0:00

So Google said that links aren't

0:02

important. Yes,

0:04

they said they're not that important compared to before.

0:07

They used to be one of the

0:09

leading algorithm factors. But over

0:12

the years, you know, uh, Google

0:14

has confirmed that it is not through not a top

0:17

three ranking factor. And now

0:19

they're saying, which still goes in

0:21

line that hey, we're able to determine

0:23

even if a site has very few links, if it's

0:25

worthy of its position based on a lot

0:27

of other circumstances ex user

0:30

experience, low time back but and if

0:32

you know, the content matches, the keyword intent,

0:35

all those types of things, right, I

0:38

still believe links matter

0:40

because you know, Backlinko posted an

0:43

article years ago talking about Google's

0:45

ranking factors and how there's over two hundred. Google's

0:47

talked about how they have tons and tons of ranking factors.

0:51

Dude, you have an agency. I have

0:53

an agency. I don't know how many times

0:55

we've optimized sites and made them. Literally

0:58

most people look at them like this is perfect, and

1:00

they don't rank because there's not enough links.

1:03

You just need links. I've never seen it

1:06

where a site doesn't have either a lot

1:08

of links being like the domain authority, or

1:11

a page doesn't have enough links and it's just like, oh

1:13

cool, low domain authority,

1:16

very few link counts. You have the

1:18

best content out there, and you dominate the

1:20

top spot. All the studies, in all the data

1:22

we've done, when we scrape the web, analyze

1:24

backling counts, etc. Everyone has

1:26

a craft tenne of links. When

1:29

Google says something like links aren't important

1:31

anymore or not that important, I

1:34

take it with a grain of salt because when you think about their

1:36

entire history of saying things a web spam team,

1:38

you can't believe it because what they're trying

1:40

to do ultimately is they're trying to present

1:42

They're trying to protect their algorithm. And when

1:45

you look at the last recently that the helpful content

1:47

updates a lot of the people that want they

1:49

had sites with high domain authority, high

1:51

domain rating, however you want to look at it, that means their link

1:53

profile is very strong. And so if none of you

1:55

guys want your links, and you have a marketing site, contact

1:58

Neil and myself. We will gladly take a websites

2:00

off of you. We'll take your link profile if it's

2:02

not that valuable. Right, But from what

2:04

we see with our clients, what you've seen with your clients

2:06

too.

2:07

It's still a major factor.

2:08

And you know, we can talk about AI all we want, but I still

2:11

think we're five ten years out before we start

2:13

to really devalue links more and I still think

2:15

that. I still think at that point it's still going to be important.

2:18

Same here.

2:18

And it's funny. Do you remember the old study that

2:20

Ran Fishkin did years and years ago when

2:22

he was at MOS where he told everyone

2:25

to Google. It was something like the best

2:27

is a random thing. Yeah, it was like the best steak.

2:29

It was related to steaks. And I could

2:31

be getting the keyword wrong, but he said,

2:33

everyone click on the number one listing and

2:36

go back and then click on either the number

2:38

two or three listing, and

2:40

but stay there and scroll around and click around. And

2:42

I'm paraphrasing here, And within

2:45

hours it caused that site to

2:47

shift from like the second or third

2:49

position to number one for that keyword.

2:53

And it just shows that they're using user

2:55

signals. But back then a lot

2:58

of people are like, no, Google's talked about how they don't

3:00

use a lot of this kind of stuff. This is false.

3:02

It's not because I'm like, but the ranking shifted. And

3:04

then Michael

3:07

King is that his Michael King. Michael King talked

3:10

about it at a popcorn speech a

3:12

few months back or a month back, and he was

3:14

like, yeah, it was actually true, and a lot of us didn't

3:16

believe in based on what you know people in Google

3:18

and everyone was saying.

3:19

But like, you can't.

3:20

I mean, at the end of the day, your main business

3:22

for Google is searched. You run

3:24

ads, right, you need to protect the algorithm, and so even

3:26

if it's true, you can't confirm it, right, and

3:29

you're better off just confusing people at the end

3:31

of the day.

3:31

That's really what their job is.

3:33

And what Mos did what ran

3:36

Fishkin more so so he did the steak test, but

3:38

he also did another test where it was just gibberish.

3:40

It's like everyone searched for this gibberish. It's like xx

3:43

b x y or something like that. Right, it's a long

3:45

time ago and everyone searched for it, and all

3:47

of a sudden, you know that, I think

3:50

what happened. I think that the I'm

3:53

trying to remember the test, but it was something similar where

3:55

like the clicks for that or the

3:57

the that key word. No,

3:59

no, no, I'm not remembering the test. I have to find the test now

4:01

I'm going to find the test now now now it's bugging me all

4:03

right, real quick, I need to tell you about

4:06

the group that Neil and I created called the Agency

4:08

Owners Association. And this is a group

4:10

that's similar to entrepreneurial organizations such as

4:12

YPO or EO.

4:13

By the way, Neil and I.

4:14

Are both a YPO, but we thought it would

4:16

be really cool if we're able to create a group

4:18

that's dedicated to agency owners, to helping them

4:21

scale, so you could be at six figures, seven figures, eight

4:23

figures. We have different groups for different levels. All

4:25

you have to do is go to Marketing School the

4:27

io Slash Agency. Again, that's marketing School,

4:29

the Ioslash Agency, and you can.

4:31

Go there to apply.

4:32

And I will tell you right now what we're doing is there's

4:34

an online community. We do calls every

4:36

now and then. There's stuff that we share in there

4:38

that we don't share publicly, and you can at least

4:40

the online community, you can counsel at any time, so you.

4:42

Can go there to learn more about it.

4:43

And that being said, back to the

4:46

video, let's continue on here. You had something else about

4:49

Google. Yeah, so, and speaking of

4:51

Google, Google CEO talked about

4:53

what search will be like in ten years,

4:55

And there was this whole article on Searching Journal

4:58

and they were breaking down pretty much how it's

5:00

the early days of AI. It's evolving

5:02

fast, and they talk about somewhat

5:05

of the future. If you haven't read the article,

5:07

you can check it out, but I can paraphrase based

5:10

on everything that they're saying. Right,

5:12

they talk about, oh, there used to there haven't

5:14

been ten blue links in a long time, which is true.

5:17

I've even done tweets about this because everyone's like,

5:19

oh, the ten blue links are going to disappear. That's

5:21

a big misconception. Google hasn't had ten blue

5:23

links in ages. I'm not talking about a year

5:25

or two or three or four. I'm talking about it's really been

5:28

ages where they moved away

5:30

from that model. But they're

5:32

talking about, oh, you know, ten

5:34

blue links. They haven't been there. It's

5:37

not a chat bought experience. AI

5:40

improved search not replaces it. Websites

5:42

are still important, and of course

5:44

because they need the data from websites

5:46

and the crawling. But the

5:49

overall, when you read the whole article, they

5:51

didn't really give any insights on what

5:53

Google's going to look like ten years from now. What

5:56

it seems like is they don't really know what

5:58

Google is going to look like ten years from now, and it's

6:00

just going to be a big experiment. That's exactly

6:02

what we've been saying on this podcast. Yeah, it's a big

6:04

interpretation, and if you look at everything that

6:06

they do, it's all like, oh, let's make this tweak,

6:09

show it to zero point one percent of our traffic,

6:11

make sure it doesn't negatively impact

6:13

user experience and hopefully not

6:15

negatively impact revenue. I do believe they put

6:17

the users first and then from there,

6:19

if it works out, they do more of it. If it doesn't work

6:22

out, they go back. If you look at a lot of

6:24

the changes that they've done over the years in

6:26

Google, they've went back and forth on

6:28

changes is because things didn't work out

6:30

based on users signals and what

6:33

they're gathering from people. I think what's for

6:35

sure in terms of the future of Google

6:37

is that they have their core

6:39

business to protect, and they have their shareholders to

6:41

protect, and so that forces that stay

6:43

focused on the golden goose. And

6:46

I don't know how they're going to pivot over the next ten years,

6:48

but we've seen companies like Microsoft figure out

6:50

how to pivot. We've seen Facebook pivot, We've seen Apple

6:52

pivot over the years. So yeah, they have a lot of smart people

6:55

working there and hopefully they figure it out. But

6:57

you know, it's searches their golden goose, right, Whereas

7:00

if you're like a perplexity or an open AI, you

7:02

have a lot more flexibility to test things because

7:05

you are trying to you are trying to compete for

7:07

really ultimately, everyone's competing for attention at the end

7:09

of the day. I found the test. By the way, here's the test. So

7:11

what I was saying was rand Fishkin. This is in

7:14

twenty fourteen actually, so he said, care

7:16

to help with a Google theory test. He actually ran this test

7:18

a couple of times because I haven't seen this one. He said,

7:21

could you search for imech lab in

7:23

Google and click the link from my blog? I have

7:25

a hunch, so obviously his hunches.

7:28

If everyone searches for imech lab and clicks

7:30

on his result, that click through signal

7:33

is going to bump things up. And then from this

7:35

it actually moved his result all

7:37

the way to the top. Yeah, and he

7:39

did a similar thing with the stakes example

7:41

that I gave earlier. Yep, and speaking

7:44

of Google and change. Dude,

7:46

here's an interesting survey that we ran at

7:48

an NP Digital back in twenty twenty.

7:50

We ask people how do they search for questions

7:53

online? And ninety eight percent

7:55

says search engines, one percent says social

7:57

media, one percent said other other

7:59

being like sites like Cora and stuff like that.

8:02

In twenty twenty four, So this year

8:04

we ran this survey again, but this time

8:06

with eleven one hundred and five

8:08

people. Instead of ninety

8:10

eight percent of the people saying they use Google to find

8:12

questions, sixty one percent, seventeen

8:15

percent said social media, which is a big jump

8:17

from one percent. Thirty percent

8:19

said AI chatbots like chat GPT,

8:21

and two percent said other like sides like Cora.

8:24

But trends are shifting and changing.

8:27

This doesn't mean Google's dead or anything like that, because

8:29

questions only make up roughly eight

8:31

percent of their searches per day out of the eight

8:34

point five billion searches that they get. Plus,

8:37

Google's growing in popularity each and every

8:39

single year, and if you look at their traffic, it's actually

8:41

up overall. But there's a

8:43

lot of shifts that are being made,

8:45

and it's just like you and I talked about Google

8:48

doesn't know the future because technology

8:50

is drastically impacting the future

8:53

and we're in the early stages

8:55

of AI.

8:56

You know what's interesting.

8:58

So Brian

9:02

Halligan from HubSpot, former CEO of HubSpot

9:05

and now chairman, I believe he retweeted

9:07

Aaron Levy, who's the CEO of Box, the

9:09

founder of Box, and

9:12

it's this whole thing about And by the way, Vanode

9:14

coast Last said this too. So where I'm going with

9:16

this is how service businesses,

9:18

a lot of businesses are going to change in the next couple of years. And

9:20

I think it's going to be very possible to build

9:22

a billion dollar revenue company with

9:24

less than one hundred employees. This is exactly what Vanode

9:26

coast Less said. Vanode coast led those like don't

9:28

know he founded Sun Microsystems

9:30

and he's a very popular VC.

9:33

He's done very well for himself. And it's

9:35

it's exciting to me because you see Aaron

9:37

Levy, he's talking a lot about AI agents, right like

9:39

you and I. If we have twenty of us

9:42

micro computers that are just exactly

9:45

like us, thinking the way we think do but

9:47

just doing work, how much more efficient are

9:49

we going to become? Right? And I'm

9:52

just very excited to see that. And I think those

9:54

people that know how to build entire solutions

9:57

and they know how to craft agents around

9:59

them, they're going to create a lot of leverage for their business.

10:02

And there's there was a study and I don't

10:04

have the link to it right now, but this study about

10:06

how you know, when you think about Salesforce,

10:08

the market cap for Salesforce is thirty five

10:10

billion, right, but when you look at its

10:12

Salesforce is not a thirty five billion dollar company.

10:15

If you get it wrong, I'm

10:17

one hundred and ten percent sure it's worth at least one

10:19

hundred maybe close to two hundred billion.

10:22

Or is the market thirty five trillion?

10:24

Two hundred and sixty seven thirty? Okay, so

10:26

thirty So the market is thirty five trillion. The number thirty

10:28

five stix in my head, So I think the market can be thirty five

10:30

trillion. That's too big for CRM space, not

10:32

just CRM space, it was just talking about it. There's

10:35

like this graph where it says like sales right

10:37

buying and then there's it buying, which is

10:39

like one hundred and fifteen trillion or something like that.

10:41

So that makes more sense.

10:42

Right. But it's just like

10:45

to the point about Google earlier. We don't know how the future

10:48

is going to look, but I can say for sure these AI

10:50

agents, I don't think they're overhyped. I think they're under

10:52

hyped, and most people aren't talking about them right now. All right, So

10:54

I wanted to take a second to tell you about

10:57

Leveling Up Founders. This is

10:59

in event slash Mastermind

11:01

for people doing seven eight, nine figures.

11:03

These are founders that are doing that amount, and

11:06

we've been doing this event for.

11:07

A couple of years now.

11:08

We've had amazing speakers, but more than anything,

11:10

it's about the people. What I mean by that is

11:13

like minded people want to hang out with like minded people,

11:15

and this is the best spot to connect with people

11:17

of a certain caliber. And we vet every single

11:20

person that comes through. So if people

11:22

are even though they make a lot of money, but

11:24

their character we don't really align with that, we're not

11:26

necessarily going to let them in. We do this event in Beverly

11:28

Hills and it's happening in the

11:31

beginning of August. All you have to do

11:33

to learn more about it is just go to levelingop dot com

11:35

slash Founders Again. It's levelingop dot com

11:37

slash founders.

11:38

If you want to hang out with.

11:39

Amazing people, Neil, my podcast

11:41

co host, is going to be there. I'm going to be there.

11:43

People like say Ed Bulky, he will be there

11:45

as well.

11:45

And again it's going to be a great time. Levelingop

11:48

dot com slash founders to learn more and

11:50

we'll see you inside. You want to talk about something that's trending,

11:52

let's talk about the WNBA. Okay, do

11:55

you think the WNBA has potential now

11:58

because of the new recruit that got Kaitlyn

12:00

Clark. Yeah, she was drafted number one. You know, you know how

12:02

much she's getting paid. It was something like two

12:04

or three hundred grand. It was terrible. Yeah, for

12:07

how much media exposure she's giving the

12:09

WNBA. Look, I know

12:11

the WNBA makes a fraction of the NBA, but

12:13

she's bringing so much limelight to the WNBA

12:15

she should be getting paid millions of dollars in my opinion.

12:18

So, our our friend Brad at record

12:20

edit podcast dot com brought this up.

12:22

I think this is great. This is a great idea, or not a

12:24

great idea, a great topic.

12:26

So the WNBA has been kind

12:28

of in the not doing well since

12:30

its inception, right, not many people

12:32

watch it, right, that's reason, that's the reason why advertising

12:35

revenue is not that high. But to your point, Kaitlyn

12:37

Clark, I mean, I watched the championship

12:40

game right where they lost. But she's basically

12:42

like the Steph Curry. She's a sharpshooter and she's

12:45

everyone. All the NBA players are talking about her. Right.

12:47

She just signed a deal with Nike, a shoe deal about

12:49

twenty eight million dollars, I believe, so she's

12:51

gonna make a lot of money off that. But to

12:54

what Brad and I were talking about pre show, it's like,

12:56

I think the WNBA is trending in the right direction

12:58

now. I think people are gonna make a lot more. But I also

13:01

want to be clear, like it's people are talking about the salary.

13:03

It's unfair everything like that. The WNBA

13:06

will get there, but everything is compensated

13:08

based on the number of views you're getting at the end of the day,

13:10

and Kaitlin Clark's going to change that. Bingo. There

13:12

was this Instagram clip that talked about

13:14

the World Cup in the past and how

13:16

there was a pay disparity between the men and

13:19

the women. But when you look at how much the men

13:21

got paid versus for the revenue they brought in.

13:23

It was actually a lower percentage for what the

13:25

women got paid versus what they brought

13:27

in. And what I believe

13:30

with the WNBA, what

13:32

she's bringing in, she's

13:34

not getting paid enough, right Like,

13:37

I don't believe that someone should just get paid more because

13:39

they want it, want it. It's logical.

13:42

You Marri bring Yes, you bring value,

13:44

you should get paid more. I don't get if you're a guy or

13:46

girl, an alien, you pick whatever you want. But

13:48

she's bringing way more value than

13:50

what she's getting paid. And I bet you

13:52

if she played in the NBA, she can

13:54

beat a lot of the dudes in there. She

13:57

can shoot, for sure, she can shoot.

13:58

I think she would do well.

14:00

I'm not talking about she can go against Lebron James

14:02

and beat him. But there's a lot of the

14:04

NBA doesn't have tons of Lebron James. For every

14:07

Lebron James, there's a ton of videocre players.

14:09

Yeah, exactly.

14:10

Yeah.

14:10

So look, I think at the end of the day, if someone

14:13

generational like her comes along and she changes

14:15

the sport, then great props. I mean, that's

14:17

why she gets that twenty eight million dollar deal, and hopefully

14:19

they all get paid a lot more. I think she's going to make

14:21

everyone in the WNB a lot happier, and

14:23

she's going to boost ratings. And on

14:25

top of this, she's good.

14:28

But she's still early in her career.

14:31

You give her five to ten years, she'll be a much better

14:33

player.

14:33

We'll see.

14:34

I mean, I've watched the championship game. I mean that being said,

14:36

like neither, by the way, neither Neil and I. Obviously we

14:38

played basketball. I watched a lot of sports. I played basketball

14:40

for years in the league.

14:41

You never played, well, yeah I did.

14:43

I played for thirteen years. Okay, anyway,

14:45

I was never good at it, but

14:47

I played for thirteen years.

14:48

I was a decent perimeter shooter.

14:50

I played all the way. I stopped

14:52

at high school. But it played as a little kid. Neil

14:55

can also run thirteen miles straight,

14:57

right, is that right? Yeah? Longer, but

14:59

I won't sweat. That's the funny thing. Yeah, So

15:01

Neil has all these weird corps that we don't

15:03

know about. Will uncover them more as you listen to That's

15:05

why she listen to this whole thing. But you want

15:07

to know what's funny if you asked me to run around a building

15:10

with the tires strapped on, like on a rope, you know,

15:12

like they do.

15:13

Yeah, you can't do that.

15:14

I can't do that.

15:14

I gave out.

15:16

I have amazing stamina with no weights.

15:18

The moment you put on weights.

15:19

Game over. Yeah. So that is it for today.

15:21

I let us know what you think and go

15:24

to marketing school the io Slash Agency to

15:26

learn more about the Agency Owners Association. Please

15:28

don't forget to rate review subscribe.

15:31

You know we meet in person for this.

15:33

They've got Brad from record edit podcast

15:35

dot com and uh yeah,

15:37

we'll catch you in the next episode.