LLM SEO, Unlinked Mentions & Chiang Mai’s Wildest Ranking Tactics

The SEO scene in uh in Thailand is just insane. It might be the best place in the world for SEO probably. Yeah. And also the the the I think the main part is the community. So no matter at what stage you are in you know whether you are new or you are advanced more than two decades everyone is very willing to help and share and you know just have a good community here. I think that's the biggest um biggest plus point of being in Chiang Mai. like people are very helpful. How long have you been in SEO for? 10 years. Okay. So, I got into SEO after moving to Chiang Mai. Really? Wait, you you moved there and then you and then you met all these SEO people and there were like Oh, yeah. You were like I moved. Oh, wow. I didn't I was nowhere in in SEO. I My wife uh back then my girlfriend, she moved first. Like she didn't move. came here for some work and she said hey come check this place pretty nice place so I came I I fell in love with the place and I was like okay let's need to survive here so I was applying everywhere kindergarten call centers every anything that can give me a job ended up in a landed ended up in a SEO agency not a tie but remote job but that's how I got introduced to SEO and got into SEO you have uh I guess do what's your way of doing search engine optimization I I think a lot of people have like their own their own kind of method. What meth what meth method does does jabz have? Just do all the things that can be done in in the most simple way. My thing is don't complicate SEO. So follow the 80/20 rule and keep things as simple as pro possible. focus on good content and good site structure first and then for the rest of the thing if it's too complicated just hire you know consultant or a one-time you know expert get it fixed and then move on doing the simple stuff on repeat what what is something that that you see like a lot of newer people in SEO just get completely wrong all the time newer people I think uh one of the mistakes that I was also doing was procrastinating like trying to figure out the strategy first and then implementing and you never get the best strategy. The best strategy is to start implementing whatever you've learned. So I think that's one of the biggest problem I face and I see a lot of people still face is that is that people spend kind of like too long being like oh I don't know what keywords to target like where am I going to where do I even start what page should I put it first right yeah things like that or you know if I do this strategy maybe it will break so I let me wait for you know the next episode from this expert or let me see what this expert says about keyword research or content and then I implement. So trying what is uh the word is like trying to be the most perfect you know trying to implement the perfect strategy. Yeah. Perfectionism. I think that's that's a problem. You fell into that. I I did I always been uh but but thankfully um being in Chiang Mai and having access to a good community I finally started you know learning okay how people even the most I think the best things I've learned from the best experts is that as soon as they figure out something or they they straight away go ahead and test it you know instead of waiting so I think um then that got me into okay Even if it this breaks, even if I've learned a new thing, then it breaks if after I implement it, I learn something that it's not working. This method of marketing is so effective, I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept doing it. It's a form of SEO I call compact keywords. Whereas most SEO focuses on putting up articles to answer questions, how, what, when, compact keywords focuses on putting up dozens of pages that sell to searchers who are actually looking to buy. These pages rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less work, too. The average Compact Keywords page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting sales with SEO. A customer recently said, "Each lesson is dense with information. You're giving years worth of experience boiled down into 15 to 30 minute lessons with no filler or fluff. I feel like I'm gaining a new superpower. Compact Keywords is about setting up an SEO funnel that brings you sales for years and years and years. It works with AI. It's less work than traditional SEO and it makes way more money. You can get it now at compactkeywords.com. Back to the podcast. Are you are you doing any SEO tests right now? A lot for LLMs. A lot for LLMs with um listicicals and a bunch of off- page topical uh semantic network. So that's been you know what we've been totally busy with right now. Is it is it all types of listicles or is it just self-promotion listicles? All types. So the goal is uh the way we are seeing things for ranking in LMS is the way you build a topical map for your own site. You build a topical map off page as well and you go deep based on your comp how competitive your niche is. you the easiest way to start ranking is yes start with listicles but then uh these LLMs and AI AIO views and I we are seeing this with regular the results on regular SERs as well where you know the listicles we are publishing because they are backed up with so much more off-page content and u you know network of coverage for our client that these listicles and these are very b like they're not published on very big sites. They are mid-tier sites, small sites. They start ranking, they've been ranking on um page one of Google apart from LLMs and AI overviews. I I shared a post yesterday um three out of four top keywords uh top uh results uh for a certain keyword for our client are all the listicles that we publish. So it's been um yeah it's been quite interesting and as I said the what the strategy we are following is build a build a solid consensus of page as well. So okay so you have maybe so it's a listicle that's on your client site is that a self-promotion listicle and then or or I guess maybe no depends how you can say it's a self-promotion but we like the client the client puts themselves number one number one yeah oh yeah so that's a self-promotional and then off that's your start yeah but then but then the other okay so then how about um all the listicles that appear here off offsite. So you have maybe satellite domains, maybe you have Medium properties, maybe you're using Reddit, maybe you're using YouTube descriptions, and then the client is number one on all of those listicles, or do you kind of like mix it up? It again depends on how competitive your niche is and how much the client wants to invest into these strategies. So like some of our really big clients who are in competitive niches, we start with placing them on the number one spot. Then we mix it up number two and number three. Mhm. But uh we don't try to put them further lower below. And also even when you put your client on number two spot or number three spot or you get an opportunity to be added in someone else's listicle but you can only be added at number three or number four. uh include yourself as with something very unique. For example, I run if I run an SEO agency and I want to be added in a best top 10 SEO agencies listical and I'm getting number four or number five position, I will not just add myself as okay here's another agency which is on number four. I will I will add it as this is the agency which is known for ranking across LLMs. So add yourself with a unique factor. So in that case then it doesn't matter at which position position you've been added because you've clearly stated that you why you are standing out in this whole ranking and that increases your topical authority as well. Yes. Topical authority as a yeah. Yeah. uh to what extent are you developing satellite domains versus getting list get uh appearing in other people's listicles um versus actually doing parasite. So that could be medium that could be Reddit that could be something else. So we are I would say 98% publishing on other people's site you can call it as guest post. uh if not 90 at least 99 I would say some clients who uh who insist no we do want to be added on older previous ranking uh listicles in that case we try to you know get added but it's the ROI uh when we compare you just get more speed first of all when you're publishing your own listicles you have more uh control because you can you have full you know uh control on how the article needs to flow where your artic clients need to be and the most important thing we are seeing results. We are seeing results with um fresh articles being published and they are cost effective as well. If you try to be added into uh an old listicles they know that we can charge a lot like website owners they know we can charge a lot to be add if someone is reaching out to be added in our listicles. So the whole ROI wise we we've seen that okay fresh articles are working best for us so we just go ahead with that. How are you finding? Oh, so wait wait wait. So freshness actually performs better in LLMs is what you're saying. At least for now. I mean from our test and uh some first of all from our test we've only done fresh articles and we've been ranking and my other point was that it just takes too much time and too much resources to be added in in old articles. So rather than spending resources, time and more money on being added in older articles, we just um publish fresh articles when it's giving us giving us good results. But wait, so you're publishing the articles, but you said you were appearing in other people's articles. No, we we are we are publishing articles on other people's site. Ah, as as guest blogs. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, how do you find a site to do a guest blog blog in and like what do you look for in a site? Um, actually I I don't know if you know Sarvves Shri Vastrava and he was on Yeah. So, he was on the podcast yesterday and we had a a long discussion about guest blogs and what he looks for in sites that that he's doing guest blogs on. Do you have a method for that for listicles to be honest? Um and again this is from all our testings and how we've been seeing results. We don't go after premium sites. We we it gets just more and more expensive and just too many hurdles to get reviewed. Right. All we are looking for the number number one most important thing the site shouldn't block any LLM crawlers because then it won't have any effect. So that's the number one rule. Second, have some decent traffic, thousand plus traffic and decent backlink profile and traffic shouldn't be manipulated like no bot driven traffic. So if these few uh criterias are there for LLMs, we've been like the with these selections, it's been working really well for us so far. What tool do you use to analyze all of that? Hrefs. Yeah. Uh and okay, so you're looking at organic traffic uh to make sure that it's actually that actually has rankings. And that Yeah. And that it's not decreasing. I mean there will always be fluctuations. Now with every single update it's get the pool of sites is getting smaller and smaller from where you know we where we can publish articles. If the ones who are surviving they are stopping to you know accept guest post. So the ones that are left there I mean their stats are shrinking. So we again the when we what I shared in the open opening of this podcast I try to keep things simple not complicated. I just want sites with that have traffic not manipulated traffic not bought traffic and the crawlers uh like they are not blocking any crawlers. So if these few requirements are there um it will perform. That's really interesting. So you said wait correct me if if I misunderstood. So you said that the sites that are accepting guest posts are dying and the sites that that have stopped accepting guest posts are actually performing better. Stop. Um I wouldn't say they've stopped um they've started performing better. It's just that they are being more careful. So they don't want to you know get further penalized or if once they have stopped you know uh if they've got any kind of penal penalty or any issues after an update also you I mean with from our testings with LLMs uh for LLM ranking really really small sites also start ranking really well. I mean we've seen um now there's another test we are uh going to we working to implement is listicical on EMDs. So publish fresh, excuse me, fresh listicles on brand new EMDs and see how they're performing because we are seeing some of our clients competitors are doing that and they've been outranking in certain uh categories and that's what we want to test out and um there are some like a lot of citations on sites with barely any traffic less than 100 and they get cited. I had uh yeah, a friend of the podcast, David Quaid, he came on and did an entire episode actually about how he loves exact match domains as like satellite domains for the business. Uh and that's so that's really interesting. When you are when you're building up an exact match domain, uh what type of link building will you do for for it or will it just be like extremely minimal like directories or something? extremely minimal. We'll we'll start it from start from there because I came across two AMDs that were directly competing with one of the I would say mid-level keyword for our client DR0. One was DR0, other one was DR2 or three. So barely any link building done on them. One had less than 100 traffic, maybe 50 or 60 and the other one was 200 or 300. So very very t tiny small sites as I think with EMDs my first goal will be to uh get them rank indexed and ranked. We did an EMD test but that was not for listicles that was just EMD test to see are these AMDs getting indexed and ranking and this was a couple of months ago and they were rank this some of them started ranking on page one for the main keyword for which we bu did the uh for which we got the MD. So now the the goal will be that okay without even without any links these EMDs are ranking. Now, let's just build listicles on them and see if they start influencing the results on LLMs. So, wait, sorry. I I missed it. So, you didn't do any you didn't get any backlinks or maybe you linked from the parent domain to the EMD? No. No. When when we did just plain EMDs without any listicles, no links at all on them. No backlinks to them. No backlinks. And do you did you submit that did you submit them to Google search console? How did they get discovered? Yeah, they went yeah submitted to search console. Now, but now we have to do like the a new test with listicles on them. So Okay. Okay. That's a test we we uh So you're not you're not even going to build any links to these EMDs. You're just going to put them up. Not in the first phase. Yeah. Yeah. Not in the first phase. But um after if we see okay these are not driving the results then we maybe few will trickle in also with the network we build with listicles and off- page to give more context like when we're building off-page topical network we are not just doing roundup articles it's you know a list of different kinds of articles that we publish comparison articles dedicated brand review even antonyms okay top 10 products to avoid in this category or um deal breaker articles, five things to know before you buy a protein powder, things like that, right? And um even with these some articles um we add links to the main client. In some articles, we don't even add links to the clients. And we did a whole extensive test recently where articles we published without links to the client's main site, they're ranking on page one. They're influencing the results on LLMs and AI overview. And in those articles, we link out to other third party articles that we published, other listicles, other review, other comparison. And so that's going to be something that we will try with EMDs that when we are publishing other articles, we will may probably link out to those EMDs. When you say you don't link out to the client, does that mean that you are doing an unlin brand mention or you're just not even mentioning the client at all? UNL brand mention. Okay. And it's if the client is in the Yeah. If the client is in the ecom niche then and they have a store on Amazon or or some other ecom store then we add a link to that site or as I said we we add a link to any other article that we have published for the client maybe a brand review or any other comparison review but not to the client's main site. Okay. Yeah. So, okay. So, uh EMDs. Uh that's a that's a cool test. I'm uh I I'm excited to see what happens, especially without without links. Um anything else? Anything else that you are testing that you're excited about? After EMDs, we I mean we will I mean I want to test out Reddit. So I'm just prepping up gathering resources how to um just build more consensus with Reddit as well because Reddit obviously comes up with in a lot of citations across LMS uh and we are just right now getting all our you know parts together to uh figure out a strategy where we can either in you know add our comments or in existing citations that are that are being cited from Reddits or you know just build a solid subreddit and duplicate uh content from uh threads that's ranking or influencing the results. So that's Reddit will be the next strategy to test after emds. right now I mean right now our current tests have been all across listicles on mid-tier guest post and then unlin articles across smaller sites. So yeah we call them one one set we call listicical the other set we call unlin um brand coverage. building a subreddit does seem to be the play right now. Like as in like the easiest way because like when you're trying to do parasite on other people's subreddits, it's just all too easy to Now, don't get me wrong, there's lots of exceptions. Like it's very easy to do parasite SEO in local subreddits. You take a you take a small um local subreddit with a few tens of thousands of of members, maybe even a few hundreds, but usually tens, and you do a parasite SEO post, like what's the best uh I don't know what's what's the best uh falafel restaurant in this city, you know, and it's it's very easy. It's very very very easy to do. Um, you know, I think uh I' I've been making a lot of content about this. Like YouTube, what is happening with YouTube right now is actually scary how easy it is. And I think a lot of SEOs are focused on parasite SEO on Reddit. But the thing about Reddit is you've got to build up accounts that can post, that have karma, that have karma in subreddits. And and and even then, like Reddit can be hard. Like the barrier to entry for Reddit versus YouTube is a lot higher and and parasite SEO a lot of the times people are doing it with anonymous accounts though you can have your own subreddit with a branded account but like YouTube is blowing my mind what is happening with I don't know have you looked into that at all I mean we see YouTube citations everywhere in across LMS so but we don't have the capacity right now to you know help our clients with publishing a lot of content on YouTube. So yeah but as you said almost eight like eight out of 10 searches that we do will have some sort of YouTube citation. Eight out of 10. Yeah. So okay this is this is what I'm seeing with YouTube right now and I I can't believe that people are getting away with it. I'm literally seeing this. It is AI accounts. So the these are anonymous accounts um with uh it it just it might not even be a there might not be any face or it might be like a face done with with Hey Jen and then an AI voice with like 11 Labs or something. And what these accounts do is they review their competitor's products and they don't even buy the products. They literally just they do a quote unquote review, but it's actually just commentary of the landing page, but they call it brand review. Is this brand legit? Should you get it? That's what what the title of of it is. And yeah, and they and then in every single video they recommend the same product as an alternative, as a top alternative. They recommend they say this product, you know, it's really interesting this approach, but and it's again all commentary on the landing page. They never bought the product. They never tried the product. They never spent money on the product. Oh yeah, this is like it's a really really great way that they're doing it, but actually what what this product is doing is better. And every single video is recommending the same alternative product for for one of these channels. And I am seeing these I'm seeing these channels get cited in in chat PT and other LLMs even though the channels never actually bought and used the product and it is getting it is showing very high in Google and it is and it's all it's all anonymous it's all AI there's usually there's not even a face it's faceless in oh man it's so and every single video on one of these on one of these channels is brand review. Is this brand worth it? It like it's just every single one. Have you seen offer? Have you have you noticed that any uh stats with these uh videos that are that get cited? Like is there a minimum subscriber count that you see only then those videos get count sited or a minimum video a view like yeah stat? That's a that's a good question. I have and I haven't looked at that, but I I I will say um if you are a if you are an actual if you're a real brand that is doing marketing, uh like you can probably get enough traction to a social account to do this yourself because you have your social links in your footer and you maybe you have an email list and you just you just say, "Hey, you know, we're active on YouTube. Follow us here. We're active on Instagram. uh follow us here and you get enough traction that you can probably rank for your competitor's brand names because nobody is targeting your comp nobody's targeting comp your competitor plus the word review just that is not very common at all unless it's your competitor is is a huge company and then if your comp your competitor is a huge company you might be a decently sized company as well and you might have enough traction on your YouTube to do this anyway or you can create you can can create YouTubes and probably I'm not going to recommend anybody to to you know skirt the rules and do the stuff that you shouldn't do but I wouldn't be surprised if these people are doing that but but like anyway my point is if you are a legit brand who's doing marketing you can get enough I would bet you can get enough engagement to one of your social channels to do this yourself and you're not going to Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we mentioned like to one of our clients which is they're pretty big um ecom uh company and they've got budget for they do massive amounts of influencer partnerships every month. So one thing we recommended them was to when they when they partnering with influencers and creating new videos suggest them to you know suggest the influencers to create videos in somewhat listical title format you know some Google friendly titles instead of hey I'm going to today I'm going to upgrade my you know XYZ product instead of that here I tried 10 and this is my favorite something on those lines. So, some somewhat listical format. So, it further increases the chances of getting cited. Well, here's the thing about here's the thing about social and I don't I don't need to tell you this. You know this, but for for for listeners, it's you could put up a a video in in social that you think is entertaining in your niche in your niche. That will be good for brand building, but you can put up a way less entertaining video that targets a high intent keyword. way way way way less entertaining. Won't do very well, but it will do well enough to rank for that high intent keyword with with social content that then directs people towards your product. And you are actually going to make way more money from this way less entertaining post than you would from an entertaining post in your niche. The trick is to not do that for every post. That's how you get caught. That's how you get hurt. That's how you hurt your brand. So, you don't do that for every post, but you do that for a bunch of them. And yeah, like um it's it's just it's insane and it's insane to see it getting cited so much in AI like Yeah. One more thing I saw u and this is just one instance, but I think it it can um be replicated. So one of one of the websites where we publish a listical for our client they probably have an automation where once they publish something it gets autopublished across their social accounts. So then for that particular keyword in the regular SERs the second or third result was the Facebook post that they published. It was just an automated Facebook post with the listical. So yeah, where wherever possible we tell our you know our team that okay if if this particular site has social accounts request them without like we don't want to pay anything extra for it but if they can just do it uh for free just request them to you know publish on the socials it further sends more signals and can help with Facebook too you have a if you have a you have a Facebook page take one of your reviews take your own review your own positive you don't even have to like let's say you you're not getting video reviews then okay just read the written reviews that you get yourself or or do it faceless with an AI it's not going to be as good if you do it faceless with with an AI but you can still do that and and then put that up for brand name plus review on your Facebook page on your YouTube and and yeah and you can use different language for the titles like brand plus review and then you do is this is this a scam is this legit is this real and each one is different and you can with the same review you can take up multiple positions in the same SER with the same with the same content and yeah yeah yeah uh actually wait that automation is interesting so you put you put up a listical on the client site and then it automatically comes out to all the social channels I I was saying maybe they have I'm not 100% sure because we just published on their site and then they had published on their social accounts out of which Facebook got cited so or maybe they they just published manually but whichever process they used it's good so uh we should not I mean right now uh the way we are seeing um things for LLM rankings don't leave any real estate anywhere you get to you know build consensus for your brand of your client's brand utilize that utilize every single real estate that you can get because consensus right Now for LLMs is more important than links. Consensus is more important than links. Yeah. Uh yeah. How how actually here's a good question. How how has your approach to SEO changed in the last couple of years? Or maybe it hasn't changed because it's interesting because I have some people who come on the show and they say it changed a lot. And then I have other people come on the show and they say, "Well, didn't really change that much. I was always focused on these things anyway, and these things work pretty well with LLMs." And so, it's kind of like a tossup and it's a fun it's a fun question to to hear what people are focused on. I mean, uh, as a overall arching rule, again, the way I see SEO or let's say even more than SEO, I use the word ranking or search ranking. It's my approach is always the same. Keep things as minimal and simple as possible without over complicating it. But with LLMs, uh one thing that with our approach change was that you know we were not focusing on building up off- page consensus or off- page topical authority. Even when we were doing link building used to be you know very none of it was published in a way none of the articles or links were published in a way that built consensus or built more e factors for the for the client site or for the brand that has changed with LLMs when we are trying to rank across LM so now we are focused on you know just building more and more consensus and balance it out with your regular SEO for Google that okay just make sure your on page remains you know as before consistent but off page just go fast with building consensus right cuz cuz with traditional SEO your brand could be in a listical that is in position seven and not a lot of people are going to see that but with the LLM will actually see that and will utilize that. Yes. And you remember I mentioned a point with the way you add your brand into any other listical as well. Getting your feature like your USB mentioned clearly that's really important. So an example was like we recently published a article for a client. So, and my team um forgot forgot to do a spot check and um one like we defined a factor for and to what makes certain products or brands you know uh more favorable in a certain category and um my even though my clients my client was placed on number one the brand that was placed on number two position had better stats comp in the the factors mentioned the competitor didn't have any link any anything going to to their site. So but in in Claude when we did the search organic search the number two brand was placed as number one and my client was placed on number two and it was clearly cited you know this is the reason th this this uh product this brand has better you know stats and the second one stats as in as in like um you're doing a comparison of these products and the comparison lists product two as actually better than yeah so for example best protein powder The first one gives you 38 g g of protein. The number but the number two brand gives you 40 g of protein. Even though they are ranked on number two, LLMs will pick up. So that's what you you got to see because I said with LLMs more than links, it's consensus and the right facts you know that's that matters most. M when you are creating a listical actually yeah when other okay when you when people create listicles is there a length like an amount of products an amount of brands that you need to have is it 10 is it 15 it does it depend on just diversify diversify diversify yeah just and diversify everything that you like that you write, you know, don't repeat the same. Don't just keep publishing 10 best, 10 best or top 10. Even the titles, there's so much diversify, highly recommended, most reliable, highly voted, local. Is there a minimum? Is there is there a minimum? Like cuz a lot of people people don't want to write long listicles if they don't have to. Oh my god, I have to write a 25 brand listicle. This is going to take me forever. So I guess is there like a is there a minimum that you would do five 10? I us we usually start around uh either 9 10 or 12 and then based on how much then we keep stacking we just you know keep changing. So uh 3 5 10 recently I've again another thing that I'm noticing is that even articles written as number one XYZ brand in XYZ niche usually um brands they publish these kind of articles on their own sites and the they are not even listicles they just have that number. So I've seen LMS are picking up from the number uh point of view as well. So we are just today itself for one of our clients or actually for two campaigns we are going we are working on few articles like that where we are not doing a listical we're just number one product for XYZ niche and we mention the client and we'll see if they get cited. How are you writing listicles? Are is it very AI heavy? Are you using a writer or two or what's happening? So yeah, so for our main listicles that includes a link to our clients, they are fully I mean obviously research with uh Claude but we have a writer that you know does um the whole rewrite on it. Then for brand coverage we use clot I mean we we and we use clot skill to we we built our own intensive clot skill to to work on those uh content and then have editor to fact check. Uh so okay when you're getting started with claude what are like what what are some of the ways that people cuz everyone in in the SEO community loves Claude. So Oh yeah. What how somebody who wants to start with Claude automating certain things of SEO or just improving with SEO? What should they focus on? What should they focus on first? Use Claude's own skill creator to start building your skills. I think that was the game changer for us that once and just just utilizing Claude itself like their their skill builder to help you build better skills and then from there you keep um you know just just have more conversations and keep upgrading the skills. Mhm. Are you So you said that um I think you said that that links are is it was it you said that they're not as important as they were for LLMs? Mhm. But does that mean like uh to what extent are you still building links now in 2026 for clients still building? Because clients still still want to rank organically, right? We can't at least at this point ignore your regular old-fashioned SEO for ranking on Google. So still doing you know the regular link building and regular SEO work for ensuring the regular organic traffic coming from Google. But for LMS um as for LLMs it's again more consensus than links. Even if even if uh someone asks us okay I want 70% unlin coverage I said I'm fine I'm fine even with 80% unlin coverage and whenever we get good like placements on decent clean sites take the opportunity to uh link out to the main uh client site. you think unlin coverage helps with just aside from uh from LLMs, you think unlin coverage helps with SEO as well? So, we've ranked those articles, those on page one, regular subs. Those articles are ranking. Now are they increasing the organic traffic of our clients of our sites? I don't think yet. I don't think that that's like organic traffic is increasing from maybe you know an added factor. Okay. uh Google sees that okay this site is built has more authority and has eat factors maybe at in the back end that's adding to strengthening um the site's overall authority maybe that but as of now like that we like how you publish links and you ste and you see you know increases in your traffic from that point of view unlink U publication not yet we're not seeing you know that heavy uh jump in traffic because of them. I I feel like it's there you need to have some amount of unlin brand mentions to have a natural looking backlink profile at the very least probably. Yeah, for safeguarding I I would say unlin mention will or unlin coverage is good for safeguarding your regular SEO. So it it makes it look natural and it also builds more um topical authority. Yeah, topical authority and eat as well. It it just tells you, you know, tells Google that you have you have more coverage everywhere. Dude, being in uh being in Mai, being in Thailand, you must see some really creative link building schemes. Like just some things like, "Oh my god, that's so smart. That's so clever." Do you see that stuff? I mean, um I think I've learned I've had the opportunity to work with some of the sharpest SEOs and working with them like some were in Chiang Mai and some were not. just working with them. Uh I we picked up um I I got the opportunity to learn new techniques but um yeah and that was just not being in Chiang Mai just yeah Chiang Mai plus the opportunity of working with other SEOs that helped me really u learn some new tricks and also also opened my mindset of okay just don't focus on one kind of links just try think creatively think creatively to figure out uh link building techniques I want to I want to I want to transport a listener who's not in Mai to Chiang Mai doing networking with you hearing about some crazy tactics. So what are some like crazy things that you've heard that you can talk about? Linguilding. Yeah. Okay. I mean uh I think this is now very popular already but it's something um so like one of the SEO conferences that was happening this is probably 7 years ago and someone shared a blackhead image link building strategy where they were you know just like creating fake dummy uh personas of hey I'm this person's lawyer you are using my client's link uh image and they were was claiming as someone's they were not even using their own images. They were using someone else's image and claiming hey I'm this person's attorney and you need to send it to send a link to my client. So we tested that. I tested that and it worked. We got we were getting like DR 60 70 uh links and I was very uneasy do doing that kind of link building. I was like this cannot do this. So I stopped and I then figured out um a whitehead way of doing it which was creating um my own style of images that has high probability of being downloaded and being used as a cover image in uh articles. Um that's the main point. You can't just randomly create images. you need to do bit of keyword research and then see what kind of article like we use AHF's content um planner to not content what's it uh AHS has a tool um the content analyzer or content um anything you add the keywords there and it'll show you a graph of how much growth and how many articles are being written so based on that trend and we figure out keywords and then create images that are broad and have higher chances of being used as the cover image of articles and then we distributed them across Unsplash, Pixab Bay, Pixels and let them sit let them sit for months, months, months and then you start seeing um okay then you start doing reverse image search and then you'll see oh so many sites have started using that and um yeah then And you then the way you reach out needs to be very polite as well. You cannot demand. You have to come across really polite and say, "Hey, I'm so glad you using it. I'm very happy to see that. If if you don't mind, would you can you help me by giving a link? It will help me create more such images." Be very polite. If you're aggressive, they can report you to these platforms and without any warning, you can your profile will get blocked and all images removed. So yeah, that's I think that's one of still that approach still works and that's one way where you can get links month on month on month on recurring basis high quality really high quality links coming to your site for free. Do you still do that? Not now. I mean I I've got now from just for my own sites I've got you know profiles who are just that are being marinated and just getting a lot of downloads and we'll just start getting links for our own sites from from those profiles but not for clients anymore because it's just too time consuming. What do you mean profiles that are being marinated? Uh so we create profiles in different different niches like health tech and we've just let them sit in like across Unsplash, Pixab Bay, Pixels. Uh uh and and we're just waiting waiting out for more downloads to come through and and then you'll reach out to everyone and you do it at you do it at the same time or do you kind of like chunk it out so that it's so that the velocity of links comes in uh more linearly or do you like this huge rush of links because you messaged everybody at once? it anyways like it takes time for so we like we'll reach out at once but it will still take time for web masters to reply to publish so the way it will eventually and then even after they add it will take time for it to get rec crawled for that page to get rec crawled and being and that link to actually get indexed in in the latest crawl so um it doesn't come across then unnaturally Yeah. What are what are some other what are some other crazy SEO things you see in Mai? Crazy SEO. I think right now I mean people in terms of SEO so many people are diversifying into different different things. So yeah people are just doing a lot of um other businesses and other um kinds of works. But in terms of link building, some other strategies uh that are still working and uh one of that would be um testimonial outreach and that's another way to get free homepage links. So yeah, I mean a lot of these testimonials are published on homepage. So reach out to brands that you in your niche or even your you know your there are so many brands that come that that need testimonials and you should be willing to give your name there and probably a image and yeah you can get some good free uh homepage links using testimonial outreach. That's so funny. So okay so you find basically it's hilarious. So you find businesses in I mean you I guess you want to appear on a homepage that is topically relevant, right? You Yeah. So you find Yeah. Go on. Topically relevant but also if it's a really big site. So few links from not so relevant pages as well is fine. From is fine. Uh-huh. And and so you you say something like um oh this business th this product transformed our business five out of five stars and then and that appears on this homepage and then they are linking to your site. Yeah. So you have to reach out to them. You have to like reach out and tell them that hey I would like to publish a testimonial or I would like to give a testimonial. So you have to first categorize. For example, we we ran this for an um SEO agency themsel and we were running this for the owner's point of view. So this is pro so so we we listed SEO tools, SEO content writing tools, CRO tools, um GMBB tools, so many tools that you can list. Then you see which of these tools have either testimonials on the homepage or a dedicated testimonials page or dedicated review page because not there there will be sites that don't have this section there. So there's no point of reaching out to them. Then you uh short list those sites that do have a testimonial section and then you reach out to them. Hey ex u we would like to submit a testimonial. Would you be interested? And then you you take take things from there. You're not Are you just filtering for sites that have testimonials on homepages or or will you do it for sites that have like a reviews page? Yeah, both. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. That's Dude, that's cool. You're bringing the goods. These are like these are actionable things that people can do and I like and and they're not like you have to change your entire strategy. They're just like fun little little cool things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And dude, um, actually I was looking at your ex before this and you're you're always sharing you're sharing a lot of interesting conversion rate optimization screenshots which which personally I'm I'm really into CRO. Uh, and I think I think that's really cool. Like you were sharing like what school is doing and how they're putting like percentages. I'm I don't think I shared much of uh CRO. I'm not very active on X. Maybe you came across a different profile. Oh my gosh. Wait, did I? Yeah, I'm I mean that's one platform I'm not very Oh, this is you. Habz Habz Jabz Ruben. Really? This is you. You shared you and you shared I've never seen a checkout page flex this. Oh, that one. Yeah. Yeah, that one I shared. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. That that we implemented that was uh Oh, you did? Yeah, you implemented it. And then we implemented that as well. So um we s I saw this on school and then man this is very very impressive and I straight away updated that strategy for our um sales pages as as well and uh one of the buyers also commented man this makes it so easy to make a decision. Okay wait so can you talk about the strategy? It's very simple. So basically where on your sales page where you have your product price listed just make a very small um table where you list your competitors who are more expensive than you and A B C D E competitors and just list their pricing and then provided you are cheapest compared to rest of them and then at the end you you put your pricing so it just makes it no-brainer for you know buyers has to make a decision. Yeah, you shared the screenshot from school and and so it's at the bottom of below the prices. It shows like school at $9 per month or $99 a month for pro and then below it it says school has the lowest transaction fees and then it gives transaction fees for Discord, Patreon, Circle, Stan, and then you see school is the lowest by far at 2.9%. which is more than like less than half of what the the next lowest one is, which is stand. Oh, that's Yeah, that's that's cool. And I think I I also seen you uh you you show you showed this like clever checkout upsell by Elementor. I don't know if you put something like that into Yes, that was very also very interesting. The Elementor one. I to Oh, go on. I was just saying we've not been able to implement that but I I found it to be very very cheeky very very good cool trick. Yeah. Um what do you think search engine optimization is going to look like in three years? So mid last year I mean I would say past two years once or multiple times in a year I would have this um fear existential a agency existential fear of hey where how long can we stretch this or how long can we still survive LMS are taking over will I mean we primarily sell a lot of links um will it matter? Will it work? But then at the end of every year um I figured out like we figure out how things are changing for the next year. For example, this this whole LM thing we were not doing this last year and somehow we figured out okay this is how it's ranking on LLMs and we are now ranking our clients uh pretty fast. So I would say SEO your regular SEO for Google and optimization for LLMs may change algos are changing so uh your strategies might may change but with this point of view that you will figure out and you'll learn um what's working and what's not working. you'll figure out what are the ranking factors you will be able to implement and the core of it that you know you figure out a ranking factor and you implement that's been the same over the past 10 20 years and it will continue to be the same so I would say maybe the finer details will change but the mindset will remain the same that okay we'll figure out we'll implement and we'll move on yeah dude actually I I would I would say that I kind of have a similar experience where uh I before I was really getting deep into like what a query fan out is, like how LLMs are doing searches, how they're getting their information. Um I I was also kind of thinking like how is the industry going to change? And the deeper I get into it, the more I'm like, this is SEO. And and the people who know how to do SEO are the people who can influence LLM. And in fact, like I was have as I was uh as I was walking home today, I I was having this thought like, "Oh my god, like we are in and I I've had this conversation a few times on the podcast before, but whenever I think about it, it still blows my mind that we are this I I think SEO is the most it's it's the coolest marketing channel that there is right now. It's cooler than uh it's cooler than social. And social is cool. It's cool to be blowing up on social, but like with SEO, you target people who want who who not not just you can target people who want what you want who who are searching for what you sell right now. It's you can do crazy reputation management. You can destroy a brand if a brand doesn't know how to counter your SEO. And and and this is very like Anti-competitive SEO is very easy to do and if a brand or sorry uh competitive SEO is very easy to do. Um Yeah. Yeah. So if a brand doesn't know how to counter that, they will get destroyed. And it's and like like what I talked about with these anonymous YouTube accounts, these anonymous AI YouTube accounts, it is insanely easy right now. If you are an SEO and you don't like somebody and you have a lot of time on your hands, you can ruin it's terrible. You can but you can ruin somebody's life. You can ruin a brand and it's the it it's so easy and it's the I think the craziest marketing channel that there is right now. it and like I and I and I was just like thinking about this and I'm like holy moly we are on the cutting edge of marketing like of that everybody wants to be a part of that everybody is interested in and we are we know this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I think you've rightly put that because even when you see ress and social posts of various influencers and you find a cool product before buying you always go and check for reviews before buying you always go check for more data and that's where you know it the sale can break or make it you know so I think yeah SEO and search optimization is I think probably the strongest form of marketing. Yeah, it really and the most influential I would say. Yeah. So, so actually something that I'm doing now is um I I just started funding a company where we we wanted to find we were looking for two things. Um, we wanted to find a niche where people don't want to vibe code their own software because that's what we are going to do. And if people like SEO, it I think doing marketing in SEO is very difficult especially if you want to put out like some new software and SEO because like lots of SEOs are just vibe coding their own solutions. They're using cloud code. They're spinning up something in a day and they're like, "Wow, this is amazing. I'm brilliant." and and so yes it's uh that so so number one is find a niche where people don't want to vibe code their own solutions and then number two is find a niche that has poor SEO and there are lots of niches that have poor SEO and that where people also don't want to vibe code their own solutions but I specifically talking about niches with poor SEO when you actually see a niche where people don't know how to do SEO and you do know how to do SEO you are like you're a you are a shark smelling blood and there's like nobody around to stop you. It it it's like it's it is the most incredible blue ocean feeling that there is and I I like maybe you know you know the feeling that I'm talking about and and it's this feeling where I'm like I'm so glad that I that I know how to do search engine like this is so cool. I'm so excited to completely dominate all of these SERs. 100 100%. The one thing actually that I think about all the time now is because SEO I believe SEO is so easy is how do I not dominate things so fast that I'm going to set off red flags within Google? because I'm of the belief that if you if you start getting really high rankings really really fast and your backlink profile is not catching up, you you're going to be stopped and you're going to be hit. You're going to stretch your authority too thin. I don't know if you ever think about that or see that. Yeah. And that's why coming back to the UNL consensus and coverage really helps you be safe and play it safe as said because u with the unlink coverage and the results that we were seeing and in some cases I shared a like a screenshot yesterday out of top four results were the listicles we published without links. Right? So even if your organic SEO and ranking is slowly catching up, at least you are there in the SERs, you are there on in someone else's article as the number one recommendation. So and this is even outside of LLM in AIO. So even your you know your regular SEO, you can do a lot with just uh by playing safe with UNL coverage. That's that's good to know. So that's a huge that's a huge thing is get more unlin brand mentions is what you're saying if you want to extend your SEO. Yeah. And by brand mentions it doesn't mean that oh you are just mentioned in an article. You have to build um the whole article around you that puts you in the in the driver's seat as the number one recommendation. Only then it will be effective. just placing your brand in in an article randomly or without any context, that won't help much. If someone is starting SEO from scratch in 2026, and there's a lot of people who are newer in SEO who listen to this show, what should they focus on first? Build out a proper website with proper content map or let's say a proper topical map. Pick one category that you want to dominate, build it around it before you start doing links or anything else. Get the get the engine set up properly. Then you figure out what fuel you need to add and the interiors and everything I Okay. Yeah. Go on. I mean, that's my rule number one, just the basics. So, you mentioned eat a few times and I want to ask, what does that mean to you? What are the mistakes that you see people making with eTat? Yeah, I mean there are a lot of definitions and people um trying to add so many so many factors around it. To me again boiling it down and keeping it as basic and simple as possible. How much coverage is there across the internet for that brand? and number two if possible for the founder or the team of that brand behind that brand. So either uh either of it you and just build your consensus around that. I think this is one of the reasons people say a lot of you know when across different uh updates that come these big sites don't get hit and um I think one of the reasons is that big bigger sites also get a lot of a lot of coverage outside uh of their site with actual brand name and not just a link going to their site with as for example um as per Forbes or as per this article on tech crunch you know proper brand coverage across different like so many other verticles. So I think um for me in in very simple terms is how much coverage I can get about the brand and as much as possible about the team or the founder across the internet. So so what methods what tactics do you have for getting that coverage? I mean simple as brand coverage. I mean publish articles that talk about your brand and also mention about um the team behind it. there are and sometimes we also publish articles with written under the founders's name and um then you have harrow strategies like harrow um harrow style of publishing links that you publish expert comments under the name of the the founder or the one of the main team members from your team and how else you can add or um the more and if if the I mean if you're doing on for your own like for my own self just doing podcasts like these like as much coverage I can get so and if you're doing for your clients encourage them to get on podcast or go for speaking gigs as and in and be covered in as many places they can be. So yeah, coverage is yeah that's just a term I've been repeating over and over again. I'm getting I'm getting really excited because uh actually when I get off of this call um when we get when I get off off of this podcast, I'm jumping onto a call with the operator for this business that I told you that I'm setting up, the one that that I'm funding. And um we just finished vibe coding the pro the the tool the or I'll call it more of like I don't know maybe a platform is better but yeah that the the product the MVP is is done and the site is pretty much complete. We're just going to review the site and now we're moving on to onto actually doing marketing, building links, putting up bottom of funnel SEO landing pages that target high intent terms and uh we're making a huge push on actual on actual marketing and because I like you believe that brand building is really important and I'm really I'm like I I'm thinking about all the things that we're going to do and I am just so genuinely excited for us to like get that flywheel going and podcast too. I'm always recommending it's called aipodcastmatcher.com which is my affiliate link for a tool called Podmatch which uses uh which uses AI to recommend guests who want to go on podcasts with hosts who actually want guests on on the podcasts. And I I love getting links through podcasts and building a brand as well through through guest podcasts. And like that's one of the things that we're going to be doing. And I'm I'm just like I'm I'm just imagining the brand growth and I know how that is going to fuel SEO as well. And like it's something that I personally talk about all the time which is like build a brand cuz cuz your SEO is going to work so much better. Absolutely. And I think even um I I see now like Chadu that um Chad also is changing the way it's showing results. So um it's also taking a lot I have a feel I can be wrong but I just have a feeling that uh in a lot of recommendations it just shows brands that have better brand value in some of my re especially in the last two or 3 weeks I'm seeing a slight shift in the way it's suggesting um brands and I see that you know it's slightly being biased towards brands with better um brand value or you know better better authority and not particularly them being listed across uh a lot of articles or or in a lot of listicles. Oh, wait. Really? You said not you you said not being mentioned in a lot of listicles but having a high brand. So, so I would say yeah I would say some results I would see like some brands. So let's say five brands are mentioned and one or two brands out of that will be brands that were not in any of those listicicals. Uh so in fact just today I was uh working on a campaign for a client and the number one brand that was suggested across GBD was not even in our client's competitors list or even the competitor list that we um scraped using Claude's research that was not there. So I was I wonder why why is Chad GPD uh suggesting this brand as the number one answer. So pro maybe they have better brand branding done. They have better coverage done in in some way. So I can be wrong. I'm I'm just uh making you know my own hypothesis which is just in the last two or 3 weeks. I still have to do a lot of research to you know pin that as an answer. Well, that's see that's that's why I like this approach about building a brand because different tactics in SEO, they come and go. They work for a long time and then like and and these I'm talking about like real tactics that like that get that get abused. They they come and go like it's very possible that these that in a year from now these revieworiented anonymous YouTube channels will not exist. Um and and so if you are optimizing for one specific tactic, uh you like that's just it's to me that's never really been the way of doing search engine optimization. I I'm a huge advocate of putting up bottom ofunnel SEO landing pages, conversion-based SEO landing pages. these are getting cited phenomenally in in AI, but you also need to balance that out with doing social and and doing uh social where you're targeting keywords and putting up some blog posts where you're also targeting where you're where you're also targeting keywords. But overall um you should be if you are actually setting out to build a brand you are going to have SEO that is extremely durable and resilient. you are going to you are going to rank just if if one basically what I'm trying to say is one tactic might stop working but because you've built a brand then another tactic will stop working will will start to work that you've accidentally optimized for because you're actually building a brand. Yeah. And also so social profiling and branding is also helpful for safe safeguarding your regular SEO as well. again um talking about eat. So uh brand building also is very helpful with solidifying your eat and uh I think the other thing that we were talking about you know unlin brand coverage all these things they safeguard your regular SEO as well they give extra cushioning they give they make your whole profile over overall consensus for your site for your brand look more natural so 100% like you cannot sleep on brand building and and also from business point of view I mean for if I talk personally Okay. Our business, my business grew from the point I started uh putting up more content on social media, started doing more podcast and started doing uh public speaking gigs. So, personal branding is I mean yes, good for um your SEO, but also like at the end of the day, it's really helpful for business. And it, you know, it's true because that content that you just talked about, social content, podcasts, these rank in Google, and these get cited all the time by AI. And it's so it's not like you're also not doing SEO by doing it, but and and you're getting you're getting links through this. And then with a with with a site, you're targeting terms that just have phenomenally high intent. And uh yeah for me SEO is really is like I think coming full circle now talking to what talking about what we were talking about at the beginning which is just like focusing on the simplicity and what is the simplicity it is having content that is very relevant or the find it's it's one finding the right keywords that's where everybody messes up right away. Yeah they don't they don't find the right search terms. So find search terms that have high purchase intent. These aren't search terms that where people are adding by. These are like I I personally am talking about like scenario-based search terms where like someone is looking to do something or get something solved and you can you can tell by the way that they are writing that they need this now and find one of those make content that's very well optimized for it. So relevance and building up your authority and then building a brand and it's like there we I that one sentence is like all of SEO in in a nutshell to me. So what you said like getting the intent of keyword is really important and um it's the same thing happening across LLMs as well. So I'll give you a quick example. We have a client that runs uh online booking platforms for booking venues for parties, corporate parties. Okay. Now, if they want to rank, so when we started doing these listicles for them and they suggested, hey, we want to rank for best Christmas party venues in XYZ location. Now if you search for best Christmas parties party venues in XYZ location let's say New York it will list LMS will list actual venues they will not list um you know the platforms online right so even if you know the search volume for best platform or best way to book party venues online will be less that will be the only like probably the best intent keyword would my client can target right now to start with after they've built a lot of consensus on that and also probably done some good amount of brand building as well. You see results um added results in LLM searches. For example, if someone is searching for best venues for parties in in in New York, it will give you results and then sometimes it also gives you additional information. By the way, the these are things you you need to look forward to before you book a venue. And here are five platforms that you can use to book it online. And if you've done your homework, your consensus, your your brand building, then you start showing up in those uh results as well. If you've done uh your you know listicals and other publications around best platforms for booking uh venues online, you'll anyway start showing up for for those phrases. But for broader uh keywords, you you can show up if you've built everything around the right in intent keyword, built your brand, and build your consensus. So, you're saying that you're you're actually starting with a high intent keyword that doesn't necessarily have a lot of search volume. Is that correct or did it miss? Yes, but has to be like Yeah. closest intent for my that makes sense for the Uh-huh. And and and because it doesn't have that much search volume, maybe it's not that competitive anyway because like uh Yeah. Yeah. And also that the search pattern on LLMs is very different. People are very elaborate. So if I'm buying uh standing desks, it's not the best standing desk that used to be best standing desk. I am 5' 11. I'm based in Chiang Mai. I want white color. I have dual monitors. So it's very elaborate. A very good um uh white paper was released by agency called Prosperity Media. So it they released a white paper titled the state of search or the yeah state of AI search and they covered how the search pattern has you know evolved and changed and that's why being granular even is important and not being focused on just one two-word keyword or three word keyword is enough you just and you know uh with query fan out these LLMs searching in different patterns as well. So you need to also have you know content and coverage in different patterns being very very granular in different different categories. It's that's another reason why you know people like doing they like just putting up like standing desks for hospitals, standing desks for kindergartens, standing desks for offices, standing desks for this. But but what you said is that's another reason why it's actually a good idea not to do that because because you have more variety if you don't do it like that and and because the thing is these like standing desks for for X Y and Z occasion they might all have the same information but if you are put if you are targeting a variety of keywords you will have more information about how your brand satisfies a variety of situations making your making your purchase intent coverage greater. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. And LLMs, they a lot of times they will share reasoning why this brand is better. How like if you search for best protein powders for men who do CrossFit, it will give its reasoning. It will give its okay criteria and then it will look for okay which protein powders fit the criteria for this query. So if you have a coverage where you have clearly defined that under this category for this particular reason my client's brand is you know um is excelling and covers all the requirement then you will get cited as a top choice. That's something so yeah I I I mentioned Alejandra Meerhands is the one who connected us. He's been on this show two or three times now. And that's something that uh him and I spoke about when he was on the last episode, which is how LLMs are doing grounding queries and and they're doing a lot more search they're doing a lot more query fanouts than they used to. They do the initial query fan out. they find they find uh a a list of brands to look into and then they actually go and do searches into those brands to see if the brand is appropriate for this specific use case. So it's like the more documentation that you have that also gets indexed because it has to get indexed because they're they're searching search engines. The more documentation that you have on your brand, the the more opportunity there is for your brand to get recommended in large language models. Yeah. And LLMs are fighting this whole issue of hallucinations and being as accurate as possible. So they will look for sources that can back up their claims or you know help them be more accurate by and you know the more you can as you said I mean the results look same the articles look pretty much similar like best protein powder for crossfit and best protein powder for hierox will pretty much be the same list but you are helping LLMs you know give a proper citations So they don't come across as, you know, uh, having an issue of hallucination. They've got proper citations to back up their answer. I think it's really what you're saying is like it's more so the most common scenarios where like everyone is is is asking for like the best what was it the best protein powder for what's like the most common thing? Muscle building I I guess or like Yeah, muscle building or best powder for vegans. Yeah. Yeah. Best Yeah. best protein powder for for vegans. Yeah. And so something like that is so common that it's like okay consensus is really important for this one because like this is being like everyone is targeting this and that's where the consensus is so critical. Yes. Yes. 100. uh health niche is definitely with even with LLM's one of the toughest ones to crack or let's say it just takes a lot of publications to you know start ranking but the way you can uh see results for your clients is going sub subniches really breaking it down so in no way like if I have a client in in in protein powder niche I'm not going to uh publish anything like best protein powders for vegans millions of best protein powders for bodybuilding now has to be sub subcategories like best protein powders for men above 35 who do crossfit really sub and it's bottomup approach I will stack up all low low low hanging fruits and sub subcategories and then build my way up yeah and then and then maybe you even take the ones that are ranking and and uh and you interlink those to the more competitive pages Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, you're awesome. Chavez, thank you for coming on the show. It was funny, you know. Um I saw your post um on LinkedIn about image outreach some few weeks ago, right? And I I I got excited because that was something I had worked on for such a long time. like man I need to have a chat with this guy and maybe we can do a podcast on it because and then I saw oh Alejandro has been on this show let me reach out to him and I forgot to reach out to him and then he on his own dropped me a message hey do you know he actually called me hey do you know Edward I said uh oh yeah I saw his post on LinkedIn and then he connected so I'm glad we we could finally connect yeah dude thank you again so did you did you come up with that tactic the image link building tactic not the blackhead one the the one to make um your own images a lot of people have come up I at that time when I uh came up with I didn't see anyone else doing that strategy so I didn't have any reference point to to work on but then around the same time we saw other people were also starting to do that images we just few pointers which I think helped us to get results faster. Yeah, that was so I I I think I heard about that for the first time u and you know how these things spread. So you might have been the one to popularize it. You might have been the one to share it and but so I I I heard about it the first time. I think it was on the SEO subreddit uh or or Charles Float's link building subreddit, but then yeah, but then Charles put up a post on LinkedIn about this tactic. And so I made a video on Charles Post's float. I make a lot of videos on Charles content and a Charles floats post. Yeah. And u and I guess that's the video that you saw on LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I saw. And we were doing this pre-COVID. So this was like when we were doing this was long time ago when we started doing this and um it just was a such a time consuming strategy because you have to wait out so we didn't um you know I would only do it for either my sites or clients who are very regular for us most of the time I would just we would just consult and teach the client hey get your VA and do this on your own. It's it'll be much easier for your team. But you can you can automate it now, right? Yeah, you can automate it. But I don't know right now if um because these platforms especially Unsplash you get the best downloads on Unsplash and Pixabay especially unsplash of all the platforms Unsplash also has the most amount of traffic if you see. So um but they are very strict with their criteria. They just don't let you upload any random image a like out of 10 especially on Unsplash back then. I don't know the recent one but back then because we were taking our own uh photographs. So Unsplash was not even allowing you to upload any madeup images. I mean we didn't even have AI back then. So you can't even create a poster and or it has to be a proper image a photograph that you have taken. Well so now now I'm curious. So did you so you what you hired like a photographer and you said like capture every maybe your niche is is furniture. Just capture every cool image of like couches and chairs and every like and and then you had and then you had to to pay somebody to tag the photos scrupulously too. I'll tell you what we were doing. So we were hiring photographer. Yes. And this is preAI. So we did not have AI. So I said my goal was how can we create images that bloggers want for their cover image right uh so if so what we were doing we were taking uh what's it called bananagram those tiles the letter tiles right and we would make words from it and and take create words using those tiles and then take photographs of that word and uh they so there will be thousands of articles around furniture there will be thousands of articles around iPhone there will be thousands of articles around and you're just spelling the words you're just spelling the words with with with these tiles yeah that's it highest rate of download and being used it's neutral and also leave white space so the writer can add their own name as well. And then and then you do and then you're reaching out like you're like this like this is your like you're this honest creative artist. Oh, you used my image. You know, it would just help me so much. I could make more images like this if you if you just linked to me. But when you're saying like when you're saying I could make more images like this, it's literally just like a thousand more bananagram images. But that's what we did. Anyone listening, please just go and like Google Bananagram and you see the Bananagram tiles and you see these tiles and you know immediately cuz I've cuz cuz cuz dude I was I was on Unsplash and Pixels in those days getting stock photos for articles that I was putting up for SEO articles that I was putting up and I would see those bananagram tiles all over the place. And now I know and and honestly they were annoying because I'm like, "Oh, these are so cheesy. I don't want to use these." But people did use use them and you just saw them everywhere and I'm like, "Oh." And and now I know that it was that it was it's the job the jobz's who who are responsible for those. I don't know like I'm trying to search u some of our images really got uh they've been used so much. Um I don't know if it's still around, but yeah. Also, uh if you want to jump in quickly, you don't have time for your images to sit through and you can also try to reach out to um images that have a lot of downloads and is relevant to your niche and try to buy them off from those creators. Oh, that's a good idea. And and so how have you done that before and how do you approach that? I've done that. Uh actually someone who had done that some someone was using this approach and they were saying just buy it off. So the way I mean uh you would do it is you first of all find search for your uh target keyword and then see which one has downloads and then reverse engineer like reverse search im reverse image search and search yeah which ones are actually being cited and used a lot. Based on then you reach out to to the creator using that their profile and see if they're willing to you know let you buy the whole package. Now there are two things you can either buy it and get them to remove it from their profile. So and um upload it in in a fresh profile you know and see if because some platforms also won't allow you to move from one and then publish on other one it gets flagged sometimes I don't and again this is as duplicate content yeah duplicates yeah so and these uh platforms are pretty uh pretty strict with that or you can let let it sit in the owner's profile as is but make sure he adds a comment that this image now belongs to XYZ site because when you do this uh image outreach a lot of u people will ask you what's the ownership proof that's why in your when you create your own images you and you make your own profile you have a clear uh description that all images are created and owned by XYZ And that's super smart jobz. So where where where's Okay, you're not posting that much on X. Uh but where where should everybody where are you posting the most? Where should everybody find you? LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place where I'm like constantly posting now. I'll get active on X. So but LinkedIn and Facebook are the main places. And work-wise, especially with all my LLM testings right now, uh LinkedIn is the best place. How come you don't cross post? So, so what I do now when I post uh when I post a text post or a text post with an image, I always I post the same exact content to my Facebook page, to LinkedIn, to X, and to threads. The same exact content because all of these are ranking. They're they're all ranking. There's an audience on all of them. Is there a reason why or you just you just find that it's like easier to like it's just easier to double down on one platform and not have to think about syndication? I think it was I was just being uh lazy to not do on X. I was just again um being uh stuck because I followed you I actually followed you on on X before this. I'm like, "Oh man, this guy's putting up some good stuff." I was like I I like that school stuff and the CRO stuff. I I just I think I was not being um yeah being uh because of perfectionism and trying to figure out how X algo and format actually works. It just keeps kept delaying it. But I think I I'll the very least just copy paste the same stuff. If even if I'm not um editing it for Xfriendly format, I'll just post whatever I'm posting on LinkedIn and and Facebook because that's what I do across LinkedIn threads and and Facebook. It's the same content. The only place I was not active was X. So I just restarted yesterday to So you were trying you were trying to optimize it for for the specific platform. That's it's interesting cuz I don't uh maybe I do talk to more perfectionists and I don't really realize, but it's like it's like yeah, like you said, perfectionism is the en is the enemy because like I I don't know how long you've been neglecting X for, but I bet that if you had just been cross-osting everything exactly to X, you'd be like way bigger than you are now. I I'll I'll take that recommendation and I'll I'll get back to X because you because you have good you have good taste. You're posting cool stuff and you shared interesting stuff,…

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