James Dooley: So today I'm joined with Chris Pantelli from Linkify. Hey James, thank you. Thanks for having me. Good stuff mate, good stuff. So I'm going to start grilling you, you know, with who you are and what you do and your bit of background. So for anyone that doesn't know who is Chris Pantelli?

Chris Pantelli: He's a male model. Um, no. Um, yeah, Chris Pantelli. Um, I'm from the UK. Um, and I co-founder of Linkify. So we are a digital PR agency specializing in expert quote links and PR campaigns.

James Dooley: So let's dive straight into it then. Expert quote links, can you briefly explain for anyone that doesn't know what expert quote links is and has it got SEO value?

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, so expert quote link building is inbound requests from journalists looking to source experts that they can quote in their article. Um, it's not a link building opportunity per se from the journalist perspective, but as SEOs we noticed that often times the journalists when they quote an expert they will link back to the expert's website or the website that the expert is representing. And therefore it is a wonderful opportunity to win links from some of the world's biggest publications.

James Dooley: So obviously it's a great time to be doing a podcast with yourself because recently HARO, Helper Reporter Out, has now upgraded to Connectively. So can you explain a little bit about anyone that knows about HARO, what, why the change is it better? The dashboard now, is it making it harder for people who are trying to do expert quote link building? Has it made it better for Linkify? Like what, why have they upgraded and is it good or is it bad for you as a company?

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, so it used to be three emails a day. Anyone that knows the old system or remembers it, I, it's been around for nearly fifteen years now. So um, it was three emails a day from multiple journalists sourcing experts. Everybody got very used to that. Obviously fifteen years is a long time to be doing something the same way. Um, and as the introduction of AI sort of became quite prevalent, um, maybe twenty odd months ago let's say, um, that's when the journalists were getting bombarded with like AI spam. And although I think there was some sort of inbuilt blocking systems with the old system, it wasn't um enough I think for the journalists to um not be getting annoyed by this like mass onset of AI spam from from people trying to get backlinks. Obviously as you know, anything in SEO which is a good thing gets taken over by SEOs, quickly becomes like a bad thing.

So um, also it was free. It had been free for fifteen years. Peter Shankman, the original founder of it, started it as a free way to connect um journalists with expert sources. And um, the new system is now pay-to-play. So you've got to pay if you want to play. You've got to pay. And it's not prohibitively expensive, but there is a cost. You get five free links. Um, five free links, five free pitches. So potentially five free pitches per month. Um, and then on top of that, any additional um pitches you want to do, there's a cost to it. I think it's like a dollar a pitch or maybe less if you scale up the amount of pitches that you buy.

Is it better? Um, it's different. Um, and it takes some getting used to. Um, I'd say the biggest, um, certainly for an individual I'd say the biggest change if you've been used to the old system and you're going on to the new system is the psychology behind it. So you used to get these three emails a day, obviously you'd be working for one or two of those. If if you're working, um, and then you'd maybe set aside one of those emails blasts to sit down, look through, see what's appropriate and then fire off one or two pitches. So it's now like a continual roll of source requests that are just dripping in, like continually. So now you need to just psychologically decide how you want to approach it if you want to sit down for a few hours a day if you want to look through. I mean, the worst thing is missing the perfect opportunity, but that does happen. Um, and then us as an agency, we find it better. Our results have gone up um simply because uh the barrier to entry, albeit small, is definitely there. It's sort of there were some systems that you could buy into where it would just do all the pitching for you with AI. Not recommended. Although because, you know, you could pay very cheaply and they would send so many you would eventually win, you know, some links. The cost now I think has sort of wiped all of that out. So if you want to be involved, you've got to pay a small amount, which means um there there's a lot less AI spam. Um, and it's a golden opportunity to create pitches better than the people that are paying but aren't taking any care or attention. They just plug and play in ChatGPT and sending off an AI response. If you go one step above that with any level of um like uh looking at what you're actually doing, checking that it doesn't look like AI and doing some research, just one notch above can set you apart from ninety percent of what's being sent in.

James Dooley: Yeah, so what was interesting then is several times you mentioned a but you followed it with AI spam. And obviously artificial intelligence is in and around us all. Does Chris Pantelli at Linkify use AI? But obviously it's garbage in, garbage out. It's how good your prompts are. Not all artificial intelligence is spam. Some can be used in a good way. But is Linkify using AI in any sort of way to integrate further growth within your business?

Chris Pantelli: I, I think you'd be mad not to be using AI like in this day and age. It is fantastic. But again, like you said, garbage in, garbage out. So it's how you use it. I spoke at um Dubai SEO conference last year, um towards the end of last year, and um I spoke about how you can use it and what it is that journalists are looking for and what it is that that that they're not looking for. So basically you should be using AI. We do. But it's how you use it. And for us, the best thing that you can do is have an individuality to the voice and to the the use of the English language that you're that you're using in order to create your pitch.

So really, really frequently the journalist is looking to quote an expert with just an ever so slightly unique or interesting way that what they already know is being said in a different voice. So for example it could be um a fitness expert, a fitness journalist that's writing an article about the uh the best way to get motivated to go for a run. And they just want you to come up with something interesting but is quotable. So some linguistic flurry to to the lines that you're using, but also an original voice and also unique enough that it isn't the same answer that ChatGPT would spit out if you've just in a vanilla fashion put that question into ChatGPT, hit return and been given a response.

So the it can massively in improve your workflow and your speed. It can be used as a research tool. It's really good at analyzing data if you're taking data from multiple um sets as well. You can use the data analyst tool in ChatGPT to like cross analyse multiple documents and then get like a summary. So if you're actually trying to produce a quality pitch, you want to utilise as much research and data as possible. And AI is the best way to handle large amounts of data, analyse them and get fast uh output that you can actually uh understand in a meaningful way.

Then the other side of it is the pitches that you actually send to the journalists. So I think AI is going to have this almost um unspoken agreement between all those that use it. Everybody knows that everybody's using it. But what we don't want to do is just be using it and it obviously be AI. And if we're pitching journalists, these people are professional writers. So they can smell AI. We've all put stuff into AI and seen those really AI phrases that you see time and time again. If you're sending this stuff, the journalist will know. They're not even going to bother reading past the first sentence if if that's what they've seen. And also the journalists have to uh protect their reputations as well.

So the two major issues with AI: one, the journalist or the writer may have been um dictated to by the the um publication which they're writing for that they do not want the use of AI. Which means that the journalists and the publications likely will be using AI checking tools. So we need to pass those tools, which isn't difficult, really. And you can use AI to generate responses in order to rewrite stuff that you've written to pass AI. And don't forget, we can write stuff in our own words and it fails the AI detection tools. So it's a bit of give and take. And you know, understanding the the nuances there.

And secondly, they don't want to be in infringement of um any uh content which has been written before and then you're just rehashing in your own words. So copyright um or plagiarism. Two major things. So in-house, everything that we send off goes through AI detection and make sure that we pass plagiarism. We want to be safe for the journalists. We also make sure that we are utilising other features. So if we are actually an expert in the pitch that we're doing, a super neat trick I can tell your audience, especially if they're watching and they're an expert and they're going to go and start pitching expert quotes after watching this: is just get your iPhone, look at the question, do a little bit of research, then do a voice note into an iPhone and just speak for like five minutes answering the question. Don't worry about "ums" and "ahs", don't worry about anything. Just use your own tone of voice and put it into a voice note. Then take that massive chunk of like almost illegible text, put it into AI with a clever prompt that asks to tidy it up but maintains the tone of voice and the nuances of the language that's been used. You will have a really succinct, well-written pitch response that passes AI and plagiarism, is written in your tone of voice and perfectly answers the question.

James Dooley: Great knowledge bomb there. I like that. So as I've come to interview Chris Pantelli at Linkify, I wanted to do a little bit of digging about who, what you've said recently. And there's a quote that says "we are living in the Golden Era of Link building". So can you explain a little bit further by that quote of what you said? We are living in the Golden Era of Link building. Can you explain to the viewers here what you mean by that?

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, so it's what we're noticing is obviously content is um is everywhere now. It's easy to come by. It's easy to produce. So the distinguishing features for content is uh twofold: is is the quality and uh where it's coming from. So I do believe that um news publications and journalistic content will be uh around and survive the the AI mass production of content. And journalists have since time immemorial and for the foreseeable future will want to enhance their articles, the credibility by uh quoting um experts uh from the expert quote side. And then from the digital PR side, they want to feature experts and feature real people talking about the the the the stories that matter to their audience. Which means this is a great time for us to be those people.

So that takes some work in order to set yourself up, set your profile up, make sure that you have a wide visibility across the web. But it's a great time for us to be that person and get featured in these publications, develop our own brands, develop the brands of our business and also control the narrative of the AI as well. So the AI tools that are scraping hundreds and thousands and billions of data points, the more that we're getting our name and our business and our brand message and our brand narrative out there into the ether, onto these trusted sources, the more that we're going to control what AI is going to say about us in our business.

James Dooley: So Linkify obviously does reactive PR campaigns, it does expert quote link building. If anyone wants to know a little bit about the difference between reactive PR and expert quote link building, check the link in the description. Me and Chris actually speak about the difference between the two strategies of what people can do for link building. But I'm now going to talk about, like, obviously you must be happy with the latest Google leak. Because obviously in that Google leak it talks about tier one publications and getting links on fresh pages, which kind of screams and shouts you want to be getting your name and ideally getting links on fresh pages in Google News in T1 publications. It screams and shouts digital PR, right? And the SEO community now seem to, it seems to be the buzz word. Have you found business to be growing obviously because of the Google leak? What's your thoughts about the Google leak and specifically the T1 publications and fresh pages?

Chris Pantelli: Uh, yeah, um, it hasn't really changed. This is a narrative that we were pushing before the leak. Uh, we we interviewed Barry Schwartz on on our podcast a while ago and we asked him his views on this. And obviously a lot of the leak was, um, although it was confirmed by Google, there was no sort of uh definitive clarification that everything within that uh API documentation was uh either historically or currently being used by Google. However, for a lot of the SEOs, we sort of looked through it, the stuff that we saw it did sort of validate a lot of our pre-existing opinions.

So we know that there is a lot of safety in building links on uh tier one news publications, simply for the fact that they are received so much organic traffic from Google anyway. And obviously a large amount of organic traffic is a big signal that Google trusts that site. Google will not send a website, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of organic uh monthly visitors if it if it doesn't trust the site. So if we were to build a link, if we were able to win a link from one of these sites, we can feel relatively confident that uh, you know, in six months or twelve months time when Google changes its mind again on a number of factors, that that this probably won't be something that's going to uh ding you like maybe if you've built a bunch of PBN links or niche edits. Not that they are, they are um bad strategies because they're most definitely not. Um, but as a white hat PR agency, the narrative that we were pushing is "show tier one publications, fresh pages".

So um, it hasn't really changed in that sense. But the the Google leak docs did sort of in a sense validate that for us. Um, and yeah, it is a b uh, it does seem to be a buzzword. Um, but I think the the value is it just goes beyond the SEO uh the the like algorithmic SEO value. So you have all the other elements to it as well. I mean, PR is a is an industry far older than the internet itself. So we want to be building brands. We want to be building um multiple touch points with customers. If you're an ecommerce site, if you're a SaaS business, if you're, you know, an affiliate site, whatever it is that you are, you want to be building brand. You want to be building multiple touch points across the web. Um, and you want to be controlling the the new wave of what's going to be talking about us, which is the AI algorithms.

So I think it's an exciting time to be a part of it. Uh, it also grows, develops your E-A-T, which we know although not on algorithmic ranking factor, at some point a search quality rater, a human from Google, is likely going to come and click and look at your website and want wants to know really quickly whether or not it can trust your website. And if it can see that you've been featured in websites that it's heard of, then it's another um another tick in the in the box to get you to pass that and and have longevity for your for your business.

James Dooley: Yeah, so with regard to digital PR now, you've sold it upon the viewers. Everyone's all in. I want to do digital PR, right? But for some reason they don't want to use Chris Pantelli. They think that you look like one of my business partners, Scott Clendenin, and they don't want to use Linkify, right? So for whatever reason they do not want to use you and they don't want to use Linkify. They can use Scott. Yeah, they can. Next best thing. Yeah. The effective pitching, if they want to do this and they're looking for effective pitching in the current climate, what setup? What profile? What visibility? What a what is needed for them to be able to do it themselves? If I want the viewers to have some sort of knowledge, if they did want to do it themselves, what's needed there?

Chris Pantelli: Okay, so uh sign up for any of the platforms that are free to begin with. So free Connectively account, quote account. Um, set alerts on X for uh #PRrequest and #journalistrequest. And then make sure develop a uh make sure your about page on your website accurately reflects your credentials that are aligned with that website. Uh, and if you haven't got that, then that is something that you need to look into. Um, depending on your uh feelings towards bending the truth slightly, depending on what niche you're in, I would not recommend this with you know anything YMYL, medical, et cetera. But if you've got a travel website and you've only ever been to one country, can you say you've been to twenty countries and you're a travel expert? I would. Because you need to be an expert. This is the key. You've got to be an expert. Um, and you need to have that visible on the about page. You don't want one profile picture of yourself that looks like it's been generated by AI and one paragraph that just says "I'm an expert". You want to talk about everything that you've done, every accolade, every award, every credential. Everything needs to be really well represented on the about page because the journalist will go and check you out. It takes them five seconds to do it. And if they can't find it, they'll move on.

So make sure it's there and it's easy to find. Make sure that that visibility extends beyond the website. Make sure that it goes onto a LinkedIn profile, social profiles. And make sure that you're not um a gardening expert on your gardening website, okay, which is fine. But then if the journalist clicks on your LinkedIn, you are an SEO manager or a cold email marketing specialist. Doesn't it, it's not going to, the two and two aren't going to click with a journalist. They're going to think, "I don't trust this." They're going to move on.

So for the um for the the duration of whichever campaign that you're running, make sure that all of that expertise and visibility tracks through across all those platforms. Build a pitch template which is clean and simple: introduction, who you are, qualifications, awards, where else you've been featured. And then give the journalist the link to your website, your headshot. Make everything simple. Then scour the opportunities and make sure you're going for opportunities that make sense and make sure you're reading the requirements. The journalist will always give requirements, okay? If they are looking for a gardening expert and you are a gardening expert and the requirements state that you must be a gardening expert, then go for it. You know that's perfect.

Also check the domain. Make sure it's a good domain. Um, and you've got a good chance of winning. If they're looking for a gardening expert that is a female and you are a man, don't answer that query because you're going to annoy the journalist and you haven't adhered to the requirements.

And finally, if you're going to utilise AI, I would get an AI checking detection tool. There's a number of free ones. Just pick one. Don't try it across multiple because they're all different and they're all changing all the time. Um, and make sure it passes um any plagiarism checks as well.

And lastly, probably the most important thing is make sure you have alerts set on your name and your uh business and domain name. Because we win forty to sixty percent of our client links come after the fact. So that's getting an unlinked mention where the journalist has picked our quote, included us in the article and not linked to us. So you need to be monitoring the alerts. Find those unlinked mentions. If you've got a previous correspondence with the journalist, you can just go, "Oh, I just saw the article. It's great. But you didn't link to me. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Or if you didn't have a correspondence with a journalist and they just quoted you but didn't link you, you need to try and track down the editor of the publication, sister publications, go above and beyond to try and get that link added.

James Dooley: Sounds like a lot of hard work to me, that Chris.

Chris Pantelli: Well, it's worth it, though.

James Dooley: Anyone who watches my channel will know that if I'm building an extension on my house, I get a bricklayer to come and build my wall. I get a roofer to come and do my roof. I go and get an electrician to do all my electrics. Like, for me, it's just, you know what you're doing for expert PR, digital PR, for reactive PR, for expert kind of comment um PR. Like, I'm just, for me it's just better to outsource. The people like Linkify listen to all that, like just do this and just do that. I'm like, no, I just, there you are. How much is it? Go on.

Chris Pantelli: You can absolutely do it on your own. And my advice to your audience watching that like doesn't have budget, doesn't have um uh time, too much time, is to uh a little hackers, just to get one or two of the links that you know you can get. Find your competitors in your space, go to a few competitors' websites, see what logos they've got on the front page of their website. Chances are their expert quote links. And chances are if they've got them, you can get them. Go and find them, those requests on those platforms, and just respond to those until you win those links. It's the easiest way to get start just a couple of things on that.

James Dooley: That, if people are looking to do it themselves, you mentioned but it was quite quick as you were going through it, you mentioned one or two different tools. So obviously HARO now has changed to Connectively. Is that paid? Is it pay and play? Or can you get so many requests for free per month? Um, and then I think you mentioned Quoted. Um, I think there was something Plugs, Press Plugs or something like that. Like, can you just list those of what they are? What if someone's doing it on a budget? What's their best way? I think on Twitter you mentioned PR request and journalist request. Are they the hashtags as well? So if someone's looking to do it, like what's the four, what's the four things that you would do?

Chris Pantelli: Um, Twitter, um and #journalistrequest, #PRrequest, set alerts. That's all free. Connectively, free account, five free pitches per month. Quoted, I think is the same. It's definitely a free tier. Um, press plugs is paid. Uh, there's a site called Media Matchmaker, I believe, which does a decent trial. And that takes a lot of the the the tweet requests and pushes it out via their platform. Like HARO, Helper Reported Out, help a reporter out, is that, is that good?

James Dooley: Yeah, that's good. That's free. And that's more um your sort of uh marketing, techy, uh technical writing sort of uh niches. So some uh ecommerce as well. Uh, business finance, really nice publications that source on there. Um, fewer requests, but some really nice publications. That one's completely free as well.

Chris Pantelli: Yeah.

James Dooley: So let's dive into the last bits now with regards to digital PR as a whole. All what's the difference? And what do you think you, people like SEOs or web masters or SEO agencies, should be concentrating on? Is it all forms of PR, digital PR? Is it um reactive PR, brand kind of profile PR? Or expert comment link building? Like should we be doing just one of them? Or are you kind of of the opinion that they should be trying to do everything and trying to get as many different referring domains pointing through to their website as possible?

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, I mean, obviously depends on the circumstance of the individual and and the business. But yeah, more more uh referring domains, the higher you grow your authority. And then obviously you can start ranking for more and more keywords. You can start getting more traffic. Then you can convert more customers, make more money. Um, but you need to decide which is the best route for you. And if you can allocate budget to uh all of these different um types, I would recommend that because you're going to see an ROI on it. Um, but also you need to understand the nuances between the two.

So expert quote building is going to give you uh the ability to um get some really nice, unique, more US-centric domains that aren't really available from PR request, just because those publications aren't receptive to um PR uh PR campaign, sorry. And then on the PR campaign side, uh, there's going to be links and publications. It's a bit more UK-centric. But there's going to be, you're going to get access to sites on that side that you wouldn't get from the other. Um, you get a bit more control over the narrative on the PR side. So you can control your brand message and a little bit more to an extent. Um, you can come up with interesting stories that represent your business more in more of a way than than you want, whereas the expert quote side, you are providing commentary to enhance an article which the journalist is already working on.

So, for example, if you own a gardening website, they're looking for like a gardening tip to support their argument in their gardening article, where is, if you're a gardening um supply company and you do a PR campaign, you may do a reactive piece on, let's say the um Prince of Wales was recently uh spotted in his garden and they took some pictures. You may come up with a really interesting idea um to react to that news and have your business as the main focus of the of the of that campaign. So it's much more brand building in that sense. Um, but yeah, I mean, I would focus on on both if you can. I think both support each other really well, from our perspective as like as as an agency, but also um it can give you the ability to be seen in front of more journalists and more people writing content and see you more of an expert in your field.

James Dooley: Yeah, so well anyway, Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure in interviewing you. Something I would recommend for the viewers: check out some of the links in the description. There's actually a couple of other videos where I dig down a bit deeper. I always knew Chris has been the HARO links guy, obviously, over the years he's grown to be much bigger than that. And there's a lot more different sorts of digital PR campaigns now, including reactive uh PR campaigns and stuff like that. But I dig deep um into why HARO has moved over to Connectively. There's a full video on that. I dig deep into exactly why SEO should be looking to get expert commentary link building techniques, cause a lot of SEOs just look at citations, guest posts and link inserts or niche edits. And they're not really looking at the advantages of using expert quote link building or any sort of digital PR campaigns.

But for anyone that doesn't know where to find you, Chris, where is the best place to get in touch with you and hang out if they've got any questions?

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, well thanks for having me on, Dooley. It's been awesome. Uh, yeah, Linkify.io. Uh, you can find me there or uh Linkify on X, Christopher Pantelli on LinkedIn as well. Um, book a call with me as well if you want. Or uh see me at um a conference sometime soon.

James Dooley: Well, Chris Pantelli at Linkify, it has been an absolute pleasure. And I hope to see you soon at one or two of the next kind of events. In fact, touching on that, before I leave, um, can you explain a little bit about the White Press um and kind of joint venture with Linkify? SEO conference in Cyprus? For anyone that's not got any tickets?

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, are you just Googling now the dates of...

James Dooley: Yes, frantically. I know it's the end of October, but I don't know the exact date.

Chris Pantelli: Yeah, anyone's looking to attend any SEO conferences, Chris is putting one together with the, probably, in my opinion, the best link building marketplace that there is, White Press, the teaming up, putting a great SEO conference together. So what's what's the dates of that, Chris?

James Dooley: Uh, yeah, the twenty-third to the twenty-fifth of October. In, I'm actually half Cypriot. My dad is um Greek Cypriot. So it's awesome. We are doing it in Cyprus in Larnaca, which is absolutely beautiful. It's still going to be really really hot and beautiful in October. Um, SEO Vibes, we're doing it with White Press and Linkify. Um, the e-commerce edition. Uh, and we've got some great speakers already. Um, we've got the head of SEO, Alibaba, um, we've got Lisa Ayana, Roman Halliday from Boohoo Group. Um, and Greg Elfrink, I think, as well, from Empire Flippers. Loads of awesome speakers. So if you can get tickets, Cyprus is going to be beautiful. Even if you just come for the sun, it's going to be it's gonna be a great, great event.

Chris Pantelli: Just so you know, they've got a secret assassin. Me and Kay are coming there. You go. We're doing it. We're doing a Q&A. Awesome. We're coming along to support you and White Press and the SEO Vibes, to be fa. I absolutely love the SEO Vibes, SEO conferences, because one, they're not a profit-making machine. They're doing it to actually provide value for all their users. Obviously, all your users, they're trying to do it in all the different countries throughout the world. So massive pats off to White Press for that and SEO Vibes for it. And yeah, I'm excited to come over and participate in your first SEO conference as well. So hope anyone watching this has enjoyed my interview with Chris Pantelli from Linkify. Leave a comment in the comment section and make sure you check out all the other videos that I've done with him as well. Cheers, Dooley.

James Dooley: It's been awesome. Cheers, mate.