Don Klos, Director of Sales and Business Development at Nuclear Networking, joins Ricardo on today’s episode of the MORE podcast. As a long-time SEO specialist, Don understands the tedious and time-consuming nature of search engine optimization. He makes the most of his time by using third-party platforms to help expedite the ranking process to deliver faster results. 

Tool #1 - Location Scan

• Location Scan determines which directories your business is on (like Yelp and Google My Business) and alerts you to inconsistencies in your information between platforms.
• It’ll show directories you aren’t on, giving you an excellent opportunity to establish your company in other areas of the web. 
• One warning before jumping on the app: Don’t use their “fix” feature to perform SEO updates - they’ll try and rent you backlinks. (Meaning when you stop paying for the privilege, it goes away.)

Tool #2 - GTmetrics

• GTmetics gives your website SEO an A-F school grade and provides tips to get to an A.
• They go over everything on your site - your site speed, the images, everything on-site that might bring down your grade. 
• You can click “what does this mean” to reveal problems and solutions to your search engine optimization.

Tool #3 - SpyFu

• SEO ranking is all about keywords. SpyFu gives you behind-the-scenes information about your competition and see what they’re doing for keywords and backlinks.
• Spyfu doesn’t reveal which keywords do or don’t work, but it does show the keywords and backlinks they use.

Don has been in this industry for a long time. How does he do it?

• His company started 11 years ago, and their model is unorthodox for the industry; they don’t try to be everything to everybody. Instead, they focus on specific areas, do those areas well, and find vetted partners.
• About 90% of companies do on-site SEO—Don’s company differentiated by specializing in white-hat backlinking.

The Backlink Basics:

• Backlinks are juice for Google. It’s a link off your site, either to another website, somewhere else that sends it back to you, right either as a blog or a link on your site. It has to be something in your space. 
• Black hat backlinking are methods banned or frowned upon by Google, whereas white hat backlinking is the process of building positive backlinks that Google loves.
• Don’s company used to get their stuff cannibalized all the; people would find out their strategy and try to use it for themselves. 
• How did they solve the problem? They found a way to mask their backlinks. Meaning their competition couldn’t steal their backlinks.

Don’s recommendations and final advice:

• While he’s not a big podcaster, Don recommends The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.
• His advice for entrepreneurs: don’t forget the importance of marketing. Marketing should utilize about 10% of your revenue and is critical to growing your business. 
• To the small business owners: When using a third-party SEO company, find out what the deliverables are. Find out what you expect to get for your money, and hold them to it.
• People get upset with the process and say it doesn't work. It does work. It just has to be done correctly.