Author name: geasybhw

Note: This is a very very long interview, so I suggest you take a coffee, pen & paper as @Leith shared some really great golden nuggets here. To begin with, I’d like to say thanks to @Geasy for this opportunity. The last time I did an “interview” was years ago, and although I’m no guru or celebrity.. it’s still pretty cool that some members wanted to find out more about myself. I’ve said this time and time again but BHW has been instrumental in my SEO career so far and the connections I’ve made here over the last few years has been invaluable. And before we begin, I have to warn you. I have a tendency to write… a lot. The answers below ended up totalling 7k words (WTF?) If I bore you at any point please feel free to curse me in the comments, lol. Can you tell us about your background? How did you get into this business? Before I start rambling on about my background, a question I get asked quite frequently is whether or not Leith is my name. Thought I’d take this chance to clarify. It’s my ‘online’ name/alias (the name comes from the area I grew up in). I’m really not sure what sort of format to go with this interview, so I’m going to shamelessly copy @Sherb. This is going to sound cliched (and you’ve probably heard this a million times elsewhere). I wasn’t born in a wealthy family; quite the opposite actually. Mum didn’t work – she was usually too busy keeping myself and my two younger brothers in check. That wasn’t easy, lol. Dad worked 2 jobs. 7am – 1pm stacking shelves and then 6pm – 2am as a chef at a restaurant. We really didn’t have money. But that didn’t matter. Whatever little money my Dad made went towards rent, food and paying for my private tuition. My parents did everything they could to ensure I got quality education, both in school and outside. After all, they were relying on me and my future. I didn’t have any games consoles, didn’t have a mobile phone and we didn’t have money to eat out or go on holiday. Despite this, my parents would always somehow find ways to give me money to go out with friends here and there. Deep down though, I knew we were struggling and that sparked my initial desire to make money. I could write an entire book about what happened next, but I’m going to skip right to the end. After experimenting with various offline money making methods (reselling sweets in school, trying to make my own playing cards (failed miserably, lmao), selling whatever items I could find in my house, going to auctions to snag cheap bargains) I eventually realized I had to do something else. I’ve always had a fascination towards computers. I would go to typewriting class during my lunch break at school and since it was only me that was at the class (LOL), the teacher would work with me on a 1 to 1 basis (I can now hit 150+ WPM when writing long-form content, so I’d say it paid off). After begging my Dad for what felt like years for a computer, my wish was finally granted. To be precise, this was my first computer. It was the cheapest option available at Curry’s. I’ll always remember my Dad haggling with the sales rep, even though we knew the price (which was actually on sale for £249) was final. And since I didn’t have any Internet (we couldn’t afford it), I spent the first few months playing Pinball and attempting to play Minesweeper (I had no idea how to play). After what felt like another few years, we finally purchased an Internet package — and this is where things started to get interesting. Again, I could write an entire book about how I started but I’m going to cut to the chase. After stumbling across several “make money from home” ads, I found myself clicking some of them and ending up on a GPT site (these are sites that pay you $0.20 – $0.50 for doing surveys). I made a tiny amount of money on these sites ($20 or so), but ultimately I leaped through various other verticals such as affiliate marketing, video marketing, torrents, PPD… and in the end, SEO. It was mid 2009 at this point. The connection I felt once I grasped the very basics of SEO will always have a special place in my heart. For anyone who was in the industry back then, you’d know literally how easy it was to rank. So easy you could do it blindfolded. In a way, SEO really screwed up my education at school. My Dad was paying for my private tuition, but I wasn’t paying attention in those classes. I wasn’t doing my homework and my social life quickly evaporated. You’d find me always rushing to the library during lunch break to soak up my knowledge on SEO. Even after school when I arrived home, it was straight to the computer to read, read, read. It’s safe to say when I literally had no social life, lol. Whatever chance I got, I made sure I was absorbing information. It became worryingly addictive. At my age back then, most kids were going to the movies, playing football, on the games console or just sitting in front of the TV all day. The first site I ranked went on to generate hundreds in revenue and it wasn’t long before I met my business partner (who is still my business partner today) @d3t0x online and we hit $2k/day in revenue on some of our sites. This was a game-changer for me in particular, since during this period I was making my Dad’s monthly wage in a day, lol. Being able to give my parents the full payment for rent, food expenses, new clothes, restaurant meals and holidays to meet family abroad (who we never had the chance to meet) all thanks to my online marketing

1. Can you tell a bit about yourself? What do you do and how did you get started in internet marketing? I am 28, born in Slovakia (note, not Slovenia), raised in the lower-ish middle class family with my younger brother and sister. I graduated from law school at Masaryk University in Czechia, where you can find me wandering the streets of southern Moravia drunk to this very day. I started with IM, remotely, when I was 19. I was working as an externist for one advertising agency as a PPC campaign admin. But the work there went slowly to shit and being 21 and stuck at law school, well, I figured that I might do PPC campaigns for my own clients. Oh well, how wrong was I. After the initial success I kinda run out of money to promote my service and well, had to say farewell to this idea (From what you can see, I really like to talk about myself). Then one day I came across BHW, which was a huge coincidence. I remember having a cigarette break with my band-mates during rehearsal and someone came up with idea to make a meme website, like a copy of 9gag. So my job was to find a Facebook clickjacker. I remember looking for one for hours until I stumbled across BHW and I read threads here until 5am. That was back in 2012. I took the action the very next day, made my first big money the very year and it took off from there. 2. Tell us a bit of your current projects, what are you working on? Well, to be honest, I am trying to divert from IM altogether. I am mostly focusing on cryptocurrency offline (if they can be called offline) projects (no, I am not doing any ICO). And why the diversion? I feel kinda burnt out and I feel like a change is needed to move in my “professional” life, if we can even call it that. 3. What kind of SEO tools do you regularly use? My most favorite tools are my employees. No idea how they handle my mood swings and temperament. I guess I pay them well enough. Besides that, I love remote desktop and teamviewer… No, really, considering that I focus mostly on selling domains, my tools without which I would not be able to do crap are Majestic, Ahrefs, Archive, Domaintools and Hosterstats. One that I love the most, outside the domain checking category, is probably Semrush. Makes keyword research effortless. And this will sound cheesy as hell, but the best tools are your hands and head. I might be old school, but I still like to do most of my work without any automation. 4. How do you see the role of A.I. in SEO? I prefer the term “virtual intelligence” for science sake. Well, we can already see it in effect in form of the “Rank Brain”. I believe that if you were to ask a Google engineer why a certain site is ranked #1 for its term, he would not be able to answer. Google algorithm is advancing and learning fast, but the question is, whether it can “kill” SEO as we know it. And I believe it can’t. There will always have to be some “factors” like backlinks etc., that can be exploited and manipulated. So unless the search engine can read the mind of the user, I think we are good to go. Problem is that SEO is taking way too long nowadays. Ranking site can take years and you have to be content with the fact that you might be pouring money down the drain for months and might not ever see those money again. Getting your initial investment back can take ages and overall, SEO is a game for big boys only nowadays. You can ask any backlink sellers about how their orders look compared to few years back. Newbies can’t really afford SEO and those who come in with $100 budget end up very disappointed and demotivated. 5. What kind of link building strategy do you use? My main focus, despite the fact that I sell domains, is a perfect onsite optimization. Once you build a flawless site with flawless densities, interlinking and keyword research, the entire link building campaign is a piece of cake. And besides guest posts, PBNs and few expired web 2.0s, I do not even use any other links. Waste of time. They don’t do crap anyway. And unless you are planning to pointlessly play with fire and pump your exact/partial anchors as high as possible, while trying not to end up stuck sandboxed at 2nd page, then you do not need any foundation links at all. 6. Do you still use 301 redirects? What is a proper way to make them work? Well I have never been using 301 redirects that much and I have not played with them in some time. I know what some of my clients have been doing quite successfully and I’ve mentioned it all over the forum quite a few times (dozens). – Don’t even bother with some small 10 – 20RD domains. – Get a big one. – Like really big one. – Bigger – Is it big enough? Good. – It’s related though, right? No? Sucks. – Get a niche related one. – More related. – Anchors get redirected too you know, so if there are some random anchors, even if within your niche, then it’s not a good idea. – Good, now build it up. – What do you mean you want to redirect it at registrar level? No. – Build it up like a regular site. Populate it with content. – 2 weeks have passed and you want to redirect it? Haha, no. – Wait for a few months. – Does it rank naturally for some keywords? Good. – No you can’t redirect it yet, wait some more. – Are you there still? – Good,

Disclaimer: I’m all over the place. Please forgive me for the sporadic answers. 1. Can you tell a bit about yourself? What do you do and how did you get started in internet marketing? 1. I got into IM in 2009. I was about 14. Lived in a rural area so there wasn’t much to do – no distractions. So it led to me spending a lot of time on the computer and then eventually internet marketing. Micro niche websites were popular then, so I made them for people. I realized the only two keyword research tools at the time (Micro Niche Finder and Market Samurai) sucked so I started making my own. Exec VIP member meathead1234 told me I ought to sell licenses and not just keep it for myself. hitman247, another exec VIP on here, saw me talking about it on the forum and came in as one of my first customers. He’s now a very close friend of mine – we chat daily and visit each other often. After that, the company blew up on BHW and WF. I got WSO of the day and week. First day I ever made 5 figures was then, when I was 16. PayPal came along Feb 1, 2012 and did what they do, limited my account, held 5 figures and cancelled all my recurring subscriptions. This basically forced my company to a slow and painful death. More about that here. Then I founded another tool called SerpClix (credit goes to BTB and Taktical for their advice on this project), and had some exciting times with that. Learned old school sales. One day I was on the call with an older man, he was an agency owner down south and had a few big contracts. I think it was Victoria’s Secret and Hilton Hotels for each around $500k/mo. He wanted to try SerpClix. On the other end of the call is me, a kid in college, sitting in my apartment at a desk, half dressed, bed head, about 2:00 in the afternoon, excited and anxious with every answer I gave back. He said he wanted to try it for $500. I confidently replied “add a zero” – and he’s said “okay, $5000?” – and that was basically one of my first sales calls ever. His young female assistance PayPal’d that money over to me right away. I got another few hundred agencies signed up and then one agency just bought the company outright and I’ve been enjoying life ever since. So, to answer your question, what do I do – I sell software. Mainly. 2. Tell us a bit of your current projects, what are you working on? 2. Right now I moved to San Diego for the winter. I just graduated college 11 months ago so I’m kind of living my life on the money I earned while in college. SD is supposed to be one of the best places in North America, so I got a nice place downtown. I don’t even call what I do “work” – like I wake up in the morning and just do whatever I want to do. But after I exercise, clean up and clean my apartment, I fill my empty time with problem solving. I’ve been coding all sorts of stuff lately but my main venture is my influencer search engine Shout. Everyone in the IM/ecom space is pretty familiar with success stories like Quay Australia so I won’t recap much but there’s a lot of money to be made in influencer marketing, so I just have a tool that helps do that. I’m also into ecommerce, and we’ve been doing well with that. 3. You have successfully built 3 6-7 figure companies, and sold one. What are the processes to achieve something like that for someone who only does SEO? 3. Everyone makes money in a different way on here. There’s no real process that’s true for all of us. As humans we try to find patterns in situations where patterns may not exist. I guess the first thing is to decide what your goals are. If you’re good at SEO, the easiest way to make money is to sell links in the BST forum. Everyone does it. Issue is, you’re going to struggle to become a millionaire from that. If you’re like me, you’re looking for something that can grow and be massive, not capped. So you could rank your own money sites. Sure, less capped, but the issue is then, your income is super unstable. Rankings jump around. They’re like your mentally unstable ex – you never know what they’re going to do next and you can’t have that shit in your life. So that’s why I like PPC. You can spend $50/day and mess around with campaigns and when you get a good campaign, you just scale it. You find guys who can bank roll a $250k/mo ad spend, you show the numbers/ROI for your trial campaigns and you decide what kind color your Lambo is gonna be (joking about the Lambo, no one gives a shit what kind of car you drive). However, to answer your question, easiest and most reliable money in SEO is being an agency. A friend of mine, Ilan, owns a very successful agency. He doesn’t take on clients under $3k/mo. We talked 2 weeks ago when he called me about some ecom stuff. But he mentioned his competition was under offer for $35 million. He says he doesn’t know how they get an offer because no one in the agency space wants more clients. They’re all busy. If you have discipline and can open an office in a city, there’s good money to be made. As for my own process – I’m kind of old school. Also I wouldn’t say I’m in the SEO space, but I’m just an entrepreneur. I basically prove my worth to as many people as possible and opportunities present themselves. So I try to keep an open