In this episode of the Website Investing podcast, Richard speaks Benjamin Golden from GoldenWeb about the upside that technical SEO can bring.
In this part 1, free subscribers get the first 40 minutes of the conversation; paying subscribers also get part 2 in their RSS feed. As is typical, part 2 elicits more insights as we get deeper into the conversation.
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Part 1 Show Notes
Humble Beginnings
Starting with YouTube
At the age of 12, Benjamin stumbled upon a bunch of YouTube review videos focusing on technology like phones and other gadgets. Later on, he started making his own review videos, and even got sponsored by companies to review their products. Today, his channel has over 25,000 subscribers and 10 million views.
Getting Into Websites and SEO
By 17 or 18, Benjamin thought of making his own websites where he could host his videos, and where people could learn more about him. Later, various companies contacted him and inquired if he could make websites for them, which he did. He then turned this into a business which worked on 7 to 8 sites per week, with a team of 23 members.
However, he later realized that the companies which contracted him to make websites for them were not really looking for websites, but were looking for leads. This is how he got into marketing. Later on, he and his team would get into web designing and development, and eventually, SEO.
SEO Auditing
Thanks to having a strong background in web design and development, Benjamin and his team are able to offer website optimization services to their customers. This way, small and basic issues relating to coding, links, and not implementing best practices are taken care of. By cleaning, auditing, and working on these, Benjamin’s customers are able to garner more organic traffic on their websites, without the need for any kind of new content or links.
Through networking and recommendations, Benjamin was able to capitalize on a lot of opportunities to grow this business, and today, GoldenWeb offers SEO auditing and solutions for its various clients.
GoldenWeb
Revenue-Sharing Model
A large part of the business of GoldenWeb comes in the form of a revenue-sharing model, specifically for e-commerce sites. As opposed to the usual project fee, they negotiate with their clients for a return of the site’s upsides for a certain period of time. It brings a ton of benefits for clients, as they get their websites audited immediately, allowing them to earn more money quickly after their sites have been optimized. Usually, they would negotiate for a 10% to 20% share of the revenue, and only if the traffic comes through organic searches to keep things fair.
GoldenWeb also has other payment structures available, such as getting a percentage of the earnings after a website has been flipped and sold. They can be very flexible in this regard, and it all depends on the individual agreement with the client.
For the Client’s Benefit
GoldenWeb does not require any investment, time, or thinking from the site owners, as Benjamin and his team handle everything for the client, with the goal of optimizing the website and making it better than it was before to achieve incredible returns. In fact, more often than not, Benjamin turns down audit requests from clients, if he sees that he and his team cannot provide amazing returns at all.
Services
GoldenWeb performs audits for their clients, and once fixed, there is no need to worry about this aspect of websites anymore. Rather, the focus of clients should be on releasing new content and links. GoldenWeb focuses on providing services and activities that deliver the most results, like auditing and fixing links, instead of tweaking small aspects of the site which are not even guaranteed to rake in more organic traffic and good upsides.
Optimization Tips
Being Careful with Internal Links
Changing internal links, or how pages link to other pages, can have a negative impact on how your website operates, especially if you aren’t careful enough. Consequences can include seeing a drop on those pages, as broken links and indexed content are actually quite common.
Category Pages
Benjamin always suggests to clients who want to rank category or parent pages that they must have unique content on these pages, and not just generic posts. This also depends on the type of website that you have. For niche websites, for example, which revolve around that same niche, parent-and-child pages are more optimal. On the other hand, for more diverse authority sites, categories are the way to go, and ranking these categories can definitely be beneficial.
Benjamin also suggests not to use your target keyword in the URL more than once for these category pages, as it would lead to a very cluttered URL, and is actually contrary to best practices.
Sites With No Authority
Google may see some sites as not authoritative enough due to their linking not being correct, or not being good enough. Often, they do not even have supporting content, which is why the site does not have any authority, as it is all over the place.
WordPress
Benjamin says that WordPress is still the best platform for people to choose, as it is the most well-structured platform, since it has the most support and the most plugins available. Though security can be an issue, this can be usually taken care of by the available support and plugins.
Episode 18 Part 2
In part 2 of this conversation we discuss:
Crawl budget optimization
Handling redirects to not lose link juice
The Affiliate Accelerator Program where he’s partnered with Mark Whitman (previous podcast) - find out how much he is allocating to content vs links
Why Benjamin buys expired domains without a link profile (this is a killer hack)
How best to target local markets
Part 2 is for paying subscribers, you can access by hitting the button below.
Enjoyed this episode or have any questions? You can leave a comment at the bottom of the web version of this post.
Cheers
Avi Silverberg (Producer) & Richard Patey (Host)
Ep 18 Part 1: Benjamin Strušnik on Upside from Technical SEO