Joe Davies’ Post

Love a snippet.

Link Gap Analysis is dangerous. "Our competitor has 167 DA40 links to their service page, we have 4. Let's build 163 DA40 links." This can sometimes encourage a reckless and impatient mission to 'close the gap' but may cause more trouble with things looking unnatural. Besides the link spike to a certain page, there may be lots of other factors such as supporting links to the homepage and other pages flowing authority with internal links. Not to mention age, social and on page content factors. It gets very complex, and not as simple as closing the gap in many cases. If you're going to go the link gap route, best to space things out over long periods of time, and be very balanced. Don't build 100+ links to a service page if your homepage has 30 links. Better still, my advice would be to just build a low amount of supplementary links in a natural way to pages that make sense. Homepage, blog posts, some to service pages, but not many. I say supplementary because you should be putting a big focus on real marketing, branding, social, content marketing and attracting links. This holistic approach is what makes your supplementary campaigns really work. Put less focus on # of links a competitor has, Google is far more complex than closing the gap of link numbers in a DA level. Instead of trying to “catch up” or win in the exact same way your competitors have, carve your own path, find new content opportunities, and think creatively outside the box. What do you think about this approach?

Oi oi

This is one of the easiest ways to get more traffic... Add an FAQ section to your high traffic blog posts. Bloggers and niche site owners know this intrinsically, but a lot of business blogs miss this strangely. People are asking questions related to your content, and you can directly answer them. Using Spindrift you can simply click 'Questions' and 'No Mentions' filter and see all the questions you are being found for, but not covering in the content. Simply answer these questions and Google has no choice but to rank you higher for these terms. You're helping the user, helping Google, and helping yourself. Win, win, win.

When starting an SEO agency, your only job should be: Get leads, close leads, set strategy. Outsource the deliverables from day 1 to a freelancer or vendor.

Agree or disagree?

Our SEO agency used to rely on referrals to get leads, but then they dried up. We were then forced to build self sustaining, consistent lead machines. Here's the 4 methods that worked: 1. Post case studies on Linkedin/X Not just "look what we did", but more "here's how we did it". Don't be afraid of giving out the sauce, it's the sauce that's going to get you leads. You'll need to have an active profile so make sure you're commenting and connecting while posting. This is a budget option but requires at least 1hr/day manual work. 2.Create 'system' lead magnet Package up your methodology into an ebook/course/video and target a specific audience. The methodology should solve a problem (SEO, paid, get more clients, increase conversion, improve operations etc). Run ads to this and create a funnel which leads them into a call and a DFY service. This takes a little more set up than other options, but once the funnel is optimised can be the most effective. 3. Run ads to discovery call This one works best when you run the ads for a specific market. Show case studies for that market, and lead the prospect into booking a free 'no strings attached' discovery call, where you walk them through your methodology - give away the sauce. Easy way to get up and running with ads > call. May get a lot of people who don't want to 'jump on a call' so potential for wasted ad spend. 4. Run ads to a productised offer If your offer is somewhat productised or 'packaged' you can clearly display them on a lander, and allow prospect to buy and onboard themselves. Works better for lower ticket, but can work for higher ticket too, no problem - people buy Teslas this way for $100k+. Google Ads can work well for this method as you can target people who are searching for what you're buying. This takes set up, but for the right offer, can be the cleanest simplest way to run an agency. Leads are essential to a business, without them, there's no need to optimise anything else. Nail the 4 above and you'll never run dry.

Things you need to start an agency: - An offer - Paypal - Email Things you don’t need to start an agency: - A website - A team - Ad budget - Company culture book - Huge audience - Business plan - "Branding" - Limited Company - ClickUp / Asana / Notion automations - An office

Great agencies don't overcomplicate things. They nail the basics. Here are the 6 fundamentals you need to get right: 1. Customer Avatar. Who are you serving? Name them. Picture them. Ours is called "Agency Adam". 2. Speciality. What do you do best? Remove everything else, or at least move to the backend. 3. Proof. Demonstrate your results with in depth case studies. Make a dedicated page on your website, but also share them daily. 4. Methodology. Be transparent about how you do what you do. Again, make a dedicated page on your website, but also share daily. 5. Transparency. Give a clear idea of what it looks like to work with you, including pricing. 6. Simplicity. Make it easy for a prospect to make the first step of working with you, whether this is a call, a productised offer, or a simple form. Scaling an agency is hard, but covering the bases on these 6 things gives you every chance to succeed.

Don’t call your sales team a sales team… Don’t call your sales calls, sales calls Let’s be honest, no one likes being “sold” to. Car dealership vibes. Book a call > Contact Sales Client Success Team > Sales Team