James Dooley: Some people say that oh I can't remember last time someone had an unnatural link penalty it happens every single week I think it's trying to differentiate what I am and what just simply and that's the hardest thing Craig how we doing all good mate all good you know you look at Cristiano Ronaldo what's the difference between him and someone else it's it's it's a small thing what's the difference between a good SEO and a great SEO in your opinion I think the the differences are Craig how we doing all good mate all good so managed to get you on a podcast finally mate it's been a long time coming but for a long time unfortunately or fortunately let's let's get straight into it why SEO myths in the industry debunking SEO myths and obviously from speaking to you over the years we've had we've heard a lot of stories we've tested a lot of things together what for anyone who's starting out how does people know on some of the training and some of the stuff that's going on whether it's an SEO myth or whether they should be going down that route?

Craig Campbell: So for me that that's a very very difficult one and the the reason being is you know when you start out you don't know who to to listen to so you could be saying this or someone over there could be saying that so for me you know I was listening watching five or ten people and you know someone would say oh do this do that and without actually testing it you're you're going to run into trouble you can't go around doing things that is is hey so to speak because we both know that when when it comes to SEO there's a lot of hearsay or you know even now when when you listen to to people talking and and stuff like that they're doing stuff that was like you know four five years ago which we know 100% doesn't work and I think we had a conversation last night and I'm not going to mention any names or anything like that but you know there was a particular person who who mentioned something that we when it comes to local SEO that that hasn't worked for years it just clearly doesn't work and you know so so there are people out there who are teaching stuff that maybe did work two three years ago or even six months ago and you know you're taking that as gospel and because you're a a newbie you you're going you know that makes perfect sense but of course Google are always changing stuff as well so for me it's not necessarily always myths it's it's how up to date the information is and you know there there is of course miss out there but I think a lot of the problems you've got as in is the out of date information which is a hellish amount out there and it's it's even you know I used to do a lot of online courses and stuff but even trying to keep that up to date is it's almost impossible something that could work for me this week might not be relevant next week so again then people say ah you're a bullshitter or that's a myth or that didn't work or whatever it might be so I think it's trying to differentiate what a myth is and what just simply no longer works and and that's the hardest thing.

James Dooley: Yeah I think what's important about it is that the the misinformation that's being shared I don't think the people are physically trying to send them down the wrong path yeah I think it is that they've probably just heard it thought that it sounds good and then next minute they getting in their own slides or in their own course when all that sounds advanced I'm going to get it in with no testing and and at that time like you said what was talking about last night with regards to Google Business profiles and local SEO there were some strategies that was working really well but Google patched it probably about three years ago yeah and there's still people talking about it last week on stage saying you just need to do this this and this and you're like no mate like that that was three years ago that it got patched and we know from like and it was pretty much like 98% of the time didn't work so it was like absolute conclusive on the testing that it doesn't work anymore yet these people are still sharing that information and I think it's sad because like you said how do you break through the noise and understand what works and what doesn't when you are listening to certain people or not.

Craig Campbell: Yeah so I mean from from that I'm going to jump on to a next question for you I'm going to give you a couple of quick fire questions to start with let's do it what's the difference between a good SEO and a great SEO in your opinion I think the the differences are the the small amount of detail you know small amounts of details that a great SEO will go into so I I've spoken to many SEOs over the years and who would be considered good or or great and all that kind of stuff I know guys that that we I know we're both fans of Matthew Woodwards you know what what's the difference between Matthew Woodward and and let's say another good SEO that's out there you know it's the it's the small attentions to detail and you know he's very technical guy and he thinks about things you know really differently plus he he tests a hell of a lot you know I don't know whether he still does or not but you know he would be able to have an argument with you saying no that's that's rubbish and you know you should do this or if you tried that you thought about this and I think that's the the difference between good and great you know we all know anyone can really be a good SEO if they follow you know what works and stuff like that but you know really being a great SEO would be someone who's actually you know on top of it and they're doing the test that you know they're they're trying things out and and you know it's those small details in in the background there and and you know trying to always level up as the difference between good and great and you know you look at Cristiano Ronaldo what's the difference between him and someone else it's it's it's a small thing you know he's obviously very very dedicated and it's the small other little things that he does which obviously sets him miles apart from everyone else and even watching the the Portugal game last night you know he's still fast he's still you know great physique for a guy at 39 so so I think it's not necessarily completely different things it's just the the dedication you know some some people I spoke to are just obsessed with SEO and they don't stop they don't they think about it on Sundays and you know even some of the group chats we in and stuff you know people will be fighting at 6:00 on a Sunday morning about stuff and I think that's really you know the difference between good and and great and you know and it it's one of the the things that I would always say to you you know you you obviously done a lot of traveling as well but you always refer back to the same little amount of guys let's say there's 20 or 30 guys in in a kind of little group and you always revert back to them probably because they're all very very similar people doing the same kind of thing they're all arguing they're always fighting they're always trying to level up not not fighting in a bad way but you know you're going no definitely that's some rubbish right there you're talking rubbish what about this what about that I've tried this I've tried that and that that's good conversations to be having and I think that's a healthy debate and I don't think other SEOs are prepared to take that on board and I think that's what makes people great is is you know no one's got a big ego here and says I'm the best I am the most money or anything like that.

James Dooley: Yeah you know what's great like I literally still to this day see myself as being an amateur as as an SEO yeah I'm very I've leveraged SEO in a big way from a from a business standpoint I've done very well from SEO but I still see myself as being an amateur so still last night I'm asking you like little bits of questions what you do here what you do there the reason why I love our crowd and our private co-work groups and private little Mastermind groups of what we have is we we will call someone rubbish like no that don't work that's not worked for two years but you can't really do that on a stage but obviously in a private group I'll throw you under the bus all day long no Craig you've not done this you need to test that and then you'll do same to me and it's like right all right well let's have a competition let's rank this keyword and let's see what's working in today's algorithms.

Craig Campbell: Yeah and that's what I love about our group yeah is that they're not shy of having a debate and and saying no I I disagree yeah where sometimes events you can't go and heckle someone on stage you know what I mean so it's a bit different when it's like that but I'd say also a little bit of a difference between good and great is once we get the minor details right like what you said with dedication is systemising it and scaling yeah and like I think a lot of people will come come on to this further down the line but a lot of people suffer with the free PS prioritisation procrastination and perfectionism do you know what my SEO's probably not as good as 90% of the ones who are good yeah but I scale yeah and I scale well and I don't procrastinate and I think that's where our team have done very very well because we're very very good at scaling things with systems and processes in place.

James Dooley: Yeah that's something I would say you're always good at is is the ability to take something and then it grows with arms and legs which is it's funny to see as well where you just take that small amount of knowledge and bloody blow it up which is always good to see but question for you and we you know as we've spoken about you know you've got to test stuff changes happen with Google the the job for Google is to to stop us from manipulating what we do and obviously we've seen recent updates helpful content update and and websites and getting manual actions taken against them or or algorithmic penalties or whatever whatever it may be there's obviously thousands of people talking online about it I know you in particular deal with website recoveries and stuff like that so I just want to know from here and now because obviously want to give current information out to people and what have you seen with you know obviously websites and having either algorithmic or or manual penalties and how have you been able to recover any of them any tips?

Craig Campbell: So there's a lot of different manufacturing penalties of what you can get so say one of the easiest ones to get out of and that we do very well with is the unnatural links penalties some people say that oh I can't remember last time someone had an unnatural links penalty it happens every single week like literally every single week there's people getting them now we're in the know because people come to us for that service yeah so from there then what works very well is you've then got to extract every single one of the keywords it's in the backlink profile using various tools from Majestic Ahrefs SemRush Google search console link research tools extract them all put them into a system work out what you think are toxic but prior to that is you actually need to show Google that you've tried to reach out to these bad links to get them if anything that you don't know about to get them physically removed so you've got to do that process as part of the reconsideration request that's very important part of it as well which majority of people don't do and then come to us going I have done five reconsideration requests and they've not even responded and you're like you've not followed what they've asked you to do yeah so you got to follow them in that route now the truth of the matter is trying to outreach to a lot of these web TSE you're just not going to get any response so then at that point then you then going to load them into the disavow file you've got to be pretty aggressive with the ones that you want to put into there anything that's got any sort of toxicity get them put into there and then submit it via the reconsideration it's taking approximately about 12 weeks on average for Google to come back now previously during covid it was nearly 12 months geez so it's but approximately 12 weeks there is some six to eight weeks that are coming back we've got a very good success rate of getting out of them because we follow exactly what they want us to do we've got certain wording in the reconsideration request that we put in there with regards to pure spam it's a very difficult one to get out of and almost to the point it's not worth doing because when you do recover it and if you do get it back rankings don't come back so it's almost almost worthless just move on and build another site with regards to thin content you've just got to go through any pages that are not ranking any pages that are not getting impressions any pages that I deem that you think could be low quality and again just be really really aggressive with content pruning getting rid of those pages do the reconsideration request and again you can get them back from the thin content penalties and they're all the manual action ones with regards to actual algorithmic penalties the worst I don't know what your thoughts are in this but the worst algorithmic penalty I've ever come across is the helpful content update and for display ads and affiliate sites I've seen sites that have had in traffic kind of Flatline half in traffic Flatline half in traffic and some of these are really good sites in my opinion they've got topical authority good quality links good quality optimised content and I think some of them have been caught up along bad sites yeah and some of them have wrongly been hit and obviously the rise of Reddit and other user generated content kind of websites that have taken over and there's been a big intent shift from Google that are not wanting to rank the same looking sites that people are using like surfing resío on page and other correlation tools and Google are trying to move away that they're not showing the same set of results but everyone saying is that it is it the end is is affiliate marketing dead well go and type in best TVs best whatever yeah there's still affiliate sites that are ranking so it's not like dead and you just need to change your approach now do I know the approach yet for recovery not not fully we're testing a lot testing the same things like disavow even though you might have an unnatural links penalty removing the toxic links doing content pruning try to improving the content that's not getting any clicks that you think you need that's like the right entities on point with the central kind of entity of the site and any gaps in the content for topical authority and stuff like just doing what you've always taught me anyway like when you used to come down eight years ago to train our team it was right good quality content do topical authority technically build a a decent site internal link it do a lot of off page kind of factors like social media do some good quality links like it's the same thing yeah but I think the the quality thresholds have have gone up so that's kind of what we're trying to do to to recover on algorithmic penalties a lot of the others that are not helpful content update like the March update there was pretty easy with content pruning and building more content and more links as long as it's quality that that was easy to recover for from the March one but the out for concert September's been a bit lethal and one particular website and which I'm not going to name for obvious reasons but the gambling one your website the gambling one which I'm sure mutual friends and stuff will know which one we're talking about obviously that and took a dive in terms of traffic and you done testing you done your 301 redirect it recovered for two weeks and then it fell off a cliff again and tell us a bit more about that and what your plans are next because obviously not everything can be successful not everyone can sit here and say I've done this I've done that and it was all successful there's obviously pain points within the SEO industry and that's one that you suffer from a very successful website that you've spent God knows how much money on don't even want to know but what's the plan next for that?

Craig Campbell: So that's a great question so what we we heard some people going oh you need to do is and do the 301 or do a and a a cross domain canonical and then we started speaking to other people that was technical going cross domain canonical don't work you need to do the 301 method and we've tried it's two different sites actually that we done the freeway up we did a we tried to do a cross site canonical I'm not very technical but this is on one of the sites showed nothing didn't recover at all and then we other one we tried to do a 301 and the one that we did the 301 it was pretty much getting 10 clicks a day and previously it was getting like 10,000 clicks a day and we did the 301 and two days later boom everything jumped back like position number one for the main primary terms in casino slots bingo it was like wow we've done it page by page redirect just to a new domain it was like right brilliant this is it and then it lasted I think was 17 days and then boom just took a nose dive again went and so but the point you know you know what frustrates me right with the industry some people it's some of these graphs that people do because I could have took that graph and took it on the 17th day yeah and gone I've recovered this site I am the expert at recovering sites yeah and it's just the wrong way of doing things and people spend but not telling you that two days after and this is where some of the we speaking about this last night as well some of the testing that people talk about some of the myths and stuff like that like some some people do that with CTR yeah so they do CTR do search and click within Google and they get the jumps they get the jumps they get the jumps until they overcook it and then they tank right or they stop doing it and it just drops back down in a worse position than what there was previously yeah and people are doing this but then they're showing the results of him jumping from number seven to number one yeah and there was only number one for 24 hours and then it's jump back there in worse position than what it ever has but they get the graph showing I got this from number seven to number one using my CTR techniques yeah and then actually when you then start to dig deeper you're like you can't just say that like what you've not said is that you ran it for 48 hours it did jump for 24 hours and now it's in a worse position than what it ever was yeah well well I'd not be able to sell me to then I'm was like right okay so that's where some of the myths thing starts coming with what's working and what's not but the next steps back onto the 301 and just going to try to do everything that we know like see whether maybe doing like a press release and a digital PR campaign of like given an injection of quite a few links yeah might spark something that's like oh there's been a boost in this and there we found think like 107 new pages that isn't that we're missing on the site that we feel could be part of our topical authority it's probably about 90 pages there it's not good enough and some of them that we've gone too wide on like topic dilution so we're going to prune some of them back go into existing pages like that got content rot or maybe an intent shift and so we've got like I think it's called Night Watch or Market Watch from Page Optimizer Pro yeah Kyle Roofs just to see whether there's been an intent shift on certain pages in The SERPs all right can we now reoptimise that page to get Edge analysis and stuff just try and do everything that we can and but at some point I might just park it and leave it and just work on the other sites that are working well because like there's only so much money you can throw at it until you start to realise I'm not getting a return on investment on this site yeah so it it's a loss a big loss we've spent a lot of money on that site but we have got a lot of sites that are doing well yeah so we've got both ends of the spectrum we've had a lot of sites doing really really well and we've got some big sites that have been completely decimated so yeah I I don't know what if we could do another one in a few months and I'll tell you where we're up to with it and if we've recovered it what did I do and what recovered it and stuff like that but I can't give the exact answers because I've not fully recovered it but the 301 method like I said works in for this in the gambling space for 17 days and then tanked again so and I'm assuming before you done through one redirect you done the and disavow links and content pruning and all the other stuff that you mentioned?

James Dooley: Everything everything that everybody has told us in the industry or you just need to do that or you just need to do this that we feel is a bonified way of all right I I can see your point there so the all the crawl errors in Google search console all the internal linking every every page is two clicks away from the home page technically it's a well-built site like it loads in I think like point 7 seconds and everything we did from a technical standpoint content span on point may be we are missing a few pages and maybe there was a few extra pages that we needed to delete so maybe we're looking at like cost of information retrieval yeah but I'm looking at the pages that are ranking and I'm like they've got so many more pages that are terrible and some of the links it's got so many more toxic links so like I don't know if I'm being honest I'm I'm clueless in certain areas for that site yeah and some of my other sites that have taken over this site that's ranking and doing well I don't think it's as good yeah and they're outranking it so it's not just all doing loom I don't know what I'm doing with SEO and that's it it's gone like some of the sites I have have flown and I'm like why are they doing so well it's bizarre how that happens and I've done that myself where you're like bloody that was easy and and then there's others that just don't move so yeah annoying bit of the random ranking factor of the Google dance whatever you want to call it it's like yeah you need to that's why I think diversification is important yeah like don't throw all your eggs in one basket don't have one big affiliate site, try try and do some sort of I mean I probably diversify too too much you are the diversifying guy but we'll go into that anyway I'm going to ask you a question right if you could ask a Google engineer one question right about a ranking factor that and he has to answer it honestly, what would you ask him?

Craig Campbell: So I've thought about this and for the last couple because I've seen the questions before really difficult and you know the big thing for me would be the that interests me the most that you know obviously we understand on page we understand link building we've all done that kind of stuff for years even CTR we've done all that kind of stuff but the the engagement side of things is the big big thing for me that I don't think anyone fully understands and how Google such kind of deal with with that data whether that's coming from social media whether it's coming from paid ads whether it's coming through CTR or whatever you're doing and and you know obviously going on and using your mailing list what what is the real impact of doing that kind of stuff obviously we see massive jumps and stuff like that but I'd love to to nail a Google engineer on here because I think there's there's a lot to be in that little part there you know we've all seen it position seven and or whatever and and you send a whole bunch of traffic to a particular page and boom you know you know we we all know that kind of stuff but I would like to to get a Google engineer to be more honest on that we know links work we know content we we you know all of these kind of things have all all worked for for many many years and as has engagement signals but I just like to dig deeper into that because it is it is a great one is it because like you start looking at the engagement signals and is it dwell time is it pogo sticking but the issue is and this is where I have a debate with some people like if someone goes on to my website and I present them with the exact information of what they want and a telephone number right and they get the telephone number and they go right brilliant but majority of industries if you're buying something or you want a service you want free quotes so you're going to go back to Google to click on the next result down and click onto that yeah and maybe get their email address or their telephone number that doesn't mean you didn't like the number one result yeah so if they are penalizing sites for pogo sticking because they gone back to the SERP to click on number two result yeah maybe they just got the telephone number and is that doing a disservice for the number one result and then number two result clicks on to number three result and it's like and then the number three result I've got my three quotes and and then they exit it down the whole I've had the best best kind of result on number three result it's like they've not so it's such a strange one for them to do.

Craig Campbell: How many different pages do the visit because some people like Eric Lopers came out with a case study saying he thinks that a lot of affiliate sites and display ad sites got hit because a lot of other sites that get hit is because the amount of average pages being visited where an affiliate site if it does its job you land on a page for best Lawn Mowers and you go oh I want to know what that is and you click off the site via the affiliate link yeah you've done your job for the affiliate site but they've only visited one page yeah but they've had a good user experience because they've had the list and now you've presented them with what you wanted to present them with but then he's kind of implying that because they've only visited the one page it's a negative signal so it would yeah would be an absolute great question one more question for you then on with regards to the Google so if you owned Google so someone came along there you are you majority shareholder right and you could you could turn the dial up or down in certain areas right so it seems to be like let's say like Reddit yeah now has been white listed and pretty much it gets this ranking boost better than a lot of other sites yeah so would you kind of turn that one back down or would you turn user generated content sites back down a little bit or would you promote links more and if you do promote links more let's dig a bit deeper like would it be the relevance of the links does it links that get traffic is it powerful links like what would you dial up within Google search results that you think would yield better results?

Craig Campbell: I mean that is a really tough one to to answer because like I get it you know Reddit and you know for whatever reason I've I've got their extra little bit of a push and but the big thing for me is people will abuse that and like so do the way I see it they're like wolves in a minute they see something working they all go in there and smash the rubbish out of it and it's the same with links you know would you dial up links again and and what type of links so we all know that people for many years whether they agree to it or not they they do some form of link building whether that be buying guest post doing digital PR you know blah blah blah blah blah and you know what what is a good quality link now we all you know do links and we all know what we're buying and all that kind of stuff there are you know I think Woodward gave out his 28 point checklist you know you've got to have links with traffic they've got to be absolutely relevant you know what and you've got all these kind of again myths going back to the myths thing is it the content surrounding the the anchor text that that has to be relevant or is it the page itself that has to be relevant or is it the website itself that has to be relevant and these are all things you could and potentially fine tune I think link building for me I don't know if I would actually turn the heat back up on it because I think it's too easy and to manipulate you know if if if I was a Google engineer and I released a statement saying you know good quality relevant links with traffic you know that that's all you need everyone's going to pile in and get that kind of stuff and they're not going to and the only issue though know if it was let's say content based would be that's probably easier than ever know with AI and our special intelligence so it seems to probably be engagement would be probably the one that you'd try to dial up but yeah I think that that you'd have to dial up but again you'd have to dial up the components within that like you know it wouldn't be fair like you said there and you know if you went on to an Amazon affiliate website and and you know you land in one page and then you go to Amazon and buy your camera whatever it may be that and Google are hammering you for that that's rubbish because Google have to understand what the rubbish they had a good experience you know and so I think that type of thing has to be and tweaked and that's something I would be tweaking I think there's you know a lot of things even even when it comes to the algorithmic penalties and stuff I think a lot of websites have been hit that definitely shouldn't have and I think that you know they have to fine tune the nozzles on that but I think again it would go back to engagement we we we all kind of semi understand on page we all understand link building and but what other things are in there and I think that that kind of grey area is the engagement side and I don't know all of the answers all I can really do is you know do what I do and and hope for the best but you know I'm a killing myself with some of the engagement and you know like sending and people you know for an email and blast to to go and land on a page and it's maybe not giving everything or not giving away everything that to that 40,000 people or whatever I'm sending it to and so again I could be killing myself by doing that but because everyone says engagement is the you know the big thing I'm I'm in that train as well and throwing it about so I would I would probably like to tweak around with the engagement side of things and I think you know link building it's been tweaked around for for many years anyway I'm not sure and what what you know turning that up or or down either way would really do and again I would probably agree with you on the the on page side of things and I'm not sure how much of that you could really turn up now so probably engagement for sure and would be my thing but going back to other questions and we obviously test a lot so whether that be engagement or whatever we test and you are the type of guy and I've seen it in your office you know someone's said something to you in a night out you go into the office the whiteboards there and all this you know everything that was on there rubbed out and guys were doing this today do that do that do that and which is and it's a good thing good thing to see but like anything there's only so many staff you've got so much money you've got how do you decide what you can bloody test on because there's a lot of rubbish out there and for anyone that's listening to this how do you say that's worth testing and and you know so so and so over there says something and you go no I'm not testing that?

Craig Campbell: So that's a great question because I've wasted millions on testing because I listened to everyone previously yeah and he start to realize that there's so many people out there that just rehash all Chinese whispers yeah so now I listen to the right people but also what I start to do is I'm listening to people that are experts in their field kind of always say it if I'm getting a roof done on my house I get a roof to go and do it so like slur yesterday like in my opinion he's one of the best GMB guys so when he starts to tell me something instead of me going off testing it I'll just give him one of my GMBs and go go and rank it and if he ranks it I know he knows what he's doing yeah so I kind of just subcontract it to him and I get the expert in to do it and I don't really need to test what's working yeah I just need to know when I order from him it works and I get the desired outcome and it's more the desired outcome that I want so for in-house testing I'm testing just the basics of like technical topical authority what is good quality content what is good quality links do these links move the needle what ranks with regards to like power posts and stuff like that so it's just the very core basics and anything that forms outside of it nowadays I'm like prove to me you prove to me you're telling me that this works here you are I I'll give you this website or give you this page or I'll give you this Google business profile go and show me yeah and a lot of them don't show me yeah and then I go obviously it's not working then if it was then I'll pay you if you rank it you know what I mean like you're telling me this works prove to me show show me on this site at the moment that ranks in position number five get it to position number one yeah and that's kind of saved us a lot of money but also cowork groups masterminds like I want to touch on you've got a mastermind group and I don't feel you promote it enough and I know you don't like promoting things but Craig Campbell Mastermind like people need to know about this because it's an amazing mastermind group that's got people like Slur and other people in there and experts in that group that it's less than 100 pounds a month to join it they're getting weekly calls they've got all the other people that's in there that's doing the tests I don't need to test as much anymore yeah I used to be the one out there that when I wasn't doing as much networking I was needing to test everything yeah nowadays I don't need to because whoever's the expert in their lane they're doing the tests every single day because they want to be the most innovative and the best in their lane yeah allow them to test what works on Google Business profiles listen to people let's say like Kyle Roof and Corey on page yeah but I won't go to them about link building yeah like go to you you've got a really good digital PR service do you know what I mean but like your mastermind group I feel you need to promote it a been honest with you this is just a thing between me and you and I know you don't like being selling and pitch and all the rest of it you you like providing value you've got that abundance mindset but people need to know about it?

Craig Campbell: I mean I have I have promoted it gently to to people to see how it all worked out and and like you say there's a lot of value in it there's a lot of different people who have different skills you know there's there's guys in America there's guys in India and you know we do have a lot of tests we do have a lot of fun games competitions and to to like you know Slur for example is is a perfect one for GMBs and so although I don't operate in a GMB space just because it's it's no value to to what I do really and you know I'm I'm probably still up there in terms of knowledge wise because we we teach that rubbish and we tell people what to do we see the testing and we can see that works you know reviews you know or whatever it may be and driving directions whatever it may be and again we've been out with the phones and went to the graveyard we coped the the holy Starks method we you know we have calls about this stuff two three times a week and I think that's a great way and to delegate your tests and I don't personally want to sit there and spend money on test after test after test so if you can do that and in a group environment where everyone learns good or bad whether the tests are completing utter failure I think that's a good place to be at and I think that's what the the masterminds about and but you know there's there's about 100 people in it and and they're all good people we've had a few bad eggs in the mastermind previously as well so I do I want to promote it and have a thousand people in it that is where I've always kind of been like I'm not so sure because it's a good bunch of people and that come to conferences and all that as well and you've probably met some of them at SEO underground and stuff like that as well whole bunch of people in there and they're all really smart in their own little things there's guys that and big Reese who Gary over there and you know he's got his own CTR for GMBs and kind of stuff going on as well and again we get them on to talk about what they're doing what's up what's working what's not working and so we know we know that there's been problems with reviews sticking over recent months and you've got to warm up there so all these kind of little details again it goes back to what makes someone good or great is knowing what works and what doesn't currently and it's the it's the fine tuning bit it's like you add an image ranking test yeah like competition that's brilliant it's in a live SERP in today's algorithm yeah what's working right so you go and run that and you people doing like mass embeds Rankerx money robot and SEO Neo and some of them are just doing it on PBN and some of them are and trying to rank the image on the thumbnail like all these different strategies that people are doing that they're testing out and you're seeing all these different results in a live environment yeah that is would cost you a fortune to run yeah if you just did it by yourself on testing yeah so that alone that one if you did one test a quarter yeah would be make your mastermind absolute value for money and that's one test a quarter but you're doing it all the time this competition going how you rank this video in YouTube all right brilliant now how you rank this video in Google videos yeah so it's loads of different things that you're doing with regards to different tools that are being used and methods and strategies not just for GMBs but for images but for videos does adding the images and the videos on a page make it multimedia rich that makes the page rank better yeah and all these different strategies that are being used are great SEO tests but we we learned a lot from a test so we done an image ranking test once and recently and what we done is I wanted to see how other people thought so there was like magic PR was up against me so that dirty dog launched a PR at the last rubbish minute you know of the day and I had to think outside the box I'm like he's going to beat me he's got Yahoo finance and all that kind of stuff with the image and I thought rubbish how how am I going to beat him he's done that at like 5:00 that's the last time a PR can go out I had to think ah Randy's in America there's a a time difference there go pH Randy Randy what's the last time you can do it if you sent me it now I can I can get it out so I was able to get one up on dirty dog but you're always trying to think what is some dirty dog going to do people used YouTube to try and rank the thumbnail people done the the press release stuff people used powerful websites you know and they use LinkedIn they done all that kind of stuff but what we also found from that testing as well someone also bought a keyword rich the main name and which was I think it was emsjs king.com and so someone bought that another person set up a GMB now what we didn't know and it was a separate person Google assigned the GMB to the person who owned the keyword rich domain so Google auto assigns a lot of things as well so from that test we were like because we were accusing each other you dirty rubbish dog you've stolen my GMB and all that kind of stuff and and you know it was Google that was auto assigned so we've done further testing on that as well so you go down to rabbit you're like ah rubbish like Google can certain things that have not been claimed and stuff like that and so again when you do these tests you can learn other things that happen you know just weird coincidence because we were fighting for days like that rubbish dirty dog stole that rubbish GMB and and you're like how did you do that like never done anything and so things like that are always important and again you want to do that in a private environment you know and that's the big big thing and but yeah so that that is the mastermind if anyone does want to to to join it but and questions for you and a couple a couple of quick fire questions to and get out there now you have been around for a while you're rubbish into everything you've invested a lot of money you you got websites and all sorts of different niches but you've invested into Gigger and index exceptional which I can't really roll off the tongue you've got Auto blog a search hero local SE sharks and I know you're obviously massive on lead generation and I know you've got your own websites which I absolutely love by the way and you know and I'm going to talk about the lead generation first and even when you're talking to Slur you you think very differently from Slur where Slur wants to do it for clients and you're like no why would you do it for clients why would you why would you not just own the website and do the GMB and sell the leads which I absolutely love but a lot of people have not got the confidence or maybe even the cash flow to to be able to do that so I want to talk about some of the investments and obviously the the lead generation is one every time I do a live stream or whatever and everyone's sick and rubbish tired the clients they hate agency life or whatever and they're always wanting a way to make money and I think lead generation is a perfect opportunity so and I know you've got these by the bucket load you you you know you build I'm not going to tell and the public I don't know if you want to know that but you're building X amount of sites per week and always doing that but just want to dig into that just for for anyone listening because again I heard Slur asking the question last night are you finding the people to buy these leads before you even start building out the website?

Craig Campbell: Yeah so first and foremost the first part is the reason why we own the websites is because I don't want clients telling me that I prefer a red site and with orange buttons or brown buttons like I want to and I want to make certain that I'm doing control of the site I'll do the color of the theme of the site to to try to match the theme of the topic in the industry and build it for conversion so I'm going to like stats and data and this is someone obviously Gary Wilson always talks about let the data do the talking so I let the data do the talking I build a site that converts I make certain that I write the content that's what Google wants not just oh I don't really like that sentence I'm like well Google does and I want to write write it in that specific way so like it's my side you want leads for this this product or service that's what I'll do forget how I'm going to get there I'm just going to generate you the leads for what you want the leads that you're you're going to get a return on investment on so I build the sites out I make certain that from there then I've got full access to everything that I need to have full access for that then I go down a rabbit hole to find new niches and I keep finding new niches and I keep generating more leads for them and they keep making more money and it's the best deal for UK businesses that if it fits our model and they qualify for what we want it's an unbelievable because we guarantee them a return on investment yeah right so for them it's unbelievable but also for us I don't need to have a massive sales team because it's easy to sell yeah like it's such an easy product and service for us to sell we guarantee you a return on investment on leads who's going to say no yeah but we've got to pre-qualify that they're good enough to take our leads but quickly firing off for the other ones Gigger and index are an exceptional indexing tools that I've invested into and we're in beta stage and in exceptional consistently trying to improve it at present to be the number one and number two best indexing tools that there is on the market based on I'm not going to stop until it is why we invested in those services indexing has become a massive problem for a lot of sites not just our own sites but mass AI come out and indexing is a problem so I've invested in those two tools I want to make certain that they're the best on the market otherwise it's pointless me investing unless I think it's the best yeah and so quality control measures are just up one up one up one up one up one up it's the most indexing tool that's out there it's not just using Google API that's one part of it but there's several other things that comes along that's being done so that's the reason why I've invested in those two tools I strongly recommend anyone that's not tried Gigger or index exceptional out think it's both available now to the public test it out it's guaranteed indexation or you don't pay so again I like to make certain that the clients are getting good bang for the buck don't index it don't pay a penny really simple and auto blogging and now produces a lot of our content Scott Ken bless him has spent over 12 months on improving the prompts every single day with VBA VBA is a great founder he consistently wants to improve and innovate and all the time we're innovating to try and make certain we get in the right sentence structure no fluff removing the contextless words trying to get it in a sentence structure that's concise got the entities and stuff on the page that needs to be on the page that ranks to the top of Google which is obviously what we're all trying to do so I'm trying to get the best AI writing tool that there is on the market again otherwise it's pointing me investing in the tool so that's what Auto blogging is not AI and search hero and a lot of the link building agencies are the same they sell guest posts and rubbish I'd say the only difference with regards to search hero is now we've introduced power posts so a lot of people just write a guest post on a third party website which links back to their site that's 500 or thousand words content not really NLP optimised doesn't really rank we're physically trying to rank those guest posts I feel like it's the new reversing SEO swim type of method where it used to be talking about relevance where you'd want to try to get the keywords in the title tag for your guest posts now it's we've gone one up on that almost like reverse SEO swim on steroids where it's we physically trying to rank the guest post for the keyword you want your money site to rank for that it's linking through to ideally you want to hold like control the monopoly in the SERP for the main keywords that you want say that's the only real difference from Search Hero and links for you with regards to and guest posts and niche edits and Fat Joe and the and all the rest of them and we're all doing the same type of outreach and trying to get links on relevant sites that have got power and the relevant and hopefully going to get some sort of traffic yeah and local sharks is a new overseas SEO for low budget clients getting a lot of people that come to us for oh I want to do your lead generation I really love the idea I want leads like I want to pay on a back end and a guaranteed return on investment and no disrespects to them but they're not good enough as a company to deal with us yeah they're not big enough they don't have the sales team to be able to work our leads in the best possible way they might only work in a local demographic and ideally we want bigger clients that work over they got multiple teams that they willing to travel to do the job and stuff like that and was throwing so many leads in the bin but some of these might be willing to pay 500,000 a month where but it's just in a local demographic and for that we're like it's still a good client still want to rank for a local plumbing in London yeah so that's what local sharks is about it's local sharks.com and it's growing nicely and they're getting great rates because we're using overseas workers so we're able to charge lower type of rates to Western companies in the UK and in the US mainly in the UK we're working but we do do some in the US but able to kind of charge much cheaper rates than what a Western SEO agency would and that's what that kind of project is and then obviously the lead generation they're not with supply of inquiries so there's a lot going on and they kind of all complement each other and stuff like that but that's diversifying is it and I've got one question that has not been written down and it's about SEO is that rubbish Carl Hudson ever bought you anything or paid you from SEO yet he's the most tight fisted person I've ever met honestly could peel an orange in his pocket that lad like he he does well in business and then he's the last one to go to the bar yeah I don't think he's ever bought a meal I don't think he's ever once been to the bar and bought around so if anyone ever sees Carl Woodson at an event get into the bar I if you do I'll give you a pound myself for doing it because yeah he's very tight but yeah anyway it's been a pleasure Craig that's always good to talk see you again soon.

James Dooley: No worries cheers mate.