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The Story Engine Podcast: Where we teach you how to make marketing easier, more powerful and fun through storytelling. Each week we learn from top entrepreneurs, influencers and world-changers on how to share your story through content, copywriting, speaking and how to make your story your most powerful marketing tool.

Feb 12, 2019

Today on the show we have Brendan Hufford. Brendan created SEO For the Rest of Us, a business built around making SEO much more simple and much more friendly to everybody out there. We're also going to hear him dispel some of the biggest SEO myths out there and share what's really important if you want to get high ranking websites in Google.

 

Key Takeaways

[2:35] Brendan’s defining moment that shaped his life

[7:09] How taking a step back propelled Brendan towards his entrepreneurial future

[8:42] The first smart steps to take to start your business

[14:37]: The two types of SEO marketers

[15:14] The 3 myths of SEO

[19:24] The crucial components to generate good SEO

[22:40] The skyscraper technique and why it doesn’t work

[27:02] How to use your professional relationships for better SEO

[29:28] The future of SEO

 

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Brendan Hufford Website

SEO For The Rest of Us Newsletter

Brendan Huffords Most Recommended Resources

Entrepreneurs and Coffee Podcast

LinkedIn

Facebook

Clique Studios

Studio Press

Thrive Themes

Kim Doyle

Jason Zook

 

Transcript

Kyle Gray:                            

Hello and welcome to the Story Engine podcast. My name is Kyle Gray and today on the show we have Brendan Hufford. Brendan created SEO For the Rest of Us. Got a little bit of a stuffy nose, so apologies for that, but I made sure to ask really good questions so that Brendan could be speaking much more than me and speaking of which, let's take it over to Brendan. Thanks so much for joining us.

Brendan Hufford:           

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Kyle Gray:                            

I want to open up this episode the way I open up many of my episodes and I just want to ask you about a moment or a story or a time in your life that has really defined who you are and what you bring to the world today and then, of course, tell us, as a result, a little bit about SEO For the Rest of Us and what you're up to today.

Brendan Hufford:           

Yeah, so I think if I had to pick a defining moment, I've not always been a very ambitious person. My argument to my wife, we've been married for about 10 years. When we first got married I was like, what is it, what's wrong? So I was a teacher at the time. That's what I went to college for. We met in college. I was like, what's wrong with just being a teacher and just chilling out and just living a totally normal life like there's nothing wrong with just doing this and having the summers off like it's a great life.

Brendan Hufford:           

And then we had a kid and things changed. And I remember Rowan, we had him, right when he was born, he had a, what's called a pneumothorax, which means when he took his first breath, he got a rip in his lung. It's just because he was kind of, he was overdue, I guess we could call it. So he's a very big baby and his muscles were so strong that it ripped his lung and that meant that we were in the NICU for a week and I remember he was hooked up to all these monitors. I just had never experienced anything like that before. And they are giving him shots and taking blood and all of this stuff and it's really dramatic and really impactful. And I just remember like standing over his crib in the NICU. Everything's beeping at us and all of these monitors and just like I promise you, telling him, I promise you I'm going to take care of you.

Brendan Hufford:           

I promise you I will figure this out. And at the time I was just a teacher. I had a side business that I had kind of started because I was kind of disenfranchised after teaching for a couple years and I wanted to do something else on the side. I was like, I'm going to figure this business stuff out man and I'm going to make sure that I take care of you. And that's, I think one of those moments when a lot of things changed. I remember seeing on Instagram really popular podcasts or said something like, you know, hey, send me a reply and tell me like, what is your why? Why do you do what you do but don't say your kids? And that really made me upset because I was like, hey guy with no kids like you clearly don't understand why so many people's motivations are their children.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like having this unconditional love for another human that cannot take care of itself. And you have to take care of it, that really does change things and I think for me, a lot of who I am as a man and who I am as a husband and as just a professional comes from just very strong devotion and feelings about these young humans now, three of them that I get to take care of.

Kyle Gray:                            

I think that's incredible and it's, it is a very defining and catalyzing moment to see that and to have something outside of you. And I've seen that change happen time and time again, where it really creates the entrepreneur that has all the greatness behind them. And I want to hear about SEO For the Rest of Us. Before we were on the call, you mentioned that you know, before this wasn't your gig the whole time. You've tried a couple of different businesses, a couple of different blogs in various niches.

Kyle Gray:                            

One of the most interesting stories. And I think one of the biggest challenges that a lot of entrepreneurs face is really finding your groove and the unique way that you can add value and be really competitive. And so I would love to hear kind of how you have landed on SEO as your unique thing and maybe some of the discovery process.

Brendan Hufford:           

Yeah. So, there's this wonderful quote from Steve Jobs that I feel like I quote a lot and often butcher a lot. I feel like I should probably just look it up and get on the same page. Right? Is where he talks about like you can only connect the dots looking backward and looking backward from where we sit today, me talking to you like I can really see exactly how all of this lines up and exactly how I have this superpower and this unfair advantage, whatever we want to call it.

Brendan Hufford:           

And it all makes sense now. But at the time it really didn't because like I said, I had my first kid and I was teaching and right that summer I, you know, we had him in May and then the start of the school year kicked off and the second day of school, third day of school, my principal was like, "Hey, make sure you have your lesson plans turned in and today's my last day." And we're all like, "What do you mean today's your last day? The school year just started, we need you." And she was like, "Yeah, I got another job. But the school board there didn't approve it until just now. So I'm out." We need a new assistant principal. And I was like a really good teacher and generally well-liked. So all my peers were like, hey, you have your admin degree, like go be our boss now.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like you'll be one of them, but you're still one of us. And I thought it was going to be awesome. So I applied and I got it. And I became an assistant principal. I later found out I was the lowest paid assistant principal in the state of Indiana because that information is all public, which is kind of-

Kyle Gray:                            

Wow.

Brendan Hufford:           

Yeah, it takes the wind right out of your sails. Right? So I did that for two years and I was rewarded with more stress than I ever could imagine, no time to work on my business. So I felt like I was drowning the whole time, a really bad relationship with alcohol during that time. And just like Sunday night panic attacks, just thinking about the work week, it was such a nightmare. Eventually, I started to talk to some smart people, including my mastermind group. We've been meeting pretty regularly for four and a half years and they were like, "Hey man, why don't you just take a step back, like, just take a step back to take a step forward."

Brendan Hufford:           

And I stepped down from my assistant principal's position. I moved to a new school, a healthier school, became a teacher for another two years. This whole time on the side, I just had been building kind of a passion business of making Brazilian Jujitsu uniforms and that kind of went through its own path of like having a little community blog and then somebody sent me some free stuff and I'm like, why don't I make a website where I review stuff? So I did and people sent me a lot of stuff and I was like, why don't I make this stuff and make the kind of money that I'm making for other people? So I did that and started my own apparel company, was getting stuff made in China and Pakistan. Imports and exports were really amazing and cool, but kind of terrifying, like sending $50,000 checks to Pakistan.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like if they just bailed, what am I going to do? A whole lot of nothing. Like I'm not going there to start an argument. I don't even know where this place is. Like I just was, you know, one of the ... I knew a guy who's factory flooded and they were like, hey man, we're walking away. Like everything's underwater. We can't. It was a natural disaster. And he had to mortgages house to pay off his bills and I was like, I'm not. Nope, I'm out. So I sold it and started taking on SEO clients and I was like, all right, I'm going to start my own agency. I was really inspired by like, I want to start a real business. I don't want to be one of those guru guys. I almost went down that path. I was like, all right, I'm going to do stuff about productivity.

Brendan Hufford:           

And then courses about courses and podcasts about podcasts. I'll do webinars about how to do webinars. And I was like, nope, not for me. I like this. I like being the face of things and I like being out there and making media and stuff and I didn't want to be that guy. So we started, all right, I'm going to start my own agency. A couple of buddies asked for help with SEO. Crushed it for them. Got some really good case studies. If anybody's ever wondering like how do I start a service business? Find people, either get them to trust you or find people who already trust you. Work for them for free. Just kill it, just straight get the craziest results possible. Having my first ever case study is like, Hey, in six months we made an extra $42,000 in this guy's photography business. A bunch of other photographers were like, we're in for that.

Brendan Hufford:           

So then I got a bunch more clients and I was like, all right, I'm going to do this agency thing. And one of my buddies was like, hey man, why don't like if you, if you're done teaching. Like I was very emotionally done at that point after 10 years. He was like, why don't you just work? Why don't you just go to work in an agency? And I was just like, Uh huh. Like I never thought of that. Like it seems so insane, but you just, you have this like ... You get sold the entrepreneurial dream so much that you forget that like you could just get it a stepping stone to that could just be having a career in that. Like you don't have to have your own design agency, you can just go be a designer somewhere for a little bit. So yeah, that's where I'm at now.

Brendan Hufford:           

I'm doing my own SEO thing. I'm at an agency that 100 percent supports that and I love it. So I'm the SEO director at Click Studios, this amazing agency here in Chicago and recently I just came out with a course and kind of just building this email community around this idea of like SEO For the Rest of Us. SEO for people who feel overwhelmed by it. I'm not technical, I'm not a good writer. There are a million reasons that people have hangups about SEO and what's amazing is now I get to leverage my 10 years of teaching, not just ... when you take a lot of courses, it's really just people showing things, but they're not really. They're just demonstrating it. They're not actually teaching you how to do it. There's a very big difference between teaching somebody and showing somebody like, I can show my kid how to make a deck.

Brendan Hufford:           

He has no idea how to make a deck. Like, I mean he's five, so probably for the best. Right. But like, just because I show you something doesn't mean you can actually do it, but if I walked through the steps of actual learning, then it's really cool. People can learn stuff. So SEO is a totally learnable skill. When I started, SEO I was not a good writer. I'm still really disorganized and a mess. That's why I have to, had to get really good at things like Google sheets so I could stay organized and do things like that. I don't know. I just really want to dispel all of those SEO myths and let everybody know like, Hey, this marketing channel is extremely powerful. It's not going away anytime soon. People will forever be searching the Internet for things and it's accessible for everybody.

Kyle Gray:                            

I think that's really cool. And I like the ... again, it does bring it all together with the Steve Jobs quote about not only being able to connect the dots in reverse. And I would imagine, I would bet that because of your background in teaching and being able to hold people's attention and being able to design good lessons and make sure that people actually apply and understand the knowledge that you're sharing with them, I bet a lot of what you did as a teacher kind of informs what you do as an entrepreneur or even as a leader in your industry as well. And so tell us a little bit about how teaching do you think has influenced this. And Bren, I would love to hear some of the hangups that most people come to you for SEO.

Brendan Hufford:           

Yeah, so teaching influenced this in a couple of ways. You can probably tell just by my general demeanor that I learned to be a better showman before I learned to be a better teacher. I would also make a really great summer camp counselor. It's pretty neat. It's weird. I was like, all right. Summer Camp Counselor, teacher. Oh, also really good at like, this is just a great skill set to carry over into being a marketer and selling things. But I was cool when I started teaching. I taught psychology and sociology, so these are subjects that really aren't tested by the state and there's no real pressure as a teacher. So I got really, really good at just being the show every day. And then in my last two years of teaching, this is so silly, I'd already been doing it for eight years. I was an administrator. I had taught teachers how to do things and then in my last two years, I had this assistant principal named Josh Miller.

Brendan Hufford:           

Josh was like, "Hey man, you're really good, but you just kind of do a lot of activities and carry it with just your personality. Why don't we actually teach the ... How do you know at the end of class if somebody learned something or not?" I was like, "Bro, I don't know. They do good on the test." He's like, "Yeah, that's like once every couple of weeks. But like what about at the end of each class, if you taught them a thing, how do you know they know it?" I don't know. They completed the assignment. He's like, "Yeah, but if you like, how do you know that? They actually know the thing." I was like, "Dude, stop asking me the same question. I don't know. I don't know whether they know it or not" and he's like, "All right, cool. We're going to figure this out." And he's such a good teacher and such a good coach. This is the number one thing like teachers hate principals who can't teach. I know that sounds silly, but one of the best things in working at the last school that I worked at is that both of the assistant principals that were above me were way better teachers than me and I respect the heck out of that.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like if you're going to instruct me in anything, you've got to be able to do it better than me. I don't want to learn SEO from you just because you get a lot of speaking gigs about SEO, like can you rank a site? Like if I gave you a project or a client, could you get them to the top of Google for whatever they want? Or at least put together a smart strategy around it. I don't want to hear about your, you know, all the stats about click-through rates and all of this "woo woo"stuff because you do a lot of speakers, you know what I mean? Like I want people who can actually do the thing. So that's big on me. Like not only am I going, I think that's a big part of my instruction is like, hey, I'm going to give you real-world examples of like I've done this and you can see like, oh it actually works.

Brendan Hufford:           

And that's what's really helped me figure out. We joke in the SEO industry, there are two types of SEOs, there are the talkers and the doers. There are the talkers that bring people in that say hey marketers at big companies and all these other people. Like there's people in this, SEO ... SEO is a thing. Come use it for your company. And that's great. We need that. We need those awareness people. This exists in every type of marketing, Facebook advertising, pay per click, Facebook ads, all of that. SEO, every literally anything. So those people are really valuable, but then there's the actual executors, the people who do the work and I think that because there are so many people talking about it, there are all of these myths that come up and there's kind of like three. I'd say like two or three big myths. Number one is this idea that like it's confusing or it's not possible to understand it because it's really one of the few marketing channels we're like, we don't really understand how it works.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like, imagine I told you like we're going to bake a pie and the way we're going to bake this pie is we're just going to, we're going to guess. We have a recipe but we're just going to throw it in the pan and then we're going to put it in the oven and we don't know how long it's going to get to be in there and we don't know what temperature to cook it at, but we just think it's going to come out a pie. You'd be like, I don't know man, that sounds a little weird. But what if like 99 percent of the time it came out a pie, you'd be like, well I guess even though we don't really know this in-between step ... This is a bad analogy. I should probably think of another one. I'm like, even though we don't know this in-between stuff like it still works 99 percent of the time and people get overwhelmed by that and they think it's confusing and it's really not.

Brendan Hufford:           

If we just focus on the core stuff, the 20 percent that gets the 80 percent of results, it's really easy to understand. And if we look at those things, the primary thing is that Google indexes words. Google owns ... I say Google because Google is like 90 plus percent of all searches. Like we don't even say I'm going to do a search on the Internet for this. We just like Kleenex and Bandaid, Google, like the brand name owns the term for what it does. So they think Google primarily indexes words. Like you’ve got to be a good writer if you want to do good at SEO. And that's not true. It's just not. I write completely how I speak. I just did a big launch for my course and I got a lot of compliments on my emails. And I was like, launch emails like you're complimenting me on my selling you on this thing?

Brendan Hufford:           

Like that's amazing and that not just to me, but like I saw it in Facebook groups and stuff too. Or people were like, oh yeah, Brendan, and he's killing it with these launch emails. And I'm like, Huh. Like I just write how I speak. And I think that's a really big thing is that if we were to take a transcript from this podcast, so it'd be a bunch of broken half sentences and be mostly terrible, but if you write how you speak and then just edit it to make sense, you're already 90 percent of the way there. Writing the way we've been taught to write, to think like you need to get an A-plus on your 10th grade English paper about the Scarlet Letter or whatever is not the way you write for the Internet. Not The way you write for people.

Brendan Hufford:           

I don't want to read that. I don't want to read somebody doing like whatever, like AP, I don't even know the way you write in grad school. Ew. Gross. Bad. I want one sentence paragraphs and I want short. I want you to mix the cadence and I just want it to feel the way that you speak. Sometimes you speak in big long sections, then you hit a couple of choppy parts. Writing how you speak as a big part of it. And then the other big myth is just like, well, you're going to have to write a lot then. And it's also not true. One of my websites that I've made, you know, like 30,000 plus dollars within the last year or two, which isn't a full-time living, but for a website, I don't have to touch. It only has 10 articles on it and they're pretty good because I've been doing this for a minute.

Brendan Hufford:           

But it's not like you need to publish every day and 10,000 words a week or there's no metric. You know, Google looks at everything pretty individually anymore. And if you can build up the authority of your website primarily with links from other websites, and we can, I mean, if you want to, we can talk about how to get those, but it's really, you don't have to write a ton and you don't have to write super well. You just have to write in a way that is entertaining for people to read. And they're like, well, I don't know how to do that, Brendan. I just pause. And every time you're reading, you read things on the Internet, right? Every time you're reading something on the Internet, just drag it down into your bookmarks. And then once a week look at your bookmarks and go, why do I like reading this stuff?

Brendan Hufford:           

How do they write? What do these paragraphs look like? What do these sentences look like? How long are these? And you'll start to get an idea of like, oh, these are the things everything has in common that makes me feel good. And then all of a sudden you have a great formula to go forward with on how to write for SEO, for the Internet. The better you write for people, the better you write for SEO. And I think those are like two of the really big ones.

The better you write for people, the better you write for SEO

Kyle Gray:                            

Yeah. And then what are some of the, what is really important with SEO? What do you need to have dialed in? What are some of those crucial ingredients of the pie?

Brendan Hufford:           

Yeah. So we were talking about my website, so I think the ... we were talking about before about my website. I think one of the key things is like don't have a website that looks like trash. You kind of can't roll in with that like circa 1997 website, but you also can't ... I mean, here's the thing, I'm hesitant to say you have to have anything, because I so badly want to have a project where my website design is like really bad and it still does really well in search. There's plenty of those. Look all over the internet and you will see a ton of websites designed, Google anything and then open the top five. At least one of those is designed really bad. I just think if you want to be successful in the long run, like getting just a really good theme from ... you can use a bunch of places. I use Studio Press, other people use Thrive Themes. There's a lot of them. I'm sure you have favorites that you like too, Kyle. Anywhere like that can get you started if you have money and it would improve your business.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like, pay somebody to design your website. And I think that's a good place to start. I think the second thing, and this sounds so silly because it's not something SEO is really talked about, is having something to say. Nobody is gonna read like the ultimate guide to SEO for the 500th time. Please stop writing the same stuff based on stuff you've read elsewhere. The two biggest keys to successful publishing anywhere. Books, print media, and online media, whatever digital. Like the key is having something to say about it and then writing about things you've actually done. This is a tip I picked up not too long ago from Tim Solo who is the head marketer at an SEO company called H Refs and he's brilliant and he just wrote, he goes after my 30th article about something I'd read in another article.

Brendan Hufford:           

I just got ... it wasn't working. He was like" So I started doing things." Here's what I would ... I'll give you an example. I would much rather read an article instead of reading a top 25 tips for designing your logo, we spent $1,000 on Fiverr logos. Just, we got logos designed on Fiverr. We spend a grand on it. Here's what we came up with and it's a little bit clickbaity, but in there you can embed all of these other ... embed your top 25 tips for logo design. But instead of reading like that same old, oh, here come the tips that I've read on 50 other websites. Like actually having something to say and then actually having done something interesting. You know, don't give me your travel guide to India. Tell me like how you traveled to India and had been going there for 20 years and tell me stories. And I think that's a really, really big tip, do something and then have an opinion on it.

Kyle Gray:                            

I think that's interesting and it goes against a lot of ... I mean, one of the most common SEO kind of commandments I've ever seen, or strategies is the skyscraper method. But maybe ... well, you've, you've expressed them already.

Brendan Hufford:           

But let me, can I give you an example? It's funny, I was just talking over the weekend and why the skyscraper technique does not work. Number one, emailing people-

Kyle Gray:                            

Explain what that is first.

Brendan Hufford:           

Okay. So the skyscraper technique, first of all, I love branding. I think branding things is really good and it's helpful too. But, Kyle, if you give me this brilliant idea and then I coin a phrase around your idea and then claim it as my own, you're going to be like, "hey bro, that was my idea. You just kind of put a brand name on it or selling it as your own." The skyscraper technique existed for as long as SEO has existed and as long as we've been able to see other people's links, if I could see any type of backlink checker, as long as that has existed, the skyscraper technique has existed.

Brendan Hufford:           

I remember like I brought this up to somebody probably five or six years ago. Brian has another one called the moving man technique. It's just broken-link building. These have all existed for a long time. He just coined the phrase and thus gets a ton of credit for it. The skyscraper technique specifically is, hey, I'm going to look at an article that's ranking in Google and then I'm going to make a better article on the exact same topic, either by adding original research and all of these other things like making it better designed or something else and then, and this is the key, because the idea of make better content, that can't be a technique. That's just like a general thing. When you're publishing content, it should be better than what's out there. Otherwise, what are you doing? Why are you wasting your time? But then his technique is reaching out to the people who are linking to your competitor and the problem is the way he says here, use this formula.

Brendan Hufford:           

Hey Kyle, I noticed that you wrote an article about blue running shoes. I've also written an article about blue running shoes and I would like it if you would link to your article, my article in your article. Thanks.

Kyle Gray:                            

I've got so many, so many of those emails in my life.

Brendan Hufford:           

So many of those emails because he's like, he literally says, steal my outreach template, and it's like, this is the most garbage thing you know here. You know why that outreach template works. If you're Brian Dean and you're emailing SEO blogs, it works there. If I have a big name in my industry and I'm emailing an industry who understands the value of links, which is literally only the SEO industry, the problem is once you take it outside of that, it's like, that tactic 100 percent of the time does not work. And everybody's like, no, no, no. It works.

Brendan Hufford:           

And I'm like, cool. Do you run it exactly how it's taught? And like, no, no, no. I changed it up in like five ways. Okay, so it doesn't work. You've had to modify it like all of these different ways to make it work. I think that a big part of it is look in Google and don't improve on what's there, do exactly what they're doing. Google has shown we love this and if you're like, well I'm going to add a bunch of data or I'm going to write, I'm going to make it longer. I'm going to do something else. That's a huge mistake. If you find trends between like the top five articles, this is for something like really competitive, do exactly that. The bonus is going to be you actually having an opinion on it versus just like here's five tips. Have a voice and actually like write it for a persona and figure out where it falls, and this is kind of one of my other things. This is just like general content strategy though is just like have it fit into your funnel somewhere of like awareness all the way down to like ready to buy or opt-in or whatever. And a lot of people don't even consider that sort of stuff.

Kyle Gray:

You mentioned something that, something that the skyscraper technique overlooks. You mentioned you come to this one part where you just send them an email and they're going to give you a backlink is basically-

Brendan Hufford:           

Oh, yeah. It just happens, right? Kyle, you just email them and then you just get all the links.

Kyle Gray:                            

So what you're, what you're kind of implying here with that is that in this content, the value and challenge of developing relationships are incredibly understated.

Brendan Hufford:           

It's the most important part.

Kyle Gray:                            

Okay. So I would like to hear about that because I, I really agree with you and I think that it's kind of a novel idea or you know, it's definitely not the first impulse to assume that SEO success actually has more to do with my relationships than it does with my technical skills. Can you kind of elaborate on that for us?

Brendan Hufford:           

So I'd love to. Yeah. So two things. I have this article I've been waiting to write. It's been living in my brain for a long time called how I got 50 links from 50 sites in 50 seconds and it sounds like it's an incredible promise. Right? But the premise of it is I took everybody who I've ever been on their podcast and that has active show notes. So if they've quit their podcasts or they don't do show notes anymore, I don't bother emailing them. When I started a new project, I emailed every single person. I just continued the email thread that we already have. Our existing conversation, our existing relationship. I emailed all of them pretty much copy and paste. Hey, loved being on your show. I really appreciate that you put up the show notes. I have a new project. I'd love it if you could link to it in the show notes. If you do, I'd love. I'll send it out to everybody on social. All my social media followers.

Brendan Hufford:           

And everybody said no problem because it was really simple. They opened up their CMS, pasted in a new link and then that show notes that's been dormant for awhile got shared again and they got more visibility on their podcast and I literally copied and pasted that to everybody whose show I'd ever been on and it took me less than a minute. I got at least 50 links from it and why not? Because I sent 50 emails. I could send 50 cold emails and get no links and that's that. I wouldn't be surprised. That's very realistic, right? A good ROI would be like 10 percent. And the thing is like, because I had those existing relationships, I got all of those links.

Brendan Hufford:           

No question. Versus having no relationships. Relationships are all of SEO. I was talking to Kirsty Halls who's this really incredible agency owner. People should Google her. She's wonderful. She’s just a really good writer. I'm one of the few writers that I've seen like use motifs in their writing where they keep circling back to stuff throughout the... So good. I love, you know when you're reading something really good and it's like you're thinking about it was her 2018 year-in-review article and I'm like Ah, I'll give it a shot and by that time I hit the second mention of the same thing. I was like, oh this is good. This is good writing. It's so rare. Anyways, I was talking to her and like one of the things that I mentioned to her and that she and I were kind of going back and forth about was this idea that like in the past people thought you like one link per website.

Brendan Hufford:           

Like if I got a link from you, Kyle, that would be it. And then like that's ... I don't need a link from you again, Google's not going to count it if I get like 20 links from your website. But the secret is, and what I really think, it was the future of SEO is they want to see we have a relationship over time. So they want to see that you give me a link in 2019 and then in 2020 and then later in 2020 and you keep linking to me and keep linking to different stuff that I'm doing because it's relevant to you and they see that starts to form like a little bit of a connection between the two of us, a little bit of a stronger digital footprint as opposed to just all of these, like one to one between one website and one website over time.

Brendan Hufford:           

I think that that's kind of the future of SEOs. They're going want to see more of that. So the more you can stay relevant and that only happens with relationships, right? Like I'm a big fan of Kim Doyle. I'm going to keep linking to Kim's stuff over time. She'll probably keep linking to my stuff where it makes sense. My friend Jason Zook, runs a company called Wandering Aimfully. Like he is going to keep getting links from me over time because he just, him and his wife Carol both run it, but him and Carol, like they're going to keep getting links from me and Google's going to see this like really strong digital footprint over time versus the old idea of like one and done like that's not how you build links anymore. You want to get links continually over time from the same people.

Kyle Gray:                            

I think that that's powerful and that really that's a broader, broader take on relationships then that I've heard before. So I think that's a great, great way to kind of finish this episode out, friend, and thank you so much for sharing all of this wisdom and it's been ... It was incredible to see kind of your whole journey unfold before us in this. And then get some really solid advice for a powerful SEO strategy in the long run. Let us know where we can learn more about you, where we can connect with you and if anybody wants to dig into more of your SEO wisdom, where can they go?

Brendan Hufford:           

Yeah. So if you wanna learn more about me, you can just Google me, Brendan Hufford, even if you spell it wrong, Google will probably send new to me. Um, or else I'm really bad at my job if I can't even rank for my own very unique name.

Brendan Hufford:           

But if you Google me, you should be able to find me there on that website. You will then be able to pretty quickly find the SEO for the Rest of Us newsletter. If you want to learn SEO in a way that is understandable and cuts through the noise and get more clients or leads or customers from your website kind of on autopilot, just because you don't have to touch it after it's done. You know, it's a great option. I would definitely check out the SEO for the Rest of Us newsletter. If you're more of a social person you're welcome to check me out on Instagram. I am the Brendan Hufford on Instagram because some other jerk took Brendan Hufford really early and doesn't even use it. But I'm the Brendan Hufford on Instagram. I use Instagram in a really unique way. Most of my posts on there are just writing, just me writing, turning it into a graphic and then posting it, and then you can also follow me on Twitter. I'm Brendan Hufford on Twitter. It's a mix of like SEO stuff and me yelling about American politics, which if that's your bag near that if you're in for both of those things that I've got the Twitter for you.

Kyle Gray:                            

All right. Brendan, thanks again for joining us today and hopefully we'll continue to be passing links back and forth in the future as a symbol of our relationship. Thanks, my man.

Brendan Hufford:           

A symbol of our relationship. Thanks, Kyle. This is great.

Kyle Gray:                            

Thanks for listening to the Story Engine podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned in this episode and every episode at thestoryengine.co. If you want to tell better stories and grow your business with content marketing and copywriting, be sure to download the content strategy template at contentstrategytemplate.com. This template is an essential part of any business that wants to boost their traffic, leads, and sales with content marketing. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.