Today I’m talking to Dan Ray from Ray Digital Marketing and DanRay.me.

He is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and, specifically, a link building specialist. Link Building, building links back to websites, is a key component of SEO.

SEO get a bad reputation sometimes. It can be taught to break through the noise and the trust barrier, because there are so many shady players in the world of SEO, mainly related to black-hat SEO.

I just like how open and transparent Dan has been with the way he presents himself and his services. We talk about some interesting turns that he’s had along the way from building up to 6 figures per month in service income and then ramping down, only to build it back up again.

And of course we talk tactics about SEO and building individual links to your website.

Enjoy!

Episode Notes

[5:16] Dan’s philosophy to cap his maximum revenue per client and intentional ceiling his income.

[8:29] Building the team for the first operation.

[11:55] How Dan got into SEO. The point Dan understood he had to build systems to run his business.

• “My thinking was, I need to be able to go into hospital and retain my clients. I need to stop being a freelancer.”

[16:06] Turning points and restricting personal time to clients.

• “If you are providing 100k£ worth of services, you are getting 100k£ worth of stress.”

[20:11] Closing down the business, and rebuilding it up again. What’s different this time.

[25:06] How the process looks like from the client’s point view. Common places to get back-links. Types of links.

• “90% of links come from the follow-up.”

[32:57] Competing for attention in outreach cold emailing.

[37:41] How Dan’s clients think in terms of results. The “Transparency Strategy”.

• “By not selling SEO and just link building as a standalone thing, my only responsibility is to do what I said I’ll do.”

[41:11] Community and his strategy to sell high ticket training.

Links

• Dan Ray on Twitter
• Dan Ray’s agency, Ray Digital Marketing
• Dan Ray’s Website
• Dan Ray’s community on Facebook
• Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley
• Pat Flynn’s THE Backlinking Strategy That Works
• Brennan Dunn
• Minimalism Movement
• Over 50 Links In 2 Hours Work? Yeah Go On Then! – 4 Steps Video to Get Links
• Link Prospecting – Spreadsheets for keyword operators
• GDPR
• Google Data Studio