Platz 1 auf Google | SEO Doku 2024
Five million people search the
Internet every minute and the number is increasing rapidly. There are currently
seven billion search queries per day. 30% of users who search locally
make an immediate purchase. Effective search engine optimization can reduce customer acquisition costs
by up to 90%. For SEO projects, the average
return on investment is 1,200%. No other channel is as profitable or attracts as much attention
as search engines. In times of crisis,
large corporations increasingly rely on SEO. A single giant dominates
the entire search market. Google, Google, Google. With a 92% share, Google is
the undisputed market leader. But how do you manage to be
found and successful in Google's universe? Success in sight:
The art of search engine optimization.
How companies
conquer the digital world through SEO. Produced by Daxo Media
on behalf of business-on.de. Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is one
of many marketing tools available to companies. A general distinction is made
between push and pull marketing. Push marketing
imposes unsolicited advertising without there being a direct need. In contrast to this is pull marketing, as seen in organic search
and SEO. If you
enter a search term on Google, such as “hairdresser Berlin,”
paid and organic placements appear. SEO is responsible for
optimizing organic rankings. Pull marketing grabs
people's attention by presenting solutions
that they are already actively looking for. That's exactly why SEO
as a pull marketing strategy is an indispensable
and powerful tool for successful online marketing. We want to understand exactly
which factors are crucial and what companies need to do to be successful and grow profitably
through search engine optimization on Google
. It's obvious that we
need to talk to the industry leaders to get direct insights
into the market. For this reason
we visit Trustfactory in Mannheim. Nikita Yatsun, the managing director,
kindly invited us.
At just 24 years old,
Nikita runs Trustfactory; a company with over 50 employees
and more than 1,000 customers served. When it comes to SEO, Trustfactory is the
market leader in the DACH region and is even one of the largest
SEO companies in all of Europe. An impressive achievement
at such a young age. We take a closer look at Nikita's expertise
. It all started about eight years ago
when I launched my first affiliate website together with my cousin Max
. At the time, it was an affiliate website
about steam ironing stations that we sold on Amazon and
received a commission for each sale. It was like that here.
We had a fundamental problem: we had neither start-up capital
nor previous experience nor visitors to the website.
And that was the point
where we first came into contact with the topic of search engine optimization.
We then
worked on this matter day and night and simply
built up a network of information here. This simply meant
that we were able to expand the website step by step
and had visitors and income
on the website after just six months. A short time later we sold the website
and simply made the exact same game again with this new start-up capital
. This means that we have
built new affiliate websites again, but this time in different subject areas and simply significantly, significantly larger
and also significantly more in quantity. This meant
that at some point, as the projects
got bigger and bigger, they were sold for a lot more money
, we gained a certain level of notoriety
in the SEO community and the first external people
came to us asked whether we couldn't, in principle, implement exactly the same thing for these people
, for
these people's own projects. And that was actually our first
contact with the agency business. We found this idea
really interesting because our idea here was
that we have our own agency that can manage our own projects
so that we
can remove ourselves operationally from the projects.
We simply wanted to build an agency
with really good processes that we could use for our own projects
as well as customer projects. As we continued to work
with the agency over the years, with the projects that we
continued to do on the side, at some point we also came across our current
business partners Alex and Cornelius. At that time they were
significantly, significantly larger, had many, many more projects
and also much more experience and then
accompanied, encouraged and supported us on this further path . We accompany Nikita
on his journey to Warsaw, an up-and-coming metropolis that is rapidly developing into a center for IT
and software companies.
Some are already calling it
Europe's new Silicon Valley. We are now flying to Warsaw and meeting
Max, Alex and Cornelius there. I am happy. Even though we are unable to film
the mastermind sessions, we are excited to meet the founding team
behind Trustfactory and get to know them. So I started with SEO in 2014. At the beginning the idea was to
build websites for customers. Well, I come from the country
and the whole thing was pretty frustrating. We felt somehow restricted. We could
n't really express our creativity. What we were able to do
was get people to a website and then we
came across affiliate marketing relatively quickly. Basically it's about placing links on a website,
for example recommending products. And when people click on these links,
you earn a commission. We thought: “Okay, now we can use
SEO to get our own websites up on Google,
monetize them and make money,” and we liked that a lot more and our focus was entirely
on high-quality content. We were good at it, we were
so different from others, creating really high-quality
content that sells.
The whole thing became more exciting
when I met Alex because Alex took a completely different approach
to SEO, whereas we focused on the on-page part, i.e. the content
on the website, Alex was more of a technician. So his strength was link building. This means that you build links from other websites
to your own website and thereby strengthen the authority
and SEO power of the website. And he
saw our projects and said: “Wow, they work
without this technical part. How would it be if we combined them?” And this synergy was simply brilliant and within a short time we were
already celebrating really good successes.
One of our first big successes was a small website
that we built in a small niche
where not much was happening, and suddenly the topic
started trending. This means that
more and more visitors came to the website. We thought: “Okay,
how do we make money with this now?” In principle, there were
n’t many providers offering these products yet. But then we
found a small company in the Netherlands that had good products,
but no marketing yet. Then we said, “Okay, we recommend your products,
you pay us commission,” and we
built the system together and it took off like anything else. So we earned really
good commissions. We have built
a complete marketing channel, essentially
an entire company. So today it's
a multi-million euro company and at one point we sold this website
for over half a million euros. Yes, you ask yourself: Why doesn't every company use
SEO if it works so well? And one explanation is
simply the zeitgeist.
Today everything has to happen quickly, quickly
and SEO just doesn't happen quickly. With SEO it's like this: you invest today
and then bear the fruit in six to twelve months,
when the first results come in. And especially in the last few years, when every company
had enough money at their disposal, they have put everything into advertising
that brings direct results. And especially now,
when the market is in a bit of a crisis, the companies that
have also relied on SEO at the time are doing well because even
if they reduce their add budget, organic visitors still come
to the website generate sales. Of course, there are also ways to
achieve short-term success with SEO. This then goes into this, it's
called the black head area. And SEO is roughly divided
into black hat and white hat. Black Hat is basically
using whatever method works regardless of the losses
. That means you don't care
about any Google guidelines: What's allowed? What is not allowed?
You just do what works.
And white hat, which is what
I was talking about before, is basically about
creating good content, hoping that others
recommend your website through links and that users
just like the site. But to give an example: In the black hat area,
where we had quick successes, that was a project where we simply
divided SEO into individual processes
and then fully automated them. And Alex and I were
involved in this project. At the top, I think we had around 40,000 domains
online at the same time, with
over 350,000 visitors per day, and that means you can achieve success more quickly.
But then they are not sustainable and that does
n't fit into a solid SEO strategy for a really reputable company. Word of the successes we had back
then spread relatively quickly. This means that more and more companies
came to us and said: “Hey, can you
implement something like that for us?” But for us it was like this: On the one hand, we had the focus
on our own websites and, from that perspective, little time and we weren't really
interested in customer business either. And then we said,
“What do we do?” I mean, basically the money
that’s on the street.
People come to us. We would be stupid
if we didn't keep it. And then Alex said: “I know two guys, I’ve been working with them
in the area of SEO for a long time and they’re really good at
process optimization and outsourcing. They can do exactly what
we can’t do.” And I thought: “Yes, that sounds brilliant. Maybe we can
even hand over some of our projects to them
and have them look after them.” That was also an idea
we always had when there were more and more projects. And then I said:
“Sure, introduce me to them,” and that’s how I
met Max and Nikita. Nikita and I started SEO around 2015, around
the time of filming. That was
actually quite funny back then. We started with a classic
affiliate project. To be more precise: We sold steam ironing stations
and essentially received commission for them. And after about six months,
the project was already going well. We had good rankings,
the first income and then a short time later
it was even more successful and then we
sold the project.
After that it went on like this all the time. We built a project, sold it, built something again,
sold it, kept something. So we basically
did it all the time and sooner or later
customers came to us and asked us: “Hey, ca
n’t you do that for us too? Can’t you help us
become successful on Google?” and then we
took on a few customers too. And one strength that we've always
had is actually that we were very, very good at building processes and we also
thought very, very big. That means
we've always looked at: How can we systematize something with people
and see that it doesn't depend on us, but rather that it
works independently of us? And we really thought big,
because we were always thinking: How can we scale something huge? Then at some point we understood:
We have to focus on one thing. We decided
to focus on the SEO agency, so to speak. The goal was to build the largest, best SEO agency
where everything is done in-house so that we can
work as effectively and efficiently as possible and then at some point we
can, so to speak, hand over our own projects and scale really dramatically, for example if we
set up a publishing company and then simply
be our customers yourself.
And then at some point we
came across Alex and Cornelius. They had exactly the same mindset,
everything was right, we basically matched
and that's how we came together. And today we are
where we are with Trustfactory. We now have over 50 employees and
over 1,000 customers that we look after. And that's actually how it came about. Nikita explained to us that there
are essentially three areas that are important in SEO. He compared it to a car. The foundation of the site
is the body of the car. The content is the gasoline or, for electric drivers, the electricity
that makes driving possible. The authority of the brand
or domain is the driving force. The foundation includes a technically
perfect and error-free website, for example in terms of loading times, understandability for Google
and internal structure.
The content should
show expertise in respective topics in order to gain the trust of readers
and search engines. It is important to
delve deeply into the subject matter and
offer high-quality content. Ideally, you should offer
higher quality and more comprehensive content than the competition. Authority is measured by backlinks. Links from external sites
to your own site. Google views these as recommendations
that boost authority. Whoever has more authority
wins the race. This also includes a strong brand and trust
through reputable social media channels or proven expertise
in the industry. Sounds simple,
but what does it look like in practice? SEO is divided into two core areas. This is the on-page area
and the off-page area. On-page refers to everything
that happens on the website. That's basically
the content and everything technical. Offpage refers to everything
that happens outside of the website.
These are primarily links, i.e. links
from other websites on your website. When we start working with new customers
, we start with the on-page area, which we also
refer to as the SEO foundation. We start with the current analysis. This means that we take a
close look at the customer's website by crawling it. We extract as much information
as possible from the website so that we can then evaluate: Are there technical errors? Does
it work properly? The second part is that we
look at the competitors.
When analyzing, we try
to quantify why certain competitors' websites
perform well on Google. Why are they ranked at the top?
What does Google like about them? Because that’s exactly what we want to
implement for our customers. We use common SEO tools for this. However, we also have a portfolio
of specially developed tools, including a script, which allows us to translate this analysis process
into a catalog of measures with just one click , which we then
implement on the customer website.
We then implement this catalog of measures
in a sprint that lasts a maximum of three months. We know exactly what to do. We know where the greatest leverage lies and there
is no reason to wait any longer or to implement it for years, as
some other competitors do. They say: “
We bill X-Y every month for on-page.” Instead, we do everything
in one sprint and then we’re finished, we have a clean substance, a clean foundation
that we can then build on. We
follow the Pareto principle. We implement the most important 80%. These are factors
like internal links. Are the articles on the website
logically linked to each other, for the user and for Google? Can Google
properly crawl the website? Are there any serious errors?
Is the website fast enough? Does it load on mobile devices? These things. It's really important. If that doesn't work, then
we don't even need to continue. That means that’s what we’re focusing on.
What we don’t do is
the last 20%. These are things like really achieving 100 out of 100 points
in Google Page Speed or optimizing 40,000 description texts
for images. That's not
what moves the customer forward. This can be done at some point
if there is excess capacity, but we are
not focusing on that at this point. At this point you also realize
that it doesn't make sense to say: "Okay, I'll let
my web designer do the SEO." First and foremost,
that sounds paradoxical.
A web designer is a designer.
This is an artist. He doesn't know technology,
he doesn't have the necessary experience, he doesn't have the tools. And besides, we're
still talking about the foundation. That means the whole process
is much more complex. So don’t pay
your web designer $500 a month. That may sound cheap,
but it doesn't help. As already mentioned, the foundation
only needs to be built once. Once it's neatly constructed,
you can build on it. Then you can start to scale and focus
on the other core areas of SEO – for example backlinks
and content. Another important component
in search engine optimization is content. And we're
not just talking about any content here, but about SEO-optimized content.
What is SEO optimized content? Quite simply: It is content that, for example,
has a certain word length, that has certain search terms
built into the content, that perhaps has a certain number of headings
in the content or in the text. And this content is needed so
that your target group can find you for your relevant search terms,
so to speak. Because if you don't
have SEO-optimized content, but just normal content, you won't be found
for your relevant search terms. The first step
to writing SEO-optimized content is to create a keyword map. What this means is: We create
a list of all the search terms that exist in my market, so to speak.
And
we also look at these search terms, for example using a competitor analysis. This means that in the next step we will do
a content gap analysis. So we're looking at
the content gaps here, because my competitors
may already have content that I don't have yet,
and so I can easily see: What kind of content
am I missing on my site? And I try to identify this content
based on content gaps and then simply recreate it. And once I
have this keyword map, with all the topics that are relevant to my target group
or to my market, then I can
move on to the next step and that is simply the completion of
this entire plan. This means that this keyword map
that I once created then becomes an entire content plan. And this content plan
also includes, for example: Which competitors rank
for which keyword? How much search volume does which keyword have? So which search term
has how much search volume? What is the page structure under which I want to publish this piece of content
? For example, which internal links do
I plan? So let's say content piece A
then wants to set internal links to content piece B,
content piece C, content piece D.
What is
this internal linking structure like, so to speak? What meta title
and meta description should I use for this one new piece of content? And that is
a completely holistic content plan that we then try to create. And you just use this content plan to really, let me say,
have a kind of battle plan: What is the most important content that I need to publish over the next six
to twelve months? Once the content plan is ready and we have this holistic,
data-driven plan based on this competitor analysis, the next question
that comes to mind is: How can I
write this content now? And here we break the whole thing down
into many different areas. For us, it's not just a matter of
us going in and saying, "We're going to give this content plan
to a writer and have that writer
write every single piece of content," but it's also
a very, very meticulous process.
And for us the whole thing looks like this: we have a division
into letters, i.e. briefing creation, the actual content creation, the editing
and the infographic creation. So those are four areas
that the content piece goes through from A to, let's say, D. And this is where we
always start the briefing process. This means a completely,
let me say, separately hired person just for this area,
who spends the whole day working on creating really high-quality briefings
. And by briefings we mean that
you do an entire market analysis, here again
a competitor analysis and look: What content have the competitors
written for this keyword, for example? That means: What is the content of these individual
pieces of content from the competitors? What kind of keywords are there in this market
or for this piece of content? What are the FAQs? So what kind of questions and answers
are there that are being asked in the market? What meta titles and
symbols are used there? And much more.
And the most important part is
that these letters have already created the subheadings
for our content writer or text writer, that is, each individual subheading
with an explanation. What needs to be in the subheading
is already planned in advance and then
handed over to our content writer ready to use. Then we come to step two and that is
the actual text creation. The whole thing goes like this: The content writer has received this very,
very detailed briefing and a really good text is then written based on this briefing
. In addition to the briefing, we
also have other common SEO tools such as Surfer SEO,
which we use to easily access a maximum of keywords
in the content piece. So it's like this,
you can imagine it like this, that not only one piece of content,
let me say, ranks for a keyword, but with Surfer SEO
the content writer then sees that there are hundreds or 1,000
more keywords, which must appear in the piece of content or in the text,
which must be incorporated so that the article really ranks for a maximum of
content keywords, so to speak.
And then basically
the job of this content writer is to just go and
create high-quality content. Let's then move on to step number three
and that is the proofreading process. In the proofreading process it's like this: We simply follow
a four-eyes principle. Of course, at the end of the content or process, the content writer goes
and reads his own text,
but the whole thing is not enough for us because a copywriter
who has written his own text can very quickly
overlook a few things or read over it and then, I would say, the goal here is to hand the whole thing over
to a completely third person who
has nothing to do with writing the content and who simply
reads through the article two or three times and corrects all the content
and linguistic errors .
The fourth step is basically that the whole thing then
goes to our infographic person and, based on the content that was
written, the infographic person creates a really, really good,
high-quality infographic around the content piece again to upgrade it so that you don't just have text
and words and words and words, but also a beautiful, completely uniquely created visual
material that simply serves to ensure that the content can
be spread further if necessary, i.e. shared further. And these are these four steps that every piece of content
goes through, and this is how you really, efficiently create very, very
high-quality content.
Of course, we also work completely data-driven
and data-oriented in this process. This means that we look at
the competitors to see: “How many words has
each competitor written on average?” and then determine our
own average, which we then
pass on to the authors, so to speak. We also look at: For example, have the other competitors
installed infographics? Have the FAQs been built in,
i.e. questions and answers? Have the pictures included?
How many images were included? How many subheadings are there?
How many bold words? So the whole thing really goes into very,
very deep detail in the data analysis.
And that's just the case,
I'll say, or why we do it this way
is very simple: We simply want to
have the best data basis and not make the entire
content creation process dependent on
gut decisions, but rather we
can really say in a data-driven way: “All of this is necessary for
the piece of content to be perfect.” Additionally, it is important to understand
that this division into these four areas
is very, very important. And you need completely new people for these four areas
. So you can't go and say: “Briefing and authoring are
done by the same person”, or “Writing and editing are
done by the same person”, and other agencies go
in exactly this step and even say: “We have one SEO manager,
an employee who, in addition to all the SEO work,
also has to write texts.” In our opinion, the whole thing makes
no sense at all because, as I said,
you simply cannot ensure that the process is
meticulous is followed in detail and we achieve the optimal result,
because an SEO manager does not have to be an optimal
content writer or author.
This means that a linguistic level
is definitely not at the level of a very,
very well-trained author. And secondly, the SEO manager
cannot use his available time to create such a good, data-driven
analysis of the competitors as, for example,
a full-time briefer. And these are all points
that, in principle, differentiate us from other agencies in the process,
because with our authors it is important to us that the authors
only work on writing texts. This means that we only want to have people
in this area who have top language skills and who
can write high-quality texts. And they don't have to have any SEO knowledge at all,
no prior SEO experience at all,
but are just very, very good, qualitative people
with a very high linguistic level.
If you write the content the same way, the results are
really bombastic. Because point number one is:
The content is very, very good. Maybe not on page one, but
definitely on page two, three or four and then increases
in positions day by day. And point number two is: You ca
n't write the content any better, because through this entire meticulous
process, through the competitor analysis and this data-
driven approach, the content cannot be
written any better. And due to the division
into different positions, there is
simply no room for improvement. What I
would also like to give as a tip is that there are
many, many false beliefs in the content.
For example, a misconception is that content
has to be written for readers. In our opinion, the whole thing is
complete nonsense, because we have
a perfect example here. We once had a customer who had
an online shop in the health sector and they were actually biochemists
who wrote the content. And these biochemists had the best
content in the entire healthcare market and then wondered why this content didn't
rank at number one on Google. The problem here was that while the content
was truly the best content for the reader, it simply
wasn't written for search engines.
And that's this balancing act
that you simply have to strike, that you have to master, I would say, that you don't
just write content for readers, but primarily for search engines and keep this point in mind with the readers
, but first considered after the primary writing
for the search engine. Because if you do
n't write the content for the search engines, then
no one can read the content. This means
you have to get out of your head this misconception
that you have to write primarily for readers. Another belief is that more content, i.e.
Quantity,
must take precedence over quality. Here too I can say: There is simply no point in
publishing new content every day if this content
is not SEO-optimized. After a year, you can
have 300, 400, 500 articles, but if they
are simply not written qualitatively, then they will not rank and no one in your target group will
read this content. And that's why it's important here to
first master the quality, i.e.
To master exactly the process that I
discussed before. And if you know that you can
create scalable, high-quality content, then you think about it: How can you scale the whole thing
to another level, i.e. scale it even better and thus
become much, much larger in quantity ? This is basically
the approach that I can recommend to everyone
when it comes to SEO-optimized content. Two other interesting
misconceptions that exist are, for example, that you
only optimize for one keyword per article. As I
explained earlier in the process, this also makes no sense at all,
because an article can rank for several 100, sometimes even over 1,000 individual
keywords, i.e. search terms. And that's why it's
important to understand here that if you follow this process
and use, for example, these Surfer SEO tools, for example common SEO tools
, then you'll manage to create content
that doesn't just rank for one keyword or is optimized for answers, but directly for several 100s,
several 1,000s of keywords.
And so you simply save, I would say,
a lot of additional content that you have to write,
because you
can cover hundreds or thousands of keywords in a single piece of content. The other side is of course
also very interesting. So there are
companies that go and say: “My entire strategy
depends on three money keywords.” Money keywords simply mean very, very
important, sales-strong keywords. And these companies then simply say: If I don't
rank for these three keywords, then this entire SEO strategy or
content strategy is of no use to me. They simply forget that there are
perhaps over 100 or thousands more long-tail keywords, i.e.
variations of the money keywords, for which you can also rank,
where you can also easily reach your target group
and tap into search volume, In order to possibly
have significantly more content and significantly more keywords, and then the fact that each individual
keyword among the long-tail keywords may have a little
less search volume, it is the case that in total
all of these Long-tail keywords can potentially achieve the same or even more total volume
than three money keywords.
And that's something
where a lot of entrepreneurs are just like a kind of tunnel,
I would say, and say: “No, just these three money keywords,
for example <i>buy socks</i><i></i> >. I am an online shop
that sells socks. Those buy-socks keywords, that's the only thing
that matters to me. That's all I want." But in my opinion, as I said, this narrow-minded way of thinking does
n't make sense,
since there can be over 1,000 other variations of this keyword
and you can achieve at least the same level of sales
with over 1,000 long-tail keywords that are also much, much less
competitive than with these three money keywords,
which are also much more competitive and where
achieving results is much more difficult. It is also important to understand that the item
must of course be monetized. This means that once you have mastered
this entire content process , once you manage to
create high-quality content that ranks really well and also
gets visitors, that is, gets traffic, as they say in technical language,
then the next step is Step also ensure
that the content is monetized.
By monetization you mean including a certain call to action
in the content, for example to buy something,
to promote something and get commission for it or to get some kind of,
let's say, contact request. And these calls to action
belong in the content because that’s how you
easily increase your conversion rate. Many people simply assume that if there is no call to action
in the content, the visitor to your site or the searcher will
simply click on your logo and spend five minutes
looking for a contact form or the shopping cart icon, so to speak.
But why should you
make this entire journey so difficult for a user when you can simply incorporate
a call to action into the content and
get the conversion straight away, so to speak, and thereby
generate more sales? It is often the case that competitors cannot be distinguished from those on the market
. Just an example here: Let's say there is
a shop that sells diet plans, and let's say there is
a shop that sells weight loss pills. And it's often the case that, for example,
the shop that sells diet plans says: "No, my direct competitors are
just all the shops that sell diet plans,
and the rest doesn't matter at all to me." These too, I'll say , Approaching
SEO content makes no sense, because if the shop with the weight loss pills
ranks for the same keywords, targets the same target group, then
it is definitely an SEO competitor of yours and should definitely be
included in the strategy
the competitor analysis is included.
This means that you have to
understand very clearly: What is the difference
between direct competitors who offer the same thing as you in the shop? But what are market competitors
that are also very, very relevant in SEO? Because in SEO, market competitors are
also your competitors and you have to have them on your radar in order to capture
the same target group and the same keywords
as your market competitor, so to speak. These were a lot of false beliefs
that many people have. And in summary one can say: The entire content process
must be carried out holistically. You've probably already
noticed in the course of this process that it's no use
just writing and creating content from your gut
, but you need this data-driven approach
with the entire competitor analysis, data that you
basically develop and collects. You need this division
into briefers and content creation so that
the content is really at the highest level.
And you simply need, I would say,
this correct mindset when it comes to content, which in principle you
write for search engines and not for readers and much more. And if you manage
to master all of this really well, we'll move on
to the next area. And that is the area of backlinks and another big lever
for your search engine optimization. A backlink is a link
from another page on your site. So you can
think of it like this as an example: Page B is now your page and Page A
is someone else's page and Page B is linked from Page A. Then page B has, so to speak,
a backlink from page A.
This is basically a backlink and that is
the most important ranking factor in Google's eyes, because let's
just imagine it like this: Now the foundation is perfect, which is the on-page of the page perfect,
there's nothing more to complain about. Now the content is perfect. This means that there is a lot of content and a lot of keywords to
rank for. There's
nothing wrong with that anymore. Now the question is: How does Google
actually manage to decide: who will win the race?
Who comes forward? You might think that maybe these are
user signals and so on, but here it is,
it's far too manipulable and that's why in the end it just happens
via backlinks, because the backlinks are ultimately like a recommendation
from Google's eyes, so to speak. And that is ultimately
the most important ranking factor.
To put it simply, the one who has more authority wins
. It's best if I explain again
how backlinks work in detail before I get to
how we set it up for our customers, otherwise it will be
far too difficult to understand. First of all, you have to understand: A backlink is either a dofollow
or a nofollow backlink. This is something
that is in the source code. That means there is some code
in the background that you can't see. And you can see, for example, that
this is a dofollow backlink. So you follow the backlink,
it has more power, more strength. Or you can say
this is a nofollow backlink. The Google guidelines say that
you have to specify this if this is
a sponsored article, and then you basically specify nofollow, which means: “Don’t follow this,” and then
the link simply has less strength, so to speak , less starch is passed. Then each link
also consists of an anchor text. An anchor text, so to speak the text
that is linked to on your page.
For example, “Look at this page”, then “Look at this page” would be
the anchor text, so to speak. This will link to your site. Now this is
a generic anchor type for example. Then there is this-seite.de. This is,
for example, a URL link because you link directly to the domain. Then there is
Trustfactory, for example. This is then really
only linked to Trustfactory. This is, for example,
a brand link. And assuming
you were to sell socks now, the
anchor text would be “Buy socks”. This means that you have actually
linked to your main keyword and that is
an exact match anchor text, so to speak. That’s about the anchor texts.
And then it is important to understand:
There are different types. There are, for example,
user-generated links. This means that these are links that have been built naturally by users
. These are forum links or blog comments. Then there are content links. These are links that link from a natural
text, for example
on a blog or on a news site. And then there are directories. We all know this,
where you can register yourself. Yellow Pages, the standard directories
that just exist. And that's just
a basic explanation of how links
work in detail. Once you
understand that, then the question is: Where do I
actually get my links from? So do I buy my links
or do I build them naturally? These are
the two variants that there are. That means you can say:
“I'll take X amount of money and I'll use it to buy links
and then I'll check that too,” or you can say:
“Yes, I'll just write good content and I hope
that it is linked somehow.
And I don't know if it will work. If it works, cool.
If not, then not.” There are two variants. For us, we only
rely on the buy version for the most part because that's the only thing
you can really make scalable and what you can control. You also have to think of it this way: When you enter a new market,
you may have competition that is so far ahead of you. And then you can’t just say, “Yeah, I hope
someone just links me tomorrow.” It doesn’t work that way.
Then you have to buy the links.
It 's also the case that
all publishers these days know that they can charge money for it. That means it's clear to them: This is something that is in high demand.
I can charge good money for it. Then why should they
give it out for free? It's like if you knew, I have a cool service
that I can offer, but I'm just giving it out for free even though
a lot of people would pay me money for it. That means
it's just very, very difficult to
get any goodwill links these days. Your competitors don't do that either. You buy the links the same way.
That's why you have to do it too. And last but not least:
it saves a lot of time. So it saves a lot of time because you do
n't lose that opportunity cost. If you waited to
build your backlinks now, you might end up
losing a lot of time in which you could be making sales. Once you understand that,
then it's a question of: Where do I actually buy my links? That's the next question, so to speak: Where do I actually get the links from
in the end? And here it is:
We used to always look: Okay, where can we
get our links? These used to be Facebook groups.
These were some strange contacts.
Links were often purchased through third parties,
via some sort of detour. And what we founded a few years ago
is a marketplace. We have the largest marketplace in all of Germany
with over 40,000 publishers. And here you can imagine it like this:
We have fixed deals with publishers. We know that they upload our content
for a fee and it
includes a backlink, so to speak. And we negotiate these deals every day.
We make them better every day. We expand our contact every day and we simply sit
directly at the source. So now it's like this: We know we have the best deals,
nobody has better deals. Now other agencies are buying from us. That 's why we're building this
through our own marketplace.
Why should we buy from others
who will ultimately buy from us anyway? But the marketplace itself
is not enough now. That means if you
only have one hot source where you got your backlinks from,
that's not enough. In the end, you
also need the right strategy. And for our customers, we approach this by
looking at all competitors as the very first step. That means we look at: What are the competitors
actually doing when it comes to building backlinks? So really data-based. And we look at:
Where does our customer stand, so to speak? And at the end? We also do this
with our own tools. So this is also a tool
that no one else has. We can
throw all the data in there, so to speak, and have a really clean analysis. We may still have
six to ten hours of working time for categorization, but in the end
we have a clean evaluation and in the end
we see really clearly: This is where our customer is, this is where
his competitors are and this is the link gap ,
which we essentially have to close so that we can ultimately
overtake our competitors and stand above them.
And we see that
broken down into detail. So we also see: How strong do
the backlinks have to be or how weak? As an example:
It wouldn't be so smart if our customer simply bought strong backlinks in our marketplace,
which he spends a lot of money on,
when he actually strategically sees that it only makes sense
for him to buy weak backlinks because his competitors do too
only have weak backlinks. We also see exactly how
the anchor text types need to be distributed. We can see exactly whether we need to link to the homepage
or to the subpages. We see very clearly: Do they have to be dofollow links? Do they
have to be nofollow links? And we can
then build the strategy based on that. We then create a link plan
for the next six to twelve months. And in this link plan
we are also looking at closing exactly this gap based on data
. So we know in advance that this gap will be closed after six to twelve months
.
Our customer is more authoritarian
than his competitors and he will most likely
get the same results. That's basically our approach
in this area, so it's super data-based, because here too our mindset is: If the people or the pages that are already
ranked in the top one, top two, top three perform well, then
Google likes that. what they do, and then we just have to
do exactly the same thing.
Maybe we'll add
a little more, but we don't have to exaggerate. Don't say unnecessarily: “We're doing
more even though it's not necessary.” In other words, really maximally efficient
and that's our mindset. This is basically how we proceed in order to
achieve the best results here. This is actually the most cost-effective
method there is because we only build
the links that need to be built.
There is no way
that we can sometimes shift to the left, sometimes move to the right, or
go in the wrong direction. We have really
clarified the path to the goal and we follow it
without running around it in any way and have really
not wasted any budget unnecessarily. So we
really only build strong links when you
only need to build strong links, for example. Or if you only
need to build weak links, then we only build weak links.
Weak,
perhaps explained here, does n't mean
that the links are bad. They are just a bit
weaker and probably also cheaper and so in the end we can, so to speak,
work as cost-efficiently as possible. And that's
our overall approach to how we structure our backlinks. But you also have to understand that
it can go into great detail. There are so many
smaller important factors, so many mistakes that others also make. As an example:
Many people sometimes think and say: “I can build backlinks
myself, I don't have to buy anything,” but these are usually the people
who then build forum links, register themselves in directories
or write themselves blog comments write. But here you just have to
understand: These are good links. So you'll
also need these links in your strategy, but if you only have the links,
you won't perform, because that's necessary for the mix
in any case, but to get the right results,
that's all you can do in the end
via the content links because that's what
brings the authority in.
Or another point
that I hear very often: “The more links, the better.”
That’s not true either. Because in the end
you might go and say: “Yes, I still have a
lot of budget here, I’ll build
more links here now,” or “I’ll build a lot of cheap
backlinks, but weak ones .” I actually explained that
a little bit beforehand. The bottom line is that you need to look at
what your competitors are doing, and that's exactly what you need to do.
You don't have to do anymore. It may be that you have more budget,
but you may already have such a big gap,
you just have to maintain it. But you don't
necessarily have to put everything in there because the distance is already so big
that you really have to do the bare minimum. Now I'm sure that at the moment when I
've said so much about link building – that's exactly the moment
when the documentary is live – there will be a
lot of haters in the comments who say be: “Hey, but link building is
against the guidelines. Do not do that. Google punishes this.
This is super toxic.” My opinion on this: You can now go to the Google site
and read the guidelines. It will also say
that backlinks are not allowed, otherwise you can be penalized
if Google finds out.
It will also say that it
is against Google guidelines. In the worst case scenario,
you may be penalized. But the bottom line is,
if your competitors do it, you will have to do it too. You can't get around it. It may be on Google on
his website, but you can also prove in black and white
that it ultimately works. As an example: If you
just google “Yandex Leak”, you will get the Yandex Leak
that happened in 2023. Namely, at Yandex
the most important ranking factors in the entire algorithm were leaked. And there are a
lot of ex-Googlers working at Yandex. Around 70% of the search results
that Yandex has also match with Google
and it is written in black and white that building backlinks is a factor
that is really, really important. We also have
an internal SEO testing laboratory, for example. This is what we call the Trustfactory Testing Lab.
Phil also does this for us. Maybe you can
interview him when you're in Germany. And we also have
a test going on where we can prove in black and white
that backlinks really work and that it really brings results, because we have basically
excluded all other factors, to put it simply,
so we can really limit it to really just
being due to the backlinks.
And we can
prove in black and white that backlinks work. As I said, Phil could perhaps
tell you something about it in more detail. And that's why, yes, Google's site says
backlinks are against the policy. On the other hand,
it works, all your competitors do it and
if you do it cleanly and naturally, and you really have a clean
and good backlink structure, then nothing will happen. In all of our time
doing SEO, we have
never been penalized for backlinks. And here the saying simply applies:
Do what works, because if it works,
then it works. That's why it's even more important
that you hand over your link building to an expert if you do it
, because if you do it yourself,
then there are many other,
even smaller, factors that I don't
I can just tell you briefly in such a short interview.
And there is a big risk
that you will do something wrong. If you do something wrong,
you may be penalized. Penalty, to
perhaps explain this, means that your site
will be removed from Google's index. So this is not a monetary penalty. This is not a warning
for which you have to pay money, but Google is essentially kicking you
out of the index. You will then no longer be found,
your site will no longer be indexed or you will get a handicap, so to speak. You simply can't perform as well anymore
because you're blocked somewhere because Google thinks
you're doing something unnatural.
That's why, as I said, it's all the more important:
really hand it over to an expert so that everything runs correctly and that
everything works cleanly. Maybe also
to give a general summary of the whole SEO topic, which is important
if you are doing SEO now, and which we
always pay attention to as the main points with our customers. That being said,
SEO is a holistic process. This means you should
not join any religions. “I am Black Hat, I am White Hat.
I write my content only for readers. I
only write my content for Google.” In the end, what works
is a really holistic view. So do what works
and write the content for Google and for readers,
because that makes sense.
Then, the second point is: We always work data-driven
and you should too. That said, take advantage of the fact that you know
that Google is just an algorithm and look at what the top three sites
that are already performing well are doing and do exactly the same thing,
just a little better. And luckily you can also analyze the whole thing
based on data. There are tons of tools for this. I could list tools all day long
. So there are a lot of them. Therefore, use this and really
just build everything based on data. And the last important point is:
SEO is not a one-time thing. You shouldn't look at it like this: I'm going to buy
some package from someone who probably hasn't even analyzed my site
and that's it. Or I'll just put
something in and that's it. SEO is something long-term. This is something that has to be done over a long period of time
and then it works.
And you have to look at it holistically,
also take the competitors into account and then it will work if you do
n't look at it as a one-off thing. That's my conclusion on the subject of SEO. We would like to thank
the Trustfactory team for your insights so far and can't wait to
learn more about Phil's backlink study. We go back to Mannheim to delve further into the fascinating world
of search engine optimization. You can imagine the Trustfactory Testing Lab
as follows: This is an internal department for us
and in this department we test various theses
in the area of SEO for various factors. This means that we have
various test phases, sometimes over months,
and can then always prove: Okay, if a thesis is really confirmed, we can say that
this thesis is confirmed, or if a thesis is simply wrong and
we can therefore invalidate this thesis .
The backlink study,
especially in the last few months, has been one of the most exciting projects
we've had. We have put forward the thesis that link building
is one of the most important ranking factors. And to test this thesis,
we did the following: We went and invented a term
that didn't yet exist and then called it Krinumbelus. This term Krinumbelus was then
incorporated into ten different pages. However, these pages were
set up completely the same in terms of technical aspects. Why the whole thing was done is, you
can imagine, that you have a site in the field of fishing
and a competitor in the field of fishing. And it can always be the case
that these two pages are structured exactly the same from a technical point of view
. But what
is ultimately on the page is different. That's why we did it the same way. The technical aspect is completely the same, but the side aspect was
designed similarly but still individually, because that's how it is in real life. A page will never look exactly like a
competitor's page, for example.
And that's why we did it like this: We
perfectly SEO-optimized these pages, that is, meta title,
everything was perfectly SEO-optimized with this term Krinumbelus
and then we checked various aspects, various tools,
like after a period of time term ranks. When the rankings came in and
our tools registered them, we of course
also received a message. And when we received this message,
we went and built links for places six to ten
in the rankings, i.e.
For the pages that were ranked six to ten.
And through this link building,
after a while, around one to two months, we could
definitely see that the rankings quickly slipped from places six
to ten to places one to three, i.e. the absolute
top positions. And then it became clear to us relatively quickly: Hey,
no link building was carried out for the other pages, but
link building was carried out for the lower-ranking pages. And then it was clear that
a site that is in tenth place and
is suddenly in first place through link building, then it is very clear that link building is a very,
very decisive factor, because this ranking would not have happened , we wouldn't have
done this link building.
That sounds really promising. Thank you for the insightful
and friendly conversation. In Warsaw we learned
that the Trustfactory team is working on innovative SEO tools
that they claim will offer their customers enormous competitive advantages. To find out more about this,
we turn to Nikita again. We are planning
two new software solutions this year. We are fans of
always working data-driven. So
we are already working with previous tool solutions that do not exist on the free market. Very, very data driven
for our customers. But we now want to take the whole thing
to a new level, with a campaign builder on the one hand and then a completely
separate content marketplace.
We already have a link audit tool with which we make the building of links
very, very data-driven, but with the Campaign Builder
we also want to automate the entire planning of all link campaigns
very, very well and make it data-driven. This means, for example: If you are a customer
and are in our marketplace, you can
view all of your anchor texts completely free of charge. You can
see all dofollow, nofollow distributions completely free. You can
go to a link checker with a single click and all links will be checked
whether they are still online or not.
Currently you
always have to do all of this manually, but now with this Campaign Builder
from Trustfactory, all of these functions are
available to you completely free of charge. And the second tool
we are planning this year is basically
our own content marketplace, because as an agency we
rely on SEO content. We produce SEO content
that is supposed to rank well and we are simply not
happy with the current solutions that are available on the market.
There is a lot of AI content, a lot of content
that we simply don't like in terms of quality, and that's why we have our
own content marketplace that we launch
with trained authors only. So every author has to
go through SEO training. We have a proofreading process,
we have an infographic process and many, many other points,
such as our own editor, where all the keywords
are displayed directly with which you can write a very good SEO-optimized article
. This also means here: You no longer just have to specify a main keyword
, a keyword density, but everything is already data-driven,
made available to you, so to speak, and you
actually have the opportunity to easily
write SEO-optimized content with just one click. It has to be said that SEO is currently changing very, very
much. Ten years ago,
for example, SEO was completely different when you
compare it to today. This year alone we had
a really crazy hype around the whole AI topic. That is, Google has announced that it will release an AI-assisted search engine called Google Bard
.
There is ChatGPT, there is Bing with Microsoft, which is also
releasing its own AI solution. There is AI content being written. So you just notice this: ten years ago this was
n't even an issue, but this year it is. And that means if you, as an SEO,
always rely on your experience and say: “I always
prefer to work from my gut because I’m an expert,”
then you won’t get very far. You always have to keep your finger on the pulse and that's why we
always try to work very, very
data-driven for our customers. We don’t want to go in and say,
“We’re SEO experts. We've been doing this for eight years,
or even longer if you combine all the experiences,
and that's enough for us." No, we always want to reinvent ourselves. We always want to be able to work in a data-driven manner
so that we can follow this change in SEO
completely one-to-one.
Fascinating. Really fascinating. We now understand
how search engine optimization works and what it takes to
be successful on Google. The big question now is: How much does SEO cost and who should
deal with it and who shouldn't? To find answers to this,
we talk to Philip Mettmann from Trustfactory. In fact, SEO is
suitable for those who say: “I already have
an existing business, I've been on the market for a few years,
things are going well for me and I just want to
add another sales channel to grow even stronger
and even better Getting results." And that's just what I've learned
over the last four or five years, over 2,000 conversations,
it's really crystallized that it
makes the most sense to start with SEO for all the companies that really say, "Hey , we already have
a functioning channel, we have a functioning sales system
and now we want to accelerate even further." So all the companies that
are just starting out, where they say: "I'm just getting started now,
I'm the first “Building channels”, I would advise against
investing in SEO right from the start because it simply takes too long
to achieve results.
And here it definitely makes sense
to prefer other channels that produce quicker results
and therefore for all those companies that really say:
“I'm just starting up or I'm still relatively new,
sales aren't coming in that much yet “, I would definitely advise against
doing SEO directly. The ideal time to start with SEO
is actually when you realize that all the other marketing channels
are already going very, very well, you are making really good sales,
the profits are there and you can
imagine setting up the next channel. such as SEO,
where you sometimes say: “Waiting six to twelve months
until the results come in is no problem at all,” then you can
definitely start with SEO.
Then the time is right.
To start with SEO, you should definitely expect an investment amount
of four to five figures for at least the next
six to twelve months. Of course, it always
depends very much on the competitors. That's why you ca
n't say exactly: "This is the ideal budget" or "This is
the ideal investment amount for SEO", but you should calculate that with at least
a four-digit amount.
Most of the time it's more like
a five-figure amount. In fact,
the question that usually arises is not: “How much does SEO actually cost?”,
but: “What does it cost not to do it?” So the opportunity costs
are usually significantly higher
than the amount invested in SEO, but you can do that My colleague, Daniel,
who looks after our existing customers and is really actively involved in customer projects
, gives the best insights into what kind of results we can generate, but also what kind of sales
can come out of it or
what potential there is behind it.
Understood ?
Then we ask Daniel directly about it. SEO makes
a huge difference for business. I have dozens of examples
from everyday life. For example, an online shop
that we manage, which we can make very, very visible from almost
no visitors at all , now has
several 1,000 visitors every month, and that
of course changes the business completely. So of course you have a
lot more inquiries from now on. Otherwise, we
now also had a window manufacturer who is therefore
more regional and had the same situation. He hardly got any orders before,
organically. He had to
do a lot of paid advertising. Now he can
hardly save himself organically from orders. He got a
lot of top rankings from us. His life has also
become very stressful, he said. Of course in a positive sense, but yes,
this collaboration is definitely a complete success. Otherwise, we also had
a taxi center, for example, which was also very regional and of course it is also very important to
have a top ranking, organically.
Yes, we managed to achieve a top position
for the customer there, and of course he dominates
in his city. These are great examples where
the business has changed completely, but also one's private life. So I hear it from people
when they tell me how
everything is suddenly changing economically and at the same time they
have big savings on paid advertising, and so they are
very grateful and show that in the call.
They only know me. I'm the face
of Trustfactory, I'll say, and not just advertising. But otherwise? They are often
so grateful to me personally, even though it is of course
a team success, so to speak. From that point of view,
everything doesn't have to do with me, but that's exactly how it is. I sit there and they are very happy,
sometimes a bit emotional, because in the end
the successes are sometimes life-changing. If we suddenly turn a mini shop
that is not visited at all into a shop
that has 10,000 visitors a month, then that is of course
life-changing and they are therefore grateful. A big thank you
to the entire Trustfactory team and Nikita
for the outstanding support. A little tip: Trustfactory offers a free
SEO analysis for interested parties. At the end of the conversation, an offer
for collaboration is presented.
However, this is not just another
worthless sales pitch. Experts examine the website in
great detail and create an individual presentation free of charge
that clearly
shows all the steps necessary to achieve good rankings. For anyone who
would like to have this experience, the SEO analysis discussion is
available at trustfactory.de. Thank you very much for your attention
and see you next time. The Business On Team. Music.
