it's quicker to pay yeah no if you don't pay yeah I get it i' I've I've spoken to a few people who are I've I've spoken to a few people who are like no I 100% I will only build L

[17:38] don't I said what I said what are you like are you snake charming the site owners or something you know like playing your little flute and they like don't really get it so um because I've done Outreach to literally this probably

[17:51] millions of websites and at at this stage well over half of them ask you for and I'm pretty sure it's probably more like 85% of the sites we Outreach to are asking for some sort of payment these days asking for some sort of and then

[18:06] when like if I'm doing it personally uh say uh since uh I've been doing it for a lot of time I sometimes I can say that uh look here mate uh I have published I have written for so many good Publications and uh my content is really

[18:22] good for you uh sometimes I can I'm able to convince them that if they publish my site and then they don't they don't charge me that happens too but that's based on a reputation built over the years and that's what we try you can try

[18:38] and do it for your clients too like if if it's a big brand and if you have built your reputation over over a few years then you can try and tell them look it's really a synergetic relationship and all uh but yes you do

[18:53] need to pay in most in many cases yep yeah unfortunately that's just the world we live that's that's the way the web works and even Google in their in their link spam guidelines they have a sentence that says uh that that's how

[19:08] remember exactly but they're acknowledging that uh links or content or whatever uh needs to be paid and that's what it works so they're they're only telling you to disclose if it's a paid link obviously uh so they're

[19:24] they're not saying no you can't buy Links of course we we don't disclose it all the time but that's how the web works so how have algorithm updates affected your rankings in your agency especially the

[19:38] last kind of year with just some really crazy and wild updates yes yes so helpful content update so even if I say I create helpful content for a lot of clients it did affect many and some results were surprising like their

[19:52] results were surprising like their content was so good like you can't find anything wrong with it and when we say good we know what's good right it was good we know what's good right it was really helpful but then sometimes that's

[20:05] the way it after all it's an algorithm it's a bot it can't it can't read and that's what Google admitted in their sort of uh filings recently in the in the court that uh court case that that's going on in the US so the bot can't read

[20:21] ultimately so what happens is uh yeah some of our sites were affected but not not most of them thank ful and I've seen that you can recover it takes time and

[20:33] sometimes there are quick hacks you optimize the content a bit and then it changes so uh The Helpful content update specifically it affects the whole site so even if a few of your articles or say 25% of your articles or your blog posts

[20:49] aren good enough or you have thin content it it tends to bring down the rankings of your whole site in such cases you just quickly delete those post or redirect them to better ones um many times we find that uh some articles are

[21:05] cannibalizing the other ones like you have if you are a marketing agency you have like 10 posts on content strategy and 10 on SEO tips or whatever so you just combine them into one and or you optimize a post that was ranking well

[21:20] but has fallen recently and sometimes it works quickly like you you optimize like 15 or 20 post and then you see result the whole of the site comes up as well

[21:32] so there are some I've also seen that building links can get you out of the helpful content update sometimes in three well we don't update sometimes in three well we don't know the internal uh how these how the

[21:47] link algorithm and the content algorithm are related sometimes it works yeah well that will be out there that actually quite be quite thankful for those tips a lot of agencies got really impacted by it last year and even still now a lot of

[22:04] headless chickens without any kind of clue on what to be doing and there's no Clarity there's no Clarity from Google there's they're not explaining maybe because they don't they themselves don't know how the elgo works right yeah

[22:16] probably the reality of it so is there anywhere where people can find you online to kind of follow up with more information for when Google maybe I'm there I'm there on Twitter I'm always there um every few hours my ID is search

[22:31] Rook so okay I'll link to to your Twitter down in the description down below I thank you for coming on once more please subscribe in the uh please subscribe like and comment down below I'll see you in the next one yes see you